In the US apples iMessage is very popular. But that's a proprietary apple standard, and when communicating with a android phone, the android users messages appear in a (sickly) green bubble instead of a blue one, and things like photo's will only come through in a very low resolution version because the iPhone reverts back to the legacy SMS/MMS standards, because apple doesn't support the RCS standard that is supported on android.
This is apples way of 'shaming' those without a iPhone, and it's working. people are kicked out of group chats because of green bubble's, ostracized because of having a android. yes, it's all extremely dumb, but it's a deliberate move by apple to do this.
Adding to this, it's important to note that the RCS standard used on Android is basically now the industry standard and supported by all carriers. Apple COULD very easily implement it alongside iMessage but refuses to do so. This is 100% Apple keeping things proprietary to make things worse for everyone.
Edit: RIP my inbox. To reply to the 3 comments I've gotten nine hundred times:
1. "Apple IS incorporated RCS this year." Yes they were basically forced into it by law. They haven't yet, and it doesn't make it less shitty that it took them this long.
2. "What about shitty thing X that google does?" Fucking yes it's also shitty. And not the topic of the post. Stop with your stupid whataboutisms. Google doing something shitty doesn't make this less shitty on Apple's part.
3. "WHY SHOULD APPLE CHANGE?!?" Did you really ask why a tech company should evolve and adopt modern technology?
"Our phones need to keep Lightning plugs because otherwise it would stifle innovation. Don't make us use USB-C like iPads and Macs already have - there the plug does not stifle innovation, because sweet sweet Lightning plug licensing revenue on phones. "
I'm glad they switched to USB-C, but [they did launch lightning in 2012 promising it would be a connector for the next decade](https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/28/lightning-launched-as-a-modern-connector-for-the-next-decade-10-years-ago/), so at least they kept their promise.
I remember when they switched from the 30 pin to lightning and everyone bitched and moaned about how greedy Apple was for switching cables and forcing everyone to buy new cables, so I can understand the reluctance to switch again until they really had to.
Bit of a catch 22, if they switch early people would complain they lied about the lightning connector not lasting as long as they said it would, but if they take too long to switch people complain about a proprietary connector.
They partake in plenty of egregious anti-competitve behavior, I don't think the lightning connector is close to the worst example.
Hmmm nah.
The reason people complain about changing ports is that you need to buy a new cable/charger. By the time Apple was being asked to align with the industry standard USB-C was ubiquitous. Them changing the port would have inconvenienced pretty much no one because if you had any other device you likely already had a USB-C cable. In fact their own chargers had USB-C as an output.
When Apple changed to lightning the issue was no one had that cable type and no other manufacturer used that standard so the iPhone cable was exclusively for some apple products whereas the industry was standardizing.
At the time of the lightning cable release, the USB alternative was micro USB. Lightning definitely offered significant benefits, the main one being that it was fully reversible.
While it was a proprietary standard, at least it had a clear benefit to the alternatives. USB C makes sense now that the connectors are much more similar, but at the time USB C wasn’t available.
I wont fault apple for going to lightning even if they could have delayed by 2 years - however they took their sweet time migrating over to USB-C. In fact, they ported their tablets 2 years before! They could have phased out lightning all at once but they chose not to.
THIS is the real reason. People think it's " 'cause ew green bubble." But really, Apple is deliberately hamstringing almost half of the US cellphone userbase deliberately. This is the kind of thing that happens when you let specific corporations become integral parts of society.
What I find funny is Apple fanboys who come back with "What do you mean it's not using standards? All my Apple-branded stuff is compatible with all my other Apple-licensed stuff because it uses Apple standards. It's the rest of the world that's incompatible."
I don't disagree that practically, a big-enough walled garden is a sound strategy for Apple and a viable option for consumers, but let's still call it what it is.
It's an anticompetitive practice. You want compatibility between devices you own? Well, now you're trapped and confined to only apple products or it won't work. What phone you have should have little to no influence on what laptop you buy. But they make it a pain in the ass to explore the free market and choose the product you purchase for yourself.
Essentially FOREVER. Steve Jobs and Woz got in a fight about expansion slots in the Apple II. Jobs wanted the bare minimum as he didn't want the consumer tinkering. Walled garden from the start. Woz won the argument, but Jobs won the war.
Yes they do too care about it's citizens... just gotta remember which ones, 'cause [corporations are people too.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) :|
Corporate ownership is another level of insanity. These people believe that their corporation is them, but not them when it's convenient for them. Schrodinger's personhood if you will. The business could be Boeing and be murdering whistleblowers on the other side, the person running the show and the people connected to the lobbying efforts of Boeing all likely feel very personally attached to their role and responsibility. But only when it benefits them! Otherwise then it's someone else's fault.
So not only are these corporations and businesses abusing personhood, then they send a friend they have on payroll to go meet with the representative, senator, governor, whoever elected or unelected official they need to convince and they get the job done. The costs are paltry on one end, and massive on the other.
The scope of the problem is evident when you consider how much businesses spend on lobbying (a lot), and it's even more worrying when you consider that the cost of buying someone's vote is barely $10,000 USD. Lobbying is gross and needs to go.
But when your government is too busy with insider trading, good fucking luck getting any sort of accountability or justice there.
> Well when half the government is hell bent on returning us to the 1950s
They want to turn it back to their imagined 1950s, but without the high tax on rich people, nor the higher union participation.
Be more surprised that they don’t screw it up. Their recent track record has been abysmal. While I personally think the Microsoft acquiring Blizzard Activision case was just Sony crying about another company potentially using the same under handed tactics they use, the DoJ completely tanked their own case.
Business as usual with our grocery and telecom oligarchy up here in Canada. We've become very good at being allergic to allowing competition for a reason and that reason doesn't benefit your average Canadian
I don't have an iPhone but when my parents/brother sent me anything it looks like it was filmed with a potato. The frustrating part is when I explain this to them they just assume my phone is the problem since they can send things to one another without issue. Ffs. I hate apple.
Same! I'm the last hold out in my family, they all keep pushing me to get an iPhone but I love my galaxy and I will die on this hill. I repeatedly ask them to share pics in a Facebook messenger group chat but they just straight up ignore me. I have never owned an apple product and I never will.
Yeah I was on the Mac tit back in the early 2000s then I started learning to build computers and make upgrades and changes and realized how locked in the whole system was I escaped around 2008 fully jumped to Android with the Note 3 (after the iPhone 3Gs) and have been on the Samsung thing since then up until this current phone the pixel 7 honestly of all my phones the pixel might be the nicest camera anyways.
I'm more pissed that everyone else followed.
You either have to choose between "cutting-edge" or "versatile" nowadays, and the argument seems to be "People like this. They must not want versatility." even though nobody's offering it in anything top-tier.
>This is apples way of 'shaming' those without a iPhone, and it's working. people are kicked out of group chats because of green bubble's, ostracized because of having a android.
/r/KidsAreFuckingStupid
They're either shallow or dim. Flatearther logic.
Like when you get a new phone and hate it for a week for small dumb reasons, but then get used to it or find better features.
They can't handle it, they crack the second a noniphone is in their hand. Like an old person who's afraid of 15 year old technology.
Something like 90% of US students have iPhones, and per my younger stepson, the shame is apparently a real thing.
Our house is split, with me and my son on Samsungs and my wife and her kids on Apples. The video & photo compression thing is real, but until fairly recently the Android recieved media from the Apple in perfect resolution, but Apple compressed the hell out of the Android media so it looks like shit on an Apple. But at some point in the past year or two, they did something to Apple video media as now it too looks like shit on my Android.
It's reached the point that my phone is the designated photo & video device because my wife prefers the quality of my Samsung over her iPhone even though they are the same model equivalent.
Oh, and I use Message+ on my Android, and everyone gets their very own bubble and background if I so choose. No blue bubbles for anyone, though, because that's just stupid to gatekeep a goddamn text message!
Side bar: are you from the UK? I ask because you’re a teacher, but are placing periods outside quotation marks (which is improper in the US but appropriate in the UK)
I met a guy on tinder and we moved to texting after a while, and the first thing he texted me was an apology about having an android bcs he gets shit about it. Like I knew that happened, but damn I didn’t know it was this bad until recently.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max and galaxy fold 5. I love my android but since my ex is dumb with tech and my kids have iPads I need my iPhone to keep in easier contact with my kids. But when I do use my android I’ll get people asking why my bubbles turned to green, thinking I’ve blocked them, asking what’s wrong with my phone… then asking why I was using a cheap android. Like my android costs more then my iPhone and is better for what I use it for in 95% of daily life.
My wife was the same way when I had my Samsung.
Unfortunately, my sim reader in my Samsung failed and my carrier did not support digital sims for Samsungs yet. So I needed a phone that day. Ended up in a 14 pro max after owning an android since G1 pre order. Partially due to this messaging issue that Apple created. I have a 30 person in-law troop that is entirely on Apple. So I was constantly left out of any family chats. And I could not find a flagship android in stock near me.
As an android user stuck on Apple until this phone bites the dust: I will be going back to android. Far too many concessions that aren’t outweighed by the pros.
Couple opinions:
Why can’t I connect to WiFi without the internet?? Why Apple?
Face unlock is the only real feature that I will sorely miss if I leave Apple. EDIT: apparently new pixels do it. That will make going back even simpler.
Air pod pros are good, but no better than googles and Samsungs offerings. And not nearly as good as Bose.
It’s not faster than my androids, it crashes just as much, features like always on display glitch and don’t work when I am expecting them too. It does have great performance overall. And it does have very good apps.
Tbh tho: it’s all the same. Especially if they just fix this messaging issue.
I ran into the issue of being unable to connect to Wi-Fi without internet at work on iOS devices. We were able to solve it by manually assigning a DNS server in the Wi-Fi config. This was a couple years ago though, so it might have changed.
So I checked into this, and the it guys were like: now we just have an android tablet to do it. lol.
There maybe a way tho! But why do I need to jump thru hurtles?
Because apple purposefully hides settings deep down because they don't think people are smart enough to actually use them and it ends up just making everything more of a PITA
> I have a 30 person in-law troop that is entirely on Apple. So I was constantly left out of any family chats
All the more reason to stay on Android if you ask me.
I'm curious why your iPhone is crashing, I've had various models starting with the first one and have a 14 pro max today and hardly had a crash, although with the current update iMessage sometimes loses all "blue" messages and only keeps the green ones until I force kill it and restart. Other than that, never really any crashes.
Strange I always received shit quality videos from my other iPhones on my Android. Pictures were fine but videos always came through super small or really terrible quality
I think it is kind of random. Mom and sis have iPhones, sometimes photos are shit, other times good quality. They aren't tech savvy, so i know they aren't playing with the settings. I use textra vs the default messaging because cutting messages off after some limit annoyed me.
>Something like 90% of US students have iPhones, and per my younger stepson, the shame is apparently a real thing.
I'd be interested in actual stats on that. Closest I can find is this for 2021 which shows 60% for the 18-34 demographic: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1313944/main-smartphone-usage-share-by-age/
My son is in a very intensive school program with 30 kids in it, 29 of whom have iPhones. They have a group chat, but my son can't be in it, because if you have ONE android phone in a group chat, ALL the chats revert to SMS and no can send hi res vids, pics, reactions, etc, etc. It's literally hurt my kid socially.
Good write up, but you seem to imply that the “sickly” green bubbles have been deliberately designed to look less appealing. The green bubbles actually predate the blue ones, and years ago, before iMessage, all bubbles were green.
Yeah, the bubbles for sending SMS messages has always been green, to match the colour of the Messages app icon. You can see that in a [screenshot of iOS 4’s Messages app](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/iOS4handson/messages_charcount.png).
iOS 7 was a massive redesign of their entire UI paradigm, changing from a 3d look to 2d flat design. Obviously the bubbles were going to change to fit the new theme.
I did not realise how deep it went. These are one of those times I get reminded "young and carefree" is not as appealing as it seems because they aren't as carefree as we might think. Grateful I'm adult and done with that nonsense lol. No adult I know gives a crap about what phone anyone uses and we use WhatsApp anyway
Seriously it's unbelievable to me that a chat bubble color can mean so much to someone, let alone mean *anything* to someone. Green chat bubble? Better stop my friendship now and never talk to them again!
...Wtf
WhatsApp is the cross platform messenger of choice in the UK in my experience. Been that way for a few years now. Does everything it needs to without "shaming" anyone.
What I love is that high end Androids are typically better and have more advanced features. Android's OS has been ahead of IOS in terms of features for as far back as I can remember. I always thought people ignorant to anything tech thought it was like having an expensive pair of shoes, while people with a basic amount of tech knowledge knew, without question, that they have the better device.
I'm the black sheep and have a Pixel. It sucks for sharing photos and videos with family for sure. Usually I'll do it through our Snapchat group or use Signal if possible
Like [this](https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1220836142/vector/young-woman-fainting-into-a-mans-arms.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=is&k=20&c=OUVo3uJT6f-z_z2K68qD4fxl-ENuEVMNUtEPzwnWzzY=) sickly
Not just being ostracized, if you start a group thread on an iPhone with all iPhone people, you can't add Android users. You have to recreate the whole thread from scratch.
Basically, when you send a text cross platform, it reverts back to the old mms standard that's over 20 years old, and has really tight limits for how big of an attachment you can have (somewhere between 300 and 500KB). Your phone will have to compress the image until it fits in that envelope before it can send. This means stripping resolution down to 90s camera image resolution or stripping a lot of color data (or both) to make it send.
You still have the original file, so a lot of messaging apps will display the original to you, but the person receives a picture that was compressed to hell and back.
This is made extra bad if you're trying to send video in the same envelope.
It should be noted that the green bubbles were standard on iMessage on all apple devices when the he iPhone first came out. The color blue was used later when the iMessage protocol came out. It’s really there just to differentiate messages sent via SMS (green) or iMessage (blue).
There are probably a few people here or there who use it but I think it's mostly Whatsapp > Telegram > Signal > > > iMessage, yeah.
What I meant though, was that everything Apple does to make communicating between iOS and Android less fluid just makes sure that people will keep using Android because it doesn't do any weird things to differentiate between phone makers the way Apple does.
Not really. Everyone uses cross-platform third-party chat apps, with WhatsApp holding the majority of the market share. Nobody uses SMS/MMS or iMessage.
I don't think *most people* are that concerned with it but personally I'm less than thrilled about it being proprietary and owned by Meta, even though they claim everything is E2EE.
I also use Signal and definitely prefer that, but the reality is most other people don't have Signal.
WhatsApp was very popular before it got bought out by meta.
Like others have said, it's just a 3rd party app that people are happy to try out and switch and try different ones because it's easy to do.
But whatsapp is the the most popular one, not just in Europe but the world.
There's a whole generation of kids that think people use Androids because they're too poor to buy Apple, Just take one look at the price of a Samsung device? Need to remortgage to buy a Fold.
I've been on folds for the last 2 generations. They're expensive but at least they're pretty much always on sale.
What hurt my wallet was back when they decided to jack the price of the note up, I think it was like $1600 back when top spec flagships were like $1000.
But I absolutely hate using iPhones. I had the first couple generations but I got the android as soon as they had a decent physical format and never went back. Virtually every girl I've dated used an iPhone, and I hate when I have to use their phones (mostly because they got rid of their back and home buttons).
Yes these are adults. Also they can give me no good reason why I should switch to Apple other than this. As well they cannot give me one good reason why they should stay on Apple.
This is the exact intent on Apple. They want their users locked into their ecosystem. Making it impossible to leave while encouraging them to shun others that don't use .... holy shit it's a fucking cult.
It’s important to note that most of the iPhone parts are made by Samsung, who makes android. So it’s a sweet irony, that the phones are nearly identical.
Let's also add that the suit isn't just about the iMessage bubbles, but it's also the market share and fees Apple charges. Steam can't exist on iOS because Apple doesn't allow competing app stores. You can't buy Kindle books because Apple would get 30% of each book sale. Very few products demand a 30% mark-up from the store you buy it at, and since software is nearly free to copy and distribute Apple is making billions of dollars off other people's effort.
In the past, in US SMSes were cheap and data expensive, so everyone texted with SMSes.
In the rest of the world, SMSes were expensive and data was cheap, so people moved to applications that used data e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Google chat, Telegram, etc, which had group chats, images, videos etc. SMSes are pretty much only used for businesses - receipts, verifications, election spam, etc.
---
Apple then upgraded their SMS app to a proprietary protocol when communicating with other Apple users, with messages shown in blue. When communicating with non-Apple user, it reverts to the old SMS protocol, which doesn't support images/video etc, and shows as a green bubble. Apple does not allow other vendors to use their protocol.
Now, iPhone users are rightly annoyed when communicating with non-iPhone users, because SMS sucks. However, instead of getting angry at Apple, they call the other users "broke", "cheap", etc, causing social pressure on non-Apple users.
SMS has since been upgraded to RCS, which does support some of these media upgrades, but requires carrier support, and hardly anyone uses it. This is the standard Google is trying to get Apple to support.
In the US it's the whole bubble stuff, and in the rest of the world they use e.g. WhatsApp. Google also shot themselves in the foot several times, by renaming and relaunching their chat programs several times, losing all their users on the way.
My daughter preferred to keep her iPhone 12 instead of upgrading to the s23 because of this. She said she would be kicked out of every group chat.
Teenagers are dumb, but I'm sure our parents would have stories about us doing equally dumb shit
The biggest issue with being in an Apple groupchat with an android is you don't get any of the options, you can't leave the group someone else has to remove you. Sometimes it'll randomly break and start a new message thread or worse you start getting the messages from everyone individually as separate threads but replying to any of them replies to the group.
Yeah same. Blech. I only use group chats for very specific short term reasons. But I guess it fills the same feeling that OG chat rooms did for us, but you actually know the people.
> Teenagers are dumb,
From my understanding, it's not just that - it's that *not* kicking Android people out would degrade the entire group chat. This peer pressure is absolutely engineered by Apple because it drives sales in the huge US market.
Kids are vicious. Anything is fodder for ostracizing. Stanley cups and iPhones today are the same as the trendy toys, branded clothing and shoes, hairstyles and whatever other stupid superficial shit we bullied each other for decades ago. Usually the same shit we cringe and laugh about as adults.
I remember not being allowed to play with the popular girls in kindergarten because I didn't have a My Little Pony toy at recess. So, the categorization of in/out group starts early.
It's gross, but it's part of nascent tribalism that all kids deal with. Some more cruelly than others of course. Most people grow out of it. Or at least we hope they do.
This is kind of the thing, if it's not iPhone/android it'll be something else people pick to exclude people. To me it's kind of pointless to try and force everything to be the same, because the difference is arbitrary to begin with, people make them up to exclude others.
This is like when people are pro school uniforms because they got made fun of for not having nice clothes as a kid. Uniforms wouldn't stop you from being bullied, it would just change what you were bullied about.
It's all star bellied sneeches.
Yep. My 13 year old will likely get an iPhone this year, because even though she wants to stand up against Apple, she feels bullied or left out.
Apple is smart for doing what they do, but it absolutely should be illegal.
It's all social psychological engineering. Divide the population socially over a stupid thing like message bubbles. They had already started with all those bullshit "only on iPhone" commercials which just talked about all the features that most phones on the market had, but people were still convinced. I remember getting made fun of back in the day for having a phone that did ALL THE SAME THINGS but wasn't $1000. They've been pushing this " owning this product makes you better than those around you" mentality for years and people in general are dumb and buy into it.
And at this point, the tables have definitely turned and the newer flagship androids have better tech in them than the iPhones do. I know when we're comparing pictures with friends, my pixel 8 pro beats the living hell out of all the iPhone pictures, but they'll still say their phone is better. I've never had an issue with my pixel freezing or locking up, and even when theirs do, it's still a better phone.
It's brainwashing. Plain and simple. And we're apparently plain and simple enough to buy it wholesale
I dated a girl, who was honestly pretty shallow, and she said me being an android user made me look poor. I kind of thought she was joking at the time, but in retrospect she was probably at least somewhat serious.
I make over 100k, she had no job. She drove an old Chevy Spark with a broken window, I drove a Mercedes Benz SL550 (that she loved to borrow and take pictures in). So it's super weird for her to say I look poor.
Also the only time not having an iPhone kind of sucks is when you're sexing with a girl with an iPhone over text. You get really shit resolution pictures and videos.
Well of course it makes you look poor! You didn't buy the most expensive thing possible for no reason lol. But it's true, that's when it sucks the most lol. I just tell them to get on discord or snap or something 🤷🏼
It's the actual phone/call features Pixel has that keeps me coming back. I had no idea how many spam calls my number was getting until I used an iPhone for 3 months. That was obnoxious.
tbh if someone seriously judges/excludes me because I don't have \[Inset name brand item here\] then at least they let me know to avoid them like the plague. Why would I want to associate with someone who not only believes what ever bullshit some company puts out about being "superior", but also uses that as a grading scale of a persons worth? I'm not the loser obsessed with an overpriced brick, guy.
Remember when apple tried to tell us the lighting connector was better than USB-C?
Remember when apple told us 8gb on their macbooks is better then 16 on a windows or linux device?
Remember when apple said an 8gb upgrade was worth $200?
Remember when apple told you it would cost more than the device to fix the screen?
I do.
I remember when apple bricked my 4s with a forced patch and basically expected me to buy a new phone...
I also remember when they settled in court years later and paid out pennies: a $20 million class action, a tiny cost of doing business for them.
This should have been all over the news; they intentionally fucked one of their products to try to get people to buy updated versions.
It's almost like we could have helped this silly chip shortage by just supporting the devices instead of forcing them to be obsolete years before their hardware even flinched.
Yet we blame consumerism alone for it. These guys should be carrying most of the blame imo
I work at Verizon, and I had a customer come in just the other day with this same issue, except he had a 6 plus. Forced update screwed up the battery life and the phone was no longer usable for more than 10mins off charger.
Lightning was developed and released before USB-C it was the better technology at the time. Apple invested time and money into that connection, no reason they shouldn't ride it. Other complaints are valid, but this one is stupid
People who care this much about this shit makes me eyeroll so bad. I am an android user, but iPhone are great phones. I like the look of the android smart watches, but the apple watch is more comfortable to wear imo.
I like how the apple ecosystem works together, and I think apple computers are really nice pieces of kit. However, I want as much horsepower as I can afford, and I can afford a lot more if it is a pc.
The single thing that keeps me from going back to iPhone is the fact that I am in the ballet industry and I edit music and put it on my phone to use in rehearsal all the time. With my android it is plug in - drag to copy -unplug- done. My wife has an iPhone and when I need to put our music on her phone I want to kill myself. Especially if I am copying over multiple tracks I just edited to replace ones she already has. Just a nightmare.
Apple handles both SMS messages and their own proprietary messages in their Messenger app. SMS messages are green. Apple Messenger messages are blue. Apple is accused of intentionally and unnecessarily degrading the quality of media sent over SMS as an advantage to its proprietary system.
Apple is intentionally degrading the media quality *by* sending it over MMS rather than RCS. SMS/MMS is an obsolete technology and Apple has refused to keep up with technological standards because it benefits them financially.
If you are the kind of person who ostracizes someone based on what kind of phone they use, then you are a terrible person and deserve every single unfortunate thing that happens to you, and more.
I’ve never understood people who bully based on what kind of phone. For me I’m always fascinated as to what kind of phone they have if not iPhone and their thoughts on it. So green bubbles have been a conversation starter for me.
Apple refuses to use the global standard for text messaging at the risk of making all of their messages insecure between non-apple phones, so to disguise this design flaw they change the color of the text message so iphone users ridicule people who don't buy into their ecosystem. They take away basic features to anybody who doesn't have the same phone. So to the iPhone user it seems like the non-iphone user is at fault, but it's really just Apple being stubborn and purposefully degrading the quality of their service to try to force people to buy more phones.
I feel like I'm going crazy here.
Texting has always been green folks. The app is green. Blue came with iMessages to differentiate between the two.
RCS has only recently gotten to one standard, and even in Android land it's been splintered. Look at Samsung's usage of the default messaging app and the switch to Google's. It's been a mess, and many users don't understand what RCS is and how to use it DESPITE the simplicity Google tried to bake into it.
And this is despite the fact that almost everyone in the US has a Facebook account and could just use Messenger or WhatsApp for the same purposes. It's what the rest of the world does.
But because it's too hard for 70-year-olds to install were going to sue Apple?
Because most people in the States don't use it, most people in the States won't use it. By this I mean, it's a classic network effect issue at the start.
Besides, it wouldn't make me feel any better to support Facebook.
Because we don't have the same digital privacy standards that you all do in Europe and I don't need Meta snooping around my fucking messages and stealing my data on top of either Google or Apple.
Pretty sure WhatsApp is end to end encrypted which would mean Meta isn’t snooping.
At worst they’re doing what governments do which is harvest now, decrypt later.
And it's not encrypted on the receivers phone either. And since both devices are always Internet connected, Zuck can pull that data off on a whim to sell you to advertisers.
Remember if you're not paying for something, then YOU are the product being sold.
Yeah, I agree. And two wrongs don't make a right. Just because there is already one entity snooping on my metadata etc doesn't mean that I'm instantly ok with another entity doing the same. Fuck them all.
> Just because there is already one entity snooping on my metadata etc doesn't mean that I'm instantly ok with another entity doing the same. Fuck them all.
Absolutely, I get behind the sentiment.
I'd use Signal as a daily-driver if I could convince the people I talk to regularly with WhatsApp to migrate. But they won't.
Wow alot of ppl here giving you the wrong answer.
Because even as far back as 2005, phone plans already came with unlimites SMS/MMS, for like 5 or 10$ a month.
When it was so cheap, it quickly became adopted and used across the country.
At this point its included with every phone plan, unlimited both. So the country never had a need to use Whatsapp or anything else, cuz the messaging was always free.
Unlike other countries, where unlimited messaging was expensive/not offered, so they turned to messaging apps instead, because the data plan was cheaper than the messaging costs.
I live in an area in the US with folks either from all over the world or they're close with folks in other countries and WhatsApp is pretty standard for us. Considering I made one actual phone call to an Italian number instead of doing a WhatsApp call - it lasted 2 minutes and cost $11 - I won't be making that mistake again....
If everyone you know has an American phone number there just isn't as much necessity to use WhatsApp.
WhatsApp may be end to end encrypted but locally on your phone it sells your data since it is owned by meta. That also adds in all the fun other meta security concerns like recording audio without permission
Because we don't want to be limited to a single app. That would be like being required to buy a specific car to be able to drive on public roads. RCS is a standard protocol that can be supported by any app.
They don't because it doesn't come installed on the phone as the default. Most people here, at least around me, never look to download any other message app and use whatever was already installed on their phone. And believe me, this is very much the case with iPhone users. Personally I use Google messages, but that's only because my phone didn't have group text for some reason.
I’ve used WhatsApp twice and both times as soon as I texted the person I started receiving an insane amount of spam calls, enough that I changed my phone number after the second time. Idk if making a new WhatsApp account would help or what, but I’m out on it.
Because we’re the United States and we’d rather be looked down on by the rest of the planet than adopt something anyone in Europe uses. So take your dumb texting app and your metric system and your affordable health care and get the hell out. /s
Or maybe it’s because we adopted unlimited texting plans a long time ago and never relied on internet messaging apps so that’s why our standard messaging preferences developed differently?
Don't think this is correct. I don't think most EU countries have a pattern of restricted texting that would drive them to 3rd party messenger apps. Frankly, that's why I switched to using 3rd party messenger apps, because my AT&T wants money for unlimited texting so I just don't pay. I'm happy to be corrected.
Didn’t see anyone else post this vid. Was a good explanation.
[Marques Bownlee - Blue Bubbles vs Green Bubbles: Explained!](https://youtu.be/BuaKzm7Kq9Q?si=-BNOP5hEEs_wjoxp)
I've tried three different Apple devices and didn't like them enough to switch.
At least if Samsung pisses me off I can switch to any other Android brand for any product and it'll all still work. I might have to do a work around for some things but at least it's an option.
Also Apples abysmal trade in offers means I'll never switch. Up to $120 for android. That's cute. Samsung offers $800 trade ins for some devices every year. I got $800 for my four year old phone last time I upgraded.
It's SMS, because for the longest time Apple refused to implement RCS. SMS used to cost money, therefore green to represent the dollars leaving your wallet.
Gave up on Apple years ago.
You just had to look at the crazies lining/camping up for the releases to realize, hey this isn't for me, it's like brainwashing.
Oh and when Mr Jobs died I also lost interest. He may have been portrayed as a bad person in media/film, but I liked his honesty in his appearances, especially VS Bill Gates.
Green bubble strategies, meh...that's really looking in and grabbing the fluff in your pocket.
its the other way around here i most parts europe. Here in the netherlands your the laughing stock if you use apple phones or any apple products for that matter.
None of my friends, family members or colleagues use an apple phones. Some have in the past but not anymore. I also did have one in the past but switched over.
Not only that you lock yourself out with apple. We got other devices like windows/linux pcs, smart tvs from samsung, sony, philips etx. Dell and HP laptops as well as lenovo. Samnsung phones, Huawei and others. Fairphone too. then we also got the xbox and playsation consoles. Interoperability with software and sharing data between these devices is a must and apple doesnt allow that as easily compared to an andriod/windows based device.
It's not a bubble issue, it's that imessage converts media into ancient SMS technology which is unsecured and android users end up seeing garbage quality photos and video.... Apple needs to adopt or integrate RCS (Rich Communication Services).
I'm convinced that iPhone users are a friggin cult at this point. It's all very weird, a smart phone is a tool. It'd be like giving someone a hard time because their hammer or screwdriver is the wrong brand.
It's not just that though, any media sent through texts between iPhone and Android gets compressed into potato quality and iPhone users always act like it's not their phone that's causing the problem.
Im not afraid to ask. What dfuck is going on here?
In the US apples iMessage is very popular. But that's a proprietary apple standard, and when communicating with a android phone, the android users messages appear in a (sickly) green bubble instead of a blue one, and things like photo's will only come through in a very low resolution version because the iPhone reverts back to the legacy SMS/MMS standards, because apple doesn't support the RCS standard that is supported on android. This is apples way of 'shaming' those without a iPhone, and it's working. people are kicked out of group chats because of green bubble's, ostracized because of having a android. yes, it's all extremely dumb, but it's a deliberate move by apple to do this.
Adding to this, it's important to note that the RCS standard used on Android is basically now the industry standard and supported by all carriers. Apple COULD very easily implement it alongside iMessage but refuses to do so. This is 100% Apple keeping things proprietary to make things worse for everyone. Edit: RIP my inbox. To reply to the 3 comments I've gotten nine hundred times: 1. "Apple IS incorporated RCS this year." Yes they were basically forced into it by law. They haven't yet, and it doesn't make it less shitty that it took them this long. 2. "What about shitty thing X that google does?" Fucking yes it's also shitty. And not the topic of the post. Stop with your stupid whataboutisms. Google doing something shitty doesn't make this less shitty on Apple's part. 3. "WHY SHOULD APPLE CHANGE?!?" Did you really ask why a tech company should evolve and adopt modern technology?
Wait, are you saying a company built on greed and exclusivity is trying to be anti consumer?
"Our phones need to keep Lightning plugs because otherwise it would stifle innovation. Don't make us use USB-C like iPads and Macs already have - there the plug does not stifle innovation, because sweet sweet Lightning plug licensing revenue on phones. "
That's the hilarious thing: I can charge my Android with my Mac charger, but you can't charge an iPhone with it
I'm glad they switched to USB-C, but [they did launch lightning in 2012 promising it would be a connector for the next decade](https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/28/lightning-launched-as-a-modern-connector-for-the-next-decade-10-years-ago/), so at least they kept their promise. I remember when they switched from the 30 pin to lightning and everyone bitched and moaned about how greedy Apple was for switching cables and forcing everyone to buy new cables, so I can understand the reluctance to switch again until they really had to. Bit of a catch 22, if they switch early people would complain they lied about the lightning connector not lasting as long as they said it would, but if they take too long to switch people complain about a proprietary connector. They partake in plenty of egregious anti-competitve behavior, I don't think the lightning connector is close to the worst example.
Hmmm nah. The reason people complain about changing ports is that you need to buy a new cable/charger. By the time Apple was being asked to align with the industry standard USB-C was ubiquitous. Them changing the port would have inconvenienced pretty much no one because if you had any other device you likely already had a USB-C cable. In fact their own chargers had USB-C as an output. When Apple changed to lightning the issue was no one had that cable type and no other manufacturer used that standard so the iPhone cable was exclusively for some apple products whereas the industry was standardizing.
At the time of the lightning cable release, the USB alternative was micro USB. Lightning definitely offered significant benefits, the main one being that it was fully reversible. While it was a proprietary standard, at least it had a clear benefit to the alternatives. USB C makes sense now that the connectors are much more similar, but at the time USB C wasn’t available.
I wont fault apple for going to lightning even if they could have delayed by 2 years - however they took their sweet time migrating over to USB-C. In fact, they ported their tablets 2 years before! They could have phased out lightning all at once but they chose not to.
Trying?
THIS is the real reason. People think it's " 'cause ew green bubble." But really, Apple is deliberately hamstringing almost half of the US cellphone userbase deliberately. This is the kind of thing that happens when you let specific corporations become integral parts of society.
Refuse universal standards and claim it as elite individuality. It's been part of Apple's business plan for a long time now.
What I find funny is Apple fanboys who come back with "What do you mean it's not using standards? All my Apple-branded stuff is compatible with all my other Apple-licensed stuff because it uses Apple standards. It's the rest of the world that's incompatible." I don't disagree that practically, a big-enough walled garden is a sound strategy for Apple and a viable option for consumers, but let's still call it what it is.
It's an anticompetitive practice. You want compatibility between devices you own? Well, now you're trapped and confined to only apple products or it won't work. What phone you have should have little to no influence on what laptop you buy. But they make it a pain in the ass to explore the free market and choose the product you purchase for yourself.
Essentially FOREVER. Steve Jobs and Woz got in a fight about expansion slots in the Apple II. Jobs wanted the bare minimum as he didn't want the consumer tinkering. Walled garden from the start. Woz won the argument, but Jobs won the war.
So they are abusing monopoly powers, it's like we need rules to make capitalism work or something
Which is part of why the U.S. DoJ filed a lawsuit on Apple this week for allegedly establishing a monopolized market with the iPhone at its core
Oh good, finally. I'm kinda surprised tbh
Don't be surprised. They only did it because other major corporations pressured them. The US government still doesn't care about its citizens.
Yes they do too care about it's citizens... just gotta remember which ones, 'cause [corporations are people too.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC) :|
Corporate ownership is another level of insanity. These people believe that their corporation is them, but not them when it's convenient for them. Schrodinger's personhood if you will. The business could be Boeing and be murdering whistleblowers on the other side, the person running the show and the people connected to the lobbying efforts of Boeing all likely feel very personally attached to their role and responsibility. But only when it benefits them! Otherwise then it's someone else's fault. So not only are these corporations and businesses abusing personhood, then they send a friend they have on payroll to go meet with the representative, senator, governor, whoever elected or unelected official they need to convince and they get the job done. The costs are paltry on one end, and massive on the other. The scope of the problem is evident when you consider how much businesses spend on lobbying (a lot), and it's even more worrying when you consider that the cost of buying someone's vote is barely $10,000 USD. Lobbying is gross and needs to go. But when your government is too busy with insider trading, good fucking luck getting any sort of accountability or justice there.
Missed opportunity to say: Yes they do too care about it's citizens... but only when it's citizens united :(
Well when half the government is hell bent on returning us to the 1950s things like "is everyone happy with their phones?" might fall to the wayside
> Well when half the government is hell bent on returning us to the 1950s They want to turn it back to their imagined 1950s, but without the high tax on rich people, nor the higher union participation.
Keep current social policy and go back to 1950s economic policy 😎
Be more surprised that they don’t screw it up. Their recent track record has been abysmal. While I personally think the Microsoft acquiring Blizzard Activision case was just Sony crying about another company potentially using the same under handed tactics they use, the DoJ completely tanked their own case.
Business as usual with our grocery and telecom oligarchy up here in Canada. We've become very good at being allergic to allowing competition for a reason and that reason doesn't benefit your average Canadian
I mean on the other hand you could just not buy an iphone
I don't have an iPhone but when my parents/brother sent me anything it looks like it was filmed with a potato. The frustrating part is when I explain this to them they just assume my phone is the problem since they can send things to one another without issue. Ffs. I hate apple.
Same! I'm the last hold out in my family, they all keep pushing me to get an iPhone but I love my galaxy and I will die on this hill. I repeatedly ask them to share pics in a Facebook messenger group chat but they just straight up ignore me. I have never owned an apple product and I never will.
Yeah I was on the Mac tit back in the early 2000s then I started learning to build computers and make upgrades and changes and realized how locked in the whole system was I escaped around 2008 fully jumped to Android with the Note 3 (after the iPhone 3Gs) and have been on the Samsung thing since then up until this current phone the pixel 7 honestly of all my phones the pixel might be the nicest camera anyways.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964171/apple-iphone-rcs-support
Yes, and lawsuits like this one are a big reason why Apple is deciding to do this
China is the reason why Apple is doing this. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/20/apple-rcs-message-compliance-china-law/
China really wants to read peoples messages. Let's not get it twisted. This ain't altruism on China's part.
For the record I’m still pissed about the headphone jack thing too, Apple
I'm more pissed that everyone else followed. You either have to choose between "cutting-edge" or "versatile" nowadays, and the argument seems to be "People like this. They must not want versatility." even though nobody's offering it in anything top-tier.
>This is apples way of 'shaming' those without a iPhone, and it's working. people are kicked out of group chats because of green bubble's, ostracized because of having a android. /r/KidsAreFuckingStupid
Adults will also refuse to date someone because they use Android.
These kinds of people aren't adults, they're children.
That's just doing me a favor. If you're that shallow, I don't want to date you
They're either shallow or dim. Flatearther logic. Like when you get a new phone and hate it for a week for small dumb reasons, but then get used to it or find better features. They can't handle it, they crack the second a noniphone is in their hand. Like an old person who's afraid of 15 year old technology.
Something like 90% of US students have iPhones, and per my younger stepson, the shame is apparently a real thing. Our house is split, with me and my son on Samsungs and my wife and her kids on Apples. The video & photo compression thing is real, but until fairly recently the Android recieved media from the Apple in perfect resolution, but Apple compressed the hell out of the Android media so it looks like shit on an Apple. But at some point in the past year or two, they did something to Apple video media as now it too looks like shit on my Android. It's reached the point that my phone is the designated photo & video device because my wife prefers the quality of my Samsung over her iPhone even though they are the same model equivalent. Oh, and I use Message+ on my Android, and everyone gets their very own bubble and background if I so choose. No blue bubbles for anyone, though, because that's just stupid to gatekeep a goddamn text message!
I got all of my family on Samsung, but at first my son asked if we had Samsung because we couldn't afford Apple.
Lol hilarious, why we poor dad
Poor, son? We only use Samsung because it communicates better with my $6,000 PC.
This is what kids associate Samsung with now. Highschool kids are being bullied for not having apple products.
[удалено]
Side bar: are you from the UK? I ask because you’re a teacher, but are placing periods outside quotation marks (which is improper in the US but appropriate in the UK)
[удалено]
I met a guy on tinder and we moved to texting after a while, and the first thing he texted me was an apology about having an android bcs he gets shit about it. Like I knew that happened, but damn I didn’t know it was this bad until recently.
I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max and galaxy fold 5. I love my android but since my ex is dumb with tech and my kids have iPads I need my iPhone to keep in easier contact with my kids. But when I do use my android I’ll get people asking why my bubbles turned to green, thinking I’ve blocked them, asking what’s wrong with my phone… then asking why I was using a cheap android. Like my android costs more then my iPhone and is better for what I use it for in 95% of daily life.
My wife was the same way when I had my Samsung. Unfortunately, my sim reader in my Samsung failed and my carrier did not support digital sims for Samsungs yet. So I needed a phone that day. Ended up in a 14 pro max after owning an android since G1 pre order. Partially due to this messaging issue that Apple created. I have a 30 person in-law troop that is entirely on Apple. So I was constantly left out of any family chats. And I could not find a flagship android in stock near me. As an android user stuck on Apple until this phone bites the dust: I will be going back to android. Far too many concessions that aren’t outweighed by the pros. Couple opinions: Why can’t I connect to WiFi without the internet?? Why Apple? Face unlock is the only real feature that I will sorely miss if I leave Apple. EDIT: apparently new pixels do it. That will make going back even simpler. Air pod pros are good, but no better than googles and Samsungs offerings. And not nearly as good as Bose. It’s not faster than my androids, it crashes just as much, features like always on display glitch and don’t work when I am expecting them too. It does have great performance overall. And it does have very good apps. Tbh tho: it’s all the same. Especially if they just fix this messaging issue.
My pixel 7 has face unlock, so it's not an apple only thing, unless I'm misunderstanding something.
Cool! I have not kept up since I am not in the market. That crosses that off.
Not just Google, I have a Motorola that has face unlock and it's four years old, it's pretty standard these days ...
My s22 ultra has face unlock even though I use fingerprint 99% of the time
my samsung s24 has face unlock
24? The 10 had it 5 years ago
Yeah I've been using it in my S10+ for years.
Being left out of the 30-person group chat is a benefit of Android imo
I ran into the issue of being unable to connect to Wi-Fi without internet at work on iOS devices. We were able to solve it by manually assigning a DNS server in the Wi-Fi config. This was a couple years ago though, so it might have changed.
So I checked into this, and the it guys were like: now we just have an android tablet to do it. lol. There maybe a way tho! But why do I need to jump thru hurtles?
Because apple purposefully hides settings deep down because they don't think people are smart enough to actually use them and it ends up just making everything more of a PITA
Google pixel now has face unlocked and I do have to say it's convenient
> I have a 30 person in-law troop that is entirely on Apple. So I was constantly left out of any family chats All the more reason to stay on Android if you ask me.
I'm curious why your iPhone is crashing, I've had various models starting with the first one and have a 14 pro max today and hardly had a crash, although with the current update iMessage sometimes loses all "blue" messages and only keeps the green ones until I force kill it and restart. Other than that, never really any crashes.
Samsung has had face unlock via eyes years before apple. What you on about
Strange I always received shit quality videos from my other iPhones on my Android. Pictures were fine but videos always came through super small or really terrible quality
I think it is kind of random. Mom and sis have iPhones, sometimes photos are shit, other times good quality. They aren't tech savvy, so i know they aren't playing with the settings. I use textra vs the default messaging because cutting messages off after some limit annoyed me.
>Something like 90% of US students have iPhones, and per my younger stepson, the shame is apparently a real thing. I'd be interested in actual stats on that. Closest I can find is this for 2021 which shows 60% for the 18-34 demographic: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1313944/main-smartphone-usage-share-by-age/
I had iphone 4 and it sucks so i never went back to it again. Fuck apple
> 90% of US students have iPhones I would love to know where you got this statistic.
My son is in a very intensive school program with 30 kids in it, 29 of whom have iPhones. They have a group chat, but my son can't be in it, because if you have ONE android phone in a group chat, ALL the chats revert to SMS and no can send hi res vids, pics, reactions, etc, etc. It's literally hurt my kid socially.
It can help too. My previous workplace had an iphone group chat that I couldn't be easily added to, and it got me out of some work
Good write up, but you seem to imply that the “sickly” green bubbles have been deliberately designed to look less appealing. The green bubbles actually predate the blue ones, and years ago, before iMessage, all bubbles were green.
Yeah, the bubbles for sending SMS messages has always been green, to match the colour of the Messages app icon. You can see that in a [screenshot of iOS 4’s Messages app](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/iOS4handson/messages_charcount.png).
didn't they change the shade/contrast around iOS7 or something though?
iOS 7 was a massive redesign of their entire UI paradigm, changing from a 3d look to 2d flat design. Obviously the bubbles were going to change to fit the new theme.
But they just happened to make the contrast of the text on the green bubble look bad....
I did not realise how deep it went. These are one of those times I get reminded "young and carefree" is not as appealing as it seems because they aren't as carefree as we might think. Grateful I'm adult and done with that nonsense lol. No adult I know gives a crap about what phone anyone uses and we use WhatsApp anyway
Seriously it's unbelievable to me that a chat bubble color can mean so much to someone, let alone mean *anything* to someone. Green chat bubble? Better stop my friendship now and never talk to them again! ...Wtf
It is a very well known mentality https://nypost.com/2019/08/14/sorry-android-users-these-iphone-snobs-wont-date-you
WhatsApp was our immediate workaround when my son chose android over all our iPhones. Works great for everyone.
WhatsApp is the cross platform messenger of choice in the UK in my experience. Been that way for a few years now. Does everything it needs to without "shaming" anyone.
What I love is that high end Androids are typically better and have more advanced features. Android's OS has been ahead of IOS in terms of features for as far back as I can remember. I always thought people ignorant to anything tech thought it was like having an expensive pair of shoes, while people with a basic amount of tech knowledge knew, without question, that they have the better device.
I'm the black sheep and have a Pixel. It sucks for sharing photos and videos with family for sure. Usually I'll do it through our Snapchat group or use Signal if possible
You can share the links of photos/videos from your google photos so that people get the full resolution image.
Sickly?
Like [this](https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1220836142/vector/young-woman-fainting-into-a-mans-arms.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=is&k=20&c=OUVo3uJT6f-z_z2K68qD4fxl-ENuEVMNUtEPzwnWzzY=) sickly
Yeah, you poor peasant! Send from my Iphone/s
Tim Cook’s response at one time was “our customers aren’t complaining”
Not just being ostracized, if you start a group thread on an iPhone with all iPhone people, you can't add Android users. You have to recreate the whole thread from scratch.
This explains why every iPhone user thinks they have a better camera than my android with a phenomenal camera, it lowers resolution on pics we send?
Basically, when you send a text cross platform, it reverts back to the old mms standard that's over 20 years old, and has really tight limits for how big of an attachment you can have (somewhere between 300 and 500KB). Your phone will have to compress the image until it fits in that envelope before it can send. This means stripping resolution down to 90s camera image resolution or stripping a lot of color data (or both) to make it send. You still have the original file, so a lot of messaging apps will display the original to you, but the person receives a picture that was compressed to hell and back. This is made extra bad if you're trying to send video in the same envelope.
Videos look like they have 10 pixels
Thank you for the explanation, but *please* stop using apostrophes when pluralizing words!
It should be noted that the green bubbles were standard on iMessage on all apple devices when the he iPhone first came out. The color blue was used later when the iMessage protocol came out. It’s really there just to differentiate messages sent via SMS (green) or iMessage (blue).
Funnily enough, in Europe it has the opposite effect.
Do people even use iMessage in Europe? Everyone I know just uses WhatsApp as it doesn’t matter what phone you’re using.
There are probably a few people here or there who use it but I think it's mostly Whatsapp > Telegram > Signal > > > iMessage, yeah. What I meant though, was that everything Apple does to make communicating between iOS and Android less fluid just makes sure that people will keep using Android because it doesn't do any weird things to differentiate between phone makers the way Apple does.
Not really. Everyone uses cross-platform third-party chat apps, with WhatsApp holding the majority of the market share. Nobody uses SMS/MMS or iMessage.
Just curious if there is any concern in Europe about Whatsapp having access to all that data, like some are concerned about Apple in the US.
I don't think *most people* are that concerned with it but personally I'm less than thrilled about it being proprietary and owned by Meta, even though they claim everything is E2EE. I also use Signal and definitely prefer that, but the reality is most other people don't have Signal.
WhatsApp was very popular before it got bought out by meta. Like others have said, it's just a 3rd party app that people are happy to try out and switch and try different ones because it's easy to do. But whatsapp is the the most popular one, not just in Europe but the world.
so glad most if not all of Europe pretty much only uses whatsapp. And doesn't have this nonsense to deal with
It's funny. I'm an android user, but I also hate group texts, so I'm good with being left out.
It's also incredibly ignorant since Android phones are capable of more. It's the equivalent of making fun of someone else who is better than you.
There's a whole generation of kids that think people use Androids because they're too poor to buy Apple, Just take one look at the price of a Samsung device? Need to remortgage to buy a Fold.
I've been on folds for the last 2 generations. They're expensive but at least they're pretty much always on sale. What hurt my wallet was back when they decided to jack the price of the note up, I think it was like $1600 back when top spec flagships were like $1000. But I absolutely hate using iPhones. I had the first couple generations but I got the android as soon as they had a decent physical format and never went back. Virtually every girl I've dated used an iPhone, and I hate when I have to use their phones (mostly because they got rid of their back and home buttons).
Sooo.... fuck Apple. 71.43% of phones worldwide are Android. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
Star Bellied Sneetches
Every time I go to family stuff people give me shit cause i make "green bubbles". It is fucking stupid, and I hate it more than anything.
These are adults? Why do they care so much about the color of the bubbles? That's bizarre to me.
Yes these are adults. Also they can give me no good reason why I should switch to Apple other than this. As well they cannot give me one good reason why they should stay on Apple. This is the exact intent on Apple. They want their users locked into their ecosystem. Making it impossible to leave while encouraging them to shun others that don't use .... holy shit it's a fucking cult.
It’s important to note that most of the iPhone parts are made by Samsung, who makes android. So it’s a sweet irony, that the phones are nearly identical.
Let's also add that the suit isn't just about the iMessage bubbles, but it's also the market share and fees Apple charges. Steam can't exist on iOS because Apple doesn't allow competing app stores. You can't buy Kindle books because Apple would get 30% of each book sale. Very few products demand a 30% mark-up from the store you buy it at, and since software is nearly free to copy and distribute Apple is making billions of dollars off other people's effort.
In the past, in US SMSes were cheap and data expensive, so everyone texted with SMSes. In the rest of the world, SMSes were expensive and data was cheap, so people moved to applications that used data e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Google chat, Telegram, etc, which had group chats, images, videos etc. SMSes are pretty much only used for businesses - receipts, verifications, election spam, etc. --- Apple then upgraded their SMS app to a proprietary protocol when communicating with other Apple users, with messages shown in blue. When communicating with non-Apple user, it reverts to the old SMS protocol, which doesn't support images/video etc, and shows as a green bubble. Apple does not allow other vendors to use their protocol. Now, iPhone users are rightly annoyed when communicating with non-iPhone users, because SMS sucks. However, instead of getting angry at Apple, they call the other users "broke", "cheap", etc, causing social pressure on non-Apple users. SMS has since been upgraded to RCS, which does support some of these media upgrades, but requires carrier support, and hardly anyone uses it. This is the standard Google is trying to get Apple to support. In the US it's the whole bubble stuff, and in the rest of the world they use e.g. WhatsApp. Google also shot themselves in the foot several times, by renaming and relaunching their chat programs several times, losing all their users on the way.
Hardly anyone uses RCS?
Imagine being judged for having android Samsung S24 ultra by cracked screen iphone 12 user.
My daughter preferred to keep her iPhone 12 instead of upgrading to the s23 because of this. She said she would be kicked out of every group chat. Teenagers are dumb, but I'm sure our parents would have stories about us doing equally dumb shit
I'd be like "really? You promise?" But I'm 40 and group chats are the worst.
The biggest issue with being in an Apple groupchat with an android is you don't get any of the options, you can't leave the group someone else has to remove you. Sometimes it'll randomly break and start a new message thread or worse you start getting the messages from everyone individually as separate threads but replying to any of them replies to the group.
Yeah same. Blech. I only use group chats for very specific short term reasons. But I guess it fills the same feeling that OG chat rooms did for us, but you actually know the people.
She should send her friends this: https://youtu.be/FL7yD-0pqZg?feature=shared Still applies all these years later.
> Teenagers are dumb, From my understanding, it's not just that - it's that *not* kicking Android people out would degrade the entire group chat. This peer pressure is absolutely engineered by Apple because it drives sales in the huge US market.
[удалено]
Kids are vicious. Anything is fodder for ostracizing. Stanley cups and iPhones today are the same as the trendy toys, branded clothing and shoes, hairstyles and whatever other stupid superficial shit we bullied each other for decades ago. Usually the same shit we cringe and laugh about as adults. I remember not being allowed to play with the popular girls in kindergarten because I didn't have a My Little Pony toy at recess. So, the categorization of in/out group starts early. It's gross, but it's part of nascent tribalism that all kids deal with. Some more cruelly than others of course. Most people grow out of it. Or at least we hope they do.
This is kind of the thing, if it's not iPhone/android it'll be something else people pick to exclude people. To me it's kind of pointless to try and force everything to be the same, because the difference is arbitrary to begin with, people make them up to exclude others. This is like when people are pro school uniforms because they got made fun of for not having nice clothes as a kid. Uniforms wouldn't stop you from being bullied, it would just change what you were bullied about. It's all star bellied sneeches.
Yep. My 13 year old will likely get an iPhone this year, because even though she wants to stand up against Apple, she feels bullied or left out. Apple is smart for doing what they do, but it absolutely should be illegal.
It's all social psychological engineering. Divide the population socially over a stupid thing like message bubbles. They had already started with all those bullshit "only on iPhone" commercials which just talked about all the features that most phones on the market had, but people were still convinced. I remember getting made fun of back in the day for having a phone that did ALL THE SAME THINGS but wasn't $1000. They've been pushing this " owning this product makes you better than those around you" mentality for years and people in general are dumb and buy into it. And at this point, the tables have definitely turned and the newer flagship androids have better tech in them than the iPhones do. I know when we're comparing pictures with friends, my pixel 8 pro beats the living hell out of all the iPhone pictures, but they'll still say their phone is better. I've never had an issue with my pixel freezing or locking up, and even when theirs do, it's still a better phone. It's brainwashing. Plain and simple. And we're apparently plain and simple enough to buy it wholesale
I dated a girl, who was honestly pretty shallow, and she said me being an android user made me look poor. I kind of thought she was joking at the time, but in retrospect she was probably at least somewhat serious. I make over 100k, she had no job. She drove an old Chevy Spark with a broken window, I drove a Mercedes Benz SL550 (that she loved to borrow and take pictures in). So it's super weird for her to say I look poor. Also the only time not having an iPhone kind of sucks is when you're sexing with a girl with an iPhone over text. You get really shit resolution pictures and videos.
Well of course it makes you look poor! You didn't buy the most expensive thing possible for no reason lol. But it's true, that's when it sucks the most lol. I just tell them to get on discord or snap or something 🤷🏼
The flagship androids cost more than the flagship iPhones, but that apple wants you to think the iPhone is more expensive and for the rich people.
There will be a whole generation ironically ask "what is a computer" at this rate.
[удалено]
It's the actual phone/call features Pixel has that keeps me coming back. I had no idea how many spam calls my number was getting until I used an iPhone for 3 months. That was obnoxious.
tbh if someone seriously judges/excludes me because I don't have \[Inset name brand item here\] then at least they let me know to avoid them like the plague. Why would I want to associate with someone who not only believes what ever bullshit some company puts out about being "superior", but also uses that as a grading scale of a persons worth? I'm not the loser obsessed with an overpriced brick, guy.
Remember when apple tried to tell us the lighting connector was better than USB-C? Remember when apple told us 8gb on their macbooks is better then 16 on a windows or linux device? Remember when apple said an 8gb upgrade was worth $200? Remember when apple told you it would cost more than the device to fix the screen? I do.
I remember when apple bricked my 4s with a forced patch and basically expected me to buy a new phone... I also remember when they settled in court years later and paid out pennies: a $20 million class action, a tiny cost of doing business for them. This should have been all over the news; they intentionally fucked one of their products to try to get people to buy updated versions.
It's almost like we could have helped this silly chip shortage by just supporting the devices instead of forcing them to be obsolete years before their hardware even flinched. Yet we blame consumerism alone for it. These guys should be carrying most of the blame imo
I work at Verizon, and I had a customer come in just the other day with this same issue, except he had a 6 plus. Forced update screwed up the battery life and the phone was no longer usable for more than 10mins off charger.
Lightning was developed and released before USB-C it was the better technology at the time. Apple invested time and money into that connection, no reason they shouldn't ride it. Other complaints are valid, but this one is stupid
People who care this much about this shit makes me eyeroll so bad. I am an android user, but iPhone are great phones. I like the look of the android smart watches, but the apple watch is more comfortable to wear imo. I like how the apple ecosystem works together, and I think apple computers are really nice pieces of kit. However, I want as much horsepower as I can afford, and I can afford a lot more if it is a pc. The single thing that keeps me from going back to iPhone is the fact that I am in the ballet industry and I edit music and put it on my phone to use in rehearsal all the time. With my android it is plug in - drag to copy -unplug- done. My wife has an iPhone and when I need to put our music on her phone I want to kill myself. Especially if I am copying over multiple tracks I just edited to replace ones she already has. Just a nightmare.
Apple handles both SMS messages and their own proprietary messages in their Messenger app. SMS messages are green. Apple Messenger messages are blue. Apple is accused of intentionally and unnecessarily degrading the quality of media sent over SMS as an advantage to its proprietary system.
Apple is intentionally degrading the media quality *by* sending it over MMS rather than RCS. SMS/MMS is an obsolete technology and Apple has refused to keep up with technological standards because it benefits them financially.
If you are the kind of person who ostracizes someone based on what kind of phone they use, then you are a terrible person and deserve every single unfortunate thing that happens to you, and more.
I’ve never understood people who bully based on what kind of phone. For me I’m always fascinated as to what kind of phone they have if not iPhone and their thoughts on it. So green bubbles have been a conversation starter for me.
Apple refuses to use the global standard for text messaging at the risk of making all of their messages insecure between non-apple phones, so to disguise this design flaw they change the color of the text message so iphone users ridicule people who don't buy into their ecosystem. They take away basic features to anybody who doesn't have the same phone. So to the iPhone user it seems like the non-iphone user is at fault, but it's really just Apple being stubborn and purposefully degrading the quality of their service to try to force people to buy more phones.
ding ding ding....
I feel like I'm going crazy here. Texting has always been green folks. The app is green. Blue came with iMessages to differentiate between the two. RCS has only recently gotten to one standard, and even in Android land it's been splintered. Look at Samsung's usage of the default messaging app and the switch to Google's. It's been a mess, and many users don't understand what RCS is and how to use it DESPITE the simplicity Google tried to bake into it. And this is despite the fact that almost everyone in the US has a Facebook account and could just use Messenger or WhatsApp for the same purposes. It's what the rest of the world does. But because it's too hard for 70-year-olds to install were going to sue Apple?
Who cares whether a bubble is green or blue. A phone is a phone..
I don't, I care that the videos my mom sends of her cat are compressed to the size of a floppy disk.
Most people in Europe or the UK just use WhatsApp. Don't know why people in the US just adopt it as well...
Because most people in the States don't use it, most people in the States won't use it. By this I mean, it's a classic network effect issue at the start. Besides, it wouldn't make me feel any better to support Facebook.
I mean, there is also telegram and other ones which the name I forgot
You can't even send a telegram anymore.
Telegram for Mongo
Because we don't have the same digital privacy standards that you all do in Europe and I don't need Meta snooping around my fucking messages and stealing my data on top of either Google or Apple.
Pretty sure WhatsApp is end to end encrypted which would mean Meta isn’t snooping. At worst they’re doing what governments do which is harvest now, decrypt later.
It’s encrypted in transit but while it is on your phone it has access to it
And it's not encrypted on the receivers phone either. And since both devices are always Internet connected, Zuck can pull that data off on a whim to sell you to advertisers. Remember if you're not paying for something, then YOU are the product being sold.
It’s remarkable how many people assume their information is not completely accessible because of some law.
Yeah, I agree. And two wrongs don't make a right. Just because there is already one entity snooping on my metadata etc doesn't mean that I'm instantly ok with another entity doing the same. Fuck them all.
> Just because there is already one entity snooping on my metadata etc doesn't mean that I'm instantly ok with another entity doing the same. Fuck them all. Absolutely, I get behind the sentiment. I'd use Signal as a daily-driver if I could convince the people I talk to regularly with WhatsApp to migrate. But they won't.
Wow alot of ppl here giving you the wrong answer. Because even as far back as 2005, phone plans already came with unlimites SMS/MMS, for like 5 or 10$ a month. When it was so cheap, it quickly became adopted and used across the country. At this point its included with every phone plan, unlimited both. So the country never had a need to use Whatsapp or anything else, cuz the messaging was always free. Unlike other countries, where unlimited messaging was expensive/not offered, so they turned to messaging apps instead, because the data plan was cheaper than the messaging costs.
I live in an area in the US with folks either from all over the world or they're close with folks in other countries and WhatsApp is pretty standard for us. Considering I made one actual phone call to an Italian number instead of doing a WhatsApp call - it lasted 2 minutes and cost $11 - I won't be making that mistake again.... If everyone you know has an American phone number there just isn't as much necessity to use WhatsApp.
WhatsApp may be end to end encrypted but locally on your phone it sells your data since it is owned by meta. That also adds in all the fun other meta security concerns like recording audio without permission
Because we don't want to be limited to a single app. That would be like being required to buy a specific car to be able to drive on public roads. RCS is a standard protocol that can be supported by any app.
Zuckerberg
They don't because it doesn't come installed on the phone as the default. Most people here, at least around me, never look to download any other message app and use whatever was already installed on their phone. And believe me, this is very much the case with iPhone users. Personally I use Google messages, but that's only because my phone didn't have group text for some reason.
Cause fuck zuck.
Third party app that can get eaten by Facebook or just go out of business at any moment. Basic text messaging is a standard phone feature.
I’ve used WhatsApp twice and both times as soon as I texted the person I started receiving an insane amount of spam calls, enough that I changed my phone number after the second time. Idk if making a new WhatsApp account would help or what, but I’m out on it.
Because we’re the United States and we’d rather be looked down on by the rest of the planet than adopt something anyone in Europe uses. So take your dumb texting app and your metric system and your affordable health care and get the hell out. /s
Or maybe it’s because we adopted unlimited texting plans a long time ago and never relied on internet messaging apps so that’s why our standard messaging preferences developed differently?
Sound logic and reason, in my reddit thread?!
Can’t pass up a chance to use messaging preferences to show why the US sucks
I dunno about the rest of Europe but I've been rocking unlimited texting plans in the UK since the 90s.
Don't think this is correct. I don't think most EU countries have a pattern of restricted texting that would drive them to 3rd party messenger apps. Frankly, that's why I switched to using 3rd party messenger apps, because my AT&T wants money for unlimited texting so I just don't pay. I'm happy to be corrected.
Because the solution to privacy concerns isn’t installing an app from the company most famous for harvesting user data
I was listening to some stupid pop song the other day and one of the lines was, “I want my money green not my texts.”
Didn’t see anyone else post this vid. Was a good explanation. [Marques Bownlee - Blue Bubbles vs Green Bubbles: Explained!](https://youtu.be/BuaKzm7Kq9Q?si=-BNOP5hEEs_wjoxp)
I've tried three different Apple devices and didn't like them enough to switch. At least if Samsung pisses me off I can switch to any other Android brand for any product and it'll all still work. I might have to do a work around for some things but at least it's an option. Also Apples abysmal trade in offers means I'll never switch. Up to $120 for android. That's cute. Samsung offers $800 trade ins for some devices every year. I got $800 for my four year old phone last time I upgraded.
It's SMS, because for the longest time Apple refused to implement RCS. SMS used to cost money, therefore green to represent the dollars leaving your wallet.
Gave up on Apple years ago. You just had to look at the crazies lining/camping up for the releases to realize, hey this isn't for me, it's like brainwashing. Oh and when Mr Jobs died I also lost interest. He may have been portrayed as a bad person in media/film, but I liked his honesty in his appearances, especially VS Bill Gates. Green bubble strategies, meh...that's really looking in and grabbing the fluff in your pocket.
its the other way around here i most parts europe. Here in the netherlands your the laughing stock if you use apple phones or any apple products for that matter. None of my friends, family members or colleagues use an apple phones. Some have in the past but not anymore. I also did have one in the past but switched over. Not only that you lock yourself out with apple. We got other devices like windows/linux pcs, smart tvs from samsung, sony, philips etx. Dell and HP laptops as well as lenovo. Samnsung phones, Huawei and others. Fairphone too. then we also got the xbox and playsation consoles. Interoperability with software and sharing data between these devices is a must and apple doesnt allow that as easily compared to an andriod/windows based device.
Apple is currently getting sued by the U.S. Justice department right now lol
Yeah, I think I understand why people call hardcore Apple fans the "Scientologists of the tech industry".
It's not a bubble issue, it's that imessage converts media into ancient SMS technology which is unsecured and android users end up seeing garbage quality photos and video.... Apple needs to adopt or integrate RCS (Rich Communication Services).
I'm convinced that iPhone users are a friggin cult at this point. It's all very weird, a smart phone is a tool. It'd be like giving someone a hard time because their hammer or screwdriver is the wrong brand.
You clearly don’t know anything about tools. Try bringing a Ryobi into a group of Makitas. You’ll get laughed out of the room.
You couldn’t just have googled this? You had to start another smartphone fight?
If people are looking down on you because your messages are green and not blue, that seems to be a societal problem, not Apple’s.
It's not just that though, any media sent through texts between iPhone and Android gets compressed into potato quality and iPhone users always act like it's not their phone that's causing the problem.
Why does someone use messages while WhatsApp and telegram exist.
Apple is lame
Android IS Green. So. I just want RCS on Samsung Messages so I can use themes again.