Comment by kelnos
6 years ago
> iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android
Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
Note that I'm talking about average users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why?
> It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle.
If that's truly the case, I don't think I'd want to be friends with people who place importance on such superficial, trivial things.
Full disclosure: I've been an Android user for 10 years and the closest I ever got to owning an iPhone was an iPod Touch I stopped using in 2012 or so. SMS is fine for my needs most of the time, though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal or WhatsApp for those use-cases.
I guess I just don't see a closed iMessage as that huge of a competitive advantage for Apple. But presumably they know better as to what drives sales.
> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.
In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.
Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can't xyz" you go "ok what can we do instead?". I'm not sure I can imagine caring so little about other people, and I definitely do not want to be around people who don't.
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I've seen this exact behaviour with non-tech friends in 20s-30s people. You have it exactly right. There's a stigma to being a green bubble.
It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.
One of the most disappointing anecdotes I've read recently.
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High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school.
Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"
Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.
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There are two reasons which together make it all make sense:
tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS
1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)
2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.
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More of a reason not to be friends with them.
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> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles"
Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
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Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?
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This is very true in the US, but not a thing overseas (at least in Israel). Everyone is on WhatsApp for texting.
They care because the green bubbles indicate a severely impaired user experience. For example, multimedia may not work, and even if it does, its typically very poor quality.
HS senior here. Maybe a little, but it's mostly status/class. It's the twenty-first century equivalent of wearing expensive clothes to school.
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People definitely do.
The worst part is, an excellent upgrade exists. The RCS experience between Android users is pretty much as good as iMessage. Apple could support this; not to replace iMessage, but to upgrade SMS conversations. My tech-illiterate mom's Galaxy S negative 12 has it. Of my contacts, every single Android user I text (maybe a dozen) has RCS. Its standard.
When I put my iPhone XS and my S20 Plus side-by-side; chatting with Android users using rich text via RCS; animations at 120hz on a display so blindingly bright the brightness slider turns red at the end; so seamless with the device's edges its like looking through a portal; unlocking with a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader; swiping notifications away at a rate the iPhone can't approach; charging my computer keyboard, mouse, phone, laptop, and smartwatch with the same cable... I've religiously used both iPhone and Android, I switch every year, and the iPhone feels like its years behind Samsung right now. Its not close.
RCS: no e2e, multi-device support, or any 3rd party application APIs on Android. In other words, gimped by Google.
Google's messaging department has been chasing it's tail for 10 years. Unless they clone iMessage from the inside out, RCS has no hope. Personally, I want to see RCS fail. It's a lousy spec with few privacy protections built-in. I had it enabled on my phone for a while and there was no indication as to whether my messages were passing through my carrier's servers or Google's RCS endpoint.
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>a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader
Just hope nobody who steals your phone puts a screen protector on it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10127908/samsung-galaxy-s10-sc...
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I still can't believe that Google would back an unencrypted messaging platform. It feels like malpractice on the part of their engineers.
RCS is only rolled out in a limited number of countries.
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You know, for a tech site, people sure do love to forget that iMessage is preferred because it brings features instead of mere social status.
Whatsapp brings the same features, if not more. iMessage craze is a purely American phenomenon, the rest of the world has moved on to other IMs
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It’s a bit more than that though - try to send a picture to an Android user. It will work sometimes. Sometimes it won’t. No rhyme or reason and no way to control it. Send a picture to another iPhone - works exactly as expected every time.
It’s not just social status. It works much much better than SMS, it’s a superior experience and interacting with green bubble folk ruins it. I’m not particularly young or concerned at all with social status, but I urge people in my circles to just get iPhones because of iMessage and FaceTime. Both vastly superior experiences to any alternatives available.
Individual SMS is fine. Group SMS stinks. You can’t remove yourself from a conversation unless everyone else moves on to a new thread without you. Also, you don’t get contact names for ad hoc group conversations with new people.
Trying to get people to agree to a proper chat platform is like wrangling cats. If everyone in the group has an iOS device, then there’s no decision to be made.
I’ve never seen people exclude someone with a green bubble from a conversation, but I’ve seen this behavior (use iMessage as a high quality default) in spades.
Definitely people care about blue vs green bubbles. Have you ever tried to send videos back and forth between the two? It looks like it was shot on my old Nokia flip phone in either direction. Plus no "typing" bubble, texts seem to take longer to arrive, group chats are degraded if even one green bubble is included, etc. It sounds like Android has finally caught up with RCS, but iMessage was one of my favorite features when I switched years ago.
MMS and SMS are extremely unreliable, especially if you were out of the coverage area when a message was sent (half the time I only receive some of a conversation and have to try to interpret what happened). RCS is supposed to fix this, but no carrier seems intent on sunsetting SMS to force Apple’s hand. At least with iMessage, I’ll eventually get the message (they’ll hold it server side, encrypted, until I get back online).
I still use SMS a lot, because it’s more important to me that I can talk and send pictures to people than worrying about them being on a certain platform or app (Discord’s notifications aren’t great on mobile if you haven’t opened the app for a while). But it’s super annoying, and if Apple made iMessage an open standard (they probably won’t, since people buy iPhones for it), I think many people on Android would move to it.
You literally answered your own question.
“... though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal.”
Group texting between iPhones just works. Add an Android user to the group and all of the sudden it doesn’t work. Ergo, don’t add them.
I would buy an Android if it weren’t for the social force behind iMessage blue bubbles and the smoothness of FaceTime.
Green bubbles signal low status. It also makes it more difficult to communicate: no read receipts, no live location, photo/video/audio messages are clunky, worse emojis, no reaction option, and so on.
It’s not about Blue/Green bubbles. Everything messes up once you have one person in a group that isn’t on iMessage - including reactions to messages. Instead of getting an icon on top of message you get “John Doe liked ‘We will be there soon’”.
IME there's a loss of a number of features when communicating without someone with "blue bubbles", that you come to take for granted, and that cause a bit of friction when you realize the messages/functionality you took for granted in your exchange aren't there. If I find myself chatting with someone with green bubbles, I find I tend to transition the conversation over to whatsapp.
It's not like a "relationship killer" or something, but I imagine it is a low-level contributor to my lock-in to the platform.
99% of Americans don’t want to be funneled to WhatsApp or signal for group chat. They want it to live right next to their native texts.
Your group is likely different from the mainstream.
Which is why 99% of Americans get a to live in a shitty Nash equilibrium of either being socially ostracised and excluded or being locked into an expensive monopoly of a single smart phone vendor.
Good luck to live as Google 1984-like bootnet.
Sadly, Librem 5 future is unclear, so Apple is probably less evil here.
99% is hyperbole based on Android market share in the US.
But that’s not what I’m saying.
People buy android phones for all sorts of reasons (in the US, mainly price). But in the US, it’s nearly impossible to have a broad social circle that doesn’t want to ‘text’ so I’d guess at least 99% of US users regularly engage with default messaging apps. if given the choice, of bet nearly all of those users would prefer to centralize their ‘texts’ instead of multi-apping
Look what happened to groupme as soon as iMessage group chat got good...
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I was thinking about moving to Android about three years back. The thing that stopped me from even seriously considering it was iMessage.
Everyone I know uses iMessage. SMS is unreliable, works poorly in group chats, and can't easily be sent/received from my computer.
(I will still eventually need to go to Android because I'm not giving up my headphone jack, but I'll be hanging onto my iPhone 6S for as long as possible.)
iMessage has read receipts, faster and more reliable delivery, higher quality images/videos. More than just the color of the bubble
Looks like you have never used Whatsapp!
WhatsApp sucks. Message delivery/notifications are unreliable, the interface is hideous, it lacks the Tapback/reaction feature which is heavily used in iMessage, and it dumps pics from group chats into your photo library automatically, as if you took them yourself. Idiot posts racist meme to a group chat? It lives in your photos library forever until you notice and manually delete.
Notifications being sporadically (at best) delivered is the real deal breaker for me.
What’s more fun than a party you missed because WhatsApp didn’t feel like delivering notifications for a day?
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In the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.
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If your snark needs another snarky reply, it would be this:
“Looks like you have never used Telegram.”
This game can go on and on, but WhatsApp is nowhere close to being the best messaging app feature wise.
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Comparing against SMS. Nearly every messaging platform other than SMS has that feature set.
Can’t send Live Photo’s. They get converted to regular or a crappy gif.
iMessage is a much better user experience. Users associate the blue bubbles with that.
Like pretty much every other messaging app on every phone platform currently existence?
Other messaging apps have the same features as iMessage, but not the same user experience. For example, WhatsApp has a pretty massive spam and fake news problem, and Facebook messenger is significantly slower and applies a high degree of compression on media. iMessage offers the best UX, and that’s why, in my experience, iOS users will almost always opt to use iMessage over competitors when communicating with other iOS users.
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End-to-end encryption by default and seamless multi-device support. It's a combination of features that's currently limited to iMessage.
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It’s the combination of features and the network effect iMessage has. That’s what makes it special to a lot of people. You get rich chat features (especially in group conversations) and you don’t have to negotiate what platform to use if everyone happens to have an iOS device.
Great for you if you live in an area where all of your friends have the same messaging app. They’re all a big step up from SMS, but there’s no messaging app I know that will reach everyone I want to talk to.
No, because at least in the US, iMessage has one thing that no other messaging app has - install base.
For me - it's simply a question of reliability. SMS is not reliable in the US, and I live in an area with poor coverage. My preferred mode of communication is texting but SMS is a no-go.
If it’s of any solace, SMS is not reliable anywhere in the world. It may seem reliable sometimes in some places, but that’s mostly a facade.
SMS is very reliable here in New Zealand, even more so than any IP-based systems. I've had SMS get through easily in one-signal-bar situations where IP data was nearly inoperable (especially if I happened to be attached to a 2G GPRS cell). Wonder if SMS reliability is really an issue peciular to certain networks. SMS reliability has been good for me both in NZ and all the foriegn networks I have used in my travels around the world. 4G is very good though in low signal situations so IP based protcols are improving in reliability... Just need networks to hurry up their 4G roll out and turn off their 2G/3G networks.
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How do you know that?
And iMessage works wherever I might be.
They absolutely should care. I’m not adding you to a group text if you have an android. Life is too short to read green text bubbles.
Why don't you use WhatsApp?
I did for a while, especially to keep in touch with overseas friends, but I've been Facebook-free for a few years now and that meant deleting WhatsApp as well.
It's not a thing in the US. The iMessage user experience is unrivaled.
You're a moron, I don't even care about any temp ban for saying that, too. Anyone who thinks like you do is a moron.
The UI/UX cost of Android messages isn’t worth it for acquaintances, but unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
There are other people on this site, too, besides you and 'elliekelly. Please don't do this even though you think a ban to punish you is appropriate. (As punishment, it sure doesn't help the people who had their discussion quality lowered…)
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