This meme that it's "just about the color of the bubble" has got to die.
Messaging over SMS is way worse in every way. Group messaging breaks inconsistently in ten different ways, you have issues with attachments, you miss a bunch of other features, etc.
When you text in groups as much as teens do, these things matter. Not being able to use half the features you regularly use because one person in the group chat is Android is going to be legitimately frustrating.
What's interesting, however, is why the US population has settled on iMessage for premium messaging features, instead of WhatsApp like so many other countries.
So that's what I wonder about -- why did the US not bother, but the rest of the world did? What was different about the US?
You can’t use iMessage if most other people you are interacting with are using WhatsApp.
There is a real need for better messaging than SMS and MMS. In particular easy sharing of photos and videos is the crucial and central feature. Easy group messaging is probably another important aspect.
So both WhatsApp and iMessage provide these valuable features, however the best messaging service is of no use if you can’t communicate with the people you want to communicate with.
Because of the Android and iOS duopoly I would typically expect the cross platform solution to win out for such a use case, even if it is a bit more inconvenient.
What iMessage has going for it is that it has a relatively transparent fallback mode – I think that made it even possible for it to compete.
However, the US is still the clear aberration here, not the rest of the world. It seems to just have worked out there in a way where the critical mass of iOS was there to make this happen and last (at least for a bit).
Still, I can’t see the big crime Apple supposedly committed here. Their approach of building on top of SMS is completely valid and makes tons of sense.
> So that's what I wonder about -- why did the US not bother, but the rest of the world did? What was different about the US?
Not sure about the rest of the world, but India specifically, has more whatsapp users because we have more Android users. iPhone is considered more of a luxury here, even now and with millions using android devices, ios users do end up downloading a common app that everyone has. Also helped by the fact that there's no standardisation of message apps in android, though Google messages is trying RCS, more than half the phones don't ship with Google messages, even the close to stock ones like OnePlus have their own implementation, so a third party became standard for even android to android communication.
I think you have to switch your assumptions around. The cross platform solution of a communicator should be considered more likely to win out in a competitive duopoly.
iMessage defaults to SMS on Android- and SMS is legacy technology in Europe. Thats what stopped iMessage gaining traction.
When you add 1 phone number to a groupchat and now you can’t: Name the group Kick someone out Mute the group at night Send attachments at not potato resolution
Yeah it leads to some resentment
Think about it like this. You're low/middle class but your kid goes to a school where almost literally everyone else comes from a millionaire family. All the other kids play golf or some other expensive hobby. You're either forced to start paying for that as well or risk the fact that your kid will most likely be left out and ostracized by the rest.
If you _chose_ to send your kid to that school and it had nothing to do with education standards or prestige of being at a "better" school, then you effectively chose to bear the extra costs associated with it, but if your kid just goes to that school because it's their only real option, would you think it fair?
Nobody forces you to use iMessage. Use Snap, Whatsapp, Telegram, FB messenger, whatever. You don't need to be upgrading with every cycle (or even every other cycle) either. I am on my 4th smartphone since 2008, replacing a battery is cheaper that replacing phones. And if your teen insists on the latest&greatest instead, that should be your problem, not Apple's.
Without their walled garden Apple is nothing but a commodity hardware maker and those do not survive for long on this side of the Pacific.
This isn't a case of fair play among competitors. iMessage, unlike the other options here, is baked-into the iOS SMS client, and it's not obvious to a non-technical use how to opt-out of using iMessage services. It's akin to if Android, as a default, inspected your contacts list and hijacked outgoing SMS messages for delivery via Hangouts.
Also, integrating SMS with online messaging and giving people free chatting are Very Standard terms of competition for the hot and overcrowded chat app market, and it's precisely this which has gotten some people so bothered.
More to the point, Apple is not responsible for the visibly poisonous affects of classism on children, and Apple is not morally culpable merely because they indicated to you what's free and what's not. The families whose children are hurting each other should gather as a community, look each other in the eye and ask what's happening.
Nike also serves as a symbol of class — should we blame Nike when kids laugh at no-brand shoes?
Someone just needs to meme us teenagers to switch to a better chat client.
I still use iMessage if someone send it to me, but I’m glad to have switched to other chat clients because I have far more affinity toward my friends than I do this half-forgotten messaging service.
It pays around $12B a year to shareholders, which today comprise a large percentage of the US population.
It has 137,000 employees making an average comp north of $200,000 a year.
It’s the world leader in consumer computer products and leads its markets in customer satisfaction measures.
What is this not much else you speak of?
Paid is very strange term to use to describe it. They sold 3rd party software to users, while taking 30% cut.
Appstore model is as old as civilization - middle man reselling stuff. Some middle mans are more effective than others, and true, Apple is one of them. But that doesn't change characterization of the relationship. They don't pay developers for their service, they resell their stuff, while keeping hefty profit margins.
The entire mobile app market was not even one hundredth the size of the App Store before it was created.
The walled garden Apple created made safest and easiest app purchase environment ever, which is why it attracts the highest spending by app customers and highest spending app customers.
If Apple had taken the Google play route that $35B a year would be closer to $4B a year.
Why is this always added as if it's relevant? If I'm selling an app on both stores I care about how much money I can make in total, how many Android phones have been sold globally is just trivia.
If you don’t like the ratio, just say App Store sales are 50% higher than Android.
That $35B didn’t exist until Apple created the iPhone and built its walled garden.
Next we'll say that accepting Nike's swoosh is pandering to Nike, and look at all the poisonous affects Nike's swoosh is having on kids with no-brand shoes.
Also, apologies for getting a bit political, but I came from a country that got screwed up for 100 years because a small group of people who loved "corporation making a few people wealthy beyond all imagination" language got into power in 1917, so I'm quite sensitive to it, so what if instead we say:
"a group of 47,000 Americans who make anyone a little bit wealthier if they buy a bit of AAPL"?
We call them public companies for a reason
In 2010 the've introduced FaceTime (revolutionary back then, especially on poor connections) and wanted to make it open, open standard etc. But they got half a billion lawsuit from a patent troll over P2P patent infringement.
In 2011 they've introduced iMessage that also relies heavily on p2p too.
It is 2020 and they are still fighting this troll in court over facetime 2010.
search: apple vs VirnetX
Knowing that, I just don't see this as clear cut as you on Apple being sneaky on teen psychology
> Apple decided to redesign how it did FaceTime on a technical level as a way to bypass the patents (in essence, it stopped using an IP address as final authorization when creating a VPN between two devices and instead uses a push token, certificate and session token).
https://www.theregister.com/2019/11/25/apple_facetime_patent...
In continental Europe youngsters all use Snapchat or WhatsApp or Facebook messenger or Telegram for group chat, all cross platform.
iMessage is never the default one because that would exclude lots who don't have iphones even though Apple's products are a status symbol amongst school children.
TL;DR: you can't make fun of your colleagues who can't afford iphones if you're unable to chat with them ;)
My understanding is SMS never got anywhere as popular in the EU.
At the time, the alternative was to either pay a per message fee or pay monthly for an unlimited text messaging plan.
Unlimited messaging without extra fees was quite a draw.
Anyway, UK was/is a lot more aligned to the fads in the US than in continental Europe to which I was referring to since the UK is no longer in Europe ;) j.k.
Also unlimited messaging plans back then weren’t a thing in Europe yet either.
Still updating? Remember me any Android phone with 5 years support?
> Just buy an iPhone, problem solved. Just stay in debt to a major mobile carrier. Just keep upgrading. Just stay locked in.
Price comparison isn't so critical. Are you really need the latest pro model? Google privacy sucks 'cause ads pump - the main reason why I use iPhone and recommend it.
Another way still exists - play with Hackintosh & AirMessage.
But I have also found this true working with clients. They'd be like "you don't have an iphone?" and I'd have to show them my beautiful purple Xperia 1 to demonstrate why, but that should be redundant.
But what I have also found is Android's negelgence. The standard Messages for Web was broken for myself, and is broken for many people (will keep disconnecting from phone). They seem to have introduced new "chat features" but they had yet to show up.
Worse yet, my international Xperia wouldn't send group MMS properly with the standard Messaging app. But it would work on other apps.
That is why I would highly recommend the Pulse app. It has dual sim support as well as a snappy web interface. It really should be the standard.
I find joy in customizing my phone and figuring these things out, but the defaults need to be more sensible for android users. Nothing could be worse than cheaper phones subsidized by bloatware (ux wise).
They (or their parents) are being forced to spend large sums of money just to be locked into this card ecosystem, so that they can play with their friends. The company designs these cards with certain appealing colors and characters, and charges a hefty premium for them.
And anyone who can't afford to buy the cards (or is threatened with copyright violations if they make their own) is left out of that community.
And every year I'm forced to buy a new set of cards just to keep up with friends. Clearly they've engineered some addictive property into these cards to produce that very effect.
---
Is this similar enough? Or maybe it's the NFL or NBA or Nike shoes, or little league hockey, that we should cut/paste in there?
You can print proxies but better yet you can use a program like magic workstation to play any cards for free if you don't post the official wizards one. As long as they don't look like real MTG cards it's ok usually.
Most people offline carry more than one deck too. I don't see any of your issues as a real problem at least in my life its always been fine.
What other human natures do you try to change?
What are you railing against? Capitalism?
If that’s capitalism then yes, I’m against that. I don’t agree that is or has to be capitalism, though.
I was trying to contribute to the discussion by suggesting possible consideration that might help you reflect on your position, and not to be a contrearian, as your snide remark about internet access might suggest.
In any case, you presented hard problems with no easy solutions. Solutions will always be stochastic, and "to some extent" with any attempt at remedying this stuff.
For example children don't frequently watch commercials directed at them on TV. If you consider that to be a psychological effect with some kind of remedy through regulation, then hey, there you go. An example for you.
Have a nice day.
I live in a place where gambling is illegal. I spent years in private poker games with tens of thousands on the table.
What difference would that have made?
I don't think even those that are complaining are complaining about the colour - just that it's differentiated in any way.
I'll leave the why of that as an exercise for the reader.
> “When I asked a senior Apple executive why iMessage wasn’t being expanded to other platforms, he gave two answers,” reports Mossberg. “First, he said, Apple considers its own user base of 1 billion active devices to provide a large enough data set for any possible AI learning the company is working on. And, second, having a superior messaging platform that only worked on Apple devices would help sales of those devices — the company’s classic (and successful) rationale for years.”
https://www.cultofmac.com/433784/apple-reveals-why-imessage-...
Apple made a successful product (arguably part of the most successful non-consumable product in human history!) that lots of people use, and prevent the competition from interoperation.
People don’t protest because that once was (still is?) the career goal of most people in business. This website is also an adjunct of a Silicon Valley incubator whose members dream of building something with this level of influence.
Another thing I've noticed is that delivery of SMS to iPhones is very unreliable. I'm not sure why that is but I'll send SMS messages to our family group chat from my Android Device and my partner's phone will ding almost immediately but it can be up to 24 hours before my teen gets the message on an iPhone X.
Do you think Apple should just ditch the radically superior iMessage protocol and force everyone to go back to 30-year-old SMS, which was developed in the mid-1980s? That's not going to happen.
No, no I don't.
> Do you think Apple should just ditch the radically superior iMessage protocol and force everyone to go back to 30-year-old SMS, which was developed in the mid-1980s? That's not going to happen.
Did my post in any way suggest that?
Apple's iMessage platform lock-in and degraded experience when communicating with non-iMessage users has real world social impact not just on children. Awareness ofnthis fact needs to be raised.
It's obvious why Apple does it, iMessage brings people to the platform and locks them in for fear of social exclusion. This has monetary benefits for Apple in other areas such as hardware sales, iap, and the App store.
If Apple offered RCS Messaging support in iMessage, and the green bubbles only indicated unencrypted communication, many of the social maladies of iMessage would go away and so would the motivation to adopt Apple's platform because people largely don't give a shot about e2e encryption.
Remember MSN vs. ICQ vs. AIM? And then apps like Trillian that just ran three accounts in the same UI.
After switching from Android I disabled iMessage for precisely this reason. A green bubble I shall proudly remain.
Apple is known for many things, and they make pretty damn good products, but open standards isn't one of the things they're known for.
You picked iMessage here but you could have picked clothing lines, cars, jewelry, or any other status symbol item.
is a choice.
Nothing is stopping you and your friends from moving to another platform, each with their own """lock-in"""
Do these people complain about each and every feature on other products that keeps someone attached to a platform?