If people want to group SMS they should open their phone's SMS app. If people want to group iMessage they should all open iMessage. If people want to chat on signal, they should all open signal.
Unfortunately, iMessage is bizarrely both iOS's SMS app and a custom signal-like chat protocol, but the user can't pick between the protocols easily and it switches between them in an opaque way.
It's just a bizarrely bad UX by a company that supposedly is good at UX, and the only purpose it seems to serve is to provide this broken green-bubble experience.
I'd much rather if iOS just had "iMessage" as an app without SMS, had "SMS" as an app for only SMS/MMS/RCS, and then allowed android users to make an apple account and install iMessage (possible with an optional 1-time fee to prevent spam, like having to buy a $700 iPhone and throw it away as a sorta "proof of work" in order to make a iMessage-for-android account. This isn't too different from how some of my friends do this now, with a mac mini in their closet for iMessage which they remote desktop into if they want to chat to iPhone using friends, and use for nothing else).
If people want to group SMS they should open their phone's SMS app. If people want to group iMessage they should all open iMessage. If people want to chat on signal, they should all open signal.
Unfortunately, iMessage is bizarrely both iOS's SMS app and a custom signal-like chat protocol, but the user can't pick between the protocols easily and it switches between them in an opaque way.
It's just a bizarrely bad UX by a company that supposedly is good at UX, and the only purpose it seems to serve is to provide this broken green-bubble experience.
I'd much rather if iOS just had "iMessage" as an app without SMS, had "SMS" as an app for only SMS/MMS/RCS, and then allowed android users to make an apple account and install iMessage (possible with an optional 1-time fee to prevent spam, like having to buy a $700 iPhone and throw it away as a sorta "proof of work" in order to make a iMessage-for-android account. This isn't too different from how some of my friends do this now, with a mac mini in their closet for iMessage which they remote desktop into if they want to chat to iPhone using friends, and use for nothing else).