[julietteeb]

Am currently a teen in high school so here's my hot take. No one actually gives a shit about the color of the bubble, like beyond it being annoying that you can't add more people to a gc if one person has an android it's not an actual problem. I would love to meet a person who actually cares about the color of a message that this article is talking about because I have yet to find them lol. And plus most of the time we aren't using iMessages, (using Discord/Snap/Insta instead) so no one even knows if you have an iPhone or not, we just want to talk to our friends, no matter the phone.

[pkulak]

As an Android user, yes, people absolutely care. I care, even. If I get added to a group chat (any group chat, since my entire family and social circle uses iPhones), that chat is immediately degraded to potato videos, every like is now a whole string of useless text, etc. I'll never forgive Apple for the crap they put me though _as a customer_. My family has iPads, MacBooks, two iPhones, AirPods, you name it. I'm typing this on a year-old MacBook. But because I run one Linux desktop and don't feel like replacing my old Pixel, I have to deal with their ire. Apple demands absolute loyalty.

EDIT: Reading down the page, it seems that other Android users have a different experience, where only they are degraded? That's odd. In my experience, my presence degrades the entire chat and everyone gets swapped to MMS.

[giantrobot]

> But because I run one Linux desktop and don't feel like replacing my old Pixel, I have to deal with their ire.

SMS/MMS has technical limitations you're running into. It's the lowest common denominator that's going to work between Apple and non-Apple devices. Google and carriers have shit the bed multiple times over the past decade trying to come up with an equivalent to iMessage.

[anonporridge]

That's not an excuse.

There's no good reason why Apple and Google couldn't collaborate to design an upgraded and open SMS protocol that everyone can plug into. These two effectively control the entire mobile market.

They only reason they don't is spelled out exactly in this thread. Apple cares more about pressuring people into their walled garden than actually serving customers well and encouraging a vibrant market of products using cross compatible messaging protocols.

[andrius4669]

>an upgraded and open SMS protocol that everyone can plug into

that exists, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

[kiwijamo]

Which AFAIK Apple does not use. I have RCS enabled on my Android phone but it only works to other Android users who have a compatible phone that also has RCS. Still does not resolve the OP's issue that Apple refuses to send/receive messages to/from other vendors' devices unless it is via SMS/MMS. It's a sad state of affairs indeed.

[SllX]

I’ve seen it posted multiple times on this very forum that carriers have not done a good job rolling this out. How is this actually going over in Android-land?

[gsich]

My (european) take: nobody cares. Usage of Whatsapp/Signal is higher.

[trissylegs]

In Australia it's been on Telstra for a bit. I got it working on Optus last year. I don't know what happens to other companies running over the Telstra or Optus networks though.

[philistine]

Yeah. In the time it took them to not solve that problem, WhatsApp et al. took over the world of texting from under them.

[giantrobot]

> Apple cares more about pressuring people into their walled garden than actually serving customers well and encouraging a vibrant market of products using cross compatible messaging protocols.

Apple has already been serving their customers with Messages. A free E2EE messaging system usable across all their devices. Your "Apple walled garden" complaint rings a bit hollow considering there's tons of messaging apps on iOS. Why are you not complaining WhatsApp or Signal doesn't make their infrastructure cross compatible for Apple to use? You know, vibrancy and all.

Messaging platforms (Apple included) don't want to be interoperable. It slows down feature development and partners in development may be at cross purposes. It also means opening expensive infrastructure to use by third parties. The rollout of RCS has been an object example of those issues.

But no, it must be Apple bad. Walled garden! WHARGARBL!

[franga2000]

There's a difference between interoperability and being cross-platform. Nobody is saying iMessage should be inter-operable with Signal or whatever, but that it should in some way be compatible with non-Apple platforms. All the other messaging services work on both Apple and Android devices, as well as often having web/desktop versions.

It's the definition of a walled garden. Google's messaging services aren't limited to Pixel devices or even Android in general, whereas Apple has made theirs available only on devices they manufacture.

[giantrobot]

> but that it should in some way be compatible with non-Apple platforms

It is fucking compatible. Messages falls back to the most compatible option between platforms and carriers: SMS/MMS. RCS has been a shit show, even Google has had to run their own parallel infrastructure for it just to avoid the implementation problems of carriers. Google also has proprietary extensions for RCS for E2EE which only works on Google's infrastructure and only between clients running Google Messages.

[pkulak]

Yeah, I agree 100%. The issue is that Apple has used it's market share to force users onto something that isn't better, because iMessage isn't open to everyone. So you have Apple users bouncing back and forth between two shitty systems (in the same app, so folks don't really even know what's going on), and I'm forced to interact with them on Apple's terms.

[km3r]

RCS has been a thing for a while. Apple has no excuse.

[giantrobot]

RCS' rollout has been a complete shit show. Carriers have deployed it inconsistently between markets, messaging apps have had inconsistent support for it, different apps have added their own extensions, and interoperability between carriers has been inconsistent. Shit, Google Messages only started supporting it in 2018 with most users needing to use Google's servers to actually get it working across carriers. Google only added E2EE last summer and only in 1:1 conversations between Google Messages users.

So I'll repeat, SMS/MMS is the least common denominator that will reliably work on non-Apple devices and across carriers. Adding RCS support to Messages would mean building their own infrastructure like Google has done in order to have the feature work reliably.

[rosndo]

Apple should let RCS die, involving carriers was a shit idea.

[Kadin]

RCS has been a "thing" for years but nobody has bothered using it, because it's terrible.

Last time I checked it didn't even have E2EE.

[int_19h]

Neither does SMS, but that doesn't preclude Apple from falling back to that.

[LexGray]

RCS has been around a long time, but it has been deployed by major carriers in just the last year and certainly is not universal. Google also just did a bypass the carriers thing mid last year. It is not a this feature has been missing for years question.

Adding a full feature set is something to approach with caution since Apple does not go the Google approach of burn it down and start over every few messaging apps. Most of the zero days seem iMessage related.

[xg15]

> If I get added to a group chat (any group chat, since my entire family and social circle uses iPhones), that chat is immediately degraded to potato videos, every like is now a whole string of useless text, etc.

I think this should at the very least be classified as a new dark pattern - and it sounds as if it could potentially even have antitrust implications:

Apple's strategy is effectively that users of competing products aren't just put at a disadvantage themselves, Apple will disadvantage their whole social circle and rely on social pressure to drive them back from the competitor.

This seems honestly extremely anticompetitive. (Not to mention, has icky similarities to china-style social credit systems)

[leshenka]

Thank fucking god my whole circle uses either Telegram or WhatsApp

[Jansen312]

And signal, and wechat (if Chinese frens), and Kakao (if Korean frens), and Line (if Taiwanese), and Viber (Thai, Vietnamese), and FB messenger. Those I know on iphone also rarely using iMessage.

[Kadin]

> Those I know on iphone also rarely using iMessage.

I think there is a significant US vs. ex-US difference in how people use messaging. I am in the US and very few older adults I know use over-the-top messaging apps, with perhaps the exception of Facebook Messenger. The only people who use WhatsApp are folks who have traveled internationally, have international friends, or international business contacts. Signal is for crypto-nerds. Telegram is for... I'm not sure. Certainly nobody I know.

Interestingly, people I know who are in their 30s are more likely to use FB Messenger, because they're more likely to have been on Facebook since it was introduced.

But people in their 20s seem to have eschewed Facebook. Some of them seem to use Snapchat or Instagram Chat, but without the expectation that everyone is going to be on it.

So, basically, there is no universal chat tool that you can use in the US and basically expect people to be on, except SMS/MMS (and iMessage, which basically takes the place of MMS on iPhones from a users perspective).

[ChainOfFools]

Line is also the standard with Japanese friends

[jasonm23]

The article is about teens, and no they do not care.

They're on Discord.

[pkulak]

My 12-year-old uses iMessage exclusively with all his peers. Guess he's a few months too young, but I'm not gonna blow off the whole premise of the article quite yet.

[frostedcookies]

The people denying this seem to be ignoring the data the article quotes suggesting a sizable majority of American youth are on iPhones and likely social pressure has a lot to do with it. Sorry I’m not buying these anecdotes of “no one cares”. If no one cared they’d be on cheaper androids. Most likely they’ll say they don’t care and yet secretly do. If I as a 40 year old feel pressure from colleagues there’s no way a teen isn’t.

[firecall]

I'm not a teen, but a parent with almost teen kids!

And I can confirm, they don't really care :-)

Discord is their go-to chat platform on their gaming PCs, iPads and iPhones.

TBF One of my kids did ask about the bubble colour thing, but they dont actually care.

They love Discord, where as I find it impossible LOL! Which makes perfect sense!

Their Discord chats are irreverent and full of memes, their avatars and nicknames are totally random to me!

Which is as it should be!

iMessage is great and all - but it's very stuffy and old and corporate compared to how I see my kids using Discord!

[wincy]

I’m 35 and grew up on the Internet chatting on AIM and chat rooms as a teenager, and Discord feels very much like that. I like it a lot and vastly prefer it to text messaging or Facebook messenger.

[Ancapistani]

Funny you should say that - I’m 38, and feel the same way. So much so, in fact, that I set up a Discord instance for my 13-year-old daughter to converse with her friend group.

It’s super nice because they can set up channels for only some subset of the everyone on the instance, and because I admin it, I can see everything that goes on there if there’s an issue. I don’t expect issues, but the fact that I’m the admin means that a lot of her friends’ parents who are otherwise relatively strict allow their kids to use it.

[sour-taste]

I have no kids so have 0 context, but discord servers are very easy to create. If your child wants to avoid your surveillance couldn't they just make a new server that you don't admin? If there are parental controls can't they just make a new account? Has this been a problem for you?

[OldTimeCoffee]

Different person, but I have a kid. If your parental technique is 'surveillance', they're just going to go over to friend's house instead. It's like a micro-managing manager, it's going to be really ineffective and compliance is an illusion.

Setting the boundary of 'you can use Discord and only this channel I've setup for you and your friends' works if you've spent their whole life setting reasonable boundaries that you discuss with them. Just like an adult, reasonable boundaries are more likely to be complied with.

To the specifics, they could create a new account/server, but it's really obvious on the server list (set a unique server icon). Discord doesn't have parental controls (e.g., you can't set a settings PIN so the settings can't be changed), but there are a lot of server controls you can setup to restrict access (like really short invite times, for example).

[Ancapistani]

Sure, they could create a new instance if they wanted - but it's just easier for them not to. Plus, if they did, then some of their friends would either not be able to join or would get in trouble when their parents saw that they were members of a second server.

It's honestly not something I'm worried about. I'm just saying that using the server I set up is the path of least resistance for them.

[habeebtc]

Does Discord have scrollers and punters?

Asking for a friend, who is into 133t vv@rez.

[Macha]

Yeah, my "with friends" chat moved from MSN -> Facebook -> Skype -> Discord. My "with family/professional relations" moved Email -> Facebook -> Whatsapp in the same time. My "random internet groups" moved MSN -> IRC -> Discord -> Matrix.

[spike021]

I miss AIM, honestly. Nothing quite matches it, these days.

[Nbox9]

I think you are being nostalgic. The current generation of communication software (iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Signal, Messenger, Hangout, Matrix, etc) trumps what was popular in the 90s/00s.

[MereInterest]

And every one of them needs a separate client, with a separate list of friends and handles, a separate program to check and monitor, ensuring that they are well-behaving. The current generation of software has no equivalent of Trillian or Pidgin, which could interact across any protocol. Heck, the current generation has no concept of "protocols" at all, instead treating the network communication as something entirely internal and subservient to the program running it.

[29083011397778]

...well every one of them except Matrix, which can plug into Telegram, Discord, Facebook Messenger, and Google Chat - which I'm using all of!

[bigiain]

I know a lot of people hate it, but Signal piggybacking on your phone number and native contact list is a reasonable workaround to that “seperate contact list” issue. And mobile push notifications make that “a seperate program to check and monitor” a non problem, at least for me.

[Fnoord]

Did you check Franz/Ferdi? Though its Electron, it does support a lot of protocols.

People here (NL) barely use iMessage. They use WhatsApp mainly. I prefer (and do use mainly) Signal. For group chat, Matrix. Though Discord is (unfortunately) very popular. I dig it only for gaming.

[spike021]

Nope, here's why.

* single chat client (not a plethora on many platforms these days)

* ability to set online, offline, away, invisible (basically if you're available or not, whereas Facebook/Instagram/Slack don't really have that same separation and even the ones that do tend to not be as popular)

* Single-purpose platform, no other social media needed to carry it. i.e. Instagram's DM's are tucked away. Discord is technically single-purpose, but it's also at its core a social media platform, you need to join servers/Discords for all the separate things you're into, etc. so it's also not a single-purpose platform).

[unionpivo]

Nah not really. For normal users maybe, but if you were into programming you own utilities bots, scripts etc, today most platforms are very limited.

Out of all of them I like discord the most, but it's not hard to find problems even there. (weird scrolling, nearly useless search). I miss custom clients.

Plus, while I like the integration gifs images and some emojis, I generally find it overused in almost all servers I am on.

[ethbr0]

The nostalgia is partly for centralized reasons. It's undeniably convenient when everyone uses one thing (or ICQ).

[mbg721]

I too remember having all my friends on AIM, and my signature being about throwing real rocks at my sham-friends.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

I don't see any difference in those compared to ICQ of 1996. I have a 6-digit ICQ number btw.

[nemosaltat]

Same. I actually downloaded it in a VM and logged in one last time before the AIM servers went offline a couple years ago.

[fartcannon]

Its kind if funny that Apple Facetime and Facebook are the way my child speeks with his grandmother. He loves his grandma, but the tech will forever be old and lame as a result.

The same will happen to Discord, too. Personally, I still think ICQ and IRC are the epitome of chat applications.

[gogopuppygogo]

DeadAIM by JimADI was the epitome of chat for me... There was AIM+ as well...

It seems like yesterday we NEEDED to hack a chat client to remove ads to make it usable... Kind of how we use adblocking on web browsers to make the web usable...

[btbuilder]

While removing the ad was the first feature I think tabbed messages and message logging were the most popular DeadAIM features

[movedx]

I'm actually really glad to hear that Discord is the popular platform among young adults. I run an educational/professional Discord server so this has me thinking I'm in the right place to help teach people about my industry.

Thanks for the insights.

[int_19h]

My biggest worry isn't that Discord (or whatever is next in that space) kills off other IM, but that it kills off email - i.e. the last truly widespread open and federated protocol for person-to-person communication.

[howinteresting]

Discord is really where all the kids are.

[takinola]

Can someone explain the appeal of Discord? It seems to be the same as Slack. In what way is it differentiated from existing messaging services?

[ajvs]

It appeals to gaming communities rather than business ones through it's design and features. You don't have to sign up to instances separately - there's a single account you use to sign into any, and you can adjust your picture/nickname per instance. It's got great streaming and voice channel features. Because of all this, it's the #1 platform for gaming communities, and many other tech communities opt for it as well.

[wyclif]

There are some really vibrant programming language communities on Discord. The Python Discord always has very active servers, for instance: https://discord.com/channels/267624335836053506/267631170882...

[bckr]

God you sound like a fun parent

[i_am_proteus]

The people this article is talking about are actually in their mid-to-late twenties.

Which, with tongue like very slightly in cheek, checks out with a Wall Street Journal article about the Youths.

[lowkey_]

Was going to comment, anecdotal but I'm 24 and I absolutely prefer texting people with iMessage.

It's also a slight verification in some situations — if I were to get someone's number from a dating app, or chat with someone from Facebook Marketplace and the message was green, I'd be much more hesitant to message them.

It's a negative signal to me if it's green, as they may be using a Google Voice number or any other fake number system. This isn't to say someone couldn't have a burner iPhone, but it's way more effort than simply having a Google Voice number, and I haven't encountered that.

[wffurr]

What? All 30% of smartphone users with Android in the US are scammers?

I use a Google Voice number as my primary number and have for over ten years.

[lowkey_]

The statement isn't "most Android users are scammers," but "most scammers use Android."

I personally would be less likely to respond from a dating app or marketplace app in particular. Google Voice numbers are less traceable and more easily replaceable, which makes them more viable for scammers.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

I don't fully understand this line of thinking. The vast, vast majority of Android users do not use Google Voice. They just have a different phone operating system than your phone.

I mean, your preferences are your own, and if you prefer to only date iPhone users, that's weird, but you're entitled. I am just struggling to understand the Google Voice connection here.

[lowkey_]

I was addressing the specific commenter who uses Google Voice, but to use the comment prior to that:

> It's a negative signal to me if it's green, as they may be using a Google Voice number or any other fake number system.

I'm not implying the vast majority of "green-bubble numbers" are Google Voice rather than Android phones, but that there is no verification they are not Google Voice numbers.

I'm not trying to be elitist at all; there's just a verification that happens with an iPhone texting another iPhone of (1) this is a real phone number, and (2) this isn't a cheap burner flip-phone someone just bought. When interacting with strangers from the internet, that verification is important!

[jdavis703]

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a spam iMessage, but I get at least one green message from a spammer daily. And I doubt they’re using Android, it’s probably Twilio or other sketchier telecom providers.

This is ultimately a problem because regular SMS has zero authentication, whereas I iMessage is essentially walled off to legit users by the telephone carriers and Apple.

[th5]

I’ve NEVER gotten a spam or phish from a blue bubble. 100% are green.

Green could be any type of source. Android, Twilio, google voice, who knows.

But if a random number comes in and it’s green, more often than not it’s spam. If it’s blue, more often then not there’s a real person behind it.

[other_herbert]

Yeah but if you see blue you have way more confidence that you are talking to a real person…

[racl101]

Youts?

[technothrasher]

I just recently moved from Android to an iPhone, and pretty much every teenager I've texted since has immediately texted back something along the lines of, "Wow, you got an iPhone. Cool. Welcome." My son had to explain to me how they knew I'd switched, as I had no prior clue about the green/blue message colors. A couple of crusty old middle aged folks like myself have commented as well, but not nearly universally like the teens.

So clearly the teens in my social circle at least are paying attention enough to notice and comment.

[wruza]

The color is there because a regular SMS may either take a significant amount of money per message or empty your free SMS plan. That depends on a carrier, but e.g. my SMS costs me 0.7¢ or so, iirc. And more if a message spans a very short character limit (160, or ~80 for unicode). That's what some people would like to pay attention to, because when there was no/bad internet (a regular issue back in the day) iMessage switched to SMS seamlessly.

Edit: or MMS, if that's enabled

[spijdar]

Is this still a commonplace practice? I remember (in the US) this being the case when I was a young teen, with a call time quota too (accidentally made a $400 USD phone bill once...), but now in my mid 20s, all the phone plans I'm aware of have unlimited local + "long distance" calling and unlimited SMS/MMS.

International calls still cost per minute, and IP bandwidth is metered, but I honestly thought metered calls/texts were mostly a thing of the past. Is this a regional thing?

[easton]

In the US unlimited is common, less so internationally. That’s why WhatsApp caught on.

[kalleboo]

I live in Japan, and my carrier charges me the equivalent of 3 US cents per domestic SMS, or 40 cents for an international SMS.

On the other hand, I have unlimited data with no throttling.

Everyone here uses the LINE messenger app, or email. Literally all I have in my iOS Messages app is 2FA codes and Pingdom notifications.

[el-salvador]

This is very similar to what happens in many Latin American Countries, but they use WhatsApp instead of Line.

The phone companies got greedy and priced the individual SMS so high ($0.06 local) that nobody uses them except for 2FA codes and notifications.

If sms where still $0.02 each as they were in the early 2000s I would still use them occasionally.

iPhone users here (10%) are not really aware of iMessage because they use WhatsApp.

[ephimetheus]

Anecdotal data point from Germany. SMS is still 9ct per message if you don't pay for a package with included text messages, MMS is around 39ct/300kb, and as far as I know there are no (and have never been at any price point) packages with included MMS messages.

It's not surprising >90% of people in Germany use WhatsApp (+ other messengers)

[skydhash]

Here in Haiti, it was between texting 5 messages or call for one minutes (if you have not activated any special plans). So, when WhatsApp came, everyone switched and SMS is now mostly ads from the provider. Most people only do quick calls and would wait when the internet get better to do longer exchanges. Internet infrastructure is still not good.

[lawl]

Where i live an SMS costs me $0.15. the cheapest internet flat (unmetered) costs me $4 per month.

There are plans with unlimited SMS and domestic calls included, but they are like $50 per month.

Why would i pay that when everyone is on WA/Signal anyways and i can just buy a cheap data sim with unmetered bandwidth?

[geoduck14]

I'm an android user.

I had no idea what this thread was about until your comment. Thanks

[matt-attack]

The article misses the point. Green is not what makes it bad. Green just becomes associated with all of the bad features. The reason it’s bad is because it lacks all of the Rich capabilities that iMessage offers relative to sms.

Also the notion that if I text a friend a blurb of text that it somehow shows up as a line item on my cell phone bill and is logged by the phone company is simply absurd.

I too detest green texts. But the color has nothing to do with it.

[antux]

Absolutely. Green bubbles are associated with a subpar, lower grade, poorer quality, which creates doubt and caution in the user's mind when they see it. It's like an asterisk next to the bubble with fine print attached to it.

[yawaramin]

Quite a brilliant bit of UX design on Apple's part to put SMS/MMS and iMessages in the same exact app and colour them differently to form an instinctual association in the user's mind that 'green bubble bad, blue bubble good'.

[matt-attack]

It’s worth noting that all messaging used to be green back in the old iOS days. When iMessage was added they made them blue so you knew you were using the new snazzy feature. So to those saying apple picked an intentionally derogatory color are simply misinformed.

[DonHopkins]

That's a Saturated Pattern instead of a Dark Pattern.

[shrimpx]

It's not the color, but the fact that the person with green bubbles will not see what you see if you use comment reactions or replies -- for example if you put a heart reaction on a comment, the android user will not see a heart on the message, and instead will get a separate text that says "Jimmy loved a message" and they can't tell which message you're talking about. So when you interact with green bubble people in iMessage, you have to modify your behavior and find alternate ways to express those reactions, which is annoying.

[commoner]

> the android user will not see a heart on the message, and instead will get a separate text that says "Jimmy loved a message" and they can't tell which message you're talking about

The substitute message for the reaction (known as a "Tapback" in iMessage) does let the recipient tell which message is being reacted to, though it's not very user-friendly. The format is something like:

  Liked "[original message text]"

Examples: https://www.pcworld.com/article/395045/hey-iphone-users-stop...

The Google Messages app,[1] which is preloaded on many Android phones, now automatically interprets substitute messages for iMessage Tapbacks and displays them as reactions, the same way iMessage users would see them.[2] Hopefully, this feature makes its way to open source texting apps soon.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

[2] https://9to5google.com/2021/11/19/google-messages-imessage-r...

[shrimpx]

Thanks, I could have sworn that before I switched back to iOS, I was getting a bunch of "<X> loved a message" from iOS users. Maybe it improved in newer iterations.

[geoduck14]

I got a bunch of those

[throwawayboise]

What I find annoying is that Apple is doing exclusive proprietary stuff in their default chat app. At that point you might as well just use Instagram or whatever else. Actually I find emojis annoying to begin with, on any platform, so there's that.

[jdavis703]

You can disable iMessage in the settings. Heck, since you seem to yearn for the days of text only, you can also turn off MMS and disable messages over 120 characters.

[julianz]

Not true any more, a modern Android phone will show the likes etc.

[coupdejarnac]

Just what we need, a worse snr in group chat.

[Terry_Roll]

Stealth Advertising. 10 years ago it only cost £30k to get a couple of full page right side articles written up to stealth advertise in the Sunday Times & Sunday Observer. Don't know what the current rates are, as journalism is a lot of what you know and what they need to keep below the radar.

[IAmEveryone]

Proof it and sell it to the NYT, they’d love to see their competitor go down in flames. Or to Google, because Apple’s reputation would also suffer.

That opportunity also exists for any insider with actual knowledge. None of them coming forward is a pretty good indication it’s bullshit.

And who, exactly, is the seller here? Is it the publishing company? In that case they would seem to be underreporting their income, which is a crime. Trump could have ended the NYT if he had managed to substantiate the charge.

Or is it individual reporters? In that case, the publisher is the largest single victim of this dynamic, since they aren’t getting any cash but carry all the risk. They would have an interest to stop it and obviously a rather good position to do so.

[zachkatz]

My understanding is that it works like this:

1) Apple pays PR company to write a really compelling pitch for an article (maybe even writing basically the whole thing, or at least providing all the quotes and whatnot)

2) Journalist writes the article because hey, it’s a great story (which will get lots of clicks) being handed to them on a silver platter

[Terry_Roll]

Reevaluate your questions and start again.

[zrm]

There is a reason to not like the green bubbles. They imply that it's SMS, which is unencrypted. That is actually bad.

Of course, people can avoid this by not using iMessage in favor of e.g. Signal, which runs on both Android and iOS.

[JeremyNT]

This is the best I can do to try and fix this issue: try to get Apple people onto Signal.

My experience as an Android user when dealing with an iMessage initiated chat is terrible. Apple's obfuscation of the distinction between its proprietary messaging platform and sms/mms does a disservice to everybody.

[halikular]

Never trust the encryption in proprietary software there's a reason criminals and those relying on privacy for life doesn't use iPhones. Further Apple has proved countless times they don't care about their customers privacy. If you don't care, fine you do you.

[sharken]

So don't post state secrets on SMS. I hardly think that encryption is a major issue, unless you actually have something to hide.

But if Signal or a secure, universal SMS protocol could be agreed upon and used by Android and IPhone, that would be okay.

I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

[zrm]

> So don't post state secrets on SMS. I hardly think that encryption is a major issue, unless you actually have something to hide.

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -Edward Snowden

> I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

You can install Signal right now for free. You don't require anyone's permission to do this.

[verdverm]

Would be nice if signal did not blast out a message to contacts that I've joined signal

[zrm]

It doesn't do that.

There is a setting in Signal to alert you when one of your contacts joins Signal. Only other people who have Signal receive this notification and they can turn it off.

They also don't receive the alert because they were in your contacts. They receive the alert because you were in their contacts.

[pessimizer]

That sounds even worse. Is there a setting when you join that doesn't blast it to everyone who has you as a contact?

[TedShiller]

Can you put a webcam in your bedroom? And send me all your emails and credit card statements?

Whenever people say they don’t care about privacy I ask them those questions, and curiously they never reply.

[throwawayboise]

Can you put a webcam in my bedroom? No.

Can you have my credit card statements? No.

Can you read my SMS messages? Eh, if you want to go to the trouble to intercept them, I don't really care. They're pretty boring, and I know they're not secure so I don't send anything sensitive over SMS.

[gsich]

How about you post them somewhere? Also your address please.

[throwawayboise]

No, if you want them, it's up to you to make the effort to get them.

[barbs]

It seems to me like you're being downvoted because it looks like you're making the "nothing to hide" argument. But a more charitable interpretation might indicate that you feel SMS still has utility despite being unencrypted, which I agree with.

If you have someone's phone number, you can just about guarantee that you can message them. It might not be encrypted, or have richer features like other messaging services, or it might even be expensive, but it's fairly reliable and doesn't require any third-party apps. Just like how you might shout to someone at a distance to get their attention and convey important information, but you wouldn't shout their credit card number to them.

[TedShiller]

He's one of those conflicted people that have nothing to hide, and yet are hiding everything.

[anonymouse008]

Communicating with likes, exclamations and loves is most annoying with an Android in the bunch —

iMessage cleverly quotes the whole message you liked, which contextually is required, and doubly grinds the conversation to content mulch

[samhw]

I'm going to make the slightly conspiracistic speculation that Apple may be well aware of this effect.

[strombofulous]

Probably, at the very least they're confirmed to be aware of the network effects of the ecosystem (imessage is also specifically called out) https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1463558823109660677

[e_y_]

iOS users see those too in SMS mode? In that case the Android users might actually have the cleaner experience after the latest update: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/google-messages-upda...

I get the impression that even without RCS, Apple could have done more to keep the experience usable for the iOS users in SMS fallback mode.

[ComradeMatis]

Same here, 40 years old (single, no kids) but I do keep clued on what kids are doing these days (via my niece and nephew) - never heard them issue come up either, I hazard to guess the whole status of owning an iPhone and iMessage has more to do with the socio-economic circles one moves in. With that being said, in New Zealand 53.94% use Android and 44.52% use iOS with most kids either using FB Messenger or WhatsApp which is probably why so few care about bubble colours.

[veb]

Snapchat is pretty popular amongst kids and early 20s in NZ too.

[theta_d]

My daughter and all her friends in middle school would have to disagree with you here.

[jb1991]

I don't think the complaint is about the color itself, but rather, what the color means.

[lotsofpulp]

To me, the color means I am not sending/receiving images/video at full quality.

In my extended family, we even have both iMessage groups and WhatsApp groups, the iMessage ones specifically when we want to share original quality pics/videos of the kids and family for whoever wants to save them.

[Double_a_92]

On Android you can send images as files in Whatsapp and most other messengers. Does Apple not allow such access to your own photo files?

[dagmx]

It's not an Apple thing, it's a carrier thing. MMS (green) data sizes are controlled by the carrier. WhatsApp doesn't use MMS and is a closed protocol.

iMessage (blue) sent messages are similarly a closed protocol and unencumbered by the carrier.

[jacob019]

The destination carrier determines the maximum allowable size an MMS attachment can be:

    Tier 1 Carriers -- Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T -- all MMS content up to about 1 MB.  

    Tier 2 Carriers allow MMS content of 600 KB.  

    Tier 3 Carriers allow MMS content of 300 KB.

[hackmiester]

MMS (“green messages”) are mangled by most US carriers. The carrier will often recompress the media. And phones tend to send it at a lower quality to begin with.

[lotsofpulp]

I had never thought of doing that. I just tried, and clicking the + symbol in WhatsApp gives me option to send photos/video, documents, contact, and location.

If I choose documents, I do not see where I can go to select photos/videos in the iPhone camera roll. I presume it may not be accessible that way.

Also, I presume WhatsApp does not want to allow people to send photo/video at full size in their network to reduce bandwidth costs.

[the_snooze]

Exactly. When I see a green message bubble on my iPhone, it means that I'm in a gimped environment, especially if it's a group chat. I can't leave an SMS group chat unilaterally. I can't direct-reply to specific messages. Emoji-reactions to messages will render as "John liked 'Check out this website!'" Links won't get rich previews.

[andybak]

Personally I'd take that as a cue to switch to a more inclusive messaging platform but that's just me.

Easy for me to say I guess. There's never been enough iOS ubiquity in my circle for the network effect to take over. There's age, nationality and class factors at play. UK had slightly less iOS dominance than the US and I'm older.

[mastazi]

> Links won't get rich previews.

as a counterpoint, iMessage messes up links sometimes, I had to turn it off because it breaks some types of links that I sometimes have to exchange with my coworkers. SMS is plain text, so the link is preserved as-is

Edit: those are links generated using Firebase Dynamic Links service. When sent over Twilio (vanilla SMS) they work but when forwarded from iPhone to iPhone they will break unless you turn off iMessage.

[ryzvonusef]

I think it matters a lot for a certain social class; below the WSJ tweet of this article, this is what one concerned parent tweeted in reply (I shan't link to the tweet, don't want to hassle the fellow for sharing his opinion)

    > Yep. My son had a galaxy s20+ at the beginning of his 9th grade year this year. Within 2 weeks he asked if he could get the iPhone since kids were calling him the “green bubble” kid. Once he got his new iPhone 13 Pro Max, they shut up.

And quite a few other parents/relatives sharing similar anecdotes.

in high-schools where parents of students casually buy them $1000+ phones... it matters a lot, it seems. Peer Pressure is a bitch, even when you have no 'real' problems, kids can make up problems for themselves.

[bilboa]

You're interpreting the headline too literally if you what you took from it was that people care about the actual color of the messages. The point is that they care about preserving the advantages of everyone in a group chat being on iMessage. As soon as even one participant in the conversion is on a non-Apple device, the chat switches to SMS, and you lose some of the fancy iMessage features. There also may be a status component where some kids think iPhones are cooler.

Of course this doesn't apply to every group of people. As you say, in some circles other non-Apple chat platforms are more popular so this isn't an issue. But don't make the mistake of thinking that just because iMessage isn't popular in your friend circle that it's not popular in general.

[tnel77]

It’s not the color itself that matters. It’s the consequences of seeing said bubble. It could be purple. The point is that these nice features such as liking a message or FaceTiming the group easily are now gone. I don’t avoid Android users, but I personally try to lump them into separate groups and/or use something like FB Messenger to get back some of those missing features.

[real-dino]

I care that it makes it super easy and free to send an image as opposed to MMS and the confusing technology that exists there.

[causi]

I care about color customization only because I assign everyone their own color scheme so I won't message the wrong person. One time telling my father to "Have a good day at work sugar pie" was enough.

[duxup]

Not a teen by many decaf, I recently got an iPhone, I received a surprising amount of congratulations after my bubble color changed. From a wide range of people.

[OneLeggedCat]

Do any of your friends use Signal? Most older adults don't care at all about privacy, so I'm guessing high schoolers don't care either?

[desireco42]

I also can confirm Discord thing. I don't think they use messages (sms) to communicate to anyone else but us (their parents).

[Shadonototra]

this, i don't understand why journalists want to create problems when there are clearly none, do they feel like they became out of touch with the new generation? do they feel like they need to do something to regain the influence they long lost?

[NobodyNada]

A few years ago, when I was a teen in high school, I was part of a decently large group that used iMessage to make plans and hang out. We never had any Android users who consistently showed up, so iMessage was an easy default.

I recognized that we could potentially be excluding people who didn't have iPhones, so I brought up the topic in the group. Switching to a regular MMS group was a non-starter -- MMS is slow and unreliable, administering large groups is a complete disaster, and many teens can't receive MMS messages at all because they don't have a data plan (whereas iMessage works over a Wi-Fi connection). So I researched alternatives and suggested we switch over to Slack (this was before Discord got big, so Slack seemed like the best option at the time).

I got flamed hard for this suggestion. People very much did not want to download a new app, make an account, and learn to use it just for one group chat. iMessage was working great for us, so we decided to stick with it and reconsider if an Android user actually wanted to join the group. (One Android users eventually showed up, but the group went with the path of least resistance and just relayed information to him separately rather than switching chat platforms. Of course, this meant he missed out on all the socialization aspects of this group).

Eventually, we hit iMessage's 30-person limit on the number of participants in a group chat, and so we were forced to switch to Slack. This was a complete disaster: Slack was cumbersome, intuitive, and a painful transition, and it completely killed the group chat. It wasn't worth opening up a new, clunky app just to send a meme or joke to some friends, and Slack's extremely unintuitive notification settings [0] meant that nobody saw anyone's messages anyway. It didn't help that this happened in the fall right after some people had moved off to college and a bunch of new freshmen joined the group; and within about two weeks the group ceased to exist.

My takeway from this was that the iMessage lockin was definitely real, not because of any social stigma but because iMessage was, at that time and place, far superior to any other well-known product for our use case. Everybody made a Slack account and switched over to the new group, but nobody used it because it was unintuitive and cumbersome. Nowadays it seems Discord is finally succeeding in this space; I'm in college now and among my peers Discord is by far the preferred means of communication in small and large groups alike. Even many of my professors are on Discord and use it as their primary communication channel outside the classroom (I've had several classes where office hours are held in a Discord voice channel). Its interface is cleaner, easier to use, and more performant/responsive than Slack's, its notification settings have sensible defaults but are easy to customize, and its voice channels are an absolutely incredible feature that puts products like Zoom to shame.

I know Discord certainly has it's fair share of issues when it comes to freedom, privacy, and interoperability -- but ultimately teenagers don't care about any of that -- as you said, we just want to talk to our friends. It's all about who offers the best features for the least friction -- and I'm not talking gimmicks that nobody uses like cryptocurrency integration or talking animated avatars, but rather functional aspects including the product's reliability, usability, practicality, performance, and of course the network effect. A few years ago the winner was iMessage on nearly all fronts, today it's Discord.

[0]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6ROe0mU0AEmpzz?format=jpg&name=...

[pmarreck]

I can deal with the green text, what's annoying is when my S.O.'s father, who absolutely insists on using Android when the rest of us all have iPhones, insists on taking a video of my son and texting it to us, and it comes through as (I shit you not) some crazy potato resolution like 192x105 and is 300k despite being a minute long; this absolutely NEVER happens from another iPhone, the downsampling of both photos and video

[simonh]

> who absolutely insists on using Android

I’m in an all iPhone household, but come on. It’s his phone. No need to get tetchy about it.

[Double_a_92]

Yeah I also wouldn't like to be pressured into buying a >1000$ phone when a 200$ one works just as well... Unless some people insist on using weird, non-crossplatform messengers.

[GeekyBear]

The $399 iPhone SE is currently on it's sixth year of OS and security updates.

Even the brand new >1000$ Android phones will only get half as many years of support.

[hackmiester]

Or a $400 one like the iPhone SE?

[throwawayboise]

Still 2x what I have ever spent on a phone. And grand for a phone... that's just stupid.

[hedgehog]

My iPhone is my primary camera, good screen, durable, and in-hand for a bunch of key life events where a bigger camera wouldn't have worked. Well worth it. Purchasing choices are not universal.

[hackmiester]

Well, seems we agree, it’s a good thing you don’t have to spend a grand to get an iPhone (or a high-end Galaxy…). If you want to try an iPhone, try a refurb, to get you closer to the $200-300 price point.

[ThunderSizzle]

My wife uses iPhone, and whenever she sends stuff, it comes over as crap.

So it goes both ways. Maybe you should get an android instead? Or you can continue being snobby about Apple and Google being companies that want closed gardens.

[hedgehog]

The real villain here is the carriers who did not provide the infrastructure for large MMS attachments. If there was a widely supported standard Apple would probably implement it, instead the standard limit is 1MB or something so videos will just generally suck.

[kcb]

RCS is the infrastructure to allow larger attachments. Apple is the only one at fault here for not implementing it.

[hedgehog]

RCS is pretty meh technically and not widely supported, why would Apple take on the extra complexity? They can barely make their own apps work as it is.

[PickledHotdog]

Ah, widely supported standards like the various USB charging standards that Apple so famously adopted

[cpuguy83]

Blame Apple for this, not Google. Android supports RCS, iMessage does not. Apple is the last holdout.

There's no good reason to have it this way other than lock-in.

[jacob019]

100%, maybe Apple should be compelled to support standards when they choose not to for anticompetitive reasons.

[pmarreck]

> Android supports RCS, iMessage does not.

iMessage has existed in more or less its current form for over 10 years now. RCS took too long and basically gave this space to Apple. And Apple keeps adding features, such as bundling photos sent at once, showing where photos you have came from, and other things, not to mention things that STILL aren't on Android (nor whatsapp) like livephotos.

[cpuguy83]

There is a standard that is significantly better than SMS and Apple has so far chosen to stay with SMS as the only fallback.

Blame Apple that talking to anyone not on iMessage sucks.

Also, the features you mention are all extremely new to iOS, I'm not sure what you mean by "still".

- Sent from my iPhone

[pmarreck]

Livephotos are NOT new... 2015.

But sure, Apple could (maybe should) use RCS as a fallback instead of SMS.

[km3r]

No one is saying apple needs to get rid of iMessage, just update the fallback from sms to rcs

[frosted-flakes]

Potato-quality happens the other way too, for what it's worth. I tend to believe it's the fault of iPhones, because sending media Android->Android over MMS works fine.

[intothemild]

Yep. It's because android supports rich messages, a kind of SMS 2.0, where as iPhones do not support it because it competes with iMessage.

[frosted-flakes]

No, even without RCS the quality seems to be decent. Even on my old BlackBerry receiving a video from a Windows Phone over MMS had decent quality.

[pverghese]

There is no reason to be so entitled thinking other people have to buy a > $1000 phone just because Apple gimps on their messaging app. If you want him to text you a better quality video, buy him a phone, or better yet don't because that's their choice.

[hackmiester]

A totally workable iPhone can cost $400 new. Refurbs from Apple cost less. Carrier deals are available.

[greenyoda]

OK, but I got my totally workable Android phone (Samsung Galaxy A20) for just over $200. Some people may not have that extra money, or may prefer to spend it on something besides an expensive phone.

[hackmiester]

I think these people should go for the refurb options I mentioned, if they’d like an iPhone.

[int_19h]

They don't want an iPhone, though - they're pressured into getting one.

[kcb]

Just use Whatsapp. That's what my family has done to work around the issues with weird iPhone users.

[pmarreck]

No Livephotos.

[barbs]

I created a WhatsApp group chat for my family years ago and there's never been any functional problems. Obviously there's that whole Facebook privacy issue but I don't see my family switching to something like Signal anytime soon.

[asadlionpk]

ask them to email it to you?