Your literally talking about WhatsApp and Telegram as if they aren't their own segregated microcosms you can't message from whatsapp to telegram for instance so obviously they are their own segregated users by platform, its just a software platform not a hardware platform.

They are hardware agnostic, iMessage is restricted to users of very specific hardware.

Its only now just arrived in beta on the iPad.

...what is the "it" that just arrived to the iPad?

I assume they meant WhatsApp :

https://wabetainfo.com/whatsapp-beta-for-ios-23-19-1-71-what...

So you're saying that if I install WhatsApp on my phone, I can text anyone I want, if I have their phone number? Doesn't matter if they have WhatsApp installed? I just say "send this to 5551212" and it gets there?

They need to install the app, which is free. What they don't need to do is buy an iPhone, which is not free.

Android phones are free? I have to buy the phone no matter what, so I don't see that as a differentiator.

I don't want multiple ecosystems that don't interoperate at all. I don't want to give my private conversations over to an ad company like Facebook. I like iMessage because it adds features without taking. I don't worry about what app I need to use depending on who I want to talk to, I just send them a message and move on with my life.

You can run Android apps on almost any non-Apple brand of phones, Windows PCs, Linux, Mac OS and Chromebooks.

You can run iMessage on Apple devices, nowhere else.

Surely you see the difference.

> Surely you see the difference.

I know what argument you're trying to make, but I think it is disingenuous to pretend that WhatsApp is free while iMessage is not. As a practical matter neither is free, and both are free.

iMessage is not free insofar as one much purchase an iPhone to use it.

So they absolutely segregate users onto their proprietary platform, it just happens not to cost money to use.