[splendor_spoon]

This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.

[hospitalJail]

>Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.

That is just the bare minimum. Its 2023, every phone is like this.

Anyway, any teenager can tell you what its like to have the wrong kind of bubbles. They are extremely susceptible to in-group bias. Heck I wore Abercrombie and American Eagle, it wasn't because the clothes fit.

I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.

At some point, its denialism to think in-group bias doesnt exist. Not that someone exploited can easily admit to it, its far too difficult to imagine your brain being incorrect about something. Much easier to say things like "they are reliable and consistent" than to accept that marketers have exploited us.

[acdha]

> I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.

Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way. People do the same thing about cars, shoes, clothing, alcohol, zip codes, etc. The only upside is that it lets you very quickly identify and avoid them.

In the messaging case, it’s important to remember that Google is currently funding a huge lobbying campaign trying to get governments to restore the market position they gave up a decade ago. SMS messages have been green on iOS since the first iPhone – and shortly after the App Store launched most people were using Google Chat since everyone using Gmail was on it and it even federated with other XMPP services. Google spent the next decade pushing users away with a bunch of poorly conceived and executed attempts to lock users into their proprietary system. Only after those failed did they start picking up RCS, but most of their catch up with iMessage work has been proprietary extensions which help sell carriers on Google’s Jibe cloud service.

I like the idea of open protocols but Google is acting out of self interest and I have no doubt that they’d try to lock things up in a heartbeat if they think they could get away with it.

Let them park for their own PR, and we can talk about more open alternatives.

[hospitalJail]

>Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way.

Oh yeah its not a Apple thing, its a human thing.

Apple takes advantage of that weakness in humans and reinforces it with their marketing. I personally don't have the ethics to take advantage of people who are class insecure, but Apple stepped up in the tech space.

Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and its fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute. If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.

[acdha]

> Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and it’s fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute.

Yes, that’s the claim but it’s glaring how it’s an emotional position presented as a given but completely unsupported by any evidence and bears a striking resemblance to a competitor’s PR campaign. If this was true, it’d be easy to point to things like ads or marketing material disparaging SMS users – not to mention some effort to extend this outside of the United States where apps like WhatsApp are far more popular.

> If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.

Here’s the thing: most people don’t buy phones (or computers) to “compute”. If you look at an Apple ad, it’s full of people doing things like creating photos or videos, sharing moments with their friends, traveling, etc. – that’s what they’re selling and the repeat purchase rate suggests most people feel like they are getting what they were promised.

I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed or part of some weird social club but you might want to consider why you need to justify your preference this way. Most iOS users are buying something which they find useful and you’d be far more successful in your advocacy if you focused on what tangible benefits normal people are missing out on. What you’re doing sounds insecure, not persuasive.

[hospitalJail]

>apps like WhatsApp are far more popular.

Popular doesnt mean 'in-group'.

>I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed

No, we learned this during my MBA. Apple is basically 50% of your marketing classes. I'm not sure you want to call academics incorrect here. They were spot on, they knew you'd come to apologize. Your identity is wrapped in Apple. An attack on Apple, is an attack on you.

Meanwhile I hate google and microsoft. I'm agonistic and trying to find anything better. Heck, I even think Linux isnt great for consumers given all the USB issues I've had.

Do Apple fans complain about butterfly keyboards, international high stakes security breaches, and holding your phone wrong? Or do they rush to Apple's defense. Weird you don't see people doing that in Google and Microsoft threads.

[philistine]

Exactly. The power over iMessage is in Apple’s hands. Yet Google, with their RCS push, have not made something open-source were they have less power than Apple.

RCS is controlled by Google just like iMessage.

[hospitalJail]

That isnt factual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSMA

Google doesnt control RCS. Its a general format. Apple could implement RCS. At most, they are a loud voice. Any phone can adopt it.

This is completely different from a closed imessage that cannot be adopted by others. Not to mention, imessage has been pretty anti-consumer with all their security problems, inability to accept high quality video, etc... None of this is good for the consumer.

What is good for the consumer is that the color of the bubble are different, this is important for status seeking individuals who want to be part of the in-group.

Back to the parent comments, RCS is better if you want a computing device. iMessage is the best if you want to buy your way into an in-group.

[acdha]

Google does control the proprietary extensions to RCS they use to try to catch up to iMessage on security and features. The developers of apps like Signal, etc. have been asking for access for many years but Google chose to exclude them as they try to build their user base. Similarly, most of the carriers in the US haven’t actually implemented it themselves - they’re just paying Google’s Jibe subsidiary to host it for them. This is not open in practice even if there’s a theory where it could eventually be open.

[hospitalJail]

>proprietary extensions to RCS

Oof gross. Do you have any further reading? I couldn't find anything on it.

[noisy_boy]

> I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles".

All the people she didn't date thank her.

[woodruffw]

I don't think it makes sense to confuse the preferences of teenagers (a market group who, overwhelmingly, don't buy their own phones) with adults. In other words: the fact that teenagers prefer the same kind of free devices as their friends have is not particularly strong evidence that adults make purchasing decisions based on just chat bubble colors.

[monsieurgaufre]

I'm in that group. I like the "openness" of Android more. But the iphone 7 gifted from my mother is still supported while the samsung i bought in 2019 is not anymore.

I don't really care particularly about the icloud/imessage ecosystem but all close people around me have iphones (the network effect was not the primary reason for the switch).

[bacchusracine]

>This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment.

This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Likes this post.

Yeah, there isn't anything going on beside out-group cope. Really glad most plans have unlimited text these days. Having spam texts where the person I'm communicating with just parrots what I'd just typed with the words "Liked this" would have driven me insane back in the days when you only got a thousand texts for the month.

[8note]

Which is also what a computer should be, and thus why windows should only allow edge

I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop

[jodrellblank]

> "I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop"

All you have to do is search HN for "linux laptop", look:

"newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872

Reply: "With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022."

"I have a slimbook pro (the model before the silver keyboard) and sadly I am very unhappy with it, I got a fairly maxed out version and it's fans are always on full blast and I have found no way to keep the power management under control except throttling the CPU - so it is constantly overheated, suspend is not working properly and the chassis is not strong enough so the fans stall unless you have it on a flat surface. [...] Still I will keep buying these things.. eventually someone will figure out how to make reliable laptops that align with the ethos of free software. I've researched system76, puri.sm and also lately the way too expensive MNT reform, but really the only laptop people seem to be happy with is thinkpad x220 / x230 which came out 12 years ago.... This makes me sad. I would pay a lot for a super sturdy laptop which works (and aligns with the free software ethos)." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729

NB that they say what they want is 'super sturdy which works' but their actual behaviour, and the market signal they send, is they pay a lot for an unreliable and inconsistent piece of junk, knowing and expecting it will be that way, and that they will keep doing so indefinitely as long as companies keep making them, and as soon as companies make a good thing they will stop buying. Hmm.