And please, spare me the trite 'get new friends' comment.
Wow, okay then.
Anyway, I'd argue that the bubble color serves a useful purpose. At this point I definitely want to know whether someone I'm talking to is SMS or iMessage, because there's a meaningful difference in capability that will affect choices I make (like how to get pictures or video to them). Whether it's colored bubbles or something else, it's going to exist in some form.
I'd be bearish too if that were an important thing to fix, because it's human nature that's the problem, not the technology. The solution is a universal messaging technology that is as good as iMessage and has the broad reach of SMS. Perhaps if Google can get their proprietary extension of RCS standardized and implemented by the carriers directly.
In effect, you are using a third party app (as opposed to stock SMS), but Apple has integrated it into their OS and refused to release versions for other platforms.
https://wabetainfo.com/whatsapp-beta-for-ios-23-19-1-71-what...
I don't want multiple ecosystems that don't interoperate at all. I don't want to give my private conversations over to an ad company like Facebook. I like iMessage because it adds features without taking. I don't worry about what app I need to use depending on who I want to talk to, I just send them a message and move on with my life.
You can run iMessage on Apple devices, nowhere else.
Surely you see the difference.
I know what argument you're trying to make, but I think it is disingenuous to pretend that WhatsApp is free while iMessage is not. As a practical matter neither is free, and both are free.
Have you ever tried to stop having an Apple device? Hopefully better now, but a few years ago there was no way to unlink iMessage. So say good bye to all your Apple friends, as them texting you goes to the Apple cloud and not your new phone.
Deregistration[1] has been supported since November 2014.
I’ve never seen it fall back gracefully. My experience is that there are missing messages, unsent messages and confusing group threads.
I’m not in the US and am in New Zealand which may or may not be relevant.
> Over time, we will be adding all networks that Beeper supports into Beeper Mini, including SMS/RCS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, Slack, Discord, Google Chat and Linkedin.
Green bubbles don't mean "second-class citizen" or "doesn't support proper group chats"; they mean "SMS" (or possibly "not iMessage"; that's not yet clear).
It's extremely unlikely Apple will make RCS bubbles blue—even if they don't make them green (and keep that reserved specifically for SMS), they'll make them some other color.
It's not a way to make sure you can identify the outgroup and shun them; it's a meaningful signal of what technology other people you're chatting with are using, which tells you useful information about their capabilities.
That seems like a false dichotomy to me as those are not mutually exclusive, and indeed can (and are) both easily accomplished with the current system.
Apple does not in any way intend it to be used to identify the outgroup and shun them.
SMS on the iPhone used green bubbles for years before iMessage existed. When iMessage was introduced, it had blue bubbles simply to distinguish it and make clear "these are users of the new service you can video chat with, send files to, etc". Like I said: a useful informational signal.
It wasn't until years after that that this wailing and gnashing of teeth about blue vs green bubbles started. To the extent that such a social dichotomy exists, it is a purely emergent socially-created one, not one that Apple has pushed in any way.
Furthermore, it would be a regression for Apple to remove that useful informational signal just because people are upset that they get accurately identified as "the one in the group who is using a different device, and thus cannot safely be added to group chats for reasons entirely outside of Apple's control".
The bubble color isn't the problem. The problem is, as you somewhat allude to, inseparable from the fact that there is a way to tell the difference between People Using iMessage on Apple Messages and People Using SMS.
The nicest thing about iMessage (for me, at least) has always been that it was a significant improvement to SMS that just worked, with graceful fallback to SMS for anyone who didn't use it. No installing third party apps, wondering if someone new I wanted to contact would be on that messaging app, etc. A nice bonus, but not something that would ever get in my way. Wanting to install a third-party app on an Android phone just to get blue bubbles is weird.