Back in 2018, during a regular quarterly earnings call with investors, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a rather startling admission. “Our biggest competitor by far is iMessage ,” Zuckerberg told investors about Apple’s default messaging app as a huge threat. Till yesterday, one might have felt that Apple — while making subtle changes — hadn’t really upped the ante on Facebook and its family of apps like Messenger and WhatsApp . However, at WWDC 2020 , Apple with iOS 14 announced how Messages is set to change significantly with new features that are designed to take on other instant messaging apps.
For starters, Apple is making group chats more organised and feature-rich in Messages with iOS 14. With iOS 14, iPhone users can customise group chats with personal photos or even emojis as the main image. Even within conversations, one will be able to see group members’ profile icons more prominently around the main group image.
Apple is also bringing the Mentions feature to Messages. However, unlike WhatsApp or even Twitter, you won’t have to use the “@” to tag users in messages.
