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Comment by drawfloat | Hacker News Reader

Still find it incredible the green/blue bubble thing in the US isn’t a joke.

It’s real. Part of it is teens being judgy because teenagers do that. her bubbles are green because she’s poor and her parents can’t afford an iphone etc.

But also there is a real experience difference between iMessages and SMS and especially mixed group chats. Social people -even adults- who have lots of group chats via default messaging inadvertently punish android users for using SMS and that worse experience is represented in green. It’s just a symbol for that worse experience.

In fact, it’s getting worse not better. I have every messaging app imaginable on my iPhone (because it’s just an app why not). If I group chat mixed iPhone and android - I get the expected bad experience. But a lot of android users have now set up Signal to be their SMS app. So my iPhone will mix SMS iMessage going out, only for an android user to mix SMS signal messages coming back. So now the conversation is smeared across three apps and ruined.

Hence why I just install every app. So i can increase the odds of finding an alternative common ground.

PS. Everyone blames the android guy not the iPhone guy. “Stop being poor” or whatever. People are cruel.

It is for 80% of people. I am already mid 30s, but I assume the only people who care are young people who use it as an in group vs out group signifier. Which, if not green and blue chats, would be something else.

Everyone else simply uses WhatsApp if everyone does not have iMessage.

It is also an issue for Android users in general. In large group chat instantiated by an iPhone user, Android users may be unable to respond. My mother has encountered that on numerous occasions.

That might be a temporary technical issue, but I presume adults would just call each other and switch to Whatsapp so as to not make it a social issue like teens might by continuing to exclude someone.

> That might be a temporary technical issue,

It's temporary technical issue if Apple were to support RCS; otherwise, it is a long term issue. It is due SMS limits. This is why Google is trying to pressure Apple into supporting RCS. Apple certainly won't loosen control of iMessage.

> I presume adults would just call each other

We are talking about a large group chat. Easily 15+ people. Calling is not really an option for replying there.

> switch to Whatsapp

Not going to happen. We are talking about people who only recently became comfortable with messaging. Trying to throw them into a new application would take too long and cause too much frustration. The better answer is for Apple to support RCS.

Nah. I’m a “real adult” (in a wealthy American city) who makes plans like an adult and isn’t driven by childish cliques and in-group behavior but I have 100% excluded android users or asked someone to manually relay messages to them when they got dropped from an iPhone group chat.

SMS is botched and finding an overlapping app across 15 people is impossible. How are you supposed to coordinate that if you can’t even use SMS groups? How do you find a common app? You’d need one or two people doing person to person investigation to figure it out. At that point, it’s easier just to find the one person who’s phone doesn’t work and relay messages to them. Half the people don’t want to download a new app. Another half don’t trust Facebook apps. Another half think email is too slow (and too easy to exclude someone).

The general social sentiment is that the android users did this to themselves by choosing a cheap phone or choosing to care more about “not letting apple be in control”.

I always thought it was a Joke/Meme. I saw it come up years ago on 4chan, but now it's everywhere.

Apparently teens in the US judge each other by the colour of their message bubbles [0].

I don't know if this is merely immaturity, or sheer vapidness.

[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... (paywalled)

I am under the impression teens should be expected to be immature and vapid…because they are teens.

It's immaturity, if you will. Wanting to set oneself aside as a bit better than others, and the harsh group mechanics of building constellations with a select few through exclusions of others, is a social behavior of growing up. Almost every kid and teenager will partake in it or at the least experience it.

I don't know child psychology, but if I were to guess it's a manifestation of "survival of the fittest".

paywall bypass for chrome & firefox : https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

When I was growing up it was mostly about where you bought your clothes.

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