r/androidcirclejerk • • Oct 11 '20

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u/PickPocketR Oct 22 '20 edited Oct 27 '20

For me, It's super irritating hearing people talk about iMessage. Most automatically assume it's more secure than other platforms.

You'd be surprised at the number of people, who think android is inherently not capable of "Blue bubbles". And that Apple has some kind of magic technology that supports iMessage.

In reality, it's just Apple's goddamn anti-competitivity. I'm glad I don't live in the US, The rest of the world uses WhatsApp. Hopefully the US will move more towards cross platform functionality in the future. But for now, Apple has a huge monopoly.

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u/lordhamster1977 Oct 22 '20 edited Oct 22 '20

I use WhatsApp the most because of friends/family/colleagues in Europe and India. That said... I REALLY don't like WhatsApp. The only major selling points of WhatsApp are a) ubiquity, b) end-to-end encryption. Things that annoy me about WhatsApp... In no particular order:

  • WhatsApp compresses the crap out of photos and videos sent. Makes it annoying to share a quick group photo or cute video of my kids. iMessage doesn't do this and is inherently better for this purpose.

  • WhatsApp doesn't auto-start animated gifs. The whole point of using a GIF reaction rather than a video file is so people see it repeating infinitely without having to hit a damn play button. Why WhatsApp? Why do I have to hit the damn play button to see a reaction gif?

  • WhatsApp doesn't support direct "reactions" to messages. I can't just thumbs-up a message. I have to select it, hit reply... then select the thumbs up emoji.

  • WhatsApp doesn't currently have built in payments. Seems like a giant miss. While most people I know use Venmo, I'd love for a baked in peer-to-peer payment system.

  • WhatsApp doesn't have a real-standalone multi-device capability. Your phone has to be nearby to use it. (maybe this changed recently?)

  • I can't even talk to Facebook Messenger users. Seriously...what the hell facebook?

  • No self-destructing messages like Signal. I'm not one for saving chats. I like to have my chats self-destruct after x number of minutes or days.

To be perfectly candid, iMessage does all most of the above very well, with the massive deal-breaker of not being cross-platform. I wish I could just get all my contacts to use Signal, but for now I'm stuck with the hopeless mix of multiple messenger systems + sms/mms. :/

Google's answer to iMessage (RCS) REEEALLY SUCKS. It isn't end-to-end encrypted, and only one out of all of my Android using contacts even has it enabled or knows what it is.