US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
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But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's.
Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. There was a period of time where everyone used Hangouts, and they did a brilliant job getting market penetration by including it in Gmail. It's cross-platform, so it could have been the lowest-common-denominator in over the top messaging services, the thing that everyone knew everyone else could use when you want something that's not SMS or kludgy MMS.
But Google snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, seemingly intentionally driving people off of Hangouts into other apps. This was incredibly stupid -- when you tell your users to switch to a different app, they may well switch to a competitor's. If they wanted to roll out additional features, they should have done it in Hangouts, not by building new services. (And RCS is garbage. I don't know who wants a carrier-dependent, unencrypted messaging service in 2019, but certainly not me.)
The lack of a viable iMessage alternative is entirely because of Google's failure to invest in the Android platform and produce one.
iMessage has lots of problems. I've screwed it up a lot of times switching SIM cards, I can never understand why it needs to know if I want to contact my iMessage contact by email or by phone number, or why the messages thread differently depending on what I use. But it GENERALLY works okay.
Meanwhile, I use Signal with one friend, and just about every time I launch the damn app on my phone or desktop, it complains that I need an update, or I need to re-link something, or my safety numbers of changed, or some such crap.
And it's all better than Messenger.
And all of THAT stuff is better than Google's incessant abandonware. I loved hangouts.. until I didn't.
If you regularly need to relink Signal Desktop, it is likely your disk is failing and corrupting the sqlite DB that Signal Desktop uses. Back up your other data ASAP!
All it needs is research-verified encryption!
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/74d5ce00-12dd-11e6-839f-292294709...
Also, Signal didn't quite work in the UAE.
The fact is, Google doesn't yet have a replacement for something they stopped developing years ago. It is completely insane.
The latest update to chrome on Android in the last few days removed support for 90/120hz devices. Now everyone who was enjoying a nice smooth chrome experience on the OnePlus 7 pro, Razer phone, etc. has a nice jarring switch to 60hz when they open chrome.
This happened at the exact same time as they announced the new pixel 4 would be a 90hz phone, with exclusive 'smooth display'. Bleh.
Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app.
In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning?
Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).
People very frequently exchange data other than pure text when event planning: GIFs, map pins, tapbacks to express [dis]agreement, etc.
> The SMS protocol makes "tap backs" and stickers and other stuff work differently (and worse).
I have. MMS always has problems, and can result in extra charges from mobile network if it’s an international number. iMessage or whatsapp gives me confidence that it’s using data only and I won’t experience any charges, I can use it via WiFi without a mobile network, it’s not tied to my phone number for when I leave the country and change SIM, and delivery of messages is confirmed.
I also prefer iMessage due to Apple’s stances on privacy, and integration with macOS.
There are a number of things that iMessage does that SMS doesn’t support.
That's a sneaky odd bit of social engineering. Wonder how many iphone sales they've actually gotten because of this.
That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods.
Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that.
[1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/
I haven't found anything on Android that allowed me age-appropriate fine-grain controls that didn't require exceptions like turning the entire rule off just to allow a single purchase, or having the same functionality controlled in two or three different overlapping spots, etc.
If you really want to see how bad it can possibly get, take a peek at Amazon's Fire Tablet parental controls. Those take the cake for opaque settings that sometimes do what they say, sometimes much more, sometimes nothing.
On iOS you can disable installing apps, uninstalling apps, updating apps or disable the app store completely using Screen Time and before that you could (and still can) require a password/fingerprint/face ID for any app install including free.
It would take almost no effort from Google's part to replicate the last of these (add an option requiring a password to install any app, even free with lowest rating) but they seem to be unwilling to do so.
If I want to hand my own phone over to a child for a while, there's no way (that I've found anyway) to prevent a child from installing all sorts of crapware on it.
With Google lacking any real leadership in the Android division(See Wear OS) this problem won't be solved anytime soon. I recently switched from Android to iOS because I have faith in their ecosystem and vision. Sure it's a walled garden, but I'd rather have a nice walled garden that's tended to than a forest with no supervision, direction or purpose.
If they made spoons they'd be sharp. You'd cut your mouth on them, but they'd be insanely efficient at scooping ice cream, although entirely useless to a normal human as a spoon.
The _only_ universal _carrier_ solution for messaging is SMS. What does iMessage do to get to all cell phone users? That is the only thing that matters here. full stop.
I have many relatives that wanted me to "install" Whatsapp. I refuse. So whatsapp is the failure here? Or is it me because I refuse?
What is garbage is OOT.
Google is not the failure. Hell, the problem is right in the title of the OP: "Lock-in". At least google is trying to get SMS into the 90's.
You know what, I'm drunk and tired here... it's really just ignorant users that don't understand why everyone just doesn't use iMessage (apple proprietary) vs not understanding how open standard protocols and file formats work (email). We'll each be fighting this war till the day we die. It's in our nature.
SMS fallback. iMessage is the default SMS app. You send a message to a phone number. That’s it, you’re already using it. If they have an iPhone too you get extra features.
From an onboarding and UX perspective it’s genius/obvious.
It falls back to using SMS if you don't have iMessage.
I'm not sure we agree on what the problem is? If Google monopolized years ago, the story would play the same - only now it's the kid without Hangouts/Gmail. Sure, you're not locked into a physical device, but you're still locked into a service, and that's not guaranteed to hold true forever.
IMO we need a modern messaging standard that's vendor agnostic. SMS/MMS were good but feel ancient now. XMPP seems promising but there's too many extensions such that it's nearly unusable for the layman. I don't see an obvious solution, and asking the top vendors to collaborate on a common messaging protocol seems like a far cry.
But just because it's the best technical solution doesn't mean it'll take hold. If the best tech always won, we'd have adopted XMPP a long time before Matrix was created.
Sadly, I'm beginning to think the only way we're gonna put a stop to this crap is to threaten companies like Apple with antitrust regulation for such actions.
This isn't Google's fault. It's low education users who get whatever phone their parents bought.
And going even further back in time, RIM/Blackberry could have owned the space. Instead they focussed on hardware instead of the real driver of their sales: BBM.
Their market cap these days is $4b, while Whatsapp sold for $18b.
It didn't help that Blackberry's comms encryption for consumer devices was complete and utter garbage.
I would rather have Apple win the network effect here vs another data pimp like Google (who, ads aside, can't be trusted to maintain any communication platform).
I would much rather this all be standardized with end to end encryption protocols. (C'mon Signal!)
It's still vendor lock-in. Just not to the same extent.
To what does Whatsapp revert when the recipient doesn't have Whatsapp?
The suggestion of WhatsApp is so that everyone can use their own phone and have full features. If someone wants to join the chat, then its on them to get on board with what everyone else wants.
However, when a community of people chooses Whatsapp as the exclusive form of communication, everyone in that community is forced to get that app or be left out of the loop. Those who object to installing Whatsapp because of the serious privacy controversies surrounding its parent are left with no choice.
This is where Messages shines, as it doesn't exclude those who can't or don't want to get an Apple device. And while the SMS fallback is indeed degraded, it still fulfills its basic promise: quick textual exchange of information. Additionally, if the recipient does get excluded because of the degraded experience, it shifts the fault and liability for not-knowing from the recipient who didn't want to accept the WhatsApp TOS to the senders who didn't provide the information because they didn't like the green bubble, although I'm fully aware that that's not how it always plays out in reality.
Neither approach is ideal, but I believe it's more important that no one should feel forced to install a proprietary app they don't trust just so they can stay up to date with their community, even if they are the single person objecting.
TL;DR Even though it falls back to its most rudimentary form, Messages by default doesn't cut off people that don't bring in any money for its parent. WhatsApp does.
The current situation of competing proprietary non-interoperable systems seems ridiculous.
The issue isn't as much the lack of an open and secure messaging protocol as it is an inability to build a social network on an open client that is as large as the ones that private corporations have been able to build with their closed source solutions.
Their adding of additional features into their messaging apps that add both usability and complexity makes this an even more difficult barrier to overcome.
I've been using riot.im for some time and have generally been pleased with it.
Messages doesn't entirely cut you off from people who don't bring money to Apple, and it doesn't require another app to communicate with them. It will handle and integrate it all in the same interface with iMessage, seamlessly switching in the background to make that possible. Whatsapp, OTOH, plainly refuses to let you interact with anyone who prefers not to accept an intrusive TOS and bring in (ad) money to Facebook.
I agree that both apps have different approaches and both have pros and cons, but I don't support the suggestion that Whatsapp, or any similar app for that matter, is any less "vendor lock-in" than Messages.
I'm unsure of what do you mean when you say you see the same "vendor lock-in" in both cases.
Given the differences in authentication and encryption, I consider that feature to be a security hole. And honestly, in my experience it doesn't work very well.
When I need to chat with folks who don't have an iPhone, I use a different app, like Google Voice or WhatsApp.
Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don't, and use iMessage instead. This isn't an active choice though, it's that they are on an iPhone and using SMS, so they get iMessage by default.
This is a long way of saying that for many Europeans, "Just use WhatsApp" feels like an obvious response, why wouldn't you?
Agreed. When they purchased it, people were obviously concerned, so they promised not to combine it with Facebook Messenger. But, at their F8 conference this year they announced they are going to unify them. So you're right when you say it doesn't feel like a facebook product yet. But, I guess it probably will at some point. I think we all knew this was coming though -- there's not much point in purchasing it if they're not going to leverage it one day.
FB purchased them because they were huge.
Sure maybe the "experience" hasn't changed from a UI standpoint but FB is weakening WhatsApp's end to end encryption and mining your conversations so under the hood the experience is radically different.
There is a reason the founders of WhatsApp quit FB post acquisition (literally leaving hundreds of millions of dollars behind) in disgust over the privacy abuses Facebook was proposing. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-co-founder-explains...
Given their history, I would be surprised if they don't do some on-device metadata analysis.
An anecdotal experience i might just chaulk up to coincidence if not for this but, was talking with a friend in WhatsApp something about babies, my friend was browsing Facebook at the same time about a minute or two after our conversation about babies, my friend started getting a bunch of baby videos popping in her Facebook feed that hadn't been there prior to our conversation.
Actual text of convo: not yet but soon. Metadata: yes.
I'm building Thread - an ad-free, private social network for groups. It's an alternative to Facebook (Messenger and WhatsApp), iMessage and GroupMe. It's the best way to connect with, share content to, and interact with the people in your life.
It's a limited release right now (still in alpha), but please sign up and check it out at https://thread-app.com/register. EDIT: it only is available on desktop web at the moment to US based users. Anything else will most likely give you an error.
E2E encryption is something we are considering building. Right now, the promise is no-ads, no front-end tracking, and no selling data to third parties.
Happy to chat more about it and answer any questions (maybe this isn't an appropriate place for that discussion).
Minor bit of very biased feedback – the name "Thread" is quite overloaded. Thread (my employer) is a clothing recommendation service, ThreadsStyling is a luxury fashion concierge, Thread Group are an IoT specification, Open Thread is an implementation of that spec I believe.
Are you using ActivityPub &c?
Even if it is somewhat bulky, these linked data standards are the way to ensure you are creating the most open, reusable data possible on the largest stage.
And also it goes pretty much in the clear through the global SMS network.
What $750 dongle? You can get an iPhone for like $300 these days.
Forces itself into your life? How? Apple's data security is better than literally every other smart phone provider and its OS is fundamentally less intrusive than Android.
This post is honestly full of unfounded claims, like the rest of this thread. The HN bias towards apple as a company is straight up strange.
Lol, you can't be serious.
And in addition i'm sure you're aware that google paid apple 9 billion last year to make it the standard search engine in apple's safari browser. Just a week ago we learned that apple stores significant amounts of its icloud userdata on third party servers despite not disclosing that fact to its users. (related article: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...)
So if shoving vast amounts of data through the Google ecosystem is your definition of intrusion, you can add apple to the list.
You can also delete your location history data at any time.
And technically, it is not Android the OS that is doing this. It is Google Play framework.
Apple App Store is a walled Garden but the Banking App you get from the Apple Store is guaranteed to be the actual app from the bank it says it is. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/24/google-pl...) Plus the apps on the App Store are often of much higher quality than the Google Play store because of how much more revenue app developers can make on the Apple Store and the better demographics there for most company's targeted audiences.
Apple's voice software is worse because it doesn't do as much machine learning off device and it doesn't try to learn as much about you and communicate it home.
I haven't found any "TV box" to work all that well with a phone. AppleTV does seem to be comparable to others.
These are all trade-offs and subject to the individuals preferences. But saying Non-Apple products don't also "force you" or have trade-offs is misleading.
You can use other voice assistants, you just can't set them as the default (which is a reasonable complaint)
As an Android guy, I have to say that after trying Rokus, Fire TVs, and chromecasts the Apple TV is far from crappy and is honestly one of the best smart TV boxes. Anyway, you can also buy a lightning to HDMI adapter if you want to mirror your screen.
You can't even tell users how to subscribe without giving Apple a cut if you're on iOS. To any normal person that's an egregious abuse of power. Somehow people on HN just suck it up.
Does WhatsApp force a particular voice assistant or app store on you? No? Apple's lock in is abusive.
Stop prostrating in front of trillion dollar megacorps for $deity's sake. Apple is probably the biggest blind spot this site has.
Google forces their App Store and Assistant on you. Your Android phone manufacturer also forces other garbage on top of that as well as locking you into a version of Android with no guaranteed upgrade path. See: Samsung and Bixby.
Get your facts straight, or at least take off the blinders that is your hatred of Apple.
The non-Apple base have decided that Apple is just overhyped over-expensive gear which is only slightly more polished and a lot more locked down than whatever their favourite thing is.
Apple users use Apple products because mostly it’s just honest. You get what you pay for, no hidden agendas, no up-sell.
All concentrations of power are bad. As a society we must always seek to reduce power imbalances, not perpetuate them
WhatsApp is not a mobile OS.
Even the most basic of google searches proves that not true. There are literally dozens of ways to use AirPlay without an Apple TV (or even using any Apple products besides the phone), let alone additional ways which don’t involve Airplay.
iMessage is very different from Whatsapp. For starters, there is no dedicated iMessage app. iMessage is managed from the iOS Messages app, which handles both iMessage and SMS. It's very good at managing both from one unified interface. In fact, it's so good that it uses arbitrary coloring of messages so you can see what message was sent through iMessage and what message was sent through SMS, because you would often not be able to tell otherwise as it's all in the same interface.
A lot of caveats apply here, but broadly speaking, while an iMessage user is typing a message, Messages will contact Apple to check if the recipient is also an iMessage user. If yes, it will try to send the message through iMessage and color the text bubble blue. If no, it will go through SMS and the bubble gets a green color. If iMessage fails in the first scenario, Messages will offer to revert to SMS.
So unlike Whatsapp, Messages doesn't care if the recipient has iMessage or not. And it also does not care if the recipient has an iPhone or not. It will get the message over regardless, as long as the recipient can receive SMS, which any Android phone can. Whatsapp, OTOH, does put the onus on the recipient to have the app. In other words: when it comes to the recipient, Messages (the app) is actually a lot more inclusive than Whatsapp (the app).
These HS teens aren't locking others out because they can't text their Android friends. They perfectly can, as OP from the Twitter thread also acknowledges, from the same app that they use to text their iPhone friends. They lock them out because Messages colors the bubbles green, which has become a social stigma in our high schools. Nothing more, nothing less. So it is not a technical limitation, and neither is it a cost issue, as virtually all wireless plans include unlimited (SMS) texts in the US. It is purely a human factors issue, which teens of all times and generations have been very prone to. As sad as it is.
Why do you think the kids don't like it when a thread is green? Do you think that the kids just don't like the color green? That's not it. They don't like it because the thread being green is an indicator that nearly everything about the group chat experience is going to be worse. Messages will be drastically slower, they will have a higher failure rate, pics/videos sent over that chat will be lower quality, there will be no typing indicators or read receipts, there is no ability to label the chat, likes and other message indicators are more cluttering, etc.
It isn't just high school kids, either. I've seen people at work intentionally exclude android users on group chats because we needed fast responses from people and the 2-3 second delay each way on MMS (and that's best case. sometimes it can take minutes for a single message to go through, if it goes through at all) is intolerable when you're trying to have a fast paced conversation with many people. I've had my friend group (people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s) intentionally exclude android users because they were tired of always worrying if one of their MMSes wasn't actually received by everyone in the group (in groups with android users, MMS failures happened enough to have multiple ruined plans because some people in the group never got all the messages being sent).
This is not just a human problem. These people aren't excluding Android users just because they think blue is a cool color and they want to bully green people. They're doing it because there is a very clear technical issue with SMS where it is very lacking in features compared to iMessage. The colors just happen to be a very easy way to signal whether or not you will be using the superior iMessage or the inferior SMS/MMS.
This and group names are the absolute killers.
It's tough. My understanding is that SMS is at fault under the surface, requiring that images and videos be compressed to fit a size limit (right?).
My preferred solution would be mandated adversarial interoperability.
Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI).
Receiving photos packaged in a google library, for example, is a nightmare.
I don't know the details of the MMS spec, but I know the mms picture quality improved when I switched carriers several years ago.
I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.
(Already not happy with Google having data about me that I do not consent to thanks to people with Android phones)
There may have been a misunderstanding here.
I was referring to an android phone sending me (on iPhone) hosted images as a fallback rather then sending them via MMS (lossy) or google photos (bloated).
As far as Google having data... I'm not clear how what OP proposed would give them any more data than they currently have.
The point I want to make is that Messages is not preventing them from including Android users because they don't have an iPhone, which is a general misunderstanding that I often observe when talking with Android users who use Whatsapp or similar and is also recurring here. If the Android user gets locked out, it's because a human decided to, not because Messages refused to include that user based on ecosystem lock-in (unlike Whatsapp).
However, like Twitter OP, I can testify that teens attach a lot more weight to the blue/green than they should. But then again, it's everywhere in popular culture. Try finding a recent hit movie/TV series or music video, produced in the US, that shows green bubbles (or Android for that matter, even though it has a higher market share).
Have you looked at parental controls for carriers? Chats with green messages are in the log, chats with blue messages are not.
Depending how much they like their parents reading their messages, maybe teens aren’t attaching enough weight.
I imagine they get paid for using blue bubbles, just like other product placements.
That is a feature. Also no "seen" privacy violators.
In iMessage, the "seen" notis (read receipts) are set on the reader side. They're totally customizable and can be globally disabled.
I have them on personally, because I find that it encourages good reply etiquette on my part, but they're easy to turn off in a granular way. chat-by-chat, whenever you want.
I'm not sure how this works for IG, others. I believe in whatsapp you can turn them off at the expense of losing that info for everyone else, but I'm not 100% on that.
The feature is extraordinarily useful in group chats. If you're trying to change venues while coordinating a group activity with people that haven't arrived, you get a realtime picture of who has up-to-date information and who doesn't. Makes a big difference.
- Reactions to messages
- Any applications in group chats
- Encrypted
- Seen and typing indicators
The biggest single thing that I actually care about. There is a nice button "Leave this Conversation" I can click on an iMessage group chat, and it leaves the conversation.
But it will color the bubble green. And that's why they get locked out.
You seem to be attaching too much significance to the color. It really is because the experience sucks over SMS. The annoyance with the green color is just a symbol of that frustration. I implore you, to try having a meaningful group chat with a mix of users. Having just one Android user instantly degrades the experience for everyone involved.
> Unlike Whatsapp, Messages doesn't require that every participant has Messages, nor that they have an iPhone. Messages will send each and every group message to every Android user in the group using SMS.
Messages isn't the problem. Group SMS is.
You are forced into transitioning out of a group chat model, to a broadcast SMS one. All the usual issues apply - increased delays/out of order messages, no read receipts, Android phones randomly creating multiple smaller groups or just shitting out completely.. Any semblance of real-time destroyed.
I'm not. That is what the Twitter OP indicated as the actual reason.
He was left out "specifically because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic). Or in the student's own words: "we would start a new group chat, and the group would realize I was the reason it was green, and they would start another group chat without me". Nowhere is mentioned that the degraded experience is the reason.
It could be that that the SMS experience is the reason when it comes to adults who are mature enough to leave the green/blue behind them but have a lot less tolerance for poor UX.
But for teens - which is what this thread is about - I fully agree with OP's conclusion that the social stigma surrounding the color is the primary reason.
This is a short, colloquial way of expressing all of those frustrations. It’s assumed everyone knows already, not some aesthetic thing.
From poor country to rich country, I have never met teens who are less tech savvy than adults. If anything, adults have problems even understanding the difference between SMS, MMS, and other messaging protocols. Teens are the ones using the new features from iMessages, not most adults.
iPhone users not signed into iCloud, Messages just does SMS, and they’ll turn it green too.
iMessage is ActiveX, not a gift from a benevolent dictator, especially not a gift to the world
Don't blame the kids.
My sister used all of those things as she was growing up in the 2000s and 2010s. The flavour-of-the-day is now iMessage. She sometimes complains that I'm not on the system (supposedly handy to group chat with our mom), but I can't be bothered to follow the latest fad.
We'll see how long that lasts. Maybe at some point the telcos and phone makers will eventually get around to supporting RCS:
iMessage will live on until most people stop using an iPhone in the US because iMessage is guaranteed to be present on your iDevice and usually works reliably enough for a vast majority of the population.
Maybe Apple will be better at staying relevant than Research in Motion/Blackberry.
I feel that if I was a teenager and not an adult, this kind of frustration must result in regrouping iOS only.
I'm in EU, I moved to an iPhone a few years ago and I've yet to receive an actual iMessage, but my friends, local or international, all use WhatsApp. I just use regular SMS for more "formal" messaging, such as with my boss or landlord, or to receive OTP codes.
I think the most popular apps in school for group messages were apps specifically for group messaging, and I can't even remember the names of any because they were so short-lived. The one I used most had a blue speech bubble icon with a # in the middle. I'd put big money that Facebook Messenger fills that void now.
My guess is the majority of SMS usage in the US nowadays is just 2fa and automated messages, with the occasional text to an acquaintance until you add them somewhere else.
I use Facebook Messenger for talking to real-life friends and a couple of online friends, Discord for talking to people I only know online, Slack for work, and SMS for talking to my parents.
Also that green was popular then.
My current group of core friends are storing a party tomorrow and it is simple as it is all the blue text and I can read the messages on everything I own. Having to revert to SMS would be painful.
The funny thing is a few years ago we would all use Google Talk...yah.
Looking at my “chat” folder on my iPad, phone etc, I have Google hangouts (work and gmail friends), LINE (Japan, Korea, Singapore), Meet (google for work meetings), Discord for gaming, and Webex (work for customers that do not use Google for email). It is painful.
I did drop IRC a few years ago..
Only if XMPP had really won...oh well.
I have a hunch that most people who use these tools for group chat purposes don't really care about the features of iMessage that make it horribly incompatible with SMS clients (e2ee, pairing with computers), and just want what amounts to a Discord/Slack/whatever non-threaded channel, but on their phones and with good UX. That shouldn't have to mean lock-out.
I don't blame them. SMS is terrible. And most of the other apps suck or are from untrustworthy companies.
Apple's being rewarded for good behavior.
In that case you can't even remove it to protect yourself.
If it's an activity group they really want to belong to, that's ok. If it's between friends who want to stay close... something's not right.
They got bought by Skype awhile back which is being shelved in favor of Teams. I bet MSFT shuts it down once it remembers it still exists.
Here's a random one that seems to be recent: https://airmessage.org/guide/
1. Apple embraced SMS with the original iPhone
2. Apple added encryption and other enhancements to messages which were not compatible with any other phone
3. Extinguish users who use traditional SMS/MMS by downgrading quality of service and disabling enhances features
What we really need is a universal internet messaging protocol like Email, something that everyone agrees on and can deliver the rich experiences people expect today
I believe the lowest common denominator will eventually win, something like HTML or email. That may be Matrix.
You know what people - iphone users - actually say when there isn't mixed company?
"Android users, especially self-identified ones, lack social cues in many areas"
It goes way beyond an android user letting people know about how much control they have over their phone, which is already missing the cue of nobody caring. It goes beyond green bubbles, which is just the effect and litmus test which has now expanded to a worse user experience in rich interactive group chats.
I'm just quoting the parent comment because it's hilarious. People can gauge your culture by what brand of phone you use? Can you buy a used iPhone and mingle with the cultured elite?
[0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
TBH the biggest driver towards Apple for me (aside from privacy) is now that I am older and have kids and more responsibilities at work and don't have time to tinker I don't want to have to figure out what the best messaging app for my phone is. (I gave up using Linux in favor of MacOS as well for similar reasons).
(Cue all the neckbeard Linux/Droid guys without a family or kids saying "its not hard you just need to...<vaporize 30 minutes of your Saturday or evening>")
Now we're talking, and this is a social cues thing.
For example, a discussion about airdrop - which many android users don't know they are missing - often has an android user rationalizing their existence about some other convoluted way to share images maybe offline that is still worse.
Convincing those people that specs are mere indicators and do not matter in the face of objective UX...impossible.
Really comes down to what you are optimizing for.
And to top it off, the "green bubble" person is mostly oblivious to that happening too.
When I read about trends like the one discussed in this thread, I feel that those who exclude based on technology preferences are more "enslaved" than I could ever be by giving Google my data. Their social behavior is directly controlled by the whims of a large corporation. I understand that it's a product issue but I have a hard time imagining that Apple will do anything to make the whole ecosystem better without benefiting themselves first. Only reason to help Android fit in better is to compete with Facebook, and Messenger probably isn't a big enough competitor right now to trigger a response. So until competition becomes an issue, Apple will continue promoting social exclusion to the detriment of society and likely the mental health of teens, who are already experiencing more depression than prior generations. How is that better than data collection?
Headcount is not “market”, market is dollars to spend.
When comparing Android and iPhone in the US, you need to compare % of wealth, or of disposable income, or some closer indicator of ‘market’ than head count.
Wallet count, not head count.
It is also classism, but not just.
> Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues?
No, but they are getting weeded out all the same along with the privileged enthusiasts that do miss social cues.
> Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android.
Yes, android use, and continued aversion to switching, will more often tell you a lot about someone's price sensitivities and not just their preferences. Its usually the HTC Obsolete, not the sexy flagship device. We all know people have payment plans or some other kind of multi-year lockin for a lot of their phones or got them for free in the bad part of town from some group trying to provide basic opportunities, so its not a cheap decision to get an older cheap iphone (assuming they actually wanted that). So its always a mixture of price sensitivity and preference which people weed out from their social circle since the beginning of time, with few exceptions. Throw in a worse user experience for mixed company on top of that and its the perfect storm.