[jeremy0x4a]

Whenever I see this iMessage/SMS, blue/green topic come up I descend into an internal debate that, as I get older, I am becoming increasingly familiar with.

The debate is that one where I am forced to reconcile whether I am too far removed from popular culture to see how this is a real issue versus accepting that the issue is entirely contrived.

[idk1]

It's certainly an issue with a lot of teenagers. Speaking broadly, social status and brands say a lot at that age, and you could miss out on friends or social occasions based on it.

As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter, we grow up and realise that, but it certainly is a significant issue if it's affecting young peoples lives.

So I'd say it's somewhere inbetween what you descibe, perhaps a bit contrived, but also could have a significant impact on some people.

Side note - I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people, but of course if someone takes that point of view as an adult then it's a good indicator to show how they think.

[milkytron]

> It's certainly an issue with a lot of teenagers.

> As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter

I disagree that the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter as an adult. I've had friend groups not include me in group messages because of it. Some have gotten visibly mad at me for having green bubbles and "breaking their chat". There is certain functionality that iPhones don't support in MMS chats that Android phones do (like adding a new member to the group chat).

It does indicate how people think when they buy into the stigma, but also I think it's a general lack of understanding around why Apple keeps iMessage so tightly coupled to its ecosystem and hardware. And many people aren't interested in gaining that understanding.

Social status is very important to many adults, and blue bubbles have become a way to display that social status.

[browningstreet]

> I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people

But how many times, really?

It's like the missing iPhone headphone jack. The press and bloggers hammered away at it for years, making sure it was an ongoing meme in all coverage, but... do people really care? Some people, sure.. but enough for the coverage?

Same with bubbles.

[mdtusz]

Sidebar, but I care about the headphone jack issue and am still annoyed by it.

Bluetooth headphones just aren't very good, and we've all gotten in the habit of buying a new pair every few years because they either break, get lost, are unsupported, or have bad batteries.

I previously had the same pair of IEMs for almost a decade that had better sound quality, replaceable cables and eartips, and didn't ever run out of battery. Never did I complain about the cables being annoying or in the way, and never did I complain about the presence of the headphone jack, or the Bluetooth chip onboard.

Removing headphone jacks was a horrible misstep in my opinion and we're stuck with the path dependency it's created now. It's probably not long before we have laptops that omit 3.5mm audio jacks as well.

[thatguy0900]

I'm down to just using a permanent audio jack to USB c dongle for phones and my computer. Very very silly.

[kroltan]

USB-C is a waaaaay less stable connection than Micro-B or even a headphone jack. Having a phone in your pocket with an USB-C to P2 adapter is asking to have your sound stop every 5 minutes of walking.

[yieldcrv]

This isn't the same.

Very otherwise upstanding people will absolutely talk behind people’s back about that person’s green bubble pollution.

People go on to mock the sales pitches android users use since everyone’s heard them ad nauseam for a decade

They are generally making deep assumptions about people’s decision making process if they have a choice in phone model, and making conclusions about that person’s socioeconomic class if they don’t have a choice in phone model

And it all ends with a laugh about how most android users live their life without knowing this is happening, but that reinforces the perception of a lack of self awareness and inability to pick up social cues

“mimicking robot but I love how much controllll I have over my phoooone”

“I dont want to be around anyone that cares about superficial things anyway” bro its everyone

[quantumsequoia]

In this experiment, they created identical dating profiles, with the only difference being the brand of phone displayed in photographs. The control was no phone shown in the image.

Featuring an iPhone increased the number of likes received by 82%. Featuring a Samsung increased the number of likes by 20%. That means if you display a Samsung instead of an iPhone in your profile, you will get 34% less likes

Other phone brands did even worse. If your dating profile displays a Oneplus phone, you will get 55% less likes than an identical profile featuring an iPhone

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mobile-phones/features/mobi...

[idk1]

> But how many times, really?

Two people in the pub, I didn't know them well, but it comes up. What's interesting actually is the green bubble was not an issue for hook-ups, but it was an issue for long-term dating. I am talking about two people I've chatted to in a pub about this, and everyone else as well, so take it with a grain of salt.

Bring it up next time your in the pub! See for yourself.

[marssaxman]

I've cared about the missing headphone jack on a couple of occasions, when I wanted to stream some music off my partner's phone, but we had to listen to its tinny little speaker instead.

Of course Apple does not need to care what I think, as I am not likely to buy their products anyway.

[alvarezbjm-hn]

Bluetooth will never replace wired because wired doesn't require yet another battery.

Convenience and security, too.

[d23]

It's a really really really short article. Really short. Please.

It gets to the point in the second paragraph: the green bubbles have bad contrast. It mentions the design of the green bubbles rank as "very poor" by accessibility standards.

That's why it matters.

[jeremy0x4a]

I get it. It should be noted that enabling the Increase Contrast accessibility option in iOS/iPadOS does correct the issue to an acceptable level. Whether that should be necessary is up for debate.

[colinmhayes]

The green texts isn't just branding or aesthetics. iMessage with non iphones is a legitimately degraded experience and the green texts exist to remind you of that, but even if they weren't green the experience would still be bad because apple realizes that forcing people to buy their phone if they want to have texts that send in under 5 seconds is an incredibly successful strategy. Having long form conversations over SMS just doesn't work given the time they take to send, and tons of iPhone users refuse to get a messaging app.

[randomdata]

The nice thing about getting even older is that you soon won't care about such reconciliation.

[jeremy0x4a]

I appreciate this, but I will still cherish the joy of yelling at the children on my lawn, as I slowly descend into comfortable curmudgeonhood.

[adrr]

I would love to see a survey of mobile phone users to see if this matters to them. I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.

As for negative effects on kids. There’s more than just phones. Clothes, cars, vacations, social media posts, tutoring, sports. Maybe we should put everyone in uniforms, don’t allow kids drive to school, ban sports, and forbid them from talking about their vacations. And everyone was equal.

[criddell]

It matters to me a little bit. A green bubble means the message is basically a postcard that the carrier can read. A blue bubble means the message is in an envelope that my carrier can’t read.

[thatguy0900]

My school had uniforms, bullying doesn't stop. Kids are honestly just mean, and not idiots. You can dress a wealthy kid and a poor kid in the same clothes and you will not fool anyone in class about which one is the poor one.

[alvarezbjm-hn]

In my uniformed school, decades ago, money didn't matter as much as size. The big popular guys kept the rich guys around to buy them things.

Edit: power came from physical strenght, attractiveness and sports proficiency. Very much an ancient greek ideal, lol.

Bullying is about power. Bullying can be about money when you don't normalize the population for money. Nowadays you would need uniforms and school provided phones, I suppose. Never in America.

[threatofrain]

But does it mitigate bullying? Going straight to “but bullying doesn’t stop” is an unconvincingly perfectionist stance.

[thatguy0900]

Not really, no. If a kid wants to bully you theyll find a reason to do so. If you've ever been a third party watching that stuff, you'll see what people are actually being bullied for doesn't really make sense. Take away the shoes and the phone and it will just be your hair or your posture. Bullying is a targeted activity

[OJFord]

> I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.

I'm not sure how easy that would be - 'Apple will make you more popular if you use an iPhone instead of Android!'...'No no, that's bad, you don't want that, don't buy an iPhone!'

[snazz]

Google did an ad campaign recently that’s basically that line of thinking (plus trying to encourage them to adopt RCS): https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

[kaba0]

Obligatory addition: Google’s version of RCS is just built on top of an open standard but is hardly more open then apple’s imessage so adopting that is not a solution either.