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Comment by CameronNemo | Hacker News Reader

SMS is indeed trash. Unfortunately nobody seems willing to go out of their way to accommodate the minority of android users in their friend group. My techy friends use Signal, but efforts to get people to join me there have been quite fruitless.

My sister joined matrix, but she didn't remember her password the next time I tried to reach her there.

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I don’t know what things are like in Android land, but if 95% of your messaging is in one app it feels like a real hassle to adopt another app for just one person/group.

Would you start using a second podcast app just to listen to one individual podcast? Or would you just go without?

I’ve always assumed Android users are used to multiple messaging apps already. Is that the case?

I use:

Messages (Google SMS app)

Slack

Discord

Facebook Messenger

And Google Chat for work.

Makes sense. Thanks. On my phone I use:

* Messages (SMS & iMessages)

* Slack

That’s it. I don’t have work stuff on my phone. I suppose if I did I’d have Google Chat.

For some reason I don’t see Messages and Slack as competitors in my mind. They fit in different “categories” (for whatever reason). Messages is for everything but one long running group chat that used to be on-prem at my last job as a sort of social room. I think of it more like IRC and not personal messages. Messages is 95% one-on-one for me.

I use signal as my SMS app. And for people who have signal I get more reliable delivery and e2ee.

I use element for some random people. And interacting with open source communities.

I use slack for work.

I don't use fbmessenger/WhatsApp, discord, or any other closed source messaging app besides slack.

Would you start using a second podcast app just to listen to one individual podcast? Or would you just go without?

Do you consider close friends and family comparable to podcasts?

It was the best example I could think of off the top of my head where someone might have to use a different app for a small percentage of a task.

I’m open to better examples.

> I don’t know what things are like in Android land, but if 95% of your messaging is in one app it feels like a real hassle to adopt another app for just one person/group.

I'm experiencing that with WhatsApp (in Israel it's pretty much 95%+ WhatsApp). I moved from Android to iOS, and WA have yet to add cross-platform migration ("in the coming months"), and I don't trust any of the 3-4 sketchy apps that offer this. So I end up using WhatsApp Web and switched to texting for family members.

This led to more than a couple "oops I forgot I need to text you" because iOS Safari doesn't allow web notifications, and I didn't check WhatsApp Web yet.

Signal is almost infinitely worse than iMessage in terms of features, UX, stability, etc.

I have been using multiple Signal groups with different sides of the family for a few years now. Honestly, I have yet to run into any problems and few of the groups have roughly 25-100 new messages per day.

How so? Signal supports Android and has a cross-platform desktop app (that supports not only macOS, but also Linux and Windows), while iMessage does neither. Signal also has perfect forward secrecy, while iMessage does not.[1] Signal even allows everyone to create and publish sticker packs free of charge,[2] while iMessage requires a $99/year Apple Developer subscription to do the same.[3] I suppose Signal doesn't let you create Animoji or Memoji, but that's not essential to me.

[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/498 (page 19)

[2] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360031836512-St...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/tech/2016/9/23/13005160/imessage-st...

Signal isn't that great, but it has cross platform which isn't insignificant (even for you, don't you want to be able to switch computing platforms without losing everything?). However Telegram just blows them all out of the water with the UX, DX, search, stickers, polls, etc.

Signal is not comparable at all to iMessage.

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