> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.
In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.
Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can't xyz" you go "ok what can we do instead?". I'm not sure I can imagine caring so little about other people, and I definitely do not want to be around people who don't.
The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reaction)…people just don't want to deal with it. And yes, iMessage makes no effort to destigmatize the person who converts your iMessage chat into an SMS conversation.
But people can just use LINE, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, messenger, etc and get all the features and more which in my experience as an android user is what actually happens than this weird shallow world of green and blue bubbles I've heard about on the internet.
Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.
Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.
> Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using
You made the point yourself here. If the messaging platform the group prefers is iMessage then it's somewhat awkward when someone new to the group refuses to use it. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of people to switch platforms for a single group chat? When most of the people have a working solution already it's practically impossible.
As has been mentioned many times in the other comments, those force you to download something, perhaps make an account, make sure everyone has it…whereas 90% of the people might already have an iPhone, which might be better than the number for anything else.
I'd argue that that is irrelevant. What's the point in having anything other than a flip phone if you refuse to download apps. It's not a barrier to entry in every other case and it's never been a barrier to entry with my friends.
Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years.
I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.
Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.
"Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years."
I don't actually think this is true. Is there any verification that most iOS users do not have a single one of the most popular messaging apps in the world?
I never said they don't have anything but if you ask someone to download an app specifically to contact you they're going to be very bothered by it. It's like how as streaming services proliferate there are only so many services people actually want to subscribe to, or how pre-unlimited calling people were very judicious about calling people not on their network.
Anecdotally, in my social group:
- Snap: withering on the vine.
- Messenger: generally declining with the declining popularity of Facebook in my age cohort
- Instagram: everyone has it, but messaging is definitely a second class part of the app and no one really uses it other than to send instagram memes
- GroupMe: I downloaded it once for one person, most of the people in the chat have iPhones anyways, and people don't really use it other than to contact the non-Apple users specifically.
Well, here's an anecdote for you. I am a US iPhone user and I use zero third party messaging apps. I know of no one in my friend circle who has an iPhone and uses a third party messaging app.
The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage.
What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.
I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.
That doesn't stop the red counter bubble from appearing and incrementing on the messages app, sadly.
Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)
Never understood this argument. My parents from a 3rd world country who barely understand English are able to use 3rd party apps like Whatsapp, Duo, Skype just fine. And Duo works directly from your contacts app too (at least in Pixel and Samsung phones), in fact you can see options like "Video call xxx Message XXX with a logo of the apps that support it right in the contacts apps.
Duo came out too late, and Google has a reputation for changing things. Years ago, I tried setting up my family with google’s apps, and they kept changing, and it burned me and wasted my time. So years ago, I switched everyone to Apple, and haven’t wasted any time since.
WhatsApp is really nice, but you need a phone for it, which some of the older grandparents don’t have. But they do have cheap iPads, so everyone uses FaceTime.
I find it astounding that the grandparents have iPads before phones. Most elderly people I know have cheapo Android phones or a few with "accessible" android phones target at people with sight or mobility problems (usually amounts to buttons and a skin with large icons). A few still have older Nokia phones, but these are the ones least likely to have iPads and more likely to have an old Windows 9x/XP computer hanging around for solitaire.
The iPads are usually bought by the adult children to replace the aging computers because they are both much simpler to use and much harder to screw up. I gave my parents an iPad and added them to my plan for $20/month unlimited data. They don’t have to worry about WiFi or anything.
In my family, the grandparents live with their children and grandchildren sometimes, so they don't need phones (or at least only grandma or grandpa needs them, but not both).
But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.
And then that’s another thing they have to sign into as opposed to just looking in their contacts and choosing the FaceTime icon.
And as far as Duo - only if you have a Samsung phone or Pixel? If you have to buy a new phone anyway - since the entire Android ecosystem is a clusterf* when it comes to upgrades - you might as well get one that is going to be supported for years.
It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:
> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
I've seen this exact behaviour with non-tech friends in 20s-30s people. You have it exactly right. There's a stigma to being a green bubble.
It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.
Yeah my feeling is that there are a lot more important things going on than the color of chat bubbles (or the status/system it implies). Sorry if it came off as though I meant this is more important than other serious things going on.
I don’t think it’s just Android users who see it. I’m on iPhone and in a group text with a mix of Android and iPhone users I see it that way too. Maybe I’m on the cusp of being old and cranky but it seems a silly thing to worry about.
I actually like the "so and so Loved blah", because otherwise it would be really easy for non-iphone users to not know that someone actually acknowledged their message.
I've found that, in my social groups, "Liked" gets used as an acknowledgement for anything that doesn't require further discussion. Seems to clear up group chats of endless OKs back and forth, so I'm all for it.
That, "ha ha", and "?" are probably about tied for my most used. I find that they are all useful ways to acknowledge or question something without cluttering chats.
It’s much easier to heart the thousandth photo of a fuzzy critter my sister has saved than to formulate a response. When it’s all iPhone users the chat is a lot cleaner too.
There are two reasons which together make it all make sense:
tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS
1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)
2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.
iMessage and FaceTime audio. There are occasions where T-mobile’s voice network won’t let a call through, but I can use the data network to do FaceTime audio.
I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.
I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.
There’s also the fact that WhatsApp is Facebook. I dumped Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all at the same time and will not install any of them on my devices.
It might be possible to be in a majority-Android friend group outside of North America, but not really here. iMessage is far too entrenched in the US for that to be possible.
> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles"
Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
>I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?
>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.
They care because the green bubbles indicate a severely impaired user experience. For example, multimedia may not work, and even if it does, its typically very poor quality.
I don't see how it conveys status when used iPhones are cheap, and brand new ones start at $400 now. My lowest paid hourly employees all have iPhones, even the ones who don't speak English.
Status signaling might be a thing in certain circles (middle school and high school), but I think it's simpler than that. It's about being in or out.
People might have gravitated towards iPhones for status signaling in their youth, and by association and inertia, their inner circle uses iPhones. now, as adults, any person coming into the circle needs to conform to the group or be seen as clueless.
No? Something serves as a status signal when the person who has it has a high probability of being different from someone who doesn’t. A private jet is a status symbol because you have a high probability of assuming the person who owns it has a level of wealth or influence that most don’t. A degree from Caltech has status compared to a degree from random college because there’s a high probability the Caltech degree holder is more competent.
An iMessage chat tells me nothing about the socioeconomic characteristics of the owner of the iOS device, unless I am missing something.
Edit: although, now that I have read this whole thread, I am thinking that maybe it’s not the economic status people are looking for, but are somehow deriving some assumption about their “socio” part of “socioeconomic” status, as a non iOS user is perceived to be maybe “different” or “weird” in some way for not conforming and having an Android versus an iOS device.
I personally have never thought that, since I use Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage, and if you don’t have iMessage, I just use one of the other two, and I don’t care. But evidently, some people do.
The worst part is, an excellent upgrade exists. The RCS experience between Android users is pretty much as good as iMessage. Apple could support this; not to replace iMessage, but to upgrade SMS conversations. My tech-illiterate mom's Galaxy S negative 12 has it. Of my contacts, every single Android user I text (maybe a dozen) has RCS. Its standard.
When I put my iPhone XS and my S20 Plus side-by-side; chatting with Android users using rich text via RCS; animations at 120hz on a display so blindingly bright the brightness slider turns red at the end; so seamless with the device's edges its like looking through a portal; unlocking with a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader; swiping notifications away at a rate the iPhone can't approach; charging my computer keyboard, mouse, phone, laptop, and smartwatch with the same cable... I've religiously used both iPhone and Android, I switch every year, and the iPhone feels like its years behind Samsung right now. Its not close.
RCS: no e2e, multi-device support, or any 3rd party application APIs on Android. In other words, gimped by Google.
Google's messaging department has been chasing it's tail for 10 years. Unless they clone iMessage from the inside out, RCS has no hope. Personally, I want to see RCS fail. It's a lousy spec with few privacy protections built-in. I had it enabled on my phone for a while and there was no indication as to whether my messages were passing through my carrier's servers or Google's RCS endpoint.
Google's been unable to build a iMessage competitor because they don't have the same leverage with the phone carriers that Apple does - because they don't even sell what few phones they manufacture in the carrier's stores.
They built out a technology and gave carriers the option to implement it themselves, or they could just piggyback on Google's servers. Carriers obviously opted to implement it themselves because they don't want to become dumb pipes, then dragged their feet for years.
As I understand it, Google wants to get a basic version in place with all the major carriers first, then start rolling out many of the other features you've mentioned.
Apple's been holding out on supporting it because it's not encrypted, but it'll be interesting to see how they respond to carrier-wide adoption of encrypted RCS when that comes. Will iMessage chats fall back to RCS with Android phones? Or will they continue to fall back to unencrypted oldschool SMS?
Under display scanner on Samsungs is so horribly bad that I'm not worried about it at all :) . I often can't unlock my S10+ in five tries after which it forces me to enter pin. And S10+ cost 1000$ on release last year. I don't use any screen protectors and I've rescanned fingers after Samsung rolled out "fixes" for the scanner. It's junk.
Zero issues with the S20. It works great; not as great as TouchID on older iPhones, as if that were still an option, but barring super wet fingers or gloves, it unlocks every time while declining the fingerprints of my other fingers and the half-dozen other people who have tried mine.
Every part of the world has its own messaging apps. Depending on where you live, it might be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, LINE, or I’m sure others. In Europe I know for a fact that the popular app varies from country to country. So you could just as easily dismiss LINE as a “purely Japanese phenomenon” but the fact is each app is popular in a certain part of the world.
Because network effects are more important than UX or features.
Sure it does, but cross platform IMs are not so socially discriminating. You can easily download LINE and move on with your life in Japan. But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many, for which they end up being socially ostraostracized
Are you really going to buy, charge, supply with data and carry around a second phone, no matter how cheap, just so you can send blue messages? That attitude is, like many american ideas, really whack.
I think the best reason is explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412067 - ie. how most social circles will exclude Android users. I imagine this is only be the case when only one or two people of the group are using Android though, so if even a few people in the friend group are in that situation you might see more WhatsApp/FB Messenger.
My mid-30s colleague went back to Tinder in recent years and he mentioned he got questioned by his target market about not having a blue bubble. They were all Asian (but mostly Chinese) women in their late 20s who moved to Australia.
With reference to a recent HN thread, I wonder if saying "I'm a developer/security expert/working on a classified government project and HAVE to use a special phone" would garner sympathy or admiration and stop the questions.
This is funny because as someone who works on important but non-classified stuff for the government, I do carry around a government issued phone so that I can access my work email/IM anywhere. But, (a) it's another iPhone and (b) I'd get in an awful lot of trouble if I installed Tinder on it. Most people probably wouldn't realize that though.
Well the most annoying thing about whatsapp (other than its owned by Facebook) is that it can't automatically fallback to sms for contacts not using it.
But not all of the world have moved to whatsapp. I am from Scandinavian and I only have a very limited number of contacts available on whatsapp, most are on iMessage.
Not really an Android or WhatsApp user, so my perspective there is probably not all that relevant ;) I am curious if any apps there fall back to SMS? I think Hangouts might have a long time back?
No, WhatsApp does not bring the same features. WhatsApp is very different. You can react to messages in iMessage, which is just one among other features WhatsApp doesn’t have.
Yeah I mean there will little tiny things different on each app, but it's not a big deal breaker for many. Whatsapp is the biggest IM on the planet for a reason. People could easily ditch iMessage in favour of Whatsapp if they wanted to, but for some reason Americans don't do that.
The absolute deal breaker for WhatsApp for me is that it is owned by Facebook. There is zero chance I would consider using it for anything, ever, because of that fact.
The idea of moving to a different chat platform won’t even come up if your current system has the features you need and everyone you want to reach is on it. What would nudge a group to collectively move to WhatsApp if iMessage is the default and works well for them?
I don’t use What’s App for the simple reason I like how my contacts are integrated across my Apple devices. From email, to “normal” phone calls, to Siri, calendar invites, and even directions “hey Siri, directions to Tom’s work” — it all works seamlessly. If I want to send someone a location from Maps, it’s seamless. If I am using something like Find My, I can easily send a message from there — or even create a Shortcut to send a geofenced message. And Memojis are just simply fun. When I am on the road, sending my kids a message with a talking robot really makes their day.
I also have big trust problems with Facebook products. Apple makes iMessage to sell devices, what does Facebook do with What’s App? There have been reports in the past that installed Facebook, Inc., apps were sending analytics from devices on other apps people were using, pretty much like a Trojan horse. I don’t want any installed Facebook related apps on my devices because Facebook lost my trust long ago. While supposedly What’s App is “secure,” the entire history of Facebook has been littered with “oops, you caught us and we are really really sorry this time.”
It's not a problem on Android at all and just a limitation of the Apple platforms.
When I try to use a "share" action for example, I get my contacts from the phone and Whatsapp at the same level. My list of contacts actually has a merged view of all my contacts stored on my phone, Whatsapp and other services. Contacts on multiple services are merged appropriately.
Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
This isn’t stupid. It’s the natural consequences of tech that doesn’t conform to real human behaviors and social norms.
Your argument fails when you consider Whatsapp - the biggest messaging platform, where you need to add people's number in your contact to be able to see their names.
I agree with power of defaults though. Only reason iMessage took off, and so did other Apple services.
You definitely don't... Unknown contacts show as e.g. "+1234567890 ~Bob" (their WhatsApp display name). When you save them to your contacts it switches to the name you added instead.
Exactly this about excluding names. I was sent a group message and didn’t reply because I didn’t recognize the number. I started another chat, deleted the number and then responded.
This is mistaken. I'm in the EU and do not know a single person using SMS, nor Whatsapp, they use iMessage, however, bigtime.
Whatsapp used to be a thing, but that has been over for some time. Now, most are using Messenger, Snap, and Telegram.
And iMessage is not a craze or a phenomenon, it is a simple convenience; it's on your phone already. For most people using it, it is not even a deliberate choice. The younger generation grew up with it, they do not even really know the difference between SMS and iMessage, except that if the bubble is green, the other user does not have an iPhone.
The older generation remembers SMS, so they still tend to call it SMS, even though they are using iMessage.
Android users are in the minority around here, well, at least between family, friends, and at work.
Well, I'm in the EU (France/UK) and do not know a single person that doesn't use Whatsapp. I'm also not even completely sure what iMessage is, nobody ever mentioned it.
All I mean is: anecdotal evidence and social bubbles
It’s a bit more than that though - try to send a picture to an Android user. It will work sometimes. Sometimes it won’t. No rhyme or reason and no way to control it. Send a picture to another iPhone - works exactly as expected every time.
It’s not just social status. It works much much better than SMS, it’s a superior experience and interacting with green bubble folk ruins it. I’m not particularly young or concerned at all with social status, but I urge people in my circles to just get iPhones because of iMessage and FaceTime. Both vastly superior experiences to any alternatives available.
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.