I agree there's shenanigans with iMessage, which is why it's not perfect. But I personally have no evidence it's malicious rather than incompetency, and in other respects it's better than what Google is doing by leaps and bounds. (And I use Android, not iOS).

Windows Phone, I think given how far behind Microsoft was at the time it finally was released, they should have rolled it out as completely free and open source. And even at anytime up until about two years ago they could have done this. Now, I think it wouldn't matter. Too bad.