Anyone who knows more about this please correct me. This is purely from reading Internet forums.
Of course it was all jokey and no big deal but I still came away from that situation having learned that all this green bubble malarkey is very much real, and these were all grown adults (like, 30+ with children).
If you have all iMessage users, then you can do things like add more users to the chat, etc.
As soon as one Android user is in the chat, then you can't do that.
The other issue, for me, personally, is that I can respond to my iOS users from my desktop (where I spend most of my time), but I have to actually pick up the phone to communicate with my Android friends.
It's not the end of the world, as my Apple Watch tells me when I get texts from my phone, but it is a bit annoying.
See: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/messages/icht8a28bb9a/...
Apple degrade the user experience to spite their own customers. Quite bizarre.
Why can’t everyone in these situations just ask everyone to use one app like WhatsApp? If having good experience was important everyone would be on board.
Also it's not a "good experience" for everyone, not as much as just cutting that green bubble loser out. With no green bubbles, you get to use the default messaging app. With a different app, since you can't change the default on iOS, you have to have at least two apps, and many people balk at that.
Are Americans just too lazy to download another app?
More I think they are just really susceptible to marketing efforts by companies like Apple who tell them that it's a bad user experience to have multiple apps, and your own personal user experience is supreme, so people adopt and believe that. And for the people who don't, you can almost guarantee they have at least one "Apple fanatic" in their circle who will preach that gospel to them routinely.
Then there's the social status symbol of "Apple" that has become a big thing in the US. The killer on top is the invasion of the social sphere, partiuclarly with younger people, where you are bullied and isolated for not having an iThingy, and you've got a perfect recipe for Apple.
At some point I think it's got to come back around, but unfortunately that time isn't looking soon as it's trending heavily in the wrong direction right now. It's so bad now that "iPhone" has come to be a generic word for "mobile phones" and "iPad" a generic for "tablet." Just a few days ago I heard someone say something like, "Oh is that an Android iPad? aren't those just cheap knock-offs?" When this is the level of thinking in most of society, it's not hard for a company like Apple to manipulate to serve their ends.
Citation needed? Apple has pretty much marketed the exact opposite (e.g. the entire App Store concept)
Isn't Google using a proprietary version of RCS? That's not cross platform.
Thats ignoring that some people (like myself) have philosophical reasons not to support Meta via WhatsApp. Just like others will not install Signal since it requires them to know your phone number (at least currently).
Then try a couple APAC countries, and people will ask why you aren't using LINE.
This has been going on for decades, ever since we saw AIM/MSN/ICQ and so on divisions country-by-country. In some cases it was simply who localized their app first.
They have not restricted Android users to use third party messaging apps like Beeper. But Beeper isn't using their own infrastructure - they have reverse engineered third party API and are hacking them to work.
Apple's argument against iMessage being covered by DMA is that there are more popular third party products already running on Apple's platform in the EU e.g. WhatsApp.
On your iphone, in settings go to messages > text message forwarding and select the devices you want to allow.
It fails often enough that I can't rely on it.
You can't leave a green bubble chat. You can't send messages from your computer or non-iPhone devices (Apple has message forwarding, but it's unreliable). Pictures look awful, videos look worse. Read receipts don't work. Tapbacks/emoji/stickers/memoji/etc don't work. It's a drag to remember all these limitations.
I grudgingly got an iphone in 2019 for work. I no longer work there but now I'm locked into blue bubble chats with family. I've been trying to use Beeper to solve this it's not reliable enough yet.
(if RCS wasn't such a dog's breakfast, I might make more of an effort. Even when Messages supports RCS, the experience will still suck)
Pictures look awful,
https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018832773-Tw...
> videos look worse.
Same as above.
> Read receipts don't work
MMS read receipts have been a thing since at least 2004. Wanna bet your carrier still doesn't support them?
Why should it be up to the carrier? I guess that’s why it’s so broken.
"Oh no, our chat is acting weird because there is an Android user in here."
It's like hostages complaining that somebody left the door open and is letting in cold air.
And, to be fair, they didn't reject me per se, they would make slightly judgmental comments or observations. It just felt like it knocked me down a peg in their eyes and made it all the more difficult to make a real connection.