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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Luma and Partiful are really good.

This Apple thing is going to turn into a "green text" social signalling thing all over again. If you have an Android, you won't be invited.

More scummy Apple social engineering bullshit. Kids that already hate on those having Android colored text bubbles are going to bully each other even more. And of course kids need the latest iPhone, too.

Apple is playing into this brilliantly and it's disgusting.

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Non-Apple users are able to reply to invites so no one is going to miss any parties.

Well, it says "No HomerS" We're allowed to have one.

This green text thing only happens in the US. Nobody really uses iMessage elsewhere.

It shouldn't be allowed in the US. Lina Khan was going to put a stop to it, but tragically that didn't reach its culmination.

Why? Does the color affect functionality or are we going to pass laws based on feelings?

> are we going to pass laws based on feelings?

This is very concrete fuckery.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/21/apple-doj-antitrust...

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/21/doj-claims-green-bubbles-a...

The concrete fuckery:

(Politico) Lower video quality

(NPR) Feeling unwelcome

(TechCrunch) Peer pressure

It does. If you try to send a photo in an inferior green bubble chat, you get an error. Face time calls don’t work.

The text is harder to read for me because it’s low contrast and can’t be configured.

It’s significantly less secure, and a government agent required I use blue bubble imessage to submit an important document for security, and wouldn’t accept it by sms or email since both were not secure enough

That should work now because of RCS.

Email is secure enough though. People make up security rules in their heads all the time, doesn't mean it's true.

Tbh Apple's RCS implementation is so buggy it almost has me on the "they added bugs to keep people off of it" conspiracy train.

As in, during a conversation my phone would send RCS and the iPhone would reply with SMS only. This has happened multiple times with multiple people, and some where RCS won't let us communicate - the messages just disappear into the void, but only when sent from the iPhone.

https://i.imgur.com/FrMfECA.png

This happens in Android to Android too, especially with Samsung Messages.

A lot of carrier's RCS implementations are buggy.

apple has intentionally handicapped rcs and it is still ongoing

What are you talking about? Photos have worked in MSS group chats for 10+ years now. They send as shit quality but they work. And now mixed group chats are RCS which has all the important features of iMessage.

The error tells me to turn on MMS, which is already on.

RCS isn’t an obvious option anywhere

Settings > Apps > Messages > RCS Messaging

If it isn't there, About > Settings > General > About and tap the Carrier row. If it doesn't say RCS, the carrier doesn't support it.

Also one should note, MMS also requires carrier support and a few carriers don't support it in some countries.

There's a list of supported features for carriers worldwide at https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108048

Got it, I'll move to a country that supports RCS at my earliest convenience, and also not message anyone while I'm roaming to another carrier on vacation.

My carrier should support MMS, but I haven't yet had it work (and inbound messages to my number, like the picture of a family-member's wedding invite sent to my phone number, just silently vanish into the void)... I just kinda assumed it was working as expected since I'd heard so much about the green bubble issues.

Sending a message should just default to MMS, which I agree is lower quality especially for videos, but shouldn't get an error. I'm in multiple group chats with Android users and it's fine other than videos, which are from 2005.

I think SMS/MMS should just go away entirely though.

On my device it always gives me an error telling me to turn on MMS, which is turned on of course.

No, rebooting the phone doesn’t change anything, thanks for suggesting it

If you're in the U.S. and a "government agent" told you to use iMessage, you are 100% being scammed. No way they would accept anything less secure than a fax message or a document portal that looks like it was set up in the 90's.

It was certainly not a scam as the process completed successfully after iMessage-ing the required documents.

It wasn't the US though, yeah, but rather some american working for a foreign country's government.

Hate to break it to ya, everything humans do is fundamentally affected by feelings.

> Lina Khan was going to put a stop to it, but tragically that didn't reach its culmination.

Lets not kid ourselves she was going to keep focusing on minimum impact, likely to fail cases with good optics, and inventing more obtuse interpretations of anti-trust law while continuing to ignore any real monopolies she could.

Apple/iOS has market dominance in several places outside the US, including Japan, Canada, Scandinavia, and several other European nations. It has a slight majority in the UK.

Android has worldwide dominance overall, but people tend to communicate locally.

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...

Japan and most of Europe do not really use iMessage (Japan uses LINE, Europe generally uses WhatsApp), so I'm not sure exactly how iPhone market dominance is relevant to the previous commenter's point.

Nobody uses iMessage in Europe. It's an american phenomenon like beepers, caused by different market conditions.

In Europe the kids use Snapchat. Adults use WhatsApp for most calls, messages and rich media, and maybe Signal/Telegram for select groups or grey activities. The elderly use Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.

iMessage is nowhere near as popular outside the US, mostly because consumers do not expect to default themselves into some kind of single-manufacturer proprietary "ecosystem" that rivals Sony in how anti-consumer it is.

Thanks to the EU, you can just charge newer model iPhones with any USB-C cable now instead of having to pad Apple's profits further with proprietary dongles and cables that offer no additional value.

Your depiction of iMessage (which is essentially SMS+encrypted communication with enhancements to people who also have Apple devices) seems disingenuous, as does your explanation of why people use alternatives outside the US. Outside the HN bubble, most people don‘t care about things like proprietary vs open (and if they did, why the heck would they opt for propietary alternatives).

i read this take a lot but have never heard of it in practice (from my high school nieces)

what is overwhelmingly prevalent is political bullying; eg "make the dems cry again" was all over the school in various forms (t shirts, device backgrounds, etc)

green bubble hysteria really isn't a thing beyond nerds.

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