I'm so surprised by the way this has gone in the US. The weird ass blend of SMS and messaging iMessage uses for no reason and the fact that it's sorta-kinda platform exclusive but not really is just an absolute mess of dumb engineering.

The fact that RCS is even part of this conversation seems so weird. Surely the real answer is for iMessage to just... have an Android port that works like the iOS port, right? That's how every other messaging app does it. I mean, sure, over here in Androidland where everybody uses Whatsapp (which has its own issues), RCS is a thing. If you open your text messaging app for some reason there is a Google prompt to switch it to RCS as a one-time optional choice. I just... never bothered. Because who the hell uses either SMS or RCS anyway?

Would I switch to iMessage if there was an Android port? No. Because everybody I've ever known with an iPhone uses Whatsapp, so that'd be as useful as switching to carrier pigeons. But it's worth pointing out that the only reason the EU hasn't forced interoperability for iMessage is exactly that. If it hadn't already lost the messenger app wars in Europe they would have been forced to sort this out one way or another.