The point is that I don’t care about doing these things specifically over SMS. I send photos, voice memos etc over apps like whatsapp. It wouldn’t improve my life one iota to be able to do that with some legacy protocol.
What people care about is doing these things over something that is universal enough. In some places WhatsApp is so pervasive that it's that; in others, a mandated standard like SMS or RCS is the best you can hope for.
Whatsapp is universally available as far as I know. If people choose not to use a universally available, free and secure alternative, it would seem that universality is not the main driving factor.
Network effects are a thing. Mere availability of WhatsApp (or Signal, or whatever) doesn't do you any good if all the people you actually need to talk to don't have it installed.
Yes but you can’t fault Apple for people freely choosing to use one app over another, especially when they do nothing at all to discourage whatsapp and the other third party alternatives.
Also, some of my friends and family aren't on those apps and exclusively use SMS/iMessage.