Over the years, I have tried to make that solution work, but it never ever went smoothly.
Maybe it’s time to try it again, but it’s an arms race from what I remember. Apple just keeps changing things; if you’re on the latest iOS version, it was unlikely to work. Has that changed?
Statistically, sure, but it's not evenly distributed across regions and cultures. People can find themselves in social circles where iMessage is the norm and be pressured into using it because others are unwilling to install a second messaging app.
That's not what's hard to understand. It's choosing to exclusively use iMessage knowing that not everyone can use it. And then shifting your social circle based on one company's decision to not support it on other platforms.
If you think that something extremely basic seems something that is hard to grasp for other people, it's usually because you're misunderstanding the situation, not because other people are failing to grasp the extremely basic thing.
For years it meant fewer features and frustrating experiences in group chats.
Kids liked renaming group chats and liking/reacting to individual messages, and sending higher-res photos, and one "green bubble" participant nerfed the whole chat for everyone.
In spite of Apple knowing kids got bullied over this, meh, money. Thankfully this has now been just about fixed (depending on which Android version/carrier someone has), so green bubble stigma should be on its way out [eventually].
Firmly believe no one ever actually cared about the color.
How has it been fixed? It's still just Apple parsing the messages that came through like so and so reacted with some emoji to some message, and then attaching it to that message. But then this doesn't work with reacting to attachments like photos as it doesn't know which photo was reacted to.
GrapheneOS hardware options are substantially behind iOS hardware options. Also Graphene is somewhat annoying to use; I missed shots bc the camera app didn’t open fast enough.
I'm shouting into the wind here a fair amount, but I just discovered DeltaChat and ArcaneChat. ArcaneChat is available only on Android, but DeltaChat is available on iOS and uses chatmail relays. My family has found it to be super useful and effective. I don't think it's viable to convert everybody in my social circle, but I've been very happy with the apps and attachments, notifications, and general performance.
DeltaChat was much more useful when it worked with any email server and didn't need its own special kind of server. We have plenty of messengers that use their own servers, like matrix, XMPP, and simplex.
I appreciate the simplicity of hosting ChatMail versus a regular mail server. It's simpler, lighter weight, and better suited for the chat use case. It's basically the ideal messaging platform for my needs.
I've used both. Neither are as good. Your reply also completely ignores my point about the ease of hosting the infrastructure yourself. Prosody isn't too bad, but hosting Matrix is a nightmare -- as much as I admire what the Matrix crew is trying to do, the architecture is unwieldy and always has been.
"Usually, it just works, but for some providers, you need to adjust the settings. In this case, click on “prepare” for details.
Please note that push notifications do not work with classic providers and esp. large classic providers often have sending limits and overzealous spam rejections. This can worsen the chat experience, as messages are delayed or missing messages may even disrupt groups."
You are obviously very new to the tech world if you dont recall the many years of customer lobbying, and Apple refusing outright for a long time until they were strongarmed into it by law. You cant then turn around and claim they are all sunshine and roses because they support open protocols when they were forced to begrudgingly.
Since you are dead-set against getting a Mac, why don't you move to Android? It seems like a better fit as Apple's whole thing is about continuity between their own devices, which obviously will not work for you.
Sure! Apple can do whatever they want with their devices. But when they sell them to people, it’s no longer theirs.
People are (IMHO rightfully) not happy with a general computing device not being open.
Societies are pushing back against this practice through legal means, which is good!
The best part is if people want to stay inside whatever ecosystem, they can! It can be opt-in to enable developer mode to do what you can already do on any desktop PC.
If you want to lock down gran and gramps iphone (or PC for that matter), you can! Make an admin account and have them use an account with less privileges.
We can have the best of all worlds. An integrated ecosystem. Security. User computing rights.
I'm not the OP but I pretty much run a Windows VM solely for iTunes backups and to run a few Windows-only apps. I don't trust Windows much and that VM is firewalled off from the rest of the network.
I use Linux exclusively for my computers but for my phone I have no choice but to use either Apple or Android because of banking/government/etc. apps that don't work on custom roms. Yes there are workarounds but I've gotten app breakage or account suspensions for that. And yeah I trust Apple more than Google in terms of privacy so I end up choosing the lesser of two evils.
Otherwise I self-host everything and stay off the cloud whenever possible.
I have had a iPhone for 15 years, and I have only ever been able to back it up with iTunes on windows (as I will never buy a Mac).
Apple’s refusal to provide interoperability borders on criminal. I wish there was a better option.
Maybe it’s time to try it again, but it’s an arms race from what I remember. Apple just keeps changing things; if you’re on the latest iOS version, it was unlikely to work. Has that changed?
[0]: https://github.com/jkcoxson/idevice
[1]: https://github.com/danielpaulus/go-ios
[2]: https://github.com/doronz88/pymobiledevice3
I’ve gotten my close friends onto Signal but there are still always 3-4 group chats where that isn’t possible.
I'm sure it's possible for them to use Signal but some people are unreasonably stubborn.
Not sure why people having their own subjective views and preferences is such a hard concept to grasp.
If you really want blue bubbles, use Signal, the default color is blue.
Kids liked renaming group chats and liking/reacting to individual messages, and sending higher-res photos, and one "green bubble" participant nerfed the whole chat for everyone.
In spite of Apple knowing kids got bullied over this, meh, money. Thankfully this has now been just about fixed (depending on which Android version/carrier someone has), so green bubble stigma should be on its way out [eventually].
Firmly believe no one ever actually cared about the color.
All of these problems could be avoided if iMessage was cross-platform or if people just used something else. Nobody is being forced to use iMessage
https://chatmail.at/
I'm considering running my own chatmail relay, although I haven't tried that yet.
That was their one big plus and while I avoided it because of PGP, this means that it really has no upside over XMPP for me.
Quote from https://providers.delta.chat:
"Usually, it just works, but for some providers, you need to adjust the settings. In this case, click on “prepare” for details.
Please note that push notifications do not work with classic providers and esp. large classic providers often have sending limits and overzealous spam rejections. This can worsen the chat experience, as messages are delayed or missing messages may even disrupt groups."
As to iMessage, think carefully about the architecture, and maybe you can imagine why it is Apple only.
Sure! Apple can do whatever they want with their devices. But when they sell them to people, it’s no longer theirs.
People are (IMHO rightfully) not happy with a general computing device not being open.
Societies are pushing back against this practice through legal means, which is good!
The best part is if people want to stay inside whatever ecosystem, they can! It can be opt-in to enable developer mode to do what you can already do on any desktop PC.
If you want to lock down gran and gramps iphone (or PC for that matter), you can! Make an admin account and have them use an account with less privileges.
We can have the best of all worlds. An integrated ecosystem. Security. User computing rights.
Because I trust Google even less than Apple (and a de-Googled phone would not be useful to me).
I use Linux exclusively for my computers but for my phone I have no choice but to use either Apple or Android because of banking/government/etc. apps that don't work on custom roms. Yes there are workarounds but I've gotten app breakage or account suspensions for that. And yeah I trust Apple more than Google in terms of privacy so I end up choosing the lesser of two evils.
Otherwise I self-host everything and stay off the cloud whenever possible.