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Comment by slowraise | Hacker News Reader

Personally as a college student, all my friends use iPhones still. I have always wanted to switch to andriod, but one of the things that really holds me back is the fact iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod. Many subtle features of Imessage really make a difference with the overall texting experience on the iPhone over the long term.

Most of my friends do not have whatsapp, and we are constantly sharing photos and video. Regular SMS can barely send pictures let alone videos, and I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

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> iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod

iMessage is a messaging app that uses internet. It should be compared to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, FB Messenger.

It doesn't make sense to compare iMessage to SMS. Because nobody uses SMS as their main communication method. The only people who ever use SMS are iPhone users when they text Android users.

All this confusion comes from the fact that Apple merged their messaging app with the SMS app. This creates the illusion that iMessaging isn't just a messaging app but it is actually something built on top of SMS. It's just a messaging app that is not cross-platform.

> I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

By "other means", do you mean installing a new messaging app? I'm guessing this isn't about the effort of downloading an app but rather it's about getting used to a new app and convincing your friends to switch to it.

“convincing your friends to switch to it” is the real issue. Or remembering which platform various friends use and keeping that straight. And when you have multiple friends who prefer different platforms, figuring out the intersection of messaging platforms that they all use. Or when you have a friend on Facebook messenger but you don’t know their phone number, or a friend who can’t have WeChat installed on their corporate phone, or any number of other situations.

And I think the biggest of those subtle features is the blue coloured bubble, isn’t it?

This blue coloured bubble thing I've never heard anyone outside of Silicon Valley engineers/media mention, but I've heard it extrapolated as a deciding factor to the rest of the world by those same people many times.

I don't think most people actually give a shit about the bubble colour.

For me it's the fact that you can generally see the other person typing in an iMessage, while you can't in normal SMS.

That tells me whether the person is replying right now, so it's worth keeping my phone out, or busy and therefore won't be getting back to me for a while.

The time savings add up.

No. iMessage has the low entry barrier of SMS, but has features like a real chat app. SMS is not an iMessage replacement. Instead you have to get everyone you message with to change to something like WhatsApp.

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