Meanwhile outside of the United States basically no one uses iMessage. Precisely because it's so terrible it interfacing with non-apple devices. Everyone just uses WhatsApp which will work with anything.

Of course WhatsApp's quite a crap program as well missing basic functionality but at least it's not device specific.

As someone from the EU, I'm so confused about why this would matter to people. At that age, people will just find any excuse to bully regardless of what it is, it's why uniforms don't work either for those purposes. Hell, if someone were to try and shame me for the fucking color of my messages I'd be thankful, they've shown me another cunt to avoid associating with. In that sense it might actually be useful. (also, who even uses sms anymore?)

The green text peer pressure means nothing to me, but you are 100% spot on about the ecosystem driving sales. My whole family uses apple and I get left out of so many group chats and face times that I've actually considered switching to Apple even though I'm a die hard Note fan. Apples hardware may be nothing special, but they have a killer feature in their seamless, closed ecosystem, and they know it. At the end of the day, a phones job is to communicate, and Apple does that seemlessly- with other Apple devices

Very true and very ridiculous. A great deal of people will commonly do almost anything to be apart of a desirable group.