Do we really believe though that Apple doesn’t like it? I believe their top executives are glad it sucks because things like this make people (especially teens) bully anyone who’s not on iMessage, resulting in additional sales.
I think Apple has enough pull with carriers to tell them whatever configuration parameters for MMS they want.
Prove this, because I'm pretty certain this is not the case. I helped build a messaging app for iOS (Technically a TeleHeath app that needed to accept MMS/SMS also) and I saw absolutely none of this. That was a few years ago so it's possible it's changed but I'd have to see actual documentation for that. Otherwise I firmly believe this is BS and completely made up.