Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they should absolutely open it up.
Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?
Note that I'm talking about average users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why?
> It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle.
If that's truly the case, I don't think I'd want to be friends with people who place importance on such superficial, trivial things.
Full disclosure: I've been an Android user for 10 years and the closest I ever got to owning an iPhone was an iPod Touch I stopped using in 2012 or so. SMS is fine for my needs most of the time, though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal or WhatsApp for those use-cases.
I guess I just don't see a closed iMessage as that huge of a competitive advantage for Apple. But presumably they know better as to what drives sales.
They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
An iMessage chat tells me nothing about the socioeconomic characteristics of the owner of the iOS device, unless I am missing something.
Edit: although, now that I have read this whole thread, I am thinking that maybe it’s not the economic status people are looking for, but are somehow deriving some assumption about their “socio” part of “socioeconomic” status, as a non iOS user is perceived to be maybe “different” or “weird” in some way for not conforming and having an Android versus an iOS device.
I personally have never thought that, since I use Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage, and if you don’t have iMessage, I just use one of the other two, and I don’t care. But evidently, some people do.
People might have gravitated towards iPhones for status signaling in their youth, and by association and inertia, their inner circle uses iPhones. now, as adults, any person coming into the circle needs to conform to the group or be seen as clueless.
Because network effects are more important than UX or features.
economic barrier to buy ~$100 used iphone on ebay?
You can live without iOS/Android, even with Android/macOS VM (heh, I've tried it once) - this is your choice.
The fact their choice leads to needless exclusion of people who would otherwise be their friends.
I also have big trust problems with Facebook products. Apple makes iMessage to sell devices, what does Facebook do with What’s App? There have been reports in the past that installed Facebook, Inc., apps were sending analytics from devices on other apps people were using, pretty much like a Trojan horse. I don’t want any installed Facebook related apps on my devices because Facebook lost my trust long ago. While supposedly What’s App is “secure,” the entire history of Facebook has been littered with “oops, you caught us and we are really really sorry this time.”
When I try to use a "share" action for example, I get my contacts from the phone and Whatsapp at the same level. My list of contacts actually has a merged view of all my contacts stored on my phone, Whatsapp and other services. Contacts on multiple services are merged appropriately.
It works just fine.
This isn’t stupid. It’s the natural consequences of tech that doesn’t conform to real human behaviors and social norms.
I agree with power of defaults though. Only reason iMessage took off, and so did other Apple services.
But not all of the world have moved to whatsapp. I am from Scandinavian and I only have a very limited number of contacts available on whatsapp, most are on iMessage.
This is mistaken. I'm in the EU and do not know a single person using SMS, nor Whatsapp, they use iMessage, however, bigtime.
Whatsapp used to be a thing, but that has been over for some time. Now, most are using Messenger, Snap, and Telegram.
And iMessage is not a craze or a phenomenon, it is a simple convenience; it's on your phone already. For most people using it, it is not even a deliberate choice. The younger generation grew up with it, they do not even really know the difference between SMS and iMessage, except that if the bubble is green, the other user does not have an iPhone.
The older generation remembers SMS, so they still tend to call it SMS, even though they are using iMessage.
Android users are in the minority around here, well, at least between family, friends, and at work.
All I mean is: anecdotal evidence and social bubbles
Sure.
However, there is usage data available if one's interested.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/02/whatsapp-fac...
In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in a group chat on iMessage, you lose tons of features, like the ability to name the group chat (I'm being completely serious here; this was considered an important thing). The work around was "we'll take you out of this chat, and if something important happens someone will send you a text" - of course, it's not very easy to always remember to send that person an SMS, so they end up _very_ left out of things. This has also happened with middle-class people.
Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
If they're going to be this basic, then I'm probably going to extrapolate how these people will behave in the future.
Although, maybe thats why I only have a very few select close friends.
edit: typo
Oh and texting an i phone user sucks because those reactions come through like: Loved "blah blah blah"
Please when texting us android plebians don't use those reaction things.
It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.
> Liked "XXX"
to
> (John Smith Liked "XXX")
Including the parenthesis. Make it clear that it's not a real, typed message from the person.
> Social dynamics are subtle. For example, group SMS doesn’t support contact names. If you add someone to a group SMS, the other people only see a phone number unless they go out of their way to add the new guy to their contact list. Likewise, the new person has to add everyone else to see names. Decades of research in behavioral economics show just how powerful defaults are, so most people probably won’t bother to add names. Without names, the new person will have a more difficult time connecting with the group.
I know americans that use it, and south africans, and elsewhere.
Different friend groups may prefer different platforms, but it's pretty rare where someone new to the group refuses what the group is already using, which is almost never plain sms/imessage.
Google voice/sms is almost always for one on one friends where we don't share anyone in common or older relatives.
I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.
Having a blue circle is not the basic functionality of texting. People here are talking about fancy facetime stuff, like group names, and reactions.
"Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years."
To your average iOS user they are one and the same, which is why US iPhone users don't generally download secondary chatting apps unless they have to.
Anecdotally, in my social group:
- Snap: withering on the vine.
- Messenger: generally declining with the declining popularity of Facebook in my age cohort
- Instagram: everyone has it, but messaging is definitely a second class part of the app and no one really uses it other than to send instagram memes
- GroupMe: I downloaded it once for one person, most of the people in the chat have iPhones anyways, and people don't really use it other than to contact the non-Apple users specifically.
85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]
What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.
I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.
Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)
I'm assuming the majority seems to be third-world countries because in big UK cities the majority of the phones I see around are iPhones.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271240/android-market-sh...
I’m buying my parents an iPad just because every other type video chat is more convoluted than just clicking on FaceTime from contacts.
And as far as Duo - only if you have a Samsung phone or Pixel? If you have to buy a new phone anyway - since the entire Android ecosystem is a clusterf* when it comes to upgrades - you might as well get one that is going to be supported for years.
WhatsApp is really nice, but you need a phone for it, which some of the older grandparents don’t have. But they do have cheap iPads, so everyone uses FaceTime.
But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.
You made the point yourself here. If the messaging platform the group prefers is iMessage then it's somewhat awkward when someone new to the group refuses to use it. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of people to switch platforms for a single group chat? When most of the people have a working solution already it's practically impossible.
tldr; It's pre-installed and way better than SMS
1. iMessage is leagues more reliable and faster than SMS/MMS on even horrible connections allowing a real-time cadence to conversation with indications if messages were actually received and possibly if they've already been seen. Its features are also not crippled so simple things like sending photos between $1k+ phones does not end up with MySpace quality photos that are otherwise supposed to be 12MP Live HDR photos. Let alone sending longish videos (3 min+)
2. iMessage is already installed and integrated in iOS unlike WhatsApp which literally has all the most important features and MORE, but, for reasons I do not fully understand, I simply like using iMessage more. And so do most of my friends.
I’ve had to use FB Messenger at times to contact my one or two relatives who just refuse to by an iPhone.
I wanted to do a group video chat with relatives and we all had to use Facebook Messenger because one person didn’t have an iPhone. We just left the person out a few times because we didn’t want to bother with lower quality messenging.
It's stupid, but whatever. If you're going to be my friend, first things first: no tech prejudice :-) Apple might be more willing to interop if it had less of a network effect. Hell, I'd sub to iMessage if I could get it on Android.
Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.
You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?
>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.
You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.
Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry
The worst part is, an excellent upgrade exists. The RCS experience between Android users is pretty much as good as iMessage. Apple could support this; not to replace iMessage, but to upgrade SMS conversations. My tech-illiterate mom's Galaxy S negative 12 has it. Of my contacts, every single Android user I text (maybe a dozen) has RCS. Its standard.
When I put my iPhone XS and my S20 Plus side-by-side; chatting with Android users using rich text via RCS; animations at 120hz on a display so blindingly bright the brightness slider turns red at the end; so seamless with the device's edges its like looking through a portal; unlocking with a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader; swiping notifications away at a rate the iPhone can't approach; charging my computer keyboard, mouse, phone, laptop, and smartwatch with the same cable... I've religiously used both iPhone and Android, I switch every year, and the iPhone feels like its years behind Samsung right now. Its not close.
Google's messaging department has been chasing it's tail for 10 years. Unless they clone iMessage from the inside out, RCS has no hope. Personally, I want to see RCS fail. It's a lousy spec with few privacy protections built-in. I had it enabled on my phone for a while and there was no indication as to whether my messages were passing through my carrier's servers or Google's RCS endpoint.
They built out a technology and gave carriers the option to implement it themselves, or they could just piggyback on Google's servers. Carriers obviously opted to implement it themselves because they don't want to become dumb pipes, then dragged their feet for years.
As I understand it, Google wants to get a basic version in place with all the major carriers first, then start rolling out many of the other features you've mentioned.
Apple's been holding out on supporting it because it's not encrypted, but it'll be interesting to see how they respond to carrier-wide adoption of encrypted RCS when that comes. Will iMessage chats fall back to RCS with Android phones? Or will they continue to fall back to unencrypted oldschool SMS?
It'll get there. But, right now, it works great for me.
Just hope nobody who steals your phone puts a screen protector on it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10127908/samsung-galaxy-s10-sc...
They will opt to use imessage just the same as everyone pretty much opts to whatever is already installed. You could swap out imessage with a 1990s version of aol messenger and people would opt to use that.
Apple does not have a monopoly on good ux. In fact a lot of it is just garbage
Exactly. These are social products. Features are meaningless if you can’t talk to the people you want to reach.
“Looks like you have never used Telegram.”
This game can go on and on, but WhatsApp is nowhere close to being the best messaging app feature wise.
Notifications being sporadically (at best) delivered is the real deal breaker for me.
What’s more fun than a party you missed because WhatsApp didn’t feel like delivering notifications for a day?
I always thought WhatsApp did a fairly decent job at feeling native like iMessage? I haven’t used it much, so I’m curious what you don’t like.
2. WhatsApp has rock-solid message delivery, otherwise it wouldn't have 2 billion users (https://blog.whatsapp.com/two-billion-users-connecting-the-w...). It's the default messaging app in most of the world. You don't become that popular with unreliable message delivery.
I checked again, and yup, a bunch of messages in a group chat I never was notified for.
That behavior is fine if it’s your primary app, but it sucks if you’re not constantly checking.
Also, 2 is a bad thought in general. Consider: “Windows has a billion+ users, of course it doesn’t crash. You don’t get 1 billion+ users with bsod and forced updates.”
Your comparison to Windows is probably more appropriate than you think. When is the last time Windows crashed on you (and it wasn't a dodgy third-party driver that caused it)? It works fine for nearly everyone using it. So does WhatsApp.
Everyone I know uses iMessage. SMS is unreliable, works poorly in group chats, and can't easily be sent/received from my computer.
(I will still eventually need to go to Android because I'm not giving up my headphone jack, but I'll be hanging onto my iPhone 6S for as long as possible.)
Trying to get people to agree to a proper chat platform is like wrangling cats. If everyone in the group has an iOS device, then there’s no decision to be made.
imessage/whatsapp just does the job without stupid questions.
Green bubbles signal low status. It also makes it more difficult to communicate: no read receipts, no live location, photo/video/audio messages are clunky, worse emojis, no reaction option, and so on.
Your group is likely different from the mainstream.
Sadly, Librem 5 future is unclear, so Apple is probably less evil here.
People buy android phones for all sorts of reasons (in the US, mainly price). But in the US, it’s nearly impossible to have a broad social circle that doesn’t want to ‘text’ so I’d guess at least 99% of US users regularly engage with default messaging apps. if given the choice, of bet nearly all of those users would prefer to centralize their ‘texts’ instead of multi-apping
Look what happened to groupme as soon as iMessage group chat got good...
Why don't people use WhatsApp? Do Android users just not have any friends? Or do they use SMS? which is a joke next to WhatsApp and iMessage.
“... though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal.”
Group texting between iPhones just works. Add an Android user to the group and all of the sudden it doesn’t work. Ergo, don’t add them.
I still use SMS a lot, because it’s more important to me that I can talk and send pictures to people than worrying about them being on a certain platform or app (Discord’s notifications aren’t great on mobile if you haven’t opened the app for a while). But it’s super annoying, and if Apple made iMessage an open standard (they probably won’t, since people buy iPhones for it), I think many people on Android would move to it.
It's not like a "relationship killer" or something, but I imagine it is a low-level contributor to my lock-in to the platform.
Regardless whether you agree with that, it is super practical for me and my family. It also means we don't have run other chat software like WhatsApp.
The whole experience is just so seamless and well integrated across your devices. Everything from regular messages, voicenotes, sending cute animojis to your wife, or doing a FaceTime with my 102 year old grandmother. I do that on a daily basis. And I can easily continue a conversation from my computer, or even respond from my Apple Watch when exercising.
I am still on WhatsApp though as there are millions of users worldwide, but I keep notifications off and check it only once a day.
iOS market share is 60% in the US which is the highest worldwide, and only above 50% in a handful of other countries (UK, Japan, Oz, Canada)[0]. If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American, there's a good chance they won't iMessage you but try to add you on WhatsApp.
One: 55-60% market share in the US, by definition, is not confined to "the rich."
As to the other categories: my personal answer to "If you have any friends that aren't American" is "that's what whatsapp is for." I imagine for a lot of people the answer is that, or "I don't, actually."
Like, all the teenagers in my family. Their list of non-US friends is near-zero. Their non-US family are all on whatsapp.
They don't experience a gap.
I need all of Threema, Signal, Skype, iMessage and email just for my closest friends and family.
I also need Google Photos, Google Drive and OneDrive to share data with them.
Apple is the most anti-social platform of them all. I can't even use it to share photos with my wife.
I have never used FaceTime with anyone, because no one uses it, not even those who do have iPhones, because they all have to use something else to communicate with others.
It's really not, at least in continental Europe. Here in Germany Android's like 70% of the market and nobody uses iMessage or FaceTime.
It degraded a bit, however, with the time. Adding features is not to the benefit of the less young, whereas young tolerate UI getting more complex and less intuitive.
They could bind a windows iMessage install to your iPhone the same way Signal/whatsapp do.
Or make it part of an iCloud subscription.
Right, I'm trying to understand Apple's motivations, and this question applies not only to iMessage but their general approach regarding macOS, apps, app store, the proprietary/locked-down nature of their software and hardware.
The opposite of ubiquity would be "exclusivity" - and that does explain a lot. The reasoning must be that there is value in making their apps exclusive to their own OS(es). The same way you can't (easily) run macOS on any old PC, or the way their hardware doesn't allow users to repair or extend it.
It’s a social product. You can’t discount its social appeal.
This is mostly a US phenomenon because in other countries people had already adopted other messaging apps due to higher text messaging costs and for free international voice/video calls
You also have to remember even the Mac by itself brought in higher revenue than all but the top 100 companies in the US and it’s only 10% of Apple’s revenue. The watch is a bigger revenue generator than the iPod ever was.
There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung.
But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
It made a few billions in revenue, that's far cry from trillions a tech giant is expected to make.
> You act as if it would be a great technical hurdle to make the Watch work with Android.
That's exactly my point. They shouldn't be making such closed ecosystem, their products will be more popular if anyone could use them. This is why they caved in on Apple Music and TV like services which are available on Android, Roku, Fire TV etc.
> There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung.
Nobody cares about "Mac Company" or "iPad Company". They don't have any clout. Hundreds of companies come and go from the top 100 but only a few can last for decades. Microsoft is still standing today even after a failed Mobile venture only because of the money they made during desktop era and still cashing in on that success. If iPhones stopped getting manufactured it's pretty much the end of Apple today regardless of their Mac, iPad or Airpods business.
> But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
Since when did whataboutism became a valid rebuttal?
Apple doesn't make trillions in revenue....
That's exactly my point. They shouldn't be making such closed ecosystem, their products will be more popular if anyone could use them. This is why they caved in on Apple Music and TV like services which are available on Android, Roku, Fire TV etc.
Why because the "open" ecosystems are doing so much better? Android manufacturers aren't exactly bringing in boatloads of money. In fact, Google isn't even bringing in boatloads of money from Android. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google had only made $23 billion in profit from Android from inception to the time of discovery. Google reportedly pays Apple $8 billion a year just to be the default search engine on Apple devices. It seems like Apple makes more on mobile from Google than Google makes from Android. That whole open thing doesn't seem to be working...
Nobody cares about "Mac Company" or "iPad Company". They don't have any clout. Hundreds of companies come and go from the top 100 but only a few can last for decades
You realize Apple lasted "for decades" - from 1984 - 2001 just from selling Macs. It lasted another 6 years selling Macs and iPods. Apple went public before Microsoft.
Microsoft is still standing today even after a failed Mobile venture only because of the money they made during desktop era and still cashing in on that success.
And Apple survived almost going bankrupt by selling desktops....
If iPhones stopped getting manufactured it's pretty much the end of Apple today regardless of their Mac, iPad or Airpods business.
We have an existence proof that Apple could survive just selling computers and one or two other devices --- they did so for almost four decades.
Since when did whataboutism became a valid rebuttal?
Apple is better diversified than most of the tech companies and they have been around for longer and pivoted better than any of the big 5.