Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

> iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android

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.

View on HN

> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why?

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.

I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either.

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.

Honestly this seems like a feature of the social circles involved. I can't really imagine being, or even wanting to be, around people who are so shallow they won't have someone in a group because they can't change the chat name, or at least, people who wouldn't be willing to move to other types of software to accomodate people in the group. It seems like basic human decency that when someone in the group says "I can't xyz" you go "ok what can we do instead?". I'm not sure I can imagine caring so little about other people, and I definitely do not want to be around people who don't.

The parent comment mentioned some of the reasons why it goes beyond the normal "lol you're too poor to buy an iPhone". SMS chats are majorly crippled compared to iMessage ones, and this is technical functionality, not just bubble color. You can't really change the people in an SMS chat, iMessage features don't work (in some instances hilariously: you'll get a text like "so-and-so liked this message" instead of a reaction)…people just don't want to deal with it. And yes, iMessage makes no effort to destigmatize the person who converts your iMessage chat into an SMS conversation.

But people can just use LINE, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, messenger, etc and get all the features and more which in my experience as an android user is what actually happens than this weird shallow world of green and blue bubbles I've heard about on the internet.

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.

> 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

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.

As has been mentioned many times in the other comments, those force you to download something, perhaps make an account, make sure everyone has it…whereas 90% of the people might already have an iPhone, which might be better than the number for anything else.

I'd argue that that is irrelevant. What's the point in having anything other than a flip phone if you refuse to download apps. It's not a barrier to entry in every other case and it's never been a barrier to entry with my friends.

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.

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.

> Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone?

Having a blue circle is not the basic functionality of texting. People here are talking about fancy facetime stuff, like group names, and reactions.

Those are all part of iMessage.

Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.

"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."

> Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.

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.

I don't actually think this is true. Is there any verification that most iOS users do not have a single one of the most popular messaging apps in the world?

I never said they don't have anything but if you ask someone to download an app specifically to contact you they're going to be very bothered by it. It's like how as streaming services proliferate there are only so many services people actually want to subscribe to, or how pre-unlimited calling people were very judicious about calling people not on their network.

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.

Well, here's an anecdote for you. I am a US iPhone user and I use zero third party messaging apps. I know of no one in my friend circle who has an iPhone and uses a third party messaging app.

> 90% of the people might already have an iPhone

85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]

The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage.

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.

If you tap on the info button in Messages, you can click "Hide Alerts", which works fine for me.

That doesn't stop the red counter bubble from appearing and incrementing on the messages app, sadly.

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)

Swipe a conversation in Messages and tap Hide Alerts.

But it is precisely my social circle that matters when choosing a messaging platform.

> 85%+ of the world's on Android

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.

The UK seems to be about 50% iOS.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271240/android-market-sh...

And yet everybody seems to use WhatsApp even between iOS devices

Blame Google for never getting messaging right and having multiple chat apps at the sane time.

I’m buying my parents an iPad just because every other type video chat is more convoluted than just clicking on FaceTime from contacts.

Never understood this argument. My parents from a 3rd world country who barely understand English are able to use 3rd party apps like Whatsapp, Duo, Skype just fine. And Duo works directly from your contacts app too (at least in Pixel and Samsung phones), in fact you can see options like "Video call xxx Message XXX with a logo of the apps that support it right in the contacts apps.

Duo came out too late, and Google has a reputation for changing things. Years ago, I tried setting up my family with google’s apps, and they kept changing, and it burned me and wasted my time. So years ago, I switched everyone to Apple, and haven’t wasted any time since.

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.

I find it astounding that the grandparents have iPads before phones. Most elderly people I know have cheapo Android phones or a few with "accessible" android phones target at people with sight or mobility problems (usually amounts to buttons and a skin with large icons). A few still have older Nokia phones, but these are the ones least likely to have iPads and more likely to have an old Windows 9x/XP computer hanging around for solitaire.

The iPads are usually bought by the adult children to replace the aging computers because they are both much simpler to use and much harder to screw up. I gave my parents an iPad and added them to my plan for $20/month unlimited data. They don’t have to worry about WiFi or anything.

In my family, the grandparents live with their children and grandchildren sometimes, so they don't need phones (or at least only grandma or grandpa needs them, but not both).

But the younger set of grandparents all have their own phones, so it's only the very old that don't.

And then that’s another thing they have to sign into as opposed to just looking in their contacts and choosing the FaceTime icon.

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.

And people do. At least in Europe.

You can use Whatsapp or other IMs though, which is what the rest of the world is doing. No one really uses SMS anymore

People do absolutely use SMS.

In the US, sure. In the rest of the world SMS is solely for human-machine communication - mostly one-time login codes.

Can confirm. The only SMS I ever receive is from bots (mostly OTP codes). I can't remember the last time I received an SMS from a human.

Exactly. I'm in EU, can't remember last time I used SMS. iMessage and Telegram, however, daily.

It’s often not malice or conscious choice as you seem to think. It’s that technical designs have effects on social dynamics. Here’s an example I wrote elsewhere:

> 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.

But how difficult is it to move to whatsapp or something that everyone has supported, and most likely has on their phone anyway?

Americans do not have WhatsApp on their phones.

[citation needed]

I know americans that use it, and south africans, and elsewhere.

I've seen this exact behaviour with non-tech friends in 20s-30s people. You have it exactly right. There's a stigma to being a green bubble.

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.

One of the most disappointing anecdotes I've read recently.

If you're looking to be even more disappointed, check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23406844

Wow. There’s been a lot going on lately?

Yeah my feeling is that there are a lot more important things going on than the color of chat bubbles (or the status/system it implies). Sorry if it came off as though I meant this is more important than other serious things going on.

edit: typo

High school senior here; I can second the prevalence of this experience starting in middle school.

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.

I don’t think it’s just Android users who see it. I’m on iPhone and in a group text with a mix of Android and iPhone users I see it that way too. Maybe I’m on the cusp of being old and cranky but it seems a silly thing to worry about.

Because it's a group MMS instead of a group iMessage, it falls back to sending those as messages instead of sending them as metadata.

I actually like the "so and so Loved blah", because otherwise it would be really easy for non-iphone users to not know that someone actually acknowledged their message.

I actually think just changing the content of the message could make this so much better. Change:

> Liked "XXX"

> (John Smith Liked "XXX")

Including the parenthesis. Make it clear that it's not a real, typed message from the person.

To be fair I am an iOS user and found the reactions an unnecessary and annoying gimmick.

It’s faster to just type the “laughing with tears” emoji and press send than to use the equivalent reaction.

I really like the "Liked" reaction after a former boss used it to signify "+1".

I've found that, in my social groups, "Liked" gets used as an acknowledgement for anything that doesn't require further discussion. Seems to clear up group chats of endless OKs back and forth, so I'm all for it.

Yup, exactly. I think that by itself makes it my most used reaction by an order of magnitude.

That, "ha ha", and "?" are probably about tied for my most used. I find that they are all useful ways to acknowledge or question something without cluttering chats.

It’s much easier to heart the thousandth photo of a fuzzy critter my sister has saved than to formulate a response. When it’s all iPhone users the chat is a lot cleaner too.

The android user would prefer Apple just didn’t communicate the reaction.

There are two reasons which together make it all make sense:

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.

iMessage and FaceTime audio. There are occasions where T-mobile’s voice network won’t let a call through, but I can use the data network to do FaceTime audio.

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.

There’s also the fact that WhatsApp is Facebook. I dumped Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all at the same time and will not install any of them on my devices.

More of a reason not to be friends with them.

Sadly, this is not how relationships work and exactly how entrenched social networks come into existence.

In a way, toxic behavior like this is an indicator of how your future relationship with this person will go.

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.

You can’t expect full commitment from people you may not know too well. The UI/UX benefits outweigh acquaintances, not friends.

Unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.

It might be possible to be in a majority-Android friend group outside of North America, but not really here. iMessage is far too entrenched in the US for that to be possible.

> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles"

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.

>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.

To be fair, I can entirely understand why they’d do it: the platform all but makes you annoyed at people who don’t have iPhones.

Now you've got me curious. Are these people in the tech industry? What would their age range be, roughly?

Most of this happened while I was in high school, and now I am currently 22 years old.

Exactly zero of the people who have said any of these things are in the tech industry

This is very true in the US, but not a thing overseas (at least in Israel). Everyone is on WhatsApp for texting.

They care because the green bubbles indicate a severely impaired user experience. For example, multimedia may not work, and even if it does, its typically very poor quality.

HS senior here. Maybe a little, but it's mostly status/class. It's the twenty-first century equivalent of wearing expensive clothes to school.

I don't see how it conveys status when used iPhones are cheap, and brand new ones start at $400 now. My lowest paid hourly employees all have iPhones, even the ones who don't speak English.

Status signaling might be a thing in certain circles (middle school and high school), but I think it's simpler than that. It's about being in or out.

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.

And in the US, all of the major carriers have 0% interest payment plans. The cost difference is basically nothing over 2 years.

Apple itself sells the phone with 0% interest if you were going to buy AppleCare.

Nobody's paying street price for an iphone in that demo. They get it with their contract

You are talking about people with jobs.

But iPhones sell themselves as expensive, and that's really what lingers in people's consciousness, doesn't it?

No? Something serves as a status signal when the person who has it has a high probability of being different from someone who doesn’t. A private jet is a status symbol because you have a high probability of assuming the person who owns it has a level of wealth or influence that most don’t. A degree from Caltech has status compared to a degree from random college because there’s a high probability the Caltech degree holder is more competent.

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 definitely do.

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.

RCS: no e2e, multi-device support, or any 3rd party application APIs on Android. In other words, gimped by Google.

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.

Google's been unable to build a iMessage competitor because they don't have the same leverage with the phone carriers that Apple does - because they don't even sell what few phones they manufacture in the carrier's stores.

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?

>a sonic sub-pixel fingerprint reader

Just hope nobody who steals your phone puts a screen protector on it.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10127908/samsung-galaxy-s10-sc...

Under display scanner on Samsungs is so horribly bad that I'm not worried about it at all :) . I often can't unlock my S10+ in five tries after which it forces me to enter pin. And S10+ cost 1000$ on release last year. I don't use any screen protectors and I've rescanned fingers after Samsung rolled out "fixes" for the scanner. It's junk.

Zero issues with the S20. It works great; not as great as TouchID on older iPhones, as if that were still an option, but barring super wet fingers or gloves, it unlocks every time while declining the fingerprints of my other fingers and the half-dozen other people who have tried mine.

I still can't believe that Google would back an unencrypted messaging platform. It feels like malpractice on the part of their engineers.

RCS is only rolled out in a limited number of countries.

Countries which I do not live in, and people whom I do not interact with.

It'll get there. But, right now, it works great for me.

Sure, but I think this was a more general discussion and not a personal annecdote.

You know, for a tech site, people sure do love to forget that iMessage is preferred because it brings features instead of mere social status.

Whatsapp brings the same features, if not more. iMessage craze is a purely American phenomenon, the rest of the world has moved on to other IMs

Every part of the world has its own messaging apps. Depending on where you live, it might be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, LINE, or I’m sure others. In Europe I know for a fact that the popular app varies from country to country. So you could just as easily dismiss LINE as a “purely Japanese phenomenon” but the fact is each app is popular in a certain part of the world.

Because network effects are more important than UX or features.

Sure it does, but cross platform IMs are not so socially discriminating. You can easily download LINE and move on with your life in Japan. But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many, for which they end up being socially ostraostracized

> But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many

economic barrier to buy ~$100 used iphone on ebay?

Are you really going to buy, charge, supply with data and carry around a second phone, no matter how cheap, just so you can send blue messages? That attitude is, like many american ideas, really whack.

If technology X/Y/Z brings me something useful, I prefer to spend some money to get in. Social environment matters too.

You can live without iOS/Android, even with Android/macOS VM (heh, I've tried it once) - this is your choice.

I think the best reason is explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23412067 - ie. how most social circles will exclude Android users. I imagine this is only be the case when only one or two people of the group are using Android though, so if even a few people in the friend group are in that situation you might see more WhatsApp/FB Messenger.

My mid-30s colleague went back to Tinder in recent years and he mentioned he got questioned by his target market about not having a blue bubble. They were all Asian (but mostly Chinese) women in their late 20s who moved to Australia.

With reference to a recent HN thread, I wonder if saying "I'm a developer/security expert/working on a classified government project and HAVE to use a special phone" would garner sympathy or admiration and stop the questions.

This is funny because as someone who works on important but non-classified stuff for the government, I do carry around a government issued phone so that I can access my work email/IM anywhere. But, (a) it's another iPhone and (b) I'd get in an awful lot of trouble if I installed Tinder on it. Most people probably wouldn't realize that though.

Well the most annoying thing about whatsapp (other than its owned by Facebook) is that it can't automatically fallback to sms for contacts not using it.

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.

On iOS, that's not by any fault of WhatsApp.

Well given that it also does not do it on android I dont see that mattering.

Not really an Android or WhatsApp user, so my perspective there is probably not all that relevant ;) I am curious if any apps there fall back to SMS? I think Hangouts might have a long time back?

I think hangouts did and Facebook messenger for Android once did

Signal does.

No, WhatsApp does not bring the same features. WhatsApp is very different. You can react to messages in iMessage, which is just one among other features WhatsApp doesn’t have.

Yeah I mean there will little tiny things different on each app, but it's not a big deal breaker for many. Whatsapp is the biggest IM on the planet for a reason. People could easily ditch iMessage in favour of Whatsapp if they wanted to, but for some reason Americans don't do that.

The absolute deal breaker for WhatsApp for me is that it is owned by Facebook. There is zero chance I would consider using it for anything, ever, because of that fact.

The idea of moving to a different chat platform won’t even come up if your current system has the features you need and everyone you want to reach is on it. What would nudge a group to collectively move to WhatsApp if iMessage is the default and works well for them?

> What would nudge a group to collectively move to WhatsApp if iMessage is the default and works well for them?

The fact their choice leads to needless exclusion of people who would otherwise be their friends.

I don’t use What’s App for the simple reason I like how my contacts are integrated across my Apple devices. From email, to “normal” phone calls, to Siri, calendar invites, and even directions “hey Siri, directions to Tom’s work” — it all works seamlessly. If I want to send someone a location from Maps, it’s seamless. If I am using something like Find My, I can easily send a message from there — or even create a Shortcut to send a geofenced message. And Memojis are just simply fun. When I am on the road, sending my kids a message with a talking robot really makes their day.

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.”

It's not a problem on Android at all and just a limitation of the Apple platforms.

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.

I use both iMessage and WhatsApp heavily, the annoying thing about iMessage is the lack of ability to quote messages and @people.

Rumors say this might be planned for an upcoming iOS release.

You're saying some people exclude others from their friends group because of fucking smiley faces on a message? God that would be stupid if true.

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.

This isn’t stupid. It’s the natural consequences of tech that doesn’t conform to real human behaviors and social norms.

Your argument fails when you consider Whatsapp - the biggest messaging platform, where you need to add people's number in your contact to be able to see their names.

I agree with power of defaults though. Only reason iMessage took off, and so did other Apple services.

You definitely don't... Unknown contacts show as e.g. "+1234567890 ~Bob" (their WhatsApp display name). When you save them to your contacts it switches to the name you added instead.

Exactly this about excluding names. I was sent a group message and didn’t reply because I didn’t recognize the number. I started another chat, deleted the number and then responded.

> Message craze is a purely American phenomenon

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.

Well, I'm in the EU (France/UK) and do not know a single person that doesn't use Whatsapp. I'm also not even completely sure what iMessage is, nobody ever mentioned it.

All I mean is: anecdotal evidence and social bubbles

> 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...

It’s a bit more than that though - try to send a picture to an Android user. It will work sometimes. Sometimes it won’t. No rhyme or reason and no way to control it. Send a picture to another iPhone - works exactly as expected every time.

It’s not just social status. It works much much better than SMS, it’s a superior experience and interacting with green bubble folk ruins it. I’m not particularly young or concerned at all with social status, but I urge people in my circles to just get iPhones because of iMessage and FaceTime. Both vastly superior experiences to any alternatives available.

Individual SMS is fine. Group SMS stinks. You can’t remove yourself from a conversation unless everyone else moves on to a new thread without you. Also, you don’t get contact names for ad hoc group conversations with new people.

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.

I’ve never seen people exclude someone with a green bubble from a conversation, but I’ve seen this behavior (use iMessage as a high quality default) in spades.

Definitely people care about blue vs green bubbles. Have you ever tried to send videos back and forth between the two? It looks like it was shot on my old Nokia flip phone in either direction. Plus no "typing" bubble, texts seem to take longer to arrive, group chats are degraded if even one green bubble is included, etc. It sounds like Android has finally caught up with RCS, but iMessage was one of my favorite features when I switched years ago.

MMS and SMS are extremely unreliable, especially if you were out of the coverage area when a message was sent (half the time I only receive some of a conversation and have to try to interpret what happened). RCS is supposed to fix this, but no carrier seems intent on sunsetting SMS to force Apple’s hand. At least with iMessage, I’ll eventually get the message (they’ll hold it server side, encrypted, until I get back online).

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.

You literally answered your own question.

“... 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 would buy an Android if it weren’t for the social force behind iMessage blue bubbles and the smoothness of FaceTime.

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.

It’s not about Blue/Green bubbles. Everything messes up once you have one person in a group that isn’t on iMessage - including reactions to messages. Instead of getting an icon on top of message you get “John Doe liked ‘We will be there soon’”.

IME there's a loss of a number of features when communicating without someone with "blue bubbles", that you come to take for granted, and that cause a bit of friction when you realize the messages/functionality you took for granted in your exchange aren't there. If I find myself chatting with someone with green bubbles, I find I tend to transition the conversation over to whatsapp.

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.

99% of Americans don’t want to be funneled to WhatsApp or signal for group chat. They want it to live right next to their native texts.

Your group is likely different from the mainstream.

Which is why 99% of Americans get a to live in a shitty Nash equilibrium of either being socially ostracised and excluded or being locked into an expensive monopoly of a single smart phone vendor.

Good luck to live as Google 1984-like bootnet.

Sadly, Librem 5 future is unclear, so Apple is probably less evil here.

99% is hyperbole based on Android market share in the US.

But that’s not what I’m saying.

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...

So you are saying 99% of iPhone users would prefer to use iMessage. Yeah I don't doubt that, it's built in. Still you only need one or two close friends or family members with Android to install WhatsApp.

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.

I was thinking about moving to Android about three years back. The thing that stopped me from even seriously considering it was iMessage.

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.)

iMessage has read receipts, faster and more reliable delivery, higher quality images/videos. More than just the color of the bubble

Looks like you have never used Whatsapp!

WhatsApp sucks. Message delivery/notifications are unreliable, the interface is hideous, it lacks the Tapback/reaction feature which is heavily used in iMessage, and it dumps pics from group chats into your photo library automatically, as if you took them yourself. Idiot posts racist meme to a group chat? It lives in your photos library forever until you notice and manually delete.

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?

1. Settings → Chats → Disable "Save to Camera Roll", done.

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.

Notifications only seem to work if WhatsApp is actively running, unlike every other app on the iPhone.

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.”

Have you given WhatsApp notification permissions?

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.

> the interface is hideous

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.

In the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.

The US is a big place. WhatsApp has plenty of users in the US. It’s easily the third messaging app I use, after LINE and iMessage. And the people I talk to on WhatsApp are US natives, it’s not like they picked up WhatsApp in some other country and brought it here.

If you're using three messaging apps on a regular basis, you are either an extreme outlier or have lots of contact with people who are in other countries or have strong ties to other countries.

LINE? Really? I have yet to see anyone use that unless it is to talk to friends in Japan or Korea.

We use it for the stickers.

There's a lot of people who use WhatsApp even in the US. Perhaps not as many as iMessage, but it's still a household name.

Do they use them to talk to people in the US who have no connection to countries where it is the main messaging app?

In some cases?

> Network effects are a thing

Exactly. These are social products. Features are meaningless if you can’t talk to the people you want to reach.

If your snark needs another snarky reply, it would be this:

“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.

One thing I have come to appreciate about WhatsApp is its ability to handle low bandwidth environments better than iMessage. Back in 2015, I was traveling around Europe and had T-Mobile's unlimited roaming plan. I think the data speed was capped at like 64 or 128kbps? In addition, many hostels had less than 1Mbps wifi. iMessage would just choke trying to send pictures or large messages. In particular, it would be stuck in the middle of that "sending" blue line indefinitely like it was quietly timing out and would sometimes require a reboot of the phone to recover because it would remain stuck in the "sending" phase forever. Whatsapp seemed better tested and more solid when it came to transmitting messages. You'd see consistent progressing updates in the progress bar until it either timed out(unlikely) or finally transmitted.

Comparing against SMS. Nearly every messaging platform other than SMS has that feature set.

Can’t send Live Photo’s. They get converted to regular or a crappy gif.

iMessage is a much better user experience. Users associate the blue bubbles with that.

Like pretty much every other messaging app on every phone platform currently existence?

Other messaging apps have the same features as iMessage, but not the same user experience. For example, WhatsApp has a pretty massive spam and fake news problem, and Facebook messenger is significantly slower and applies a high degree of compression on media. iMessage offers the best UX, and that’s why, in my experience, iOS users will almost always opt to use iMessage over competitors when communicating with other iOS users.

Depends where you live. No one I know uses SMS or iMessage. Everyone uses whatsapp. SMS is a weird appendix of a thing on your phone contract, used only for automated reminders from companies. And iMessage is pretty much useless because then you can't send messages to 60% of people, and besides, they're in whatsapp anyway.

The ux is very debatable. It's the same as every other messaging app now adays.

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

Speak for yourself, I have never encountered a spam problem on Whatsapp. Fake news - maybe, but it was from the "usual suspects" ie. people who believe in every conspiracy theory they encounter.

End-to-end encryption by default and seamless multi-device support. It's a combination of features that's currently limited to iMessage.

No it's not. Seamless multi device support on android includes multi vendor support too.

I don't understand this. What is the messenger you are talking about?

It’s the combination of features and the network effect iMessage has. That’s what makes it special to a lot of people. You get rich chat features (especially in group conversations) and you don’t have to negotiate what platform to use if everyone happens to have an iOS device.

Great for you if you live in an area where all of your friends have the same messaging app. They’re all a big step up from SMS, but there’s no messaging app I know that will reach everyone I want to talk to.

No, because at least in the US, iMessage has one thing that no other messaging app has - install base.

For me - it's simply a question of reliability. SMS is not reliable in the US, and I live in an area with poor coverage. My preferred mode of communication is texting but SMS is a no-go.

If it’s of any solace, SMS is not reliable anywhere in the world. It may seem reliable sometimes in some places, but that’s mostly a facade.

SMS is very reliable here in New Zealand, even more so than any IP-based systems. I've had SMS get through easily in one-signal-bar situations where IP data was nearly inoperable (especially if I happened to be attached to a 2G GPRS cell). Wonder if SMS reliability is really an issue peciular to certain networks. SMS reliability has been good for me both in NZ and all the foriegn networks I have used in my travels around the world. 4G is very good though in low signal situations so IP based protcols are improving in reliability... Just need networks to hurry up their 4G roll out and turn off their 2G/3G networks.

With SMS you're forced to think about "where's that person live" and "can I send photos/videos and how many" to avoid crazy bills.

imessage/whatsapp just does the job without stupid questions.

How do you know that?

And iMessage works wherever I might be.

They absolutely should care. I’m not adding you to a group text if you have an android. Life is too short to read green text bubbles.

Why don't you use WhatsApp?

I did for a while, especially to keep in touch with overseas friends, but I've been Facebook-free for a few years now and that meant deleting WhatsApp as well.

It's not a thing in the US. The iMessage user experience is unrivaled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com