It really isn’t clear to me why so many people are so angry they cannot use iMessage on Android.
It’s less about a specific feature set and more about inclusion and acceptance from/by peers.
This is especially prevalent among the younger crowd. Think high school group dynamics playing out with phones.
And then on top of that, photos/videos are terrible quality.
I mean just imagine they'd degrade sound to nearly noise if you'd call a non-iPhone.
The reason the video looks like ass is because MMS messages aren't meant to be very large. While (iirc) there isn't a hard limit, the recommended maximum message size is ~600KB. The only way to fit a video into that range is to compress the hell out of it.
Apple knows of such limitations and does nothing to improve the situation. In fact they ban those who try. FTA.
Why would they? It's not their problem, nor does it seem to be a big deal for their customers because they're not clamoring for a fix.
> In fact they ban those who try. FTA.
They don't, thiugh. The App Store has tons of photo and video sharing services, email, and other messaging services; I'm sure any number of them would let your iPhone-using friends and family easily send you a non-mangled videos. This is a solved, dozens of times over.
iMessage, on the other hand, is a service Apple provides for Apple customers. They get to set the terms under which it's used, and Beeper did not abide by those terms.
In my part of the world Whatsapp is the defacto standard for group chat and even for things like scheduling anpointment to a doctor/dentist/hairdresser.
And that is because it is available on android, apple devices and even those cheap kaios halfsmartphones.
For some, but everyone knows and has the capacity to download WhatsApp.
The root issue is there is a lot of judgment about Android users, hence wanting to restrict chats to iMessage. It’s a signal that you are part of the in group vs out group.
Although, it is objectively convenient to have a group of all iMessage users at events, because any pics/video get shared at high quality with no extra work.
For example, when RSVPing to a kid's birthday party, other parents' numbers are inevitably blue. When selling and buying items, the contacts for those sales have always been blue numbers, it's rare to encounter a number that doesn't "turn blue" when I enter it into the "to" field
I would say maybe 5% of the people I know and text use Android. For one of those people I use Signal, one other has asked me to use Facebook Messenger, one has asked me to use WhatsApp, and the remaining few use SMS. It's a pain to use three separate apps to message just these three people!
One of my cousins switched to an Android phone. This broke our long-standing group message in iMessage, so she was no longer able to be included in it. After two years of this her siblings simply ordered her a new iPhone and she is back in the group chat
Getting everyone to move their default messaging behaviour for one person is a huge ask. It was easier for one person to just relay the group chat info instead, but when this became annoying, it was even easier to buy her a new phone
It is very annoying and quite real.
The reason the iphone users don't like it is because Apple specifically and artificially makes the experience annoying and shitty in several different ways, for the iphone users not just for the Android users.
> Over time, the annoyance and frustration that built up between blue and green bubbles evolved into more than a tech problem. It created a deeper sociological divide between people who judged one another by their phones. The color of a bubble became a symbol that some believe reflects status and wealth, given a perception that only wealthy people buy iPhones.
...
> On dating apps, green-bubble users are often rejected by the blues. Adults with iPhones have been known to privately snicker to one another when a green bubble taints a group chat. In schools, a green bubble is an invitation for mockery and exclusion by children with iPhones, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that focuses on technology’s impact on families.
> “This green-versus-blue issue is a form of cyberbullying,” said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense, which works with thousands of schools that have shared stories about tensions among children using messaging apps.
* Android user in the US where this dynamic primarily exists, but I just don't care because I'm not 20 any more. I only very occasionally need to send a video or picture to anyone, and in those cases, I know enough to use email or a google photos link or something, which probably annoys the recipient a little and makes me weird to them, but I'm just ok with that since I know where the blame really lies. Similarly in the occasional times I txt with family members or friends, we're not in high school and so they don't care about my green bubble, and I just accept the annoying stupid extra txts I get that say "x smiled" or whatever. That ux don't bother me in the sense that I don't spend any time thinking and caring about it, but that doesn't make it not utterly stupid and ridiculous, and especially so when you know it's a deliberate act and not an honest technical limitation. Astonishingly it's possible to both recognize that something is not worth investing much care over, and recognize that it's wrong and that it's a deliberate wrong commited by someone and not just the weather. Amazing!
In a word, android would be considered just as uncool even if they had access to imessage.
* Apple is really popular in the US
* Apple users tend to rely heavily on Apple's default applications
* Apple's messaging app is the default, and works fine with other Apple devices, but sends shitty SMS or MMS to non-Apple devices
SMS would disappear tomorrow if Apple adopts RCS.
And if they allowed iMessage clients on other platforms, they could corner the entire messaging market.
Once you automatically reject SMSes from those contacts, such that you don’t even know they're trying to contact you, the ball is entirely in their park to take action.
And it's not like there' some gigantic combinatorial explosion of apps you have to install. The vast majority of messaging around the world is about 5 apps. Facebook's Messager, Wechat, Instagram, Whatsapp, Discord. Between these, you'll reach the vast majority of the world's population somehow. And then you'll need one or two more locally-used ones like LINE or KakaoTalk depending who you're talking to.
Apple is arbitrarily and intentionally making it a worse experience than it needs to be.
I know multiple people who have switched to iPhone just for iMessage. And the kids these days won’t accept anything but the blue bubble. This is no longer a meme. Or if it is, it’s also real.
At least it sounds like that's what happens across the ocean.
Knowing someone has an iPhone tells you nothing about their wealth/power.
What people think it does tell them is where someone is on the cool / weird spectrum. See:
I'm in my early 30's and have been told to my face by friends I'm hanging out with that they excluded me from group chats because I have an Android phone. Sometimes there'll be two group chats where the second one is just the iPhone users subset. Some photos only get shared in that second group chat. Some messages get sent giving people a heads up about things and the sender sometimes forgets that a few people are being left out of the loop. There are real social segregation issues that happen.
I think one of the key reasons, other than apple sending push notifications that it's going to automatically install overnight, is they bundle candy/goodies to entice users to update asap - Want the new emojis so your friends stop sending you scary black boxes with an x over it? Update now.
I have an ipad just to chat with people who refuse to use anything other than imessage.
I don't want anything to do with iMessage, but I have to.
Well, the time has come.
Most people don't talk to people they don't communicate as well with.
For those technically savvy enough to download an additional client like Meta's Whatsapp or Messenger... it's no problem, but for the less technically inclined (like my mother) they will just use the default client.