> they would have to devote significant engineering and design effort into creating a solution for a platform they don't own or control.
They wouldn't even have to engineer it themselves. Opening for third party developers would quickly solve the problem. Besides, making a multiplatform app doesn't seem to be an issue for Apple im other contexts, or for any other maker of messaging apps.
> My understanding of low res images and video is that it's a limitation of MMS messaging?
Apple could fall back on a more modern MMS version, like RCS.
But the whole SMS/MMS -replacement thing is purely an American problem, the rest of the world has pretty much moved on to different applications that are cross-platform.
This is basically going to involve a lot of initial engineering effort no matter how you slice it. Cleaning up and opening a codebase, or turning a private protocol into a for-public-consumption interoperable multi-platform messaging protocol is a huge undertaking. Possibly even bigger than maintaining a second closed Android-only implementation of iMessage.
Second, there is a ton of design decision that needs to be put into that, too. What do you do with iMessage iCloud backups of users who switch to Android? From Android? Do you interoperate with other backup providers? Does this change the fundamental nature of iCloud backups? How do you interoperate with forks?
> Apple could fall back on a more modern MMS version, like RCS
They could. But that is also significant engineering effort and not something they get "for free." If it doesn't make the iPhone-to-iPhone experience any better, they aren't likely to invest heavily in it
I don't think there's an intention to make people unhappy, I just very much doubt that there are many Android users working at Apple who want to see this in their day to day lives, and Apple tends to build products for themselves first. Lots of other people just happen to buy them
They wouldn't even have to engineer it themselves. Opening for third party developers would quickly solve the problem. Besides, making a multiplatform app doesn't seem to be an issue for Apple im other contexts, or for any other maker of messaging apps.
> My understanding of low res images and video is that it's a limitation of MMS messaging?
Apple could fall back on a more modern MMS version, like RCS.
It's pretty clear from the article, as well as countless others (like https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... or https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121756012/iphone-android-tex... ) that they simply don't want to.
They'd rather make more money while making people less happy. You don't have to blame them, but you can understand why it makes some people unhappy.