and you want to blame them for not ALSO bending over backwards to provide that same level of elegance and functionality on multiple antagonistic competitors' platforms?

FUCK YES. This is a platform that shipped without Copy&Paste. This is "You're holding it wrong." This is an ecosystem that does everything proprietarily. This is a company that takes things from open-source to closed. This is a company where the review process happens in the dark, where any app that fills in gaps around what Apple doesn't think is worth doing is usually eliminated through a version integrated into the operating system that does it worse. 'member Growl? 'member how it was so much better than that which was baked in? 'member how you hadn't thought of Growl since it suddenly went away?

I beta test for a half-dozen companies that deal with Apple. There's nothing "careful" about what they do. I once had a firmware update rolled for the Airport Express because they had launched it with no provisions for configuring it over a hardwired network. Nope. Forgot about that. I called 'em up and they're all "uh, yeah. Lemme take down some notes. We're gonna get on that." Next day software update rolled.

But that was 2005 or so, back when Apple still admitted they made mistakes.

Apple is deliberately anti-interoprability. They've now got a proprietary file system running on a proprietary BIOS even on their spinning-platter hard drives; everyone else is out here rawkin' M.2 and loving the shit out of it but Apple is still trying to get people to believe in Lightning years after everyone else went USB-C.

MMS is an open protocol. iMessage is not. And when you're on MMS, and everyone else is on iMessage, you are being prohibited from communicating.