Simple. It’s multi platform. iMessage is only iPhones.
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WhatsApp Mac Beta With Native Apple Silicon Support Now Available to All Users
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Simple. It’s multi platform. iMessage is only iPhones.
Welcome to the Internet... I don't use it so it must not be wide spread or good... I've never experienced that issue so folks are either making it up or using it wrong... etc... remember the center of the Internet universe is me
Curious on the reasons you think WA is better than iMessage.LOL.
What Countries are the Biggest WhatsApp Users?
WhatsApp is the most popular private messaging app in the world, with more than 2 billion users across 180 countries. Learn more.www.verint.com
WhatsApp is better than iMessage. I wished more Americans used it.
I use Whatsapp to communicate with cross platform users (Android) and for work mostly.
For my private connections I use iMessage, because
- The photos and videos are shared are high quality, uncompressed - Whatsapp is really bad in this even though you select higher quality in settings
- Skeuomorphic design of iMessage is much softer on the eye and easier to use for me.
- WhatsApp being part of Meta is something that makes me switch to iMessage at any chance I get.
- Too many scam/spam messages - this is really annoying.
- Whatsapp calls are buggy, uses too many system resources and Facetime/FT Audio are far superior here.
All phone plans in Israel have unlimited text, calls (and usually 300+GB data) - and Whatsapp is extremely popular in here.
Even Customer Service operates using Whatsapp chatbots here
Ignoring the "My preferred messenger is objectively better than your preferred messenger and I will assert myself by dying on that hill" nonsense going on here -
RAM utilisation from the WhatsApp process and rosetta subprocesses is down from 1.5GB to ~130MB between the old Intel-App and the new beta. Active threads down from ~100 to ~15. My MBP battery will be very happy with that change, and my other half with the basic M1 MacBook Air won't have to close WhatsApp anymore when a game is started.
Very nice.
RAM utilisation from the WhatsApp process and rosetta subprocesses is down from 1.5GB to ~130MB between the old Intel-App and the new beta. Active threads down from ~100 to ~15. My MBP battery will be very happy with that change, and my other half with the basic M1 MacBook Air won't have to close WhatsApp anymore when a game is started.
Very nice.
I don’t mind WhatsApp, it is a very, very, good app. But without iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch support, I still much prefer iMessage (which is fine because no one I know uses Android).
And of course, quite concerned about it being part of Meta, while they cant read messages, they do seem to read everything else. I’d prefer if iMessage opened up.
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WhatsApp came before signal and once people are used to something they usually don’t move away from it
Well yeah, Israel is in the Middle East. I would think WhatsApp is extremely common in India, Africa, and a lot of Asian countries as well. Australia is different, as someone else pointed out only a third of people here even have used it in the last year, let alone use it regularly. Businesses and government wouldn't use it for customer service here. Facebook is the preferred social media platform here.
There's a hell of a lot of valuable, marketable information they can derive without even reading your messages. Who are you talking to? What groups are you a member of? Which ones are you most active in? Who else is in those groups? What other groups are they in? How does yours and their Facebook/Instagram data (linked by phone numbers) correlate with that?
Facebook makes money by advertising and marketing user information - they're totally open about that. Given that there's no advertising on WhatsApp, their app revenue can only come from selling user data.
Video call on the Mac at last! Now all I need is an iPad version
Same. I wish it wasn’t this way though. I prefer to use Signal or iMessage where possible. But 90% of friends/colleagues/family couldn’t care less and are so entrenched in WhatsApp they’ll likely never change. So WhatsApp it is! Unless I want to become a hermit.
I just tried the new beta on my Intel MacBook Pro (13" 2020, 2 GHz, quad core i5, 16 GB)., Running Ventura 13.2
It was a LOT slower than the current production Mac app. It may well be native and not use electron anymore but it just feels so sluggish. Dragging to resize the window you can see the app redrawing.
It's a universal app, so it runs on both intel and arm, but it looks and feels wonky - more like a dev test / proof of concept than a beta.
Telegram is lightning fast in comparison.
It was a LOT slower than the current production Mac app. It may well be native and not use electron anymore but it just feels so sluggish. Dragging to resize the window you can see the app redrawing.
It's a universal app, so it runs on both intel and arm, but it looks and feels wonky - more like a dev test / proof of concept than a beta.
Telegram is lightning fast in comparison.
Telegram reached 700 million last year.Maybe it's because it's the most used messaging app in the world?
Psst! There are other countries besides the U.S.
Messaging App Revenue and Usage Statistics (2025)
Over three billion people use messaging apps, making them one of the most popular app types. For most people, mobile messaging consists of two platforms: Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Collectively, over 2.8 billion people use one of these two platforms, in some markets the two apps hold over...www.businessofapps.com
Key messaging app statistics
- Over three billion people actively use messaging apps around the world
- WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app, with 2.4 billion users, followed by Facebook Messenger
- WhatsApp is also the most downloaded messaging app of 2020 and 2021
Top messaging apps
WhatsApp: The most popular messaging app in the world, with over five billion downloads and two billion active users
Most popular messaging apps 2025| Statista
As of February 2025, approximately two billion users were accessing Meta's WhatsApp messenger on a monthly basis.www.statista.com
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Fine here on M1 Air. It's not the most fluid experience, but far, FAR better than the Intel version running on Rosetta.
I just tried it. I know it's a beta but the texts and some of the styles are off. I like that it's finally a real, native macOS app now but the UI needs refinement. As it currently stands, it still needs polish: texts and icons in some parts are too small and there's a waste of space on various parts in the settings and it doesn't have any transitions or animations to make it really feel "proper".