Must be an American problem. Never heard anyone outside of the US talk about the colour of the bubbles. Everyone uses Whatsapp here.

It's not just green bubbles. Tapbacks are awkward and pictures and videos don't send as reliably.

With my "green bubble" friends, we usually use Telegram or Signal or Keybase instead.

I'd love to see a standardized IM/Text protocol instead of 1000 fragmented platforms. I've got on the order of 10 chat apps on my phone right now, all used in different contexts.

> I'd love to see a standardized IM/Text protocol instead of 1000 fragmented platforms. I've got on the order of 10 chat apps on my phone right now, all used in different contexts.

Apple could easily open the protocol, but they won't. They also won't use any of the other ones so as long as you'll be using iOS, you'll be in the iMessage garden and everyone else will be in another garden.

> I'd love to see a standardized IM/Text protocol instead of 1000 fragmented platforms.

I'm hoping that's what RCS[1] will be (ids? And that's why I referenced it above). It's supposed to by the successor to SMS, but it's been around for quite a while and not adopted, so I'm not sure what's going on with it.

Edit: It looks like as of a couple months ago it's live in the UK and France, and just those two countries.[2]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

2: https://9to5google.com/2019/07/01/rcs-hands-on-not-quite-ime...

The problem is that, as near as I can tell, RCS will eliminate much of what makes SMS an attractive thing.

Try Matrix[1]. It's a protocol specification with multiple open-source implementations. It has federation so that you can choose which server to use (or run your own) and still communicate with everyone else. It has end-to-end encryption (although at the moment it only works in one client, but it's coming along).

[1] https://matrix.org/

Agreed, it's like signal on steroids.

If you have kids that you communicate with, stickers and iMessage apps like bitmoji are a big deal, and Whatsapp doesn’t have them.

Whatsapp really seems to be missing the boat with tweens and teens - that’s cant be good for their future.

I spend lots of time with my teenage nephew—it’s all iMessage, Snapchat, Discord, GroupMe (surprisingly, because I’m old enough to use that!), and sometimes even Instagram DMs. Granted, he lives in the US, so that might change things.

> nobody likes to be a green bubble

Lots of people don't care at all. The only time I hear about this whole "green bubble bad" thing is online. In real life, I have never once encountered this sentiment. (I'm not saying this sentiment doesn't exist IRL, I'm saying that it's not universal.)

Eh, don't want to make any assumptions on your age, but I'm young enough that iPhones were introduced around when I was in middle/high school. Here in the US, living in an upper-middle class area, lots of kids got them right off the bat.

I've never had anyone SERIOUSLY be mad about me being the green bubble, but when you're doing large group text coordination and someone drops me in, then starts doing tapbacks and sending rich media, I get some shit. And it gets thrown out as a joke in general conversation all the time. "Oh, he's a GREEN bubble..."

> Here in the US, living in an upper-middle class area, lots of kids got them right off the bat.

I'm sure that correct, but how common iPhones are, even amongst your age group, greatly depends on where in the US you are. In my area, iPhones are not nearly as common as they are in other areas, and there is generally little peer pressure in the grade/high schools to have them. Having a smartphone generally is expected, but few people care about whether or not it's an iPhone.

I've never heard of this until today, but green is my favorite color. I am confused how two functioning adults can care about this. It sounds like an unreasonably childish thing to care about. If someone has different phone then you and they want you to change to appease them then tell them to deal with it.

The color is simply an indicator of an inferior system. It's not the color itself that people care about. They care about the encryption, quality of media, timestamps, delivery receipts, etc.