Oh of course, it's insanely annoying. It's not even something that crossed my mind since before transitioning to my iPhone I used to carry multiple phones on me and just switch SIMs around (I'm a mobile dev, not a drug dealer, I promise) I'm just saying that it's not hopeless, Apple hasn't done anything about it in years and from the blog it seems like the writer thinks they'll just never get text messages from iPhone users again, which is false.
From what I understand, it's less of a deliberate "HAHA SCREW YOU" and more of a caching issue on their iMessage registration side. The removal of my number took around 24 hours to propagate to their services (e.g. if a person who didn't have a thread with me put in my number, it would show green not blue) and I had to have some friends delete our chat history since my iMessage-ness was cached on their phone.
I think Apple only checks iMessage registration in pull format, e.g. when someone toggles iMessage on/off on their phone, rather than constantly checking it through some "does this phone have service" background test.
From what I understand, it's less of a deliberate "HAHA SCREW YOU" and more of a caching issue on their iMessage registration side. The removal of my number took around 24 hours to propagate to their services (e.g. if a person who didn't have a thread with me put in my number, it would show green not blue) and I had to have some friends delete our chat history since my iMessage-ness was cached on their phone.
I think Apple only checks iMessage registration in pull format, e.g. when someone toggles iMessage on/off on their phone, rather than constantly checking it through some "does this phone have service" background test.