This comment right there is why I will always believe that people will trade convenience over freedom the first chance they get. I've somewhat made my peace with it, because I don't even know if it really matters anymore.

If you, as an individual, really wanna be free and make real choices, you'll have to be willing to be a loner, and risk being considered by the groupthink a "counterculture weirdo", as this comment put it. Otherwise your choices are dictated by those who belong. You may screams your lungs out about all the dangers of going left and all the benefits of going right, if your social circle says it's left, it's going to be left.

Better get comfortable with that reality and plan accordingly.

> Android users cry about being excluded, but the rest of us don't even think about android users.

While I think you’ve illustrated the point that the issue is not just a technical one, I’d rather not be counted in that group. I’m deeply in the Apple ecosystem, but I do think about my Android friends. When possible, I use chat clients that work well for them, because otherwise we can’t share quality photos with each other. I don’t shun people for their technology choices, just as I’d hope they wouldn’t shun me for mine.

> It's not Apple's responsibility or obligation to fix this.

Do you believe that companies have any responsibilities to their customers? Especially when the nature of the relationship is one of directly exchanging money for hardware and services, it seems reasonable to expect Apple to listen to me as a customer and to build capabilities that solve the problems I think are important as a user.

As an Apple customer, I am deeply unhappy with their iMessage stance. In 2023, I want to be able to take a photo with the much-vaunted camera built into the device (one of the reasons we feel justified in spending $800-$1200+ on a “phone”) and I want my device to have the ability to send that photo to other modern devices out of the box. And if that capability doesn’t exist, I’d like a company of Apple’s size/stature to use their position to push forward new industry standards, as have the many companies that built up the modern web over the years. I’m not naive enough to think they’ll do this - they’ve shown us how they operate - but I think it’s reasonable to want this as someone who believes current tech giants owe their existence to this kind of leadership from companies in years past.

I’ve been a product manager. My customers reasonably expected me to listen to their requests, if for no other reason because they were willing to continue spending significant yearly $$$ for the ability to use my product. That doesn’t mean I could always say yes to every request, and I agree I wasn’t obligated to to implement every request, but I did have a responsibility to listen and to try to build a product that my customers would find valuable.

We don’t have to speculate about why Apple is doing this. It’s a matter of public record now from those emails revealed in discovery during a recent trial. The stance is pro-Apple at best, and arguably anti-customer. Given Apples profitability and market position, it’s hard to feel that Apple’s behavior here is really justifiable, even if it’s understandable. And by “understandable” I mean we’ve come to expect anti-consumer behavior and so it’s not surprising that Apple is perpetrating more of it. But I think they should be criticized soundly for it, even if it is their right to not give a shit.