Comment by qubex
For the iOS world, ideally the Messages app would be mandated to become a generic interface receptive to protocol plug-ins to interoperate with all messaging networks; and it too itself would be replaceable in that role.
For the iOS world, ideally the Messages app would be mandated to become a generic interface receptive to protocol plug-ins to interoperate with all messaging networks; and it too itself would be replaceable in that role.
Well the thing is: if they were particularly obnoxious about their implementation, they could be replaced. I’m looking forward to a multi-protocol messaging client that implements other protocols as plugins. If and when such a thing arrives, I’m setting it to be my default.
A complication is that iMessage supports a ton of collaboration features that don't (and largely can't) exist across other messaging apps. The messaging bits will have the same nerfed interface as SMS/RCS because of missing capabilities.
Despite having the appearance of a messaging app, iMessage operates as a backbone for a lot of OS capability that is surprisingly deep.
That seems like a good idea in the sense that it's better than separate apps for everything, but it's also probably the wrong level of abstraction. For example: what happens if you try to create a group chat containing an RCS user, a WhatsApp user, and a Telegram user? Ideally it would just work, but I don't see how that's possible without support for such a thing at a deeper level than just the UI layer.
I'm not sure Apple can be a good steward of such an open, plug-in based solution - they would always put in some restrictions to make the process very complicated and not accessible to platforms and developers.
At the same time, making it possible to choose WhatsApp for the default messaging app has been a great relief for those not locked into Messages.