WhatsApp Teases Long-Awaited iPad App

Why would anyone in 2025 want to put a Meta product on any device? What kind of glutton for punishment are these people? Do you like being a sheep? A product? Do you not care about your privacy or the privacy of your entire contact list, what you do, where you go? I don't get why someone would give themselves over to a company as evil as Facebook. There is no excuses unless you're just a slave to shiny products, when, much as someone is going to try to make excuses, there are alternatives right down to just SMS/MMS.

In a lot of country other that US, Whatsapp = the default messaging app. If you don't use it, you are basically cutting yourself from everyone else. A lot of company in those country also use whatsapp as a way for team messaging app.

The default "Message" app in IOS is not used at all other than receiving safekey code from bank in a lot of country around the globe. For example, Japan don't use "Message" nor "Whatsapp", they use Line. So, if the server for Line is down in Japan for whatever reason, that means EVERYONE in Japan lost the way to contact ppl on phone. Yes, I really mean EVERYONE in Japan.

Not everyone use "Message" app, esepcially those who don't live in the States. The "default" messaging app could be different around the globe.

If it still needs full access to your contact list to work, it's still a no I'm afraid :)

If it still needs full access to your contact list to work, it's still a no I'm afraid :)

It's a messaging app, what do you expect?

In some countries WhatsApp is as popular and indispensable as iMessenger in the US. Everyone uses it, so you can't break away.

For those in the US wondering why WhatsApp has become the standard messaging app elsewhere, it’s pretty simple. We used to pay a lot for texting (here in Italy it was around 200 lire each, limited to 160 characters). Picture messages, aka MMS, came later and cost as much as €1 each, for some stamp-sized junk… and no guarantee people on the other side had their phone set up to receive them across carriers.

As soon as smartphones and data plans came out, WhatsApp filled a niche: being able to send “free” messages by using some of the data allowance at the time. Suddenly it was much more practical to pay e.g. €15/month for 1 GB and have virtually unlimited texting than pay €0.10/text. Especially for younger people, it was a no-brainer.
It’s also less of an issue now that our data plans exploded (I pay €10 for 250 GB on mobile, and €30 for 2.5/1 Gbit fiber with transfer no cap at home), but why would one use regular texts with far less features nowadays? RCS isn’t available everywhere, and older android phones may not support it anyway.

And that’s another reason: iPhones are the dominant species of smartphones only in North America; most people use Android elsewhere, because they’re cheaper and there’s way more variety and they offer more customization (for better or worse) and some people prefer that. WhatsApp also filled that cross-platform niche, and that remains true to this day. We don’t suffer from green bubble anxiety like some US-based reports mentioned, but we also for the most part don’t even see that people have a blue bubble because in most cases one just defaults to WhatsApp anyway.

I personally prefer telegram due to bots, groups, a proper desktop app and so on, but WhatsApp is inescapable. Companies use it, doctors use it, literally everyone uses it. I book my dog’s washing through it, I get therapy reminders through it, and when I called a new dentist for an appointment he asked me to use that for confirmation. My dad gets call from his cousin over WhatsApp audio.

It’s just an issue of critical mass: while a lot of people also installed telegram over time, most people still prefer WhatsApp because they got to have all their contacts in the same place. It also makes cross-contact communication easier (groups, forwards, etc.)

They saw a market opportunity at the very beginning and turned it into a basic need. No wonder Meta eventually bought them up!

Why would anyone in 2025 want to put a Meta product on any device? What kind of glutton for punishment are these people? Do you like being a sheep? A product? Do you not care about your privacy or the privacy of your entire contact list, what you do, where you go? I don't get why someone would give themselves over to a company as evil as Facebook. There is no excuses unless you're just a slave to shiny products, when, much as someone is going to try to make excuses, there are alternatives right down to just SMS/MMS.

Sometimes it is that, or lose ties and communication with lots of people that use WhattsApp as the default communication tool. Sadly.

However, thanks to iOS sandboxing, installing a Meta app shouldn’t be a problem, right? RIGHT?