I can send pictures and video over SMS that are viewable anywhere. An iMessage user can only send a patch of 64 color changing macro blocks with some audio. While it’s technically true it’s the default. it’s purposefully degraded to the point of unusability.
Really? That seems odd. I’ve never had a problem sending reasonable quality photos to Android users and I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.
iMessage degrades images and video on MMS regardless of the capability of the network.
The photos are less the issue than videos. But they definitely reduce the size of them far more than other clients do. At least for non iPhone/ iMessage users. It gets so bad that family doesn’t share videos with many of us anymore because of how difficult it is to use something other than iMessage. Or Facebook. But that’s a whole other problem.
I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.
Depends on what the majority of people are using.
In markets where iPhone users are not in the majority, that’s exactly what’s happening: iPhone users are switching to third party apps.
If iPhones users are in the majority, though, then people will just default to iMessage, and non-Apple phones get associated with poor messaging quality. Which creates social pressure for non-iPhone users to buy an iPhone.
So it makes perfect business sense for Apple to degrade the messaging quality when a non-Apple phone joins the conversation.
