
Dear iPhone users: Please don’t forget that a green bubble is a person - freedomben
https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-1021350/
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AdamJacobMuller
> Apple intentionally made the green bubble color as ugly as possible

A lot of the arguments in this article forget a single thing, which is that
when the iPhone came out, everything was green as there was no iMessage. The
blue bubble is the new kid on the block here.

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wmeredith
I was also struck by this hyperbolic and flat out wrong talking point in the
article.

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matt-attack
I kind of resent the notion that green = Android. The distinction is actually
quite important. Green means it’s an SMS message. Green May very well cost me
money (I don’t have unlimited SMS on my plan). Green means it’s going through
the phone company. Green means it shows up in your phone bill. Green means
it’s logged by the NSA.

These are the reasons I despise green messages. Has nothing to do with
possibly being an “Android” phone. I could be a misconfigured iPhone for all I
know, but the above are still true.

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syntheticcdo
I hardly think the behavior is as malicious as the author seems to suggest.

As an anecdote, I am an iPhone user with read receipts on. My phone tells
those who send me messages both when I have received the message (Delivered),
and the exact time that I opened the message. Even with read receipts turned
off, other people KNOW that I at least got the message because of the
Delivered flag.

For this reason, there is a dynamic that compels me to -- in my limited
texting time -- respond to iPhone messages first, those people after all know
that I at least received, if not opened, their message. I feel less guilty
about putting the green messages at the back of my respond queue because at
least there's not a "READ THREE HOURS AGO" message mocking the sender.

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bradknowles
Actually, that’s not what the “delivered” flag means. It actually means that
the message has been delivered to your carrier, that’s it.

In other words, it’s just like the sound you hear when you’ve “sent” an e-mail
message — the message in question has successfully left your system and is now
somewhere in the aether. Oh, and it hopefully won’t get lost.

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sandis
"Delivered" means that at least one recipient's device has received the
message. It won't show up as delivered if the devices are offline.

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wolfgke
"This attitude might seem childish but harmless at first glance, but is
actually a real problem with real consequences. Young Android users, in
particular, increasingly feel left out within their group of iPhone-using
friends because of this green bubble phenomenon."

Who seriously want to be friend with such iPhone-using person? In this sense,
I would be proud to be left out.

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zwkrt
You might be forgetting what it is like to be a child

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wolfgke
I am very sure to have excellent memories about my childhood and I believe
that my comment reflects these memories well.

Or to put it into different words: if you are somewhat smart, you should see
very fast that the only winning move is not to play.

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DangitBobby
Sometimes the choice is to play losing games or have no friends.

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nineteen999
> The iPhone is more than just a phone. It's a status symbol not unlike a
> designer handbag or a luxury car.

I got a good chuckle out of this. The number of people I used to see using
iPhone with cracked screens was hilarious, they literally looked dirt poor and
unable to afford to repair or replace their phone.

My G1 Pixel may not have a cool Apple logo to show off on the back, but you
wouldn't see it anyway, since its safely ensconced in an after market leather
case to protect it in case it gets dropped, since it's just a tool and not a
status symbol. Several years old an no damage so far. Only reason I'll replace
it soon is that the battery life is now very degraded.

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BaronVonSteuben
My family had to switch to Slack because of this. Some of the family are
"Apple everything" people, while the rest are not and typically go with lower
end Android phones (like the Moto G). It bothered some of the iPhone users so
much to see "green bubbles" that they would routinely leave the green bubbles
out of conversations. Well a a big family party came and nobody remembered to
tell the Android users about it because they were so used to excluding them.
There were some seriously hurt feelings. We basically had to move to Slack to
save the family. Now that we do all the communication through Slack, all is
well again.

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ViViDboarder
This is why I tell my Android friends to install Signal. It’s close to the
iMessage experience but multi-platform.

I don’t like sending SMS because of reduced image quality among other
features. However iMessage isn’t the only way to remedy that.

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bradknowles
With respect, many times a green bubble is not actually a person.

Many times, it’s an automated SMS notice. And maybe from a system I don’t want
to be notifying me.

Sometimes, it’s even actual SMS spam — instead of being sent to me by e-mail,
they use SMS now.

Sometimes a green bubble is actually a real person, and I do try to pay
special attention to those.

But I would observe that I have never once gotten a spam message or unwanted
automated notification through iMessage.this is a fact not at all lost on me.

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tidenly
It's crazy to me that nearly every country globally has a preferred messaging
app of choice, but America stays in the Apple ecosystem. Why aren't apps like
Wechat Whatsapp and Line popular in the states?

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neighbour
In Australia, the closest we have is Messenger. Behind Messenger, you have
iMessage. After that, you're dealing with SMS or Signal.

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amaccuish
I got a BlackBerry in school for the exact same reason, I know how it feels. I
think it's convenience above everything else.

