[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.