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Comment by kyawzazaw | Hacker News Reader

> as I barely know anyone using iphone.

where are you located?

I'm from the Netherlands and I know plenty of people who have iPhones but I also know (and am) plenty people with androids. People use either WhatsApp or Telegram. Isn't iMessage just texting within a walled garden?

The situation is very different in the US, primarily because in other countries SMS fees tended to be really high a decade and change ago, and thus drove users to WhatsApp, but in the US most carriers had adopted some form of unlimited texting shortly after the iPhone first came out.

Thus, for many socio-economic groups, iPhone is definitely king in the US, and for them iMessage is just the default way to message people because when it was introduced it was the default way to use SMS on iPhone. A restaurant in Texas famous for their funny signs put this out, https://twitter.com/ElArroyo_ATX/status/1693316647677825160 , and tons of people (myself included) could immediately relate.

> Isn't iMessage just texting within a walled garden?

Isn't that exactly what WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent) Telegram are?

They run on basically any confumer device, so no.

Poland. I know a few apple fanboys but those aren't people I communicate with outside of work. Just not my bubble.

It's actually weird and silly when they send me text messages and somehow I end up in the same conversation multiple times - like once 1:1, once in a group chat with myself included twice or more (as a number, as an email, as a second number). It's a bizarre experience and usually iPhone user can't see anything wrong :D

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