I’m gradually weaning myself off Facebook. My Instagram and WhatsApp accounts have been deleted (waiting for the time to expire) Minimisation of Facebook itself is next.
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But it doesn’t. It works outwards from you and with anyone else on iPhone, but a non iPhone person replying only goes back to the sender, so you end up with disparate threads.
Apple’s messages on android could really be a Killer App and minimise Whatapp’s monopoly.
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I don’t doubt that this happens to you, and I remember it happening at times in the past. But I regularly text with a couple mixed groups of iPhone and Android users, and it stays one thread for me (on an iPhone). Maybe you mean it doesn’t for the Android users?
For me it always shows the answers to group messages as individual conversations. The group messages are only outgoing.
Wonder how it happened that that is not the case for you.
No, I’m on an iphone and as @Benjamin_D says, for any android users, their messages come back in a separate message thread between me and that single user.
iPhone - iphone are all in the same thread
Also to @geoffaire and anyone else with the same issue — I wonder if it has anything to do with these settings in the Messages section of iPhone Settings? The last of the highlighted ones, especially, might be the difference. Not sure though.
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I have send as SMS set to on.
MMS is off. This governs whether you can send MMS messages from Messages to non iphone users. I prefer not to as it costs me additional fees.
I don’t have an option for Group Messaging. Maybe it’s a carrier thing
I’m sorry but I fail to see the logic here.
Your facebook account already does all the “privacy negative stuff” you would not use your whatsapp account for. Why would using whatsapp matter in this case?
(your data has already been uploaded to FB servers (incl your addressbook etc) so it can’t get much worse?)
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I prefer iMessage over any other App.
- Privacy.
- Simplicity.
- Convenience (iOS and MacOS)
- Easy access to FaceTime
- Shortcuts support.
I never said it made sense 
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If you turn on MMS, then you can see group messaging.
I haven’t had a problem in years with group messages mixed iPhone/android but it may be because I enable mms and group messaging.
just thinking about that one
Did we ever check on that? Why is Apple’s E2E situation any more private than WhatsApp’s?
I think it’s more a trust thing than a “we know for sure” thing, don’t you think?
Possible. Facebook and WhatsApp are data mining services. Apple is known better for selling products and paid services. So yes, my choice is based on assumed trust into Apple. I do not use any services associated with Facebook.
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Use iMessage and / or your native messaging app period, and the reason is pretty simple.
Ease of use. It’s a texting / messaging app, not discord, or slack, etc…
Most folks I message with also have iMessage, but some don’t, and with them I just ‘text’ through iMessage.
I don’t have to coordinate ‘which’ app they have installed v. an app I have installed, it just works… every time.
Frankly, I think that asking my, parents, kids, nieces, nephews, neighbors, etc… to move to ANY messaging platform that isn’t native to their phone is silly, and VERY difficult.
So… Bottom line… for those reasons above, I don’t quite understand why people would say anything other than “use the native text / sms / messaging app on your phone” It really is the easiest way to go
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huge iMessage fan, here, and power user, every day, all day.
it just works and makes life so much easier in a Mac ecosystem
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I tend to agree - unless you want/need a specific extra set of features, why use something other than iMessage? It is easy, and it just works for me too. I don’t doubt that there could be good reasons for opting in to a different system, but I have never found them. My family has mixed Android and iPhone use and we never have any issues with our group messages.
I avoid the FB ecosystem whenever possible, especially Whatsapp since it has been absorbed by it.
I live in Italy and since the latest WA “sign this or see ya” terms and conditions have been issued, many have abandoned WA for Signal and Telegram (or both). iMessage is used less here because Apple is not the predominant smartphone in use.
For me it’s less about iMessage and more about using anything but WA whenever possible.
So to sum up, if all your friends use iPhones then iMessage is great.
If you want to have group chats with people and not all of them are on iPhones, then iMessage is rubbish.
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