The peer pressure of not having an iPhone is genuinely incredible (trust me, i experience it).

I wanna talk a bit about where this comes from. There are what, two or three models of iPhone that you can buy off the shelf right now?

Think about grade school kids and their first phone. What do they get? Well, parents almost expect them to break the phone. If it's an iPhone, then it's one of the three, expensive models. If it's an Android, it's probably a cheap piece of shit (because on Android those are an option). It's certainly not a Pixel or the latest Samsung.

So grade school kids learn that iPhone = quality, and Android = cheap pieces of shit. And even if at the high end Android is better, young people by and large don't experience that. And it sticks with them. Apple did a similar strategy with putting Apple computers into every grade school in the 1980s.

And Apple is doing everything they can to reinforce this marketing and peer pressure, especially the iMessage thing. The only reason the iMessage "issue" exists is because Apple wants it to exist. They want the $700 cosmetic for chat to continue to exist. It's a large part of their business model.