We all live in the same metro area. You might eat as early as five, you might finish as late as nine. But if you're going to use the business group, it should be about business. Banter is fine during working hours.

People get lazy and just use the "whole group" message rather than send it to those who are working today. And it's much like my problems with Android vs iOS: there are twelve people in this group, eleven of them have iPhones. They are not all going to install and use a separate messaging app for business than for personal communication, especially as iMessage is nominally E2EE. I could adapt or just be completely marginalized. So now twelve have iPhones.

Have you considered using something like Slack or Discord or (can’t believe I’m suggesting this) Teams, all of which sound like they’d be more suited to your use case?

This does not sound like an impossible stretch, works on more device types, and in the case of Slack or Teams can also be configured for HIPAA compliance (which while you don’t call it out, seems like it may be useful). Tens of millions of people use a chat system for work distinct from their personal friend groups, even if the venn diagram is a circle.

I have never used Slack or Discord. I have only used Teams for Zoom-esque meetings.

We do not have desks. Nor do we have offices.

I'm an anesthesiologist; I work where the patient and the surgeon are.

None of those are desktop applications, all work on Android and iPhones alike. All are more suitable for your use cases than SMS, iMessage or RCS.

Are they HIPAA-legit?

Both Slack and Teams can be configured to be HIPAA-compliant (as I already mentioned). Note that iMessage is NOT HIPAA-compliant.

Oh, that for sure. That seems like the obvious solution I'd pick on Signal or WhatsApp, and if Apple Messages doesn't support it, it's yet another infuriating example of their "we know best" attitude.

I like Apple hardware, but try to avoid its first party apps as much as possible due to that.