> Before iOS 5, and the release of iMessage, all messages on iOS were green.

The green is inherited from iChat on Mac OS X, which used black text for the green bubbles: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/revie...

But it turns automatically green when you text a non iPhone device.

You have no idea how much of a hot topic this is I modern bullying

This is ridiculous. As someone who suffered greatly from bullying throughout their education, the only way to deal with bullying is punishing bullies.

Bullies will always find something to bully others for, thats why they are bullies and not just expressing a preference.

I’m fairly convinced the bullying problem is a result of a society who treat kids as their parent’s property instead of communal property. Parents enable bullying.

If apple made them all the same color I think bullying would change by around 0%

It turns green when the message is sent over SMS, not when you text a "non-Apple device".

You can send SMS messages to Apple devices, from an Apple device, if you're not signed into iMessage, or they're not, or if your data connectivity is limited, or theirs is.

This! I got sick of iMessage, and I disabled it completely on my iPhone. Everything was SMS, and it made moving my sim card between devices easier. I found that if you don't explicitly turn off iMessage before you ditch your iPhone, no other iMessage users will be able to message you. All my messages were green all the time.

So, you're asserting that the color choice of the bubbles ten years ago was unintentional? That whatever developer coded it had no instruction, Jony Ive & Steve Jobs were silent, and they used a random number generator to pick the hex code?

And additionally, you're asserting that its impossible to change or improve? That its just such an intractable problem which we inherited, and changing it would be such a herculean effort that its not worth moving the needle on?

I've never seen the codebase for the iOS messages app. I believe, even acknowledging that, its probably an absolute mess of legacy code, and I have a ton of sympathy for the developers working on it. I also believe, even acknowledging that, that changing one color is something an intern could do (and because its a big tech product org, there'd be fifty user studies and three orgs of product managers involved and Tim Cook would get a say in it, but those are manufactured problems. Also, let's be clear; if Jobs were still alive & in control, even all those manufactured roadblocks would be torn down, if it were a change he cared to prioritize, because that's the kind of leader he was).

Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional.

I'm asserting that a decision was made that SMS messages were green.

Then a decision was made that iMessage messages would be blue.

I'm asserting this was not done with animosity. It was a decision by Apple's UX team to make it easy to visually identify the difference between the message mechanics and capabilities of the end-user.

It is remarkably simple, effective and easily understood.

If Apple chose to make it so there was no visual distinction between the message sending mechanisms, that would be a worse, and more confusing, user experience.

If Apple changed the colors, whatever the new colors they chose to use would just be the new focus of the debate. It would become "Orange Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles" or "Purple Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles". People would argue that Apple chose the new color based on some secondary negative characteristic of the new color, just as they do today with green.

I'm not asserting that Apple's choice of color is malicious; just that it needs to be improved.

Also, I'm not asserting that Green is bad. The issue is the shade of Green, and the a11y issues it creates. I don't know how you jumped on "entirely different colors" or "the same color"; Android's criticism in the original article is very clear, its an a11y contrast issue with the light green background and white text. That's it. Nothing else.

This issue is, seriously, a lot simpler than you're exploding it to be. Make it 10 shades darker; done. They even have an option in their accessibility settings to make it so. This is a simple change, any a11y expert (including, maybe, the MANY apple themselves employs) would say the way it stands today is bad, but their inaction conveys intention.

Apple has had an "increase contrast" option on iOS, which does exactly what you're asking for, specifically designed for a11y, within the Accessibility Settings panel of iOS, since iOS 8 I believe, potentially earlier. This increases contrasts throughout the entire iOS experience, and yes, makes the green bubbles several shades darker.

They are not "inactive".

(It's also important to remember that the "green bubbles" applies to messages sent, not received. Received texts, no matter to mechanism, are either black text on grey, or white text on near-black depending on Dark mode)

While true, prior iMessage it was only green bubbles. However, iMessage was released with iOS5 and iOS5 and every iOS prior apple went flat, used very different green: https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/04/9ddbf98c-4b94-11e4-b6...

Now compare it to green bubbles today. Anyways, when I had iPhone, flat green bubbles annoyed me. Not because "hurr-durr I have a iPhone and you don't" but because SMS lacked many features and was hella slow to send. Plus, pretty much anywhere I lived I had horrible cellphone reception which made sending SMS a nightmare.