Comment by harpratap
6 years ago
> 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.
The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reaction)…people just don't want to deal with it. And yes, iMessage makes no effort to destigmatize the person who converts your iMessage chat into an SMS conversation.
34 replies →
It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:
> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
3 replies →
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.
If you're looking to be even more disappointed, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844
Wow. There’s been a lot going on lately?
1 reply →
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.
I don’t think it’s just Android users who see it. I’m on iPhone and in a group text with a mix of Android and iPhone users I see it that way too. Maybe I’m on the cusp of being old and cranky but it seems a silly thing to worry about.
1 reply →
I actually like the "so and so Loved blah", because otherwise it would be really easy for non-iphone users to not know that someone actually acknowledged their message.
1 reply →
To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.
It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.
6 replies →
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.
iMessage and FaceTime audio. There are occasions where T-mobile’s voice network won’t let a call through, but I can use the data network to do FaceTime audio.
I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.
I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.
There’s also the fact that WhatsApp is Facebook. I dumped Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all at the same time and will not install any of them on my devices.
More of a reason not to be friends with them.
Sadly, this is not how relationships work and exactly how entrenched social networks come into existence.
1 reply →
You can’t expect full commitment from people you may not know too well. The UI/UX benefits outweigh acquaintances, not friends.
Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
It might be possible to be in a majority-Android friend group outside of North America, but not really here. iMessage is far too entrenched in the US for that to be possible.
> 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.
>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.
You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?
>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.
To be fair, I can entirely understand why they’d do it: the platform all but makes you annoyed at people who don’t have iPhones.
Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?
Most of this happened while I was in high school, and now I am currently 22 years old.
Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry
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.
I don't see how it conveys status when used iPhones are cheap, and brand new ones start at $400 now. My lowest paid hourly employees all have iPhones, even the ones who don't speak English.
8 replies →
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.
Google's been unable to build a iMessage competitor because they don't have the same leverage with the phone carriers that Apple does - because they don't even sell what few phones they manufacture in the carrier's stores.
They built out a technology and gave carriers the option to implement it themselves, or they could just piggyback on Google's servers. Carriers obviously opted to implement it themselves because they don't want to become dumb pipes, then dragged their feet for years.
As I understand it, Google wants to get a basic version in place with all the major carriers first, then start rolling out many of the other features you've mentioned.
Apple's been holding out on supporting it because it's not encrypted, but it'll be interesting to see how they respond to carrier-wide adoption of encrypted RCS when that comes. Will iMessage chats fall back to RCS with Android phones? Or will they continue to fall back to unencrypted oldschool SMS?
>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...
Under display scanner on Samsungs is so horribly bad that I'm not worried about it at all :) . I often can't unlock my S10+ in five tries after which it forces me to enter pin. And S10+ cost 1000$ on release last year. I don't use any screen protectors and I've rescanned fingers after Samsung rolled out "fixes" for the scanner. It's junk.
1 reply →
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.
Countries which I do not live in, and people whom I do not interact with.
It'll get there. But, right now, it works great for me.
1 reply →
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
Every part of the world has its own messaging apps. Depending on where you live, it might be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, LINE, or I’m sure others. In Europe I know for a fact that the popular app varies from country to country. So you could just as easily dismiss LINE as a “purely Japanese phenomenon” but the fact is each app is popular in a certain part of the world.
Because network effects are more important than UX or features.
4 replies →
I think the best reason is explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412067 - ie. how most social circles will exclude Android users. I imagine this is only be the case when only one or two people of the group are using Android though, so if even a few people in the friend group are in that situation you might see more WhatsApp/FB Messenger.
My mid-30s colleague went back to Tinder in recent years and he mentioned he got questioned by his target market about not having a blue bubble. They were all Asian (but mostly Chinese) women in their late 20s who moved to Australia.
2 replies →
Well the most annoying thing about whatsapp (other than its owned by Facebook) is that it can't automatically fallback to sms for contacts not using it.
But not all of the world have moved to whatsapp. I am from Scandinavian and I only have a very limited number of contacts available on whatsapp, most are on iMessage.
5 replies →
No, WhatsApp does not bring the same features. WhatsApp is very different. You can react to messages in iMessage, which is just one among other features WhatsApp doesn’t have.
13 replies →
> Message craze is a purely American phenomenon
This is mistaken. I'm in the EU and do not know a single person using SMS, nor Whatsapp, they use iMessage, however, bigtime.
Whatsapp used to be a thing, but that has been over for some time. Now, most are using Messenger, Snap, and Telegram.
And iMessage is not a craze or a phenomenon, it is a simple convenience; it's on your phone already. For most people using it, it is not even a deliberate choice. The younger generation grew up with it, they do not even really know the difference between SMS and iMessage, except that if the bubble is green, the other user does not have an iPhone.
The older generation remembers SMS, so they still tend to call it SMS, even though they are using iMessage.
Android users are in the minority around here, well, at least between family, friends, and at work.
2 replies →
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.