Tim Cook says ‘buy your mom an iPhone’ if you want to end green bubbles | Hacker News Reader

Tim Cook says ‘buy your mom an iPhone’ if you want to end green bubbles

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37 pointsmvd779359 comments

How big of a problem is this in the states? In Europe, nobody I know, and I really mean I don’t know one single person that uses SMS or SMS-like apps like iMessage. If I open my messages app, I only have there my 2FA messages.

It’s either WhatsApp or Signal

That is not true at all. Even close, why does someone always spew this stuff here? There's billions of SMS messages delivered every day in Europe - from businesses to people who don't have Facebooks WhatsApp/Messenger preinstalled.

Why is it so hard to understand that your little life bubble isn't the whole world?

I've lived many places in Europe and I'd say it's accurate.

It's not that text messages aren't sent, it's just that they are only ever a fallback for when primary communication channels are not available.

Pretty much everyone's SMSes are just MFA codes, "your pizza is ready", "your package is delivered", and so on.

Almost nobody that talks to each other regularly uses SMS.

Again, that is nowhere near true and it's easy to verify.

And we didn't even get to the point that the communications platform used instead of an open standard is owned by a single corporation - Facebook.

Really? I'm yet another European who only ever gets SMS from my elderly mother, for 2FA (usually only when dealing with American companies), parcel deliveries, and so on. Oh, and spam and frauds, that's like 75% of the messages I get.

Come to Germany. Enjoy the power of digital communication. I work in a town close to the city center in a new building and i have to go to a certain window to be able to talk on the phone. To have cellular data i have to go out of the building.

I had the same problem when using Aldi Talk, switched to Telekom and it's much better, but I am at the edge of the coverage area. I've seen it on the phones of the people that were visting me that Vodafone works much better in the house, but I don't want to work with them

Isn't it great only being able to use data plans on the train when they stop at a station?

> I'm yet another European who only ever gets SMS from my elderly mother, for 2FA (usually only when dealing with American companies), parcel deliveries, and so on.

I'm yet another European and even though apps like WhatsApp and Signal are very popular, SMS is still used very often.

Apps like WhatsApp do have an advantage like better UX, group chat, better allowlists, online presence status indicators, multimedia support, and multi-platform support.

Can you show such verification?

I'm from Argentina and here absolutely nobody uses SMS. As parent said, it's only used for 2FA, delivery notifications, etc (although some companies here do 2FA with whatsapp too).

I am also very interested in data to support your claim. I offered my anecdotical experience and you're saying (quite aggressively) that that is objectively not true. Can you please provide a comparison between the # of messages sent as SMS and messages sent through Whatsapp and other services?

> Almost nobody that talks to each other regularly uses SMS.

OP claims no one uses SMS at, and your reply was "I agree, no one uses SMS except for all these reasons they message all the time".

Also, it makes no sense to claim that no one uses SMS just because some people also use another means of communication like WhatsApp or email. It would make as much sense as claiming no one uses WhatsApp because they spend more time on Instagram or Twitter.

OP is saying in context of "Grandma" and in social context - "Grandma" getting singled out because of her life choices (Android) in 1:1 chats with another human or in groups.

> ...'from businesses to people'..

You see the problem in your comment?

[citation needed]

person to person sms is pretty close to zero here as well

Nobody in Europe is using SMS for communication, because it is bloody expensive.

What? SMS and voice calls are free in most plans.

I agree that these times people communicate over Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp much more than through SMS but that has nothing to do with cost.

Maybe for you, my SMS are over the top, because I am refusing to be tied up to operator via some monthly subscription.

In Poland I pay flat monthly rate for all in-country calls and SMSes. It is internet usage that you pay more when going over certain limit. SMSes being expensive would be true story maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

Where in Europe? Most pre-paid packages have tons of free SMS, mine is around 5000 per month.

I am paying 10 cents per each.

As a data point: Probably 90% of my messages are on iMessage. I have one friend group that has a telegram chat.

Almost nothing in WhatsApp or Signal.

Yep, 18 out of 20 of my top threads are delivery updates, 2FA, service updates (ISP data rollovers, for example), or advertising.

One of the "real" threads moved to WhatsApp after a couple of messages and the other was me forwarding one of the delivery updates from within the SMS app.

Sadly everyone I know is on WhatsApp and no one uses Signal.

There are regions in Central Europe where cellular data is not available.

Your argument is very weird. Most of the time, if you are in location without cellular data, it is that you don't even have a good cellular coverage. In that case, especially, people are used to always use wifi and so use WhatsApp, signal, telegram, Facebook, instead of unreliable sms.

Also, if the goal is to have rich communication, like sending video and photo. If your network provider does not cover you for cellular data, I don't see how, the same content will go through anyway as it needs data...

The only difference of RCS compared to messaging service is that you use your phone number and the service is provided by your mobile telecom provider, but otherwise it is technically similar.

One last point is that, here, in Europe, people does not trust phone number as being a permanent reliable identification. Not so long ago people had to change numbers regularly when changing of provider or of offer.

Welcome to train travel in Germany.

> Your argument is very weird. Most of the time, if you are in location without cellular data, it is that you don't even have a good cellular coverage. In that case, especially, people are used to always use wifi and so use WhatsApp, signal, telegram, Facebook, instead of unreliable sms.

I have WiFi only at home. At work i don't. Also there are shops where there is no WiFi nor cellular connection.

Or Messenger. Strangely, Messenger is more popular than WhatsApp in Europe. Got the context though

> Or Messenger. Strangely, Messenger is more popular than WhatsApp in Europe. Got the context though

I lived in Europe all my life and never heard of Messenger.

WhatsApp is pervasive. We get the WhatsApp logo shoved in our faces even while casually watching tv. Even TV programs and state institutions have WhatsApp contacts.

Don't generalise all of Europe without checking the statistics.

Messenger is the most popular chat app in France, Scandinavia and most of Eastern Europe. WhatsApp has the rest. Except Viber in Serbia and Belarus.

(Messenger is Facebook Messenger, everyone who has a Facebook account has it, though not necessarily in use on their phone.)

> Don't generalise all of Europe without checking the statistics.

If you admit that WhatsApp is the dominant messaging app in the whole Europe except for a hand-full of countries, and still in spite of your admission you still try to pass Messenger as ubiquitous in Europe, you shouldn't be talking about generalizations.

I didn't "admit" anything, and I didn't claim Messenger was ubiquitous.

This question comes up commonly on reddit —- yes iMessage is very popular here. In my experience - Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Discord are the top messaging services.

Whatsapp is not uncommon to be sure, but I would wager a significant portion of users in the United States have it installed because they chat with people overseas.

Signal & Telegram are pretty small userbases.

> I only have there my 2FA messages

Inbound texts from my bank etc come up as grey - no different to inbound iMessage so never actually noticed it.

In France I have plain SMS texts with 9 different people (friends &family) if I look back just to mid-August.

I do plenty of SMS, not everyone is on WhatsApp or Viber.

Then again I only use iDevices at work, so whatever.

This, I don't remember last time I used SMS, everyone is using Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram here, Facebook Messenger is also strong.

Looking from the rest of the World where Android and feature phones dominate, the whole issue with the green bubbles is hilarious.

The whole act of discriminating text messages based on which brand of phone they herald from is ridiculous.

It's not that different from the rest of the world. In other places there are other bubbles - Whatsapp bubbles, Messenger bubbles. They are not tied to specific phone vendors, but tied to a giant corporate as well.

Apples is just a special case of the problem that there is no open standard for text communication. RCS is supposed to be that thing, but I would like to see Whatsapp, Signal, Messenger and the rest switch to use it

>buy your mom an iPhone

Maybe buy yourself an Android. That should work too.

What I don't understand: it seems iOS just passed the mark of 50% market share in the US in the last year, and it's now at 50-something.

Which means that Apple users prefer to have a crippled experience when talking to approx. 50% of their contacts rather than switching to an equivalent app that doesn't signal their belonging to the Apple tribe.

Or, in alternative, this means that those 50% of people almost never talk to the the other 50% of people. Not sure which is worse.

Alternatively 95% iOS users have no idea RCS is a thing and just think Android sucks because it can't handle video messages the same as iOS. So rather than pressure Apple to add RCS they pressure their friends to get iPhones.

This seems like typical Apple behavior.

They will probably avoid supporting RCS interoperability standards until compelled to by European regulators.

I don't so much care that I can't send videos to Android users. But I do think it's shitty that Apple uses white text on lime green, which is very hard to read, instead of using black text on green.

Normally I don't care about this stuff, but at work, one member of my team of 9 refuses to use an iPhone, ruining any potential group chats. The obvious solution is that this person gets an iPhone.

That said, it would be nice if the SMS indicator was more subtle instead of white text on a green background, which is objectively harder to read than an iMessage. And it would be nice if Apple provided a cloud facility to send images/video to people easily given the obvious limitations of SMS.

When your only innovation is a cut out hole and always on display, both of which have been on other phones for years, your only play is the color in which the messages appear.

I'm sure the ability to use satellite for emergency service in the event you don't have cellular service qualifies as an innovation.

>> I'm sure the ability to use satellite for emergency service in the event you don't have cellular service qualifies as an innovation.

T-Mobile and SpaceX are doing that with existing mobile phones:

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-takes-cove...

Increased access is always good, but reading the article it looks likes it'll be a limited rollout starting next year

>> starting with a beta in select areas by the end of next year

> If you’ve tried to send a video from Android to iOS (or vice versa) using your regular text messaging app, then you know that your videos come out completely fuzzy on the other end.

Why would i want to send a video using a text messaging app ? It't like using a hammer instead of keys to open a door. There are apps made for video messaging.

You are technical.

People in general are not.

They do not understand why the video shouldn’t be sent by a text messaging app.

They know it works best when on an apple device.

This keeps people on apple devices.

In my corporate training, we're counselled to never refer to what competitors do, and particularly not to discuss affecting competitor sales (even braggadociously), matters of marketshare etc. to avoid running into risk of bad legal outcomes if such material were to be brought up in trial. Interesting how Apple does not feel compelled to hold itself to the same standard.

Is saying “no comment” really a better standard?

Also, a few hundred billion in the bank might alter ones response.

We don't have hundreds of billions, but we are one of the largest companies on the planet :)

> corporate training

I guess Apple, with its $2.5 trillion in market cap and net profit margin of 24% still has a lot to learn from Joe at "Corporate Training e-books LLC".

Your training is based on both the legal / regulatory / marketing situation in your industry, and issues which can be created by many loose tongues in the trenches. (Especially legal "discovery".)

Vs.: (1) Tim Cook's behavior is based on the situation in his industry, (2) a CEO's "public" job is quite different from the jobs in the trenches, and (3) any edgy statements which Tim seems to make have been gone over, in advance, by the best legal team which money can hire. (And note that legal discovery cannot apply to either the CEO's public statements, nor the legal council he receives regarding those - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_professional_privilege .)

Tim is too busy focusing on growing the Chinese economy to be concerned with this kind of petty issue.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/07/apple-chi...

Skate to where the puck is going to be, human rights be damned!

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