Apple's rivals took 7 years to create their own version of one of the company's simplest, best features - but it still has a ways to go

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

• One of the greatest features in the Apple iPhone and Mac ecosystem is the ability to send and receive text messages from your Mac computer.
• I forgot how great that feature was when I first departed the Apple ecosystem.
• Microsoft has a Windows 10 app called "Your Phone" that lets Android users send and receive text messages. It came out last year, but it wasn't great at the time. It's improved significantly now.
• You just need to install the Your Phone app on your Android phone and your Windows 10 computer, link your Android phone to your Microsoft account, and off you go, texting your friends and family from your computer.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Microsoft and Samsung announced that they're working together to bring text messaging to Windows 10 computers for Samsung Galaxy Note 10 users.

That's fantastic. The new Galaxy Note 10 has Microsoft's "Your Phone" feature built into the phone, ready to connect with your Microsoft account. Once you set it up, you can start sending and replying text messages from the Your Phone computer app on your Windows 10 machine.

It's something that Apple users have been used to for years now, and it's understandably a factor in why Apple fans don't want to leave the Apple ecosystem.

Read more: Google has started rolling out Android 10 - here are the 10 best new features and updates to look out for

But the Your Phone app isn't just compatible with the Galaxy Note 10: Microsoft released the app last year, and it's compatible with pretty much every Android phone out there. Just download the Your Phone app on your Android phone and Windows 10 computer and set it up.

Your Phone wasn't reliable when I first tried it last year, and I stopped using it pretty quickly as a result. But it's improved, and I now feel comfortable in using it on a daily basis.

Still, it's missing a few features, like text message management. You can't delete texts in the desktop Your Phone app, it's still a little buggy here and there, and you can't make calls from your Windows 10 computer yet.

Check out Microsoft's Your Phone app, which I've been using with a Google Pixel 3 XL: