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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.

Yeah I don't care when the Internet and apps as a whole are full of trackers. I'd only worry about border controls demanding me to unlocky phone or else. They also don't know what you write, just who you write to.

Anyway, FINALLY
 
Hopefully then they will get round to working on an Apple Watch app too or at least something that actually notifies the watch when you are getting an audio call in on WhatsApp!
 
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.
 
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I definitely wouldn’t want Meta/Zuckerberg having full access to my contact list
Let’s be realistic: It’s likely they already have access to many, if not all, of your contacts through other people who did share their full contact list. For the vast majority of people it’s gonna be impossible to keep track of who shared what via-via with whom. At least that’s gonna be the scenario for most out there.
 
What a joke of an app. The Apple Watch doesn’t display incoming WhatsApp calls. Can one even send full-resolution photos on WhatsApp now? Thank goodness I rarely need to use Meta products.
 
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Wait, is it seriously not possible to use a native WhatsApp app on an iPad? Is that truly not a thing? That's beyond ridiculous if so.

I can install WhatsApp on my 2016 Android tablet without any issue. How are iPads more limited than old, cheaper Android tablets? And more importantly, how does Apple allow that?
 
Why people use WhatsApp over Telegram is beyond me. The worst and most annoying messenger app in the world. Classic example of security and privacy negatively impacting UX

Meta apps give me the ick, but using Telegram has been a negative experience for me overall. On Telegram, I get spam messages several times a day, and at least once every couple of days, I’m added to some crypto text chain group that I didn’t ask to be added to and then get inundated by 50,000 people all saying “UNSUBSCRIBE” or asking what the group is. That hasn’t happened to me on WhatsApp.
 
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Meta apps give me the ick, but using Telegram has been a negative experience for me overall. On Telegram, I get spam messages several times a day, and at least once every couple of days, I’m added to some crypto text chain group that I didn’t ask to be added to and then get inundated by 50,000 people all saying “UNSUBSCRIBE” or asking what the group is. That hasn’t happened to me on WhatsApp.
Easily fixed by changing your privacy settings.
 
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Meta apps give me the ick, but using Telegram has been a negative experience for me overall. On Telegram, I get spam messages several times a day, and at least once every couple of days, I’m added to some crypto text chain group that I didn’t ask to be added to and then get inundated by 50,000 people all saying “UNSUBSCRIBE” or asking what the group is. That hasn’t happened to me on WhatsApp.
I experienced the inverse.
 
Why people use WhatsApp over Telegram is beyond me. The worst and most annoying messenger app in the world. Classic example of security and privacy negatively impacting UX
UX? User experience?

Yiu say it’s worst and annoying but what exactly makes it so? What evidence /cose is there that you know of that makes your statement true and relevant? Not challenging, I’m genuinely curious here..



I definitely wouldn’t want Meta/Zuckerberg having full access to my contact list

You should be able to go into settings app, find watsapp and disable contact use, no?..


Meta product. No, thank you.

Why exactly? Isn’t watsapp now completely end to end end. and so not even meta can access the content of every single watsappp interaction?…


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.

So just last night during the basketball game there was a commercial that was new to me and very reminiscent of an Apple commercials. It touted watsapp’s dedication to privacy and security and now not even meta can access any text or voice call info…too good to be true??

And if false and they’re really up to their old bag of tricks again, where’s the proof?...
 
Whatsapp still requires a phone number which is annoying. It would be nice to see them do email+password login and editable usernames. (like slack, ms teams, google chat, discord, etc) Also, it would be nice to see the edit button made available forever, like slack, ms teams, google chat, discord, etc...we should control our digital footprint. People who claim that "15 minutes is good" - what do they think about slack, teams, google chat, and discord allowing unlimited editing. I don't think WhatsApp should be going for a "everything we type is set in stone type of platform". I think it should be a bit more casual and allow forever edits - not saying that's what people *should* do - but the fact that it's allowed makes me, and many others more comfortable with other chat platforms, and the issue is that meta kind of has a bit of a monopolistic hold on things and so sometimes I want to type things that are blunt like "no thanks" because, sometimes it feels like giving them ideas kind of "feeds the beast" but here I am, typing out some ideas.


Another thing WhatsApp could use is 2 primary devices. It's good we can link a few devices to our 1 primary device, and I can understand some security benefits of not just allowing *unlimited* primary devices. However, I think *2* primary devices could be a good happy medium that still balances functionality with security. This way, we could login to *1* extra device *without* having to *link it* to the *1* primary device. This would give us 2 primary devices, with 4 linked means 8 devices total, I think is good. Still not unlimited for better security, but one extra primary device would enhance functionality/accessibility.

But WhatsApp needs an ability to signup with email and password and allow 2 primary devices and give us editable usernames so we don't have to share our phone number. There's so much spam out there today, we should be able to converse with people with editable usernames instead of requiring sharing our phone number. Also, their linked devices function is too limited and needs to allow 10 linked devices. backup and storage should be on the WhatsApp cloud instead of requiring backup and restore everytime.
 
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I hate Facebook/Meta as much as the next person. But my entire extended family on both sides is on whatsapp. As are several of my daughter's school groups. It's just not escapable right now (for me) and being able to just switch seamlessly between conversations whether I'm on my iphone or ipad mini is going to be a huge quality of life improvement. The web app workaround sucks SO BAD.
 
If it still needs full access to your contact list to work, it's still a no I'm afraid :)
iOS 18 allows you to limit contact access for apps to a subset of your contacts. That pretty much forced Meta to rework how they handle contacts on WhatsApp. They no longer block you from using the app without contacts access (since you can‘t detect limited access) and they even allow you to turn off WhatsApp cloud contacts (they pulled your contacts list onto their servers to sync them across your different WhatsApp clients) or edit the contacts on there.

If it will work as bad as the Mac app, then please don't
It is pretty much a 1:1 copy of their macOS app, same limited feature set. It did get more stable over the last 2-3 years they had it on TestFlight though (was atrocious early on, constantly killing your linked session forcing you to reauthenticate).

No idea what takes them so long since the app barely gets any new features. Meta probably hates the iPad, all their apps are trash tier on it (or don‘t exist, like Instagram, to hide their crap quality images).
 
Whatsapp still requires a phone number which bugs me. I'd like to see them do email+password login and editable usernames. (like slack, ms teams, google chat, discord, etc) Also, I'd like to see the edit button made available forever, like slack, ms teams, google chat, discord, etc...we should control our digital footprint. People who claim that "15 minutes is good" - what do they think about slack, teams, google chat, and discord allowing unlimited editing. I don't think WhatsApp should be going for a "everything we type is set in stone type of platform". I think it should be a bit more casual and allow forever edits - not saying that's what people *should* do - but the fact that it's allowed makes me, and many others more comfortable with other chat platforms, and the issue is that meta kind of has a bit of a monopolistic hold on things and so sometimes I want to type things that are blunt like "no thanks" because, sometimes it feels like giving them ideas kind of "feeds the beast" but here I am, typing out some ideas.


Another thing WhatsApp could use is 2 primary devices. It's good we can link a few devices to our 1 primary device, and I can understand some security benefits of not just allowing *unlimited* primary devices. However, I think *2* primary devices could be a good happy medium that still balances functionality with security. This way, we could login to *1* extra device *without* having to *link it* to the *1* primary device. This would give us 2 primary devices, with 4 linked means 8 devices total, I think is good. Still not unlimited for better security, but one extra primary device would enhance functionality/accessibility.

But WhatsApp needs an ability to signup with email and password and allow 2 primary devices and hide our phone numbers when joining public groups. There's so much spam out there today, we should be able to converse with people without sharing our phone number.
Usernames for WhatsApp (e.g. like Signal, so you can hide your phone number and have a discord style username instead) have been in the works for probably another 50 decades by now, similar to the iPad app. Maybe they finally launch that in 2026, who knows?

WhatsApp is the king of gimmicky useless feature releases. Their whole media channel is full of announcements for crappy stuff no one cares about (like being able to add 3 more emojis to stories, which no one I know uses and would love to outright deactivate). The big guns like iPad app or a completely new identifier system like usernames take a millennium to manifest.
 
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UX? User experience?

Yiu say it’s worst and annoying but what exactly makes it so? What evidence /cose is there that you know of that makes your statement true and relevant? Not challenging, I’m genuinely curious here..

- You have a limit of how many devices can use the WhatsApp account. I have a PC desktop, PC Laptop, MacBook, 2x iPads, iPhone, Android. All of those devices can use the same account for Telegram. But for Whatsapp, you're limited to only 5 devices maximum.
- Messages aren't saved in the cloud. Need to sync messages between two devices locally.
- On linked devices, if you don't launch Whatsapp for several days, it logs you out. You then need to link the device again and have messages re-sync
- The problem with linking devices is that it requires a second device to link. If I'm outside with only my phone, I'm SOL.
- Right now if I scroll up, for some reason many old messages say "Waiting for this message. This may take a while". I have all 5 devices running whatsapp. Apparently there's data loss when one of my devices logged out so that's gone forever.
- For some reason only Android devices lets you use multiple WhatsApp accounts. I have one for family and one for business. I can't switch accounts on iOS
- You need to use iCloud AND Google storage space to backup your messages. Whatsapp doesn't provide cloud storage for you.
- Backups happen automatically only once a day. If you talked a lot that day then lose your phone, you will lose all messages for that day.

And so on.
 
Do you expect Apple to force developers to create apps for their devices?
Uh, no. I expect Apple to allow an app written for iOS to be run on an iOS device (iPadOS is iOS with some tweaks as we all know). There's something called "windowed mode."

Just more proof that iOS is inferior to the competition, I guess.
 
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I've been in the beta! It works exactly how you would expect it to work. I'm not surprised it's being released soon.
 
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