Blue bubble FOMO isn't real though, at least I've never heard of it outside these few articles claiming its a thing
FOMO is real for sure, but plain old inconvenience is also at play. If your entire family and social circle is on iOS, it's a massive pain to leave. This is by design.
The only reason I can think of is Apple using a dominant position in a network in order to sabotage alternatives.
Sure, ten years ago it probably didn’t seem to matter, but the iPhone 5 already bumped the screen size from 3.5in to 4in the rear camera was already 1080p, and “phablets” were already a term in 2012. It was totally foreseeable that MMS size limits where going to be a problem, if they weren’t already!
What a great case of skating where the puck is, instead of skating where it’s headed. RCS existed as a spec, just not implemented by carriers. The fact that Apple, and even Google, are routing around their MMS servers is totally their fault.
SMS/MMS is the lowest common denominator for non-Messages devices. So including a non-Messages device in a group chat means the whole chat needs to be downgraded to SMS. Even if Apple added support for RCS tomorrow, group chats would need to downgrade to it and lose E2EE and rely on the participants carriers to deliver messages just like with SMS.
There's no good way for Apple to integrate the shit show of non-Messages protocols in a sane way. Carriers made a mess of RCS in the design, implementation, and deployment. Google has had to run their own RCS backend to allow Android users to actually use RCS thanks to the carriers' bungling and meddling. Even they haven't helped the situation with a decade of half-starts in messaging apps.
Blaming Apple is a bit ridiculous. They're not going to spend a billion dollars fixing the problems created by carriers and Google when they already have their own messaging system.
Of course you can install WhatsApp on any phone but you can't install iMessage on Android so maybe Apple had to let SMSes in.
Apple supported SMS before iMessage/Messages existed. Their Messages app didn't even support MMS until iOS 3. It didn't gain the iMessage functionality until iOS 5.
Apple supports the global standards of SMS/MMS. Their own Messages service can be disabled entirely so a phone will only send SMS/MMS messages. Just about any phone able to connect to an extant cellular network can receive these messages and send messages to an iPhone.
SMS and MMS lack a lot of capability that people want in messaging systems. SMS was born out of unused space in control messages in the GSM spec. That's why fucking everyone from DoCoMo (i-mode e-mail) to RIM (Blackberry Messenger) to Apple have added some over the top messaging system to phones.
SMS is a fallback because it's supported by essentially every carrier. Carriers have tiptoed towards a better messaging standard with RCS but they are at cross purposes with OS vendors and end users. They want a messaging system that allows them to charge per use and the ability to snoop on user messages. So they turned RCS into a mess of a standard and have bungled or slow walked it's rollout.
But no, I'm sure it's Apple that caused all the evil in the world.
They did make their own messaging system. Their Messages (née iMessage) is entirely separate from carrier provided SMS/MMS. It's accessed via the same application as SMS because on early iOS they only supported SMS. The Messages/iMessage features were added to their existing application.
Saying "this is texting plain and simple" ignores a ludicrous amount of complexity about the underlying systems. There's nothing plain and simple about text messaging systems. If you're going to bash Apple for supposedly creating problems at least familiarize yourself with the subject.
I blame Apple for making communications software (iMessage, FaceTime) that is utterly useless to me as an Apple customer.
There are exactly two useful ways to make this kind of software.
(a) Build on top of a standard that others can implement for other platforms.
(b) Support all big platforms yourself.
Apple has decided to do neither. They made something that is totally useless for everyone outside of some close-knit circles in the U.S. Lock-in strategies are always lock-out strategies as well.
But they're not just pissing off their own customers, they're also playing a very risky game. Messaging apps have a tendency to become platforms in their own right (e.g WeChat).
By taking itself out of the picture, Apple is creating a power vacuum that is being exploited by the likes of Facebook. Ultimately this could even threaten Apple's hardware sales, for instance if Facebook manages create something interesting out of WhatsApp + Oculus.
So in my opinion, Apple's strategy is unintelligent and norrow minded. It's classic short sighted "corporate greed".
For iMessage there were desktop messaging standards like XMPP or the immature at the time RCS from cellular carriers. XMPP is not a great protocol for mobile devices with unreliable/changing network connections and background processing constraints. RCS was immature when iMessage was released and hadn't really been deployed by carriers or was deployed but not interoperable between them. It also requires a SIM and a cellular service. So it's a non-starter for non-phone devices. Additionally it doesn't offer E2EE without proprietary extensions and running private relays like Google has done.
For FaceTime there was never a really good video telephony standard to implement. FaceTime uses some existing standards but all over Apple infrastructure. Remember FaceTime has always been an over the top data service and like iMessage has no tie to carriers. When FaceTime was released it didn't even work over cellular, it was WiFi only.
So what standards should Apple have adopted? As a minority player in the mobile or computer markets which of their own services should they have pushed as standards?
Obviously standards are the way to go since WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Google's 400 different messaging systems all implement the same standar...oh wait they don't.
Messages is a value-add for Apple's platforms. Google isn't bending over backwards making Nest devices work with Apple ecosystems and Microsoft doesn't offer an XBox SDK for the PlayStation. WhatsApp isn't opening their messaging for Apple to adopt. Companies compete with one another, making products and offering services to attract customers. Why is this unintelligent and narrow minded when it's Apple?
If there was no suitable standard then they should have created one. Either that, or support all major platforms.
>Companies compete with one another, making products and offering services to attract customers. Why is this unintelligent and narrow minded when it's Apple?
Because it's classic short-termism for the narrowest financial reasons, showing no creativity or vision whatsoever. They prioritised locking in some U.S based users at the cost of creating an oppportunity for the likes of Facebook to serve the overwhelming majority of users for whom Apple's offering is useless.
I have no problem in principle with proprietary software that is only available on a single platform. What I find unintelligent and even offensive as a customer is choosing this approach to create this specific type of software that so obviously requires a different approach.
For me, iMessage and FaceTime do not add value. It's preinstalled crapware that causes massive security issues.
I'm not suggesting that Apple should be responsible for making cross-platform messaging 100% compatible, but someone at Apple has made conscious decisions to make the experience as infuriating as possible.
Personally, whenever I carry an Android, I'd very much prefer Signal or WhatsApp than Google Messages app.
And similarly in other countries.
There's no "abusing market position".
Apple and Google don't want to play nice with one another. That's on both of them. The carriers are a third pole that don't want to play nice with each other or Google or Apple.
Google and Apple want value-add features on their platforms. Carriers don't want E2EE so they can mine text messages for advertisers.
HN: Look at my startup that will compete with and dominate some segment of a market.
Also HN: Startups are impossible because big players exist!
Before the iPhone and Android there were a number of mobile platforms that all sucked in their own special ways. The mobile market was the incumbents' market to lose and they then lost of their own accord.
Seriously? Windows Phone flopped because Microsoft couldn't get its act together. IE sucked and couldn't handle even mobile sites that iOS and Android had no problem with. The messaging and e-mail had anemic features. And Microsoft simply couldn't execute on a third party developer strategy.
For whatever interesting ideas the OS had it was a dumpster fire of execution. It didn't help them at all that Windows Phone 7 had no backwards compatibility with Windows Mobile so they burned anyone invested in that platform. They repeated the trick with Windows Phone 8 where Windows Phone 7 devices couldn't run 8. Being the third place platform and repeatedly burning your customers was just an asinine choice for Microsoft.
Windows Phone had interesting features and UI concepts. What killed it was Microsoft's absolutely terrible execution. It had little to do with Apple and Google being "entrenched". Microsoft wrapped a handful of interesting features or good hardware (Nokia phones) in layers of crap.
What is the purpose of this? It's an issue solely with apple phones, people sending me videos from Android phones come through fine in full quality but anything from an apple device comes in looking like a Minecraft video.
>can't receive replies to specific comments
Apple actually started having their phones start sending texts with the reaction a few years ago, see this from my girlfriend earlier today
MMS (and in all likelihood RCS) is a complete non-starter for this market.
Though I would also not be surprised to find people who felt this genuinely.
Definitely heard girls (with iphones) gossip and discussing prospective men and say "but his texts are green". Its not code for "he isn't rich" - I went to a private school and hung out with sorority girls so everyone was well off, but something more ambiguous. Something makes blue bubbles feel better.
Maybe its just that iMessage is a more rich form of communication vs SMS, and people hate needing another app to check for that one android user in their life.
Which I agree to an extent and there is actually no way to disable it.
But yea, I wouldn't want to date someone who thinks like that anyhow. Their values are obviously too different from my own if they value iMessage over security, privacy, and the ability to modify my own devices
Yeah. I think the sorority girls would agree that it may be a bad match.
> if they value iMessage over security, privacy, and ...
Its not source available, but iMsg has long been e2ee and with a focus on privacy - but i can imagine that their word isn't enough for you to trust them.
This is a marketing lie fed to you by Apple. In reality, thanks to pressure from the FBI, if either you or your contact has iCloud backups enabled, iMessage is effectively plaintext. (Same with WhatsApp on iOS, but the situation is much better on Android.) https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...
Signal does not have this issue, of course.
I think its only a lie in that apple has it upload by default (opt-out) which means as you pick it up from a store, its not e2ee, even though minor setting changes (one boolean button?) can make it real e2ee.
Everything is "effectively plaintext" if anyone can actually read it. You could screenshot your texts, and that ruins encryption. And obviously in a multi-person setting any weak link ruins it for all.
Personally, i'm disappointed its opt-out not opt-in, but i think plaintext backup and easy backups are a net-good for the users, even at expense of e2ee. Most customers don't need e2ee, but many will need backups. That said, i think most data, especially texts, could benefit with auto-deletion of old content. Some things don't need to live forever online.
Apple is acting in the FBI's interest, not in yours.
The user experience of conventional SMS is often terrible; it's not encrypted (I'm not even talking about E2E but simply in-transit encryption as mobile carriers are nasty and may want to snoop), vulnerable to number spoofing, delivery reports aren't supported on iOS (and even then it really depends on carriers) and is slower than iMessage.
Way faster than the typical android notification takes to show up (since heavy battery saving was made standard) for any IM app
I don't think it has anything to do with getting your apps from Play Store vs elsewhere. This is in the UK and despite Google Play being available, back when I worked in a phone store, customers bringing compromised Android devices was fairly common (in fact some of them didn't realize the bullshit ads or spam on their lockscreen/notifications was malware, they thought it was just normal and accepted it), and that was only the stuff I could see - technically there could be plenty more malware that chooses to remain stealthy.
Messaging app are wildly dependent on social circles and age groups. I'm forced to use 5 of them...
MMS isn't as bad as it used to be, however. Less regions have service that is too poor for MMS to work but SMS works fine I think.
It's not how it works.
In Europe not only Android is dominant but people use WhatsApp or Messenger. iPhone owners must use them too as their primary messaging app. I guess they have their iMessage full with SMS from banks and other notifications, like my Android SMS app.
I use whatever The other person wants to use though. Telegram, discord, Skype, email, text, Twitter, whatever
Apple has yet to do this and so far there's little indication they are going to. WA having terrible uptake in the US is a good thing.
Just switched from android to iPhone after 12 years of owning and working with android as a developer. I just got tired of fiddling. Most of my social group and family uses iPhone and there's no way the non-technical folks in my life are switching, so... If you can't beat, join.
So now least you've now heard of it from someone other than these articles :shrug:
You can disagree with it, but that doesn't make it not real.