[Zak]

That's only true if everyone in the group has an Apple phone, which has decreasing probability with every additional member. Excluding people from a conversation because they don't have the right brand of phone would be pretty antisocial.

[crmd]

Unfortunately it happens all the time in my friends circle, and it's for technical not anti-social reasons. Group texts that include Android users are so buggy that they tend to die out, whereas iMessage-only groups tend to be long lasting. For this reason we use WhatsApp for the core group chat, but there's still a ton of side-conversations and meme-ing in iMessage groups.

[basisword]

>> For this reason we use WhatsApp for the core group chat, but there's still a ton of side-conversations and meme-ing in iMessage groups.

I don't understand why you would use two chat systems when you know one is excluding some friends? Why not just centralise on WhatsApp which you're already using? Serious question. I can understand why switching is a big ask but when you're already using the multi-platform option part of the time switching back and forth seems unnecessary and inconvenient.

[fkyoureadthedoc]

Because the majority of my communication is already in iMessage and I don't want to bother with another app. I also by default opt out of any Zuckerberg operations that I can, they get enough of my data without me having an account on any of their platforms as is.

[pkamb]

In the USA, someone insisting on using an Android when everyone else in their social circle has an iPhone (and they do!) is what's seen as anti-social. No one wants to use the degraded green bubble SMS experience so they simply exclude the Android user and continue using blue bubble iMessage.

[StressedDev]

I have never ever seen this. If your "friends" treat you badly because of your phone choice, they are not really your friends. Also, iMessage is not that great. It's nice but it is not amazing like some people make it out to be.

[jkman]

I totally agree with you, but it's pretty obvious why this behaviour exists. At the end of the day, a cell phone is as much a status symbol, something akin to the clothes you wear, as much as it is an actual phone. Would you potentially lower your opinion of someone wearing a strange piece of clothing? The principle is exactly the same.

[patja]

Happens a lot with adolescents. They can be quite exclusionary.

[wrfrmers]

I'll do you one better: in this specific situation, the antisocial buck stops at the friend group who doesn't all chip in and buy their Android friend a "keep in touch" iPhone.

But the point remains that a cynical UX/technical/business decision that does not need to be so is rending real relationships between actual people. If Tim Cook had the power to render anyone who didn't pay him $400+ mute to their friends and family through some sort of black magic, we'd call him a comic book supervillain.

[satvikpendem]

I bought an Android specifically so I don't have to use an iPhone, speaking as a former iPhone user. "Friends" chipping in to buy me an iPhone isn't something I'd actually want.

[ryandrake]

Honestly, if your "friend" group is willing to exclude you because you're not using a particular brand of cell phone, then I have some bad news for you: They might not really be great friends.

[ben7799]

This is not really true since RCS launched. It does most of what people care about. Everyone sees Emojis and a few other special Fx and videos and pictures now look good for everyone and don't get nerfed as soon as one user is on Android.

Maybe RCS doesn't do all the esoteric iMessage stuff but it doesn't necessarily have to, half those extra features are gatekeeped on having the latest iPhone or whatever and so they don't get used as often.

[pkamb]

This is potentially true; I've noticed green-bubble chats are much less annoying in the last year. Do they send over Wifi now? That was also a killer iMessage feature on trips with bad cell coverage.

[Zak]

It surprises me people who actually have this problem don't just switch to a different messaging app. There are many, and the effort required is minimal.

[account42]

It's called a network effect for a reason. People don't want to use multiple apps so they generally will want all of their friends to be using the same app. Switching to a different app for one friend group adds significant friction.

This is why we need legally mandated interopability for call communications platforms above a certain size. It's absurd that the situation today is worse than the early 2000's where you could use one program to talk to your ICQ, MSN and Aim friends.

[PaulHoule]

Hell yeah.

Before there was the pandemic and 'Zoom Fatigue' there were other applications such as Skype, Google Meet, WebEx, Go2Meeting and many more that went through a variation of Doctorow's 'enshittification cycle' although it isn't so much that these became commercially exploitative but rather the honeymoon period ended.

If, for instance I want you to try a new "meeting" program your response is likely to be "this could be such a hassle" and the vendor has a strong incentive to make it work well so I can say, "Remember how well Skype used to work ten years ago? Zoom is like that now". In that early phase the vendor invests in quality, once it has an established user base it is 'competing' on the basis of dominance of a two sided market and there isn't any need to invest in quality. (In fact, investors insist on disinvestment because they want to take profits after years of losses.) Eventually it gets so bad that even the two sided market dominance can't save them anymore and a new competitor comes in.

If chat and messaging programs were interoperable, vendors would be competing on quality instead of relying on two-sided market dominance, and we'd have seen the user experience improve rapidly and dramatically over the past 20 years instead of going sideways. I mean, "remember how good ICQ was?"

[olyjohn]

Sounds like those people weren't good friends anyways. What kind of friends exclude you for petty shit like this?

[canucker2016]

Unless you're a teen in the USA.

Non-iPhone users are the minority in this demographic (<= 13%), see my demographic comment elsewhere for this subject.