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Comment by sbrother | Hacker News Reader

It's not about the button color, other than the fact that a green bubble means your group message is degraded and a bunch of expected functionality stops existing. It's hard not to feel some annoyance if someone is added to a group and that causes the experience to be degraded for everyone else.

I use Whatsapp for all my European friends, but getting Americans to adopt a different messaging platform is as unlikely as getting the Dutch to start using iMessage... So we're left with this situation, and it will continue until Apple/Google adopt RCS and cross-platform messaging becomes as seamless an experience as iMessage.

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> that a green bubble means your group message is degraded and a bunch of expected functionality stops existing

…because the functionality is a paid product feature that exists on their hardware and software? Because it’s a…product feature??

But they purposely make the green bubble messages worse than they need to be. Videos get sent with a lower than necessary resolution.

That is simply objectively false. They can’t make the experience any better than it is. In a mixed group, they have to resort to the greatest common denominator which is SMS/MSM. They literally can’t do anything else.

Thank you for bringing this up again. The green bubblers who hitch about this fail to understand the difference between SMS, MMS, and better alternative. SMS and MMS are legacy “compatibility modes” in effect. Apple users happily enter the ecosystem to get away from legacy native messaging with SMS and MMS. It’s not the iPhone that “downgrades” anything, is that the default IS SHITTY, and iPhone upgrades the experience with a better protocol for Apple users. Don’t like your sadness with Android messaging? Switch. Frankly Apple should change the green bubble to brown, like crap, to really remind us of that legacy protocol use.

Even when I used Android phones this would happen if you were misguided enough to send something over MMS lol.

MMS was dated when I had a Motorola flip phone in high school, I’m not surprised it doesn’t handle 4K video lol.

I don't expect 4k but I would expect that when my wife sends a video green with mms and then used Whatsapp to share it with me and I use my android to send the same video to the same group they should be the same resolution but mine is _higher_ even though she took the video.

That's not accurate. The "green bubble" is SMS/MMS. They operate on a standard protocol of decades as a fallback, which absolutely has lower quality.

You can blame your carrier for that.

It wasn't that long ago that MMS too large simply failed, or lived in limbo. I'm not a big fan of low res either, but it's absolutely an improvement and beyond what they need to do.

So Americans hate the iMessage experience, but for some reason they refuse to use any of the numerous free alternatives? And that is Apple’s fault.

>Americans hate the iMessage experience

No. They love the iMessage experience and iMessage inertia means that people without iPhones have to negotiate to get people to use something else. It's not even necessarily malicious or obvious, but it does happen. I was a little hurt when I realized I had been left out of certain group communications that were happening over iMessage when I didn't have an iPhone.

>but for some reason they refuse to use any of the numerous free alternatives?

I guess you could say that, but it's more that the inertia pulls them back to iMessage. I'd try to get people to use Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp/Messenger and at some point, they'd stop checking those apps and I'd have to send them a regular SMS. I was the only person they were checking the app for, so any lapse in our communication could result in forgetting to check the app (and even having it get automatically offloaded).

It's also kind of like being the only vegan in a group of meat eaters. They just get invited to less dinner parties when people don't want to go somewhere that accommodates the vegan's diet. That creates a social rift even if it's not obvious.

> I'd try to get people to use Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp/Messenger and at some point, they'd stop checking those apps and I'd have to send them a regular SMS.

Android guy here, so I may be out of the loop, but why do they have to check the apps at all? Shouldn't incoming messages from any app be shown as a push notification?

Push notification bankruptcy. I don't think a lot of people make checking every single app they have installed for the number a habit. I guess I could have policed them on where they put the app so it would be on page 1 or whatever it's called. But that Messages app? It's always going to be noticed since it's in the dock on every page.

> Push notification bankruptcy

100% this. And sometimes I'll get logged out of a service and miss the notification that it happened, so I'll go quite awhile blissfully unaware that I'm no longer reachable. Had exactly that experience recently with Google Chat. Didn't see the message until I noticed the email it got converted to.

So because of a combination of social pressure, app inertia and that people let their chat ups run up lots of unread notifications, there are situations where it's inconvenient for some people to use Android phones in groups with iPhone users? This seems like a pretty weak basis for indignation, let alone a lawsuit.

>let their chat ups run up lots of unread notifications

I'm noticing a pattern here where people who side with Apple on this issue rephrase what people say, almost to the point of making it bear no resemblance to what was originally said, to make it seem trivial or, in your own words, a "weak basis for indignation". If you need clarification, just ask for it instead of assuming. I'd also ask that you try to charitably interpret what people are saying and use empathy instead of being so dismissive about it.

The issue I'm describing here is quite the opposite: specifically because the chat application isn't generating enough notifications being that it isn't the primary messaging application--remember, they were only using it to communicate with me--it's easy to forget about, especially in a sea of other push notifications. This is just one element of the whole problem as well (lest we get into the circular argument where someone suggests some other suboptimal solution when the obvious answer is to provide some way to have iMessage on Android in whatever way Apple sees fit). It's not the only issues I and others have with iPhone dominance and iMessage only being on Apple devices.

I also don't care if what they're doing is legal or not, they're still fucking with my social network.

I did ask for clarification, that's what the interrogation mark is for.

But it seems that your argument is exactly as subtle and indirect as I proposed. It’s not that Apple are stopping or even discouraging you from using third-party chat apps, it’s that your communication patterns makes using multiple apps slightly less convenient, hence you wish the first party one was more powerful.

It is quite amazing that you feel that they are “fucking with your social network” for not not making Messages more cross platform.

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