ask google. they're the one's moving away from it. plus they released allo intending to replace hangouts. obviously didn't work out and they abandoned it. as an existing messaging service, it's just extremely outdated feature-wise. especially compared to the other popular ones. i use imessage mainly. i also use facebook messenger, snapchat, whatsapp, and hangouts. in hangouts, links don't embed image thumbnails. as a matter of fact, in imessage, if you link to a youtube video, the video embeds in the conversation window so you can play it in there. you reply to specific messages in imessage, whatsapp, and facebook messenger, but can't in hangouts. you also can't @ people in group messages in hangouts either.
i always have my phone on me so i just got the non-cellular version. i barely use my smartwatch as a smartwatch. it's honestly a huge waste of money for someone like me. lol
I guess I use hangouts because of the Windows app which I think works pretty well. I use Whatsapp on my phone but the Windows app has some issues since it relies on connectivity to the phone app. So I just sent a youtube link through whatsapp and the video didn't play in the conversation window. Touching it opened the youtube app.
iMessage is the only one that embeds YouTube video from the link as far as I know. Facebook messenger embeds Facebook videos
ah, also bfun, if you were unaware, google is in the process of doing away with google hangouts and replacing it with google chat. they released a preview version if you wanted to try it. i messed around with it and it at least embeds thumbnails of links. they'll probably add more modern messaging features as it goes further in development. if you're using google voice, it doesn't support the integration like hangouts did though. google hasn't talked about google voice support for a while now so who knows what the plan for that is when hangouts gets killed off.
A well done messaging app isn't important in my opinion. You're always gonna need a bunch of them due to user fragmentation. I've got iMessage, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, Discord, Skype. Not sure if Zoom and Cisco Webex count. What bothers me most is people who have my phone # will text me through Twitter, Instagram and Venmo for fucks sake.
i suppose it might be depending on your messaging usage. if a lot of your messaging is due to work, then yea, it really doesn't matter. but if you use it with friends, it becomes a full fledged app. you'll use it for messaging on top of other things. a majority of my friends have iphones so imessage is perfect. with my friends on android, we all moved to facebook messenger. both of these apps support a whole host of features like payments, location sharing, etc. i only have whatsapp because of og10 lol. otherwise, i dont really talk to anyone overseas so i don't need those other messaging apps.
Maybe the fragmentation is an American thing, we seem to be quite lucky in the UK in that mostly everyone just uses WhatsApp.
yep. us Americans are in the habit of only using what default messaging apps are given to us on our devices. so a lot of Android users still use archaic sms. iPhones have a lot of the marketshare here so iOS to iOS users at least have iMessage, but to everyone else, they settle with sms too. isn't it funny? sms still being used in 2021.
"Most everyone" is still not everyone, so there is always fragmentation. Unless you just cut people off, which I'm seriously considering lol. WhatsApp is most popular in my circle. It's a decent compromise to get Android and iOS into group text and video chat. iMessage is the 2nd most popular just based on phone sales. A bunch of my WhatsApp friends broke off to Telegram and Signal earlier this year during the Anti-Facebook hype. I appreciate Signal in principle, but FOSS is just not good or as refined as commercial products. The others stuff is just stragglers, or groups that haven't migrated to newer stuff. The Zoom & Cisco is for work obviously. Ironically, the most ubiquitous platform that works almost anywhere and doesn't even need to be tied to a phone number is Facebook Messenger. It actually outshines the primary product but I haven't had luck convincing people to move to Facebook.
I only started useing Whatsapp when a friend from South Africa asked me to use it. He said that is what the rest of the world uses.
I think I scored a slickdeal. Best Buy had an open box "certified excellent" watch stacked with a AMEX $50 statement credit. So $348 for Apple Watch 6 LTE. If I don't like it I could probably resell for a tiny profit. Now the only thing keeping me from being a full on iSheeple is the $200 headphones. Got a 2nd $50 BB statement credit to use by July, so I may become the new altergo yet.
I use whatsapp quite a bit. Works with iPhone, Android, and Windows PCs. Lets you communicate with most everyone. My wife hates Apple stuff with a passion. So iMessage isn't happening for us.
I think WhatsApp started internationally but after the Facebook acquisition it's extremely popular in the USA. Only the iMessage crowd and annoying ass contrarians won't get it. @khaid did you go with Apple Care, a case, or just yolo your watch?
ever since I got my series 1 till now, its been yolo and I work a physical job. different strokes for different folks though.
I thought your wife liked iPhones. I might switch to an iPhone someday. My Android love isn't what it used to be.
@bfun Nope. She hates Apple stuff with a passion. She has a Galaxy Note 9. The first and last iPhone she ever had was an iPhone 4. She complained the entire time she owned it.
I always pass on the warranty under the assumption: if it's profitable for them, it's not a good deal for me. But I don't know much about the watch and how fragile it is. The phones can take a beating, my current phone has the glass smashed on both sides. A few years ago I would've been obsessed with replacing it. Now I don't care in the least.
My wife is the same, hates iPhone and gave it up some years ago, found it too restrictive compared to Android which lets her do pretty much whatever she wants. If you want to do it on iPhone you usually have to pay. My daughter has an Android phone and an iPad so she has both worlds. The reason we didn't get her an iPhone is that she is currently 12 and I assume would destroy it. You should see the state of her iPad, the screen has more cracks on it than the pavement. I offered to replace but she didn't want to and said she was OK for now. The screen replacement cost is so high you might as well buy a new device. I deal with iPhones often as part of my job as we have quite a few users using them. I still use Android as I don't like iOS, find it too annoying to use. It's also a complete pain in the arse when it comes to VoIP, Apple can be so difficult when it comes to giving control to another dialler and all the issues we have with out VoIP system are on iOS devices. The Cisco desk phones and the Android App work without fail. Got an iPhone 12 pro in the other day for someone, it just feels tiny now compared to other phones with bigger screens. Also like bfun, never cracked a screen. So far I have only tinkered with a single M1 macbook pro, to be fair to Apple on that they seem to have done well and the thing was responsive. The only thing that would put me off buying one for home is that I know the M1 is kind of a prototype and I would rather wait for the second generation to see how many cores they throw at it and I have been seeing reports that the M1 loves to page so I would be worried that the soldered SSD will be taking a hammering and restrict it's lifetime.