> i admire the resolve. on the other hand i think that rules out iMessage playing much role in that long-term, right? like, they're just never going to play nicely with others, it's not easy for the broader developer base to integrate with much less improve, and so on.

Well Apple is implementing RCS, so that's good. But look, I don't really think the blue bubble stuff stems from not being able to put stickers on the conversation. It definitely doesn't come from not being able to emoji-react ("tapback" as Apple calls it) because that still works on SMS, but the SMS participant receives a text message describing the tapback. In Google Messages and other modern clients, that gets interpreted by the phone and turned back into an emoji reaction [1].

I don't think the blue bubble hate comes from people not being able to do inline replies. I don't think it comes from the inability to edit your messages when in an SMS conversation.

The source of the blue bubble hate comes from group chat splitting. When you have an iMessage group chat and you hit Add to add a new user, but that user is not an iMessage user, you are shown a prompt that says "Create a New Group? Contacts not using iMesage can only be added to a new MMS group with the same members. Contacts using email address handles will use a phone number instead."

You are given two options: "Cancel" and "New Group".

If you choose New Group, you'll now have two groups. If you do nothing else, no one knows a new group was created, since no messages were received. If you send a message, its still entirely possible for the other group members to message either or both group chats. Chaos ensues.

It's not clear that Apple is actually going to fix this with RCS. Seems most likely they will not, that group chat splitting will still occur, just replacing SMS with RCS.

> i'm pointing to where i understand the landscape to be headed. for channel-based chat systems like Discord, irc, Matrix, XMPP/jabber, Slack, it's common enough to find channels which are bridged across 2 or more of those protocols.

Bridging is hacky, and involves not showing contact information for each user. You (of course), can't start a DM with such a user, and I'd assume things like @ mentions are ambiguous or nonfunctional.

Sure it _can_ be done, but it is kind of a terrible experience. Even Matrix and IRC have the same problem, and that's one I've actively experienced from both sides (IRC and Matrix).

> my experience with ephemeral group chats is that if i want to plan a large enough event i just end up starting multiple group chats, and the unimportant details are chaotic but the important ones like where/when we're meeting i make sure find their way into both chats.

I commend you, because you take a lot more effort than most humans to make sure things end up on both ends. In my experience, with the humans I have to deal with, its about a 5-10% of the time this happens, and usually its by sending a screenshot of the other group chat with half of the first line of the next message showing more important details that they decided "weren't relevant" or just didnt fit on the phone screen.

Also it should be obvious but some kinds of planning are simply not possible or require people to perform special courier roles to complete. Things like planning for what weekend everyone's free or what elements of a potluck everyone's going to bring are pretty tedious to manage between 2 group chats.

Furthermore, in my experience events that need planning aren't given dedicated ephemeral group chats, instead they are simply planned on whatever group chats they already have. People don't tend to put a lot of thought into making sure people are included, especially if the group chat is large. Some of the family group chats I'm in are 12-14 people. Not all of those people are coming to the potluck. They still use it, and honestly I think that's better than having to juggle every combination of every participant and keep track of whos in each one.

[1] Side note here, after Google started interpreting the (fairly annoying) iPhone tapback SMS messages as tapbacks, Apple introduced a similar feature to interpret tapback SMS messages --- but only for iPhone sent tapbacks. So the scenario is a group chat with 2 iPhone users in it-- the tapbacks show as SMS to the receiving iPhone, but it gets turned back into a tapback emoji reaction. This only works for iPhone style tapback SMS messages. The slightly different format that Google Messages sends is... ignored...

Pretty much the most smug Apple way they could possibly implement that feature... but now the Pixel in the chat works in all cases and the iPhone only works in half the cases, so it actually only hurts Apple users' experiences