re: Sunbird promising iMessage for android

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I had android messages going to my PC years ago, it's doable. I have 0 issues with android messaging other than shite apple videos being sent.

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Whichever Note came out in 2018 (the 9?) + an XPS laptop (17 model) running the latest version of Windows phone connect/sync sucked by comparison.


iMessage isn’t worth abandoning android for if you love it. But, fortunately or not, the thing it has that nothing else except for SMS is popular support. I think Google Allo was a better messenger. I even liked Textra better than iMessage. A perfect example of “Apple can do anything you want it to” vs “yeah, but if it’s not designed to do that, it’s a real pain in the arse” comes in to play here. I get a lot of 2am phone calls. A fair number of them require a message to another doctor. It’s a dick move to text them at 2. It’s equally dick to wait after sometime between 5/6 (plan-changing stuff happens that isn’t emergent, but you want to plan your day based on what happened overnight without being woken up to be told about it at the time). Type the message at 2 and send it in textra? It’s right there in the app and a breeze to send a few hours later.
In iOS? You have to open the shortcuts app, create a new shortcut, tell the shortcut when to run, give it permission to run without you clicking “ok” then, and then type the message and who to send it to. It’s so nonsensical that it shouldn’t really be considered a valid way to do it (though, by all accounts, if you want to make a comparison feature list, yes, you technically can send delayed texts in iOS and through iMessage on other platforms).
More annoying? Newest osx just added timing emails but not texts. Thanks. Good job.

There is plenty of neat stuff that’s fairly unique to Apple - one I use daily. I use a laptop in/out of patient rooms instead of desktops in each room. My XPS battery was dying, and I was looking for a voice to text solution. Most of these are exceedingly expensive to have medical dictionaries in. One that catches about 90% of medical terms with decent enough accuracy was the plain old OSX (its engine is Nuance/Dragon). No- it isn’t a replacement for dragon. Yes- the $1000 piece of software is better and does more.
But it doesn’t do $1000 more for me.
Bought a MacBook Air with the m1 to play around with. Now I’ve got all-day battery, acceptable speech to text, my calls and texts pop up on screen in a small window while I’m talking to patients so i can decide what’s important, and (finally) that unique thing: I can use my iPad as a second, wireless display (so I can walk in a room and back without docking and having two screens can be very nice at certain parts of my day).


So, I accidentally in the last 2 years moved into a pretty “heavy” usage of Apple, but I’m certainly not committed to it. I’m still going to buy used SFF Windows Pro desktops from Dell/Lenovo/HP for my office. I’ll still use consumer-grade windows laptops off the shelf (mostly through Costco for their warranty). I did put a Mac Mini in my office- I wrote a post about it before, but I wanted an automated way to upload to an SFTP server and was too dumb to figure out how to do it with Powershell or Python, too cheap to pay for Goodsync, too lazy to teach 15 end users a graphical SFTP program and trust them with it, and I figured out a way to do it on a network share with shell commands and Automator.


But all that fancy stuff the M1 MacBook Air does? Can’t fricking select different drawers on my printer (controlled substance paper is different than what I print letters, handouts, etc on).

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I can tell you why it’s important to me and why I switched to Apple from Android. I used to conduct the majority of my business with my customers through email. So sending files, pictures, and videos was not an issue from my Android phone. Years ago the communication shifted to text and my customers expect to get sent the same files, pictures, etc. through text. iMessage is able to do this seamlessly through text so it makes communication easier on my end.

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LINK

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Go to europe, toss your sim in a shitty old iphone and leve it plugged in at your house. Land in europe, buy a data sim, you have iMessage, data, maps, oh yea, you can also text people through your phone at home that syncs to apple. The Apple ecosystem is so underrated by android people.

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Or you can have a single phone that works everywhere without issue

I was in St. Lucia in June with 0 connectivity issues and LTE on mountains and it cost me nothing extra.

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Or you can have a single phone that works everywhere without issue

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??


It's not a matter of connectivity you muppet.

Apple will shut this down. If you want e2e between ios and Android just use signal.

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If you want e2e between ios and Android just use signal.

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I sincerely wish more folks in the USA would use Signal. iphones, androids, etc.

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Hopefully it's not stuck in 2018 either.

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If you don't think Apple is doing the same, I have some beach front property in Arizona to sell you

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For those questioning the good of iMessage it is how seamless it integrates with all of their products.

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The problem with iMessage is that it's for apple device only. iMessage works fine for anyone with iOS. Apple knows this and purposefully uses the snot-green bubbles b/c it literally keeps some people buying their phones as opposed to android. I'm one of those people. I come from a big family and we have several family text groups that share pictures and videos all the time. The moment that I could participate in all that with android, I'll drop this iphone.

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I sincerely wish more folks in the USA would use Signal. iphones, androids, etc.

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I still have some concern about Signal. They have centralized servers that, theoretically, could have a back door for Big Brother to get in. That said, it's immeasurably better than unencrypted comms.

Since nobody I know uses Signal anyway, I use Element for encrypted comms with my team.. decentralized messaging protocol with E2E encryption, video and voice calls.