quote:
It just bugs me when people insist on SMS support in every messaging app. It's probably the same people who complain about their texts not being delivered or disappearing or whatever. Everyone looks at iMessage as the gold standard for integrating a chat app with SMS, but they overlook all the trouble it has caused. People not getting their texts when they switch to Android. Android users not getting messages when in groups with iPhone users. It's just a shitshow caused by trying to integrate SMS into things it wasn't meant for.

Everybody wants SMS because it's ubiquitous, but these days it's essentially useless. And it doesn't look like all the carriers are going to move to a new standard (RCS?) anytime soon, so people have to use apps. Then the new problem is vendor lockin/reliance. I'm not sure this new problem is worth it.

I don't understand. You say SMS is useless but it's obviously the only choice for real cross-platform messaging. That doesn't make it very useless to me?

If you want to use a single app for messaging, and still be cross-platform, while still having more advanced features available than SMS, don't you pretty much have to find some way of doing SMS integration on top of your new messaging platform?

edit: Yes, the issue with Apple->Android converts was there, but that was more Apple's fault for not falling back properly than an issue with the way they were doing it

This post was edited on 9/21/16 at 11:43 am

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Posted by Pettifogger

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

Member since Feb 2012

80847 posts

Posted on 9/21/16 at 11:54 am to efrad

Exactly.

I get the limitations of SMS, but if you're like me, the only person in a ongoing 15 person group chat without an iPhone, what is the solution? Make everyone get on WhatsApp?

Of course, the most obvious solution would be iMessage for other platforms, but Apple isn't going to do that.

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Posted by Korkstand

Member since Nov 2003

28890 posts

Posted on 9/21/16 at 12:07 pm to efrad

quote:
I don't understand. You say SMS is useless but it's obviously the only choice for real cross-platform messaging. That doesn't make it very useless to me?

SMS is useless for the way people text today. Like I said earlier, no read receipts, no formatting, hacky group messaging, etc.

As for cross-platform... there is no "true" cross-platform messaging system when you consider the browser a platform. Hangouts is close, it works in the browser and on Android and iPhone, but feature phones are left out. SMS works on feature phones and smartphones, but not the browser. Allo only works on smartphones. iMessage only works on iPhone.

quote:
If you want to use a single app for messaging, and still be cross-platform, while still having more advanced features available than SMS, don't you pretty much have to find some way of doing SMS integration on top of your new messaging platform?

Why? Whatsapp did it without SMS.

quote:
edit: Yes, the issue with Apple->Android converts was there, but that was more Apple's fault for not falling back properly than an issue with the way they were doing it

Apple could have handled it better, no doubt. But IMO part of the reason they didn't handle it better is because they tried to make the experience seamless, and I just don't think that's possible when trying to integrate SMS support into a more modern platform.

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