This is brought on by a new iPhone review where The Verge lists this as a negative:

"The power of iMessage lock-in means that most iPhone users in the US will probably upgrade to another iPhone regardless of whether the camera is slightly worse or better than the Pixel, but Apple doesn’t have that advantage in huge markets like China and Europe where everyone uses WeChat or WhatsApp and switching platforms is much easier."

Are people that fucking "LOCKED IN" by iMessage??????

I don't get it - iOS has WeChat AND WhatsApp and iMessage works with SMS - so where's the lock in? I absolutely don't understand the "jail" aspect of iMessage.

Someone explain to me where is the lock in that has a death grip that rob's US phone users of their ability to choose?

Next up:USB-C charging ports and headphone jacks.

It's encrypted, you get read receipts, you get notifications when people are typing, you can play games or use other apps within iMessage, and most importantly for me, it works via wifi.

All of those (and other things about iMessage) are big deals and aren't available on standard sms. Because of that, people with iPhones tend to socialize more with other people who have iPhones and less with those who don't. You don't have to download any app since it's the default. Unless you have a lot of international friends, you probably don't use or haven't heard of WeChat and WhatsApp.

Sure, you can say "fuck it" and just get an android, but much in the way I got invited to way less shit after deleting facebook, you end up being a bit of an afterthought.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

They mention it AT LEAST 5 times a week.

They're down to 3 times week bitching about the loss of headphone jacks.

them having too many podcasts and not enough takes is only an issue if you actually pay attention to all of 'em


www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

This has been documented over and over again for years. I'm not sure what's so confusing.

>This has been documented over and over again for years. I'm
>not sure what's so confusing.

Why? Because you can't get an immediate read receipt? Because it works over wi-fi?

Literally the reason people are staying is because they prefer the product - that's not lock in that's CHOICE.

Lock in is not: 1 company makes something better than another --SO then that company MUST make a version (and free/opensource too) for it's competitors or you are "locked in!!"

There are Hundreds of messaging clients for EVERY OS.

This is about choice - not about "LOCK IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Please, show me the documentation where it's not about preference - or the "hassle" of getting your social circle to agree on another messaging application.


Note:I am aware that there was a bug in iMessage where if you switched phones to Android and took your SIM card AND didn't turn off iMessage on your old device then you'd miss messages. That bug has been fixed for like 4 years.

b: those bugs aren't fixed completely. I just had an ex coworker try to text me a couple of weeks ago and it went to imessage on my work mac, I've never used an iPhone or imessage ever.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>b: those bugs aren't fixed completely. I just had an ex
>coworker try to text me a couple of weeks ago and it went to
>imessage on my work mac, I've never used an iPhone or iMessage
>ever.

So they SMS/MMS'd texted your phone number and it went to iMessage? That is bad.

you can't use it anymore and it impacts you significantly because it's not available or accessible via other platforms.


it's not an actual lock, and you can still switch. but it increases lock-in.

that's all.



www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

it apparently hijacked my number because I updated macos on the laptop, from what I can tell.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

You still need to do extra work to reclaim your own phone number as per: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

Even worse, you need to ask your friends to restart all of your group texts. Good luck with that.

All of this friction keeps people from switching, thus the lock in.

And I say this as someone not really into tech and gadgets but tech writers get really persnickety about slight, seemingly meaningless differences between devices. Like shouldn't we be talking about how all this stuff is killing the planet or why we have $1K cellphones which don't do anything demonstrably different from the phones from two years ago?

*knocking stones out of the air in front of my glass-walled home*