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Comment by Almondsetat | Hacker News Reader

Imagine being an exec at Nothing and seeing your acquisition turn into dust

Edit: it was not an acquisition but a partnership

Wouldn't worry at all. It's a cool feature if it works. The value in that blue bubble is less about the features of iMessage and more about social capital, not that I personally care.

It is about the features though. Apple users snob Android users because group messaging doesn’t work well, media features are not supported, etc.

RCS offers such a rich environment that Apple could finally truly integrate most stuff transparently with iMessage. Send a video to the group chat? Everyone gets it at full quality. Make a poll? Everyone can vote.

You're both right. The features matter, but so does the social stigma of bubble color.

Nothing will still have a feature and an edge by offering a "blue bubble" on Android, but this announcement would reduce my excitement a little bit if I were them.

The features Apple could not integrate with RCS will be very few, like watching an AppleTV show together or create a FaceTime call without having visible links in the chat.

The social stigma stems from iMessage giving Apple users advanced and integrated messaging for free since the very beginning, which “spoiled” people into not wanting to deal with pure SMS chats.

Why do you say "acquisition"? I thought Nothing just partnered with Sunbird.

But I do wonder if the timing is completely coincidental.

Context:

https://nothing.community/d/2968-introducing-nothing-chats

There is almost no chance Apple would tolerate an unofficial iMessage client for long, anyway.

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