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Comment by baq | Hacker News Reader

Quote from the article:

> The company “undermines” the ability of iPhone users to message with owners of other types of smartphones, like those running the Android operating system, the government said. That divide — epitomized by the green bubbles that show an Android owner’s messages — sent a signal that other smartphones were lower quality than the iPhone, according to the lawsuit.

I read that as 'interop' is a secondary issue, if an issue at all; the actual case is the green/blue segregation. If Apple embedded a fingerprint in every interoperable message and shown blue messages for iMessage-sent content, green background for others, it'd still be a problem even if messages are otherwise identical - unless all the features truly work on both, in which case the color split is purely status signaling.

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Strage to see that as an issue; SMS is clearly an inferior protocol compared to iMessage and it's useful to know when messages have been downgraded.

I agree. That's why I'm saying interop is not the root of the problem. Segregation of people based on whether they are using iMessage or something else combined with inability to install iMessage on non-Apple devices causes a social problem and a significant smartphone market pressure.

> Strage to see that as an issue; SMS is clearly an inferior protocol compared to iMessage and it's useful to know when messages have been downgraded.

Except that's not why the blue/green difference was created (at least historically).

It dates back to the time where SMS messages cost money for each one sent (though plans often came with x free messages), so the green message was telling you it was (potentially) costing you money when sending/receiving messages. (US$ = greenbacks -> green = cost)

That's also ahistorical.

The green bubbles came first.

iMessage didn't even exist for the first few years of the iPhone's life. All messages were green. Green could not have been chosen to indicate it cost money, because there was nothing to distinguish it from.

Then, in 2011 (IIRC), iMessage was introduced, and the blue bubbles were to indicate both that it doesn't cost money, and that it supports several other capabilities (which have changed over the years—IIRC, it did not start out with end-to-end encryption, so the people boldly asserting that that's the primary reason for the distinction are also wrong).

The intent of the color doesn't matter. The actual effect of the color is what matters. Hopefully to the courts, anyway.

The actual effect is to know when my message is secure. No, RCS or another protocol does not mean it’s secure, even if they have some encryption. The other app can still eavesdrop after the message has reached the end.

But perhaps the courts would want to weaken security. It’s definitely a thorn in their side.

The actual effect is ostracism of green bubbles. You literally get kicked out of social circles and get peer-pressured into buying an iPhone.

Does this.... actually happen? To like, people over the age of 10?

If so, I'd almost be thankful to Apple for letting me know who not to bother being friends with.

If someone in my social circle ostracized someone else because of their phone, they (the person doing the ostracizing) wouldn't be in my social circle anymore.

if you're not joking you can see countless examples on social media sites. it's not just friends it's family, coworkers.

my friend group has a separate group chat for just android users and they get party invites after the main group does.

I'm not joking, at all.

I have never heard of this actually happening outside of when iPhone is a topic on HN. I don't really have other social media, so that might be a part of it. But in real life? Never once experienced this, or even know someone who has.

my friend group has a separate group chat for just android users and they get party invites after the main group does.

This makes no sense to me. You exclude some portion of your friends because your text bubble is green instead of blue? Why?

It absolutely happens in real life because of basic human nature. It creates friction in relationships, and even the most minimal amount of unecessary friction can cause divides or make it harder to connect. You seem to underestimate how lazy people can be.

Imagine in 2010 you meet a potential romantic partner and they say, "Hey! Add me on Facebook!" And you reply, "Oh, I'm not on Facebook... can we just talk on the phone instead?" The person may go, "Oh, umm... sure, I guess." But then you never connect because you haven't made it as easy as possible; you've introduced a tiny amount of friction that a lot of people are just not willing to tolerate. If everyone else is on Facebook, why aren't you?

In real life, it creates so much friction that yes, there is pressure to buy an iPhone and change your entire software ecosystem just to fit in and remove this barrier to relationships. It's just text messaging; it's ancient technology at this point and no company should have a monopoly on it in any form. At a minimum they should let other operating systems download iMessage—show them ads, charge a fee, I don't know. But creating a hardware-enforced wall around basic telecommunication is wrong.

>It creates friction in relationships

I do not understand how the color of a chat bubble creates friction. I text Android friends the same way I text iPhone friends. We exchange phone numbers, then we text each other.

You sound very rational as the core function of a text is maintained. It's a fact that Apple neuters the features when texting Android. It's a social faux pas to have android as a kid, in college, or even as adults.

For me personally, I find that young professional women on the dating scene see it as a signal / red flag for lack of status or wealth when starting an interaction. It puts you in a negative light at the start of it dating, whether a tease or serious concern. There's dumber things people judge, but this is up there. Once you establish trust and comfort, I haven't found issue with texting in this scenario.

So there's initial friction in some cases like dating. And with children/families there's ongoing friction.

This must be some kind of sharp generational divide, right? I'm over 40 and I can't think of anything that has made me feel as old as I do reading the "green message shame" discourse.

Anybody from any generation has experienced this is some form or fashion, don't be coy.

the chat bubble color misses the point. it's more the loss of features. because as soon as you add a single android user the experience degrades. reacting becomes clunkier and imessage exclusive features wont work. so it's better to manage two chats

> my friend group has a separate group chat for just android users and they get party invites after the main group does.

This is beyond ridiculous. All of my group chats that need to be cross-platform just move to Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp

that's the problem. not everyone has that, but we've had the same number since middle school. sms is the default. i could delete fb tomorrow.

This happened in my family. Except my cousins just banded together and bought our Android using family member an iPhone. She was pleased with the result

How has apple pulled off an encryption scheme that prevents people from seeing the iPhone screen over somebody's shoulder?

Eye to eye encryption?

Let me propose a thought experiment.

Remove the color from the equation entirely, and what do you think would happen when someone without an iPhone joins a group chat? Do you think everyone would ignore the change completely, even though it would mean they'd lose all the iMessage features that SMS/MMS group texts lack? Or do you think they'd just be more frustrated about it because it's harder to tell when it's happening, but treat people the same?

Do you really think it has anything to do with the color of the bubbles, rather than the fact that SMS's featureset is much smaller than iMessage's?

Yes, because it's the other way around now: if you have a green bubble, you don't get invited to the chat in the first place. A different thought experiment for you: assume feature parity between green and blue bubbles starts today, what do you think happens? Do green bubbles suddenly start getting invites to group chats?

...Yes, and that's my point. It's not about the color, but lots of people are talking about it as if the color is the primary or sole cause of the ostracization—as if Apple marking iMessages differently than SMS messages is the root of the problem, rather than the disparity in features.

I'm not going to try to deny that there are some people who a) would shun (ex?)friends for using an Android phone, and b) continue to shun them even once the actual reason for that goes away, because Lord there are some petty, shallow people in the world.

I am going to say that I don't think it's Apple's or the government's business to try to fix that problem. If the government wants to force Apple to open up iMessage in some fashion, I think that's potentially reasonable, but holding Apple responsible for the cruelty and cliquishness of what must be a tiny subset of its users is just absurd.

> The intent of the color doesn't matter. The actual effect of the color is what matters. Hopefully to the courts, anyway.

Intent (often?) matters:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

iMessage is the monopoly part. They could make an App or even just an API available on other platforms but don't because they want the lock-in.

> “The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” was how one unnamed former Apple employee put it in an email in 2016 > “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...

Not getting on board with RCS or any other way to improve SMS/MMS until they were (implicitly) forced was motivated by that desire to lock their users in to a messaging platform that only works on Apple devices.

Only because of Apple's refusal to implement RCS for feature parity. They're doing this on purpose, claiming anything else is just wool.

The colors indicate the features available. Even with RCS, there will be a significant list of features available to iMessage users that are not available over RCS. No matter what Apple does there must be some mechanism to visually indicate that standard iMessage features are no longer available. What would be the alternative, pretending that these features exist and then failing silently when one client doesn't support them?

The green/blue bubble thing is irrelevant. It reflects a fundamental reality of the platform technology.

Technology doesn’t matter here. What matters is whether people feel pressured to buy iMessage capable devices by others. In the US the answer is yes. Elsewhere it’s WhatsApp everywhere (with its own homogenous ecosystem issues which should be regulated).

Gruber gives a pretty good breakdown of the blue/green bubble history: https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/seeing_green

Short version: SMS has been green since the first iPhone, blue iMessage was added later. Green was not invented to "punish the poors"

It doesn’t matter. That’s how teens are using it today.

So maybe someone should talk to the teens, rather than wasting taxpayer money trying punish a company for building a better product...

Maybe Apple shouldn't use their dominant position as a smartphone manufacturer to knowledgeably exploit human insecurity and exacerbate user woe in hope of selling families another iPhone: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24107676/buy-your-mom-an-...

How long until the government mandates that Apple start directly parenting teenagers?

Or perhaps regulators will just require Apple to adopt Google's messaging app strategy, which is clearly much better for consumers:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...

> Green was not invented to "punish the poors"

No, but blue was only given to the first class citizens.

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