Ferrari, McLaren, Pagani, Lamborghini, Tata, Honda, Toyota, Wal-Mart, Zuora (named after the two founders), Garmin (also named after the two founders).
100% I own enough Lululemon men's gear and have zero regrets - for longhaul flights nothing really beats the comfort of Lululemon/Prana pants. And they are super functional - pockets with zippers are super handy for AirPods, Passport, wallet etc.
Google and Facebook may have a larger user base but it is not the in the same realm, e.g. I use iMessage to talk to my family, my close friends, parents from my daughter's preschool, co-workers, people I've only interacted with professionally - vendors etc - all it takes to connect is a phone number which is universal, and like you say it falls back to SMS. Compare that to Facebook where you have to add someone as a friend - which I don't do often because it just feels odd, or Google where messaging ecosystem is a bit fragmented with Allo, Duo, Hangout, Hangout Chat etc. Signal and WhatsApp are actually viable options but compared to iMessage feel heavy and not native, however I do use them both.
And like you mentioned - spam - I have yet to receive an iMessage spam message. That is pretty amazing.
I came across this article[1] and this thread quoted[0] in article some time ago. I don't think of iMessage as a walled garden, it is almost like a low fence you can see across with a sign that "you must be this cool to participate".
iMessage is literally the only reason I have not tried an android phone because I don't want to deal with the fallout of all of my chat threads going back to 2011(?) getting disrupted. I don’t think I can come up with a better example of vendor lock-in.
During the demo of transparent metal glass Elon invited Franz to hit the glass with metal ball and it broke. It wasn’t supposed to because it is extra hardened or something.