As someone who lives in Israel, but travels to/from the US quite a bit, I’m always surprised by how bifurcated the messaging experience is. In Israel — and much of the rest of the world ex-Asia — WhatsApp is dominant. Heck, billionaires and oligarchs even WhatsApp one another, apparently.
In Israel, everything — I mean everything — runs on WhatsApp. I use it to see what my kids are up to in school, to send documents to my accountant, and as a supplement for Slack in the office. It serves as a mix of instant messaging, newsletter, and Facebook group.
But in the US, by virtue of having a far-greater percentage of iPhone users, iMessage is the way to go. But even as a die-hard Apple person, I’m amazed by how underpowered iMessage is. Not from an Apple-minimalism-less-is-more-a-thousand-no’s-for-every-yes standpoint, but from the vantage point of “it’s 2020.” You still can’t mark an iMessage as unread. Or easily add a document. Or broadcast to multiple groups. Or share a contact from within iMessage. Or easily share a location. Or sync seamlessly between devices.
But hey, we still got Memoji, ammiright?
