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Apple has seemingly found a way to block Android’s new iMessage app
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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The fact that people care about whether their messages are blue or green is so absolutely ridiculous.
I've known people who literally refuse to message anyone who doesn't use iMessage (and by extension has an iPhone).
Every one of them turned out to be a twat in every other facet of their personality as well.
yeah people should use this a a filter for people they should be avoiding.
That's what I'd do if I ever came across such a person. I haven't had the pleasure yet fortunately.
This reminds me of the blackberry ping days, everyone and their mom acting like a diva for having a sidekick blackberry just to use ping.
Those were better days financially.
BBM was the jam back in the days before iPhone. If you wanted to be in on the group chats you needed a blackberry. In the last little bit they opened it up to more devices but the gig was up.
I still miss their icons.
They were never popular over here outside of business users, I always liked the tiny red LED. Sure, I can make the flag on my iPhone blink on new messages, but it’s not the same
Yes the light was the best. Some of the early android devices tried to carry on with this practice but screen time attention I suspect won the day
But Android phones still have multicolor notification led. In fact it blows my mind that iPhones don't, I wouldn't even consider a phone without it anymore.
Yes had a business owner come in and demand all employee phones be iPhone or get out. Jobs was his personal hero and thought Apple could do no wrong. The issue was the company he bought was run on software made for Windows. A lot of extra effort went into making it work on macbooks he insisted we all use.
In the end he believed he was as great as Jobs. Not sure that's a great role model across the board for those that know more than just the apple procducts. The family values and toxic *work practices were not for everyone.
I was glad to get out of that company and back to my android phone and now Linux computing.
I will say the 3 good things about my iPhone was the camera, the full resolution media sharing with other iPhone users via iMessage, and the gallery uploading to other iOS devices.
The latter two are still a weakness with Google. At least they are addressing it with RCS but its still going to take time. Google photos has cloud back up but I've not really looked into how seamless the media backup to all android devices has been.
Google photos is just cloud back up like iCloud backup for iOS devices.
Google photos is also on iOS devices, so you could have your photos on any of your devices.
Apparently it breaks group chats, notwithstanding that it's an Apple problem, Signal exists and doesn't feature any of this nonsense.
I’m in more than one group chat with android people, and it’s fine.
It’s just that you can’t use some iMessage features. But nothing is really broken.
It’s because it breaks all the nice extra functionality of iMessage. iMessage is closer to Discord chats; You can do things like react to messages, send live emojis, spoiler/emphasize text, edit/delete sent messages, see when someone is typing, see read receipts, automatically send check-ins when you arrive at a destination, draw doodles, send full quality media, share galleries natively, etc… But as soon as someone with an android joins the group chat, all of that goes out the window and you’re stuck with boring old SMS.
Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified, because they’re left with a noticeably reduced feature set as soon as someone forces them to use green bubbles.
The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.
But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.
So why not use something like WhatsApp or Signal instead then? Sounds like a terrible user experience to me. Nobody I know uses iMessage, everybody uses WhatsApp instead, which is platform agnostic.
But I'm European, so the iPhone penetration is lower iirc and they can't stay in their bubble as much.
Because Whatsapp users are just as big "twats" as you call it. Try functioning without Whatsapp in Europe, you can't, and no amount of excuses will get you out of it.
Any messaging network starts acting like peer pressure once enough people around you are using it
I'm personally dying to see the DMA do its magic. If there's even a dreamy chance of not having to have the big messaging apps installed on my phone in order to talk to people on these platforms, then I don't want to stop dreaming.
In theory it would be trivial to open up the big networks, if they were each willing to expose a public, open API. The APIs don't even have to be interoperable directly, they could let the client apps deal with that. It could be rolled out super fast if they wanted to – couple of months.
But of course none of them actually wants this, so I expect they will fight it tooth and nail, while not appearing to do so. Meaning they'll drag this out for as long as possible while blaming each other. I expect RCS will be a perfect red herring for this, because of its complexity and the ability to blame interop issues on each other.
Wut? I’m in Europe and I’ve never had WhatsApp in my life.
My point wasn't specifically about Whatsapp, it's that you have to use what the others around you use.
is bullying justified
Welcome to Middle School. Blue bubble and 'Find My' support are feature drivers. You're either in or out.
Ironically, Spotify and x-platform playlist sharing (aka mixtapes) drive counter-adoption.
Go figure.
Beeper is more than that. Beeper MINI is about that. But I've been using Beeper on my PC for the past year because I am so tired of picking up my phone a million times a day just to send someone a message. I'd say probably 90% of the people I know use iPhone/iMessage so having the ability to message them on desktop was a lifesaver for me. Really bummed it's not working anymore.
Why doesn't apple make web messaging available like Android?
Then you won't need Apple hardware to use it
Messaging apps in general are basically walled gardens.
Gasp, we should try making a federated alternative.
This is literally perpetuated by schoolyard bullying. Anyone over the age of 20 will very likely be entirely out of touch with how big a deal green/blue is for pre-teens and teens these days. It’s pretty much a cornerstone in teen social structures.
I don’t know what may have changed as I am an iPhone user, but about 10 years ago I worked in a small security role for a fairly large company, and the communications company we were using was more than happy to hand over sms logs as plain text. I would personally never send messages to anyone I was sure wasn’t encrypted and I can tell that by the blue bubble. I just don’t know when it is green.
I don’t know what has changed as I don’t keep up with it, but I am still dubious about messaging outside the Apple ecosystem, which is ok for me as I live in a country where most people use iOS
RCS on Android defaults to E2E encryption now since some year back, and Signal has been around for a long time now
Uh. It's not that. Along w that is videos w potato quality, messages that never make it. Of course anyone reading your comment knows you missed the point.
Yeah.
Because Apple has a proprietary messaging format. They won't adopt the standard the rest of the world uses or open theirs up for others to use.
They uh… are going to support rcs very soon so…
By choice or by force?
Hard to say. I think some eu stuff might have pressured a bit
Doesn't change that it's shitty now and has been for years.
They don't get credit for the EU pressuring them to be less shitty.
Yeah, I get that I wish they had done rcs earlier or whatever. Like I get not opening iMessage up, but at least support the best standard out there would be nice. MMS and sms are garbo
It's not blue vs green but encrypted or not.
It's definitely the blue vs green bubbles. Your average user doesn't even know iMessage is E2EE. They also don't care.
Def agree that the vast majority don't care about E2EE (though that's probably growing with more news articles like that one where they went after someone for abortion and got their Facebook messages to prove it) I think it's less about blue/green and more about how shitty the interop is. I don't know anyone who is like "I won't talk to green bubbles" but I know plenty who get annoyed when it fucks up the group chat or either side is stuck looking at a postage-stamp sized grainy image (if it even gets delivered.) Really, really blows that the predominate message services in the states are Apple-only iMessage, owned by Facebook, or SMS. I'm over 30, so I am not on Snap and most of my friends aren't, I refuse to use Facebook products, so we're stuck with SMS.
Yeah use Signal. Encrypted messages without a thousand dollar dependency.
Its not absolutely ridiculous and you sound like an idiot who thinks that everyone lives in the same little bubble as you.
Thanks for proving my third statement.
You sure it's about that? What I heard is that being outside of "trusted" zone means less features such as media and encryption. Also the person in this article says apple users are basically forced to use sms to send messages to Android users. I too would not want to resort to plain paid messages if my partner doesn't have the right app.
IPhone users have access to WhatsApp, Signal, and other apps android users use to communicate without sms
The problem is that, in the US and Canada, android users don’t tend to use those apps en masse. The vast majority use SMS.
I think at this point the majority of Android users use RCS, which Apple is actually going to implement next year.
That's good to know. Though I wish people I knew, both apple and android, would switch to Signal instead.
It's not as good as we want it to be. Those using RCS on Android are almost all using Google's specific implementation, Apple is instead going to be using a more standard implementation. It's probably going to work better than SMS, but it's going to be a far cry from everyone just using any modern internet messaging service.
Yeah, but iphone users are different as they already have some default app that they could use instead of installing other apps. Wouldn't they want to use that default app as often as possible if their partners have the same ability from their pov? I mean it's not about the color as the original comment thinks, but about the stuff that the different color implies. Not the thing that is nice to the eyes, but the actual convenience and price.
I worked in the cellular space for about 20 years off and on before moving to other pastures. I guarantee you that maybe one in a thousand think like you.
BY FAR the average buyer that Apple targets come in two flavors.
First, the "I'm cool and all my friends are doing it" and second is the "I'm the father, I don't personally give a shit but my daughter/son wants us all to be on iMessage."