If anyone is “stirring up” anything it’s Apple which is disgustingly playing with the psychology of teenagers and is happy with pushing them to be mean to each other over green bubbles.
Google’s messages app also uses different colours for SMS and their RCS.
Um. No, it literally doesn’t.
In a group text, the bubbles are all the same color. Each person’s name that shows up above the bubble is a random color that corresponds to nothing.
If you start a one-on-one text chat with someone, there’s a little speech bubble 🗨 that shows up next to their avatar in your list of chats if it’s an RCS chat. That’s the only way to identify RCS chats.
EDIT: Also your messages on your phone are dark blue for RCS messages you send, and light blue for SMS/MMS messages you send.
This is literally the reason Apple changes the bubble color. iMessage is encrypted by default and uses normal data instead of MMS. That’s the indicator.
This entire spiel about bubble color envy is ridiculous. Features are the separation. The media will whip things up with their sample size of a handful of cherry picked anecdotes. But almost every teen has an iPhone and uses iMessage in the USA. Apple has over 80% of that market.
What Google wants is for Apple to implement Google’s proprietary RCS implementation, not RCS proper. Because RCS proper lacks a lot of features that people take for granted with iMessage. That is presumably one reason Google forked it and requires it to run through their proprietary middleware.
Edit: Don’t get me wrong. I would love for an open standard to overtake the proprietary bits from both Apple and Google. But Google is disingenuous here. They are complaining because, despite their efforts, they can’t crack the market. Teens aren’t bitting for Android. iMessage has network effect going on, so Google is trying to crack that open since they can’t get a compelling overall product and ecosystem for a valuable demographic.
I’d rather there be open standards. But that means Google RCS has to change as well.
While I agree with most of what you said (about Google and Samsung), Apple is pretty clearly encouraging the stigma when it comes to iMessage. They wouldn’t outright tell people to bully, but they are doing as much in an underhanded way.
Tim Cook says the solution[1] to the issues is to have the people you are talking to change to an iPhone. Hard to see this as anything other than encouraging, or at least accepting bullying.
Messages in iMessage used to be green, but when the blue messages were introduced, they changed the green ones to make them less readable and break their own guidelines[2]. There is no good reason to do this other than to encourage upset at green messages.
The Epic vs Apple lawsuit made information public[3] that Apple purposefully doesn’t make iMessage cross-platform in order to lock users in.
If anyone is “stirring up” anything it’s Apple which is disgustingly playing with the psychology of teenagers and is happy with pushing them to be mean to each other over green bubbles.
Google’s messages app also uses different colours for SMS and their RCS. Many phones/network operators rely on Google to provide the RCD service.
Um. No, it literally doesn’t.
In a group text, the bubbles are all the same color. Each person’s name that shows up above the bubble is a random color that corresponds to nothing.
If you start a one-on-one text chat with someone, there’s a little speech bubble 🗨 that shows up next to their avatar in your list of chats if it’s an RCS chat. That’s the only way to identify RCS chats.
EDIT: Also your messages on your phone are dark blue for RCS messages you send, and light blue for SMS/MMS messages you send.
You’ve said in your edit. They use a different colour.
They do this because it’s important for the user to know.
SMS isn’t encrypted. It also costs a lot to send images via SMS/MMS. The user needs to know, they are using a different chat mechanism.
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Again, this is all in context to teens bullying each other over having the “wrong phone”.
Unless, of course, you’re saying a teen might bully THEMSELF for having the wrong phone. The different-colored bubble is for only your own texts.
This is literally the reason Apple changes the bubble color. iMessage is encrypted by default and uses normal data instead of MMS. That’s the indicator.
This entire spiel about bubble color envy is ridiculous. Features are the separation. The media will whip things up with their sample size of a handful of cherry picked anecdotes. But almost every teen has an iPhone and uses iMessage in the USA. Apple has over 80% of that market.
What Google wants is for Apple to implement Google’s proprietary RCS implementation, not RCS proper. Because RCS proper lacks a lot of features that people take for granted with iMessage. That is presumably one reason Google forked it and requires it to run through their proprietary middleware.
Edit: Don’t get me wrong. I would love for an open standard to overtake the proprietary bits from both Apple and Google. But Google is disingenuous here. They are complaining because, despite their efforts, they can’t crack the market. Teens aren’t bitting for Android. iMessage has network effect going on, so Google is trying to crack that open since they can’t get a compelling overall product and ecosystem for a valuable demographic.
I’d rather there be open standards. But that means Google RCS has to change as well.
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There mere existence of green & blue bubbles is entirely an Apple thing.
As an Android user, I don’t know what type of phone the person I’m texting uses unless they tell me.
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Sure, but then people wouldn’t need to buy an iPhone to get iMessage, and that would be bad for Tim
While I agree with most of what you said (about Google and Samsung), Apple is pretty clearly encouraging the stigma when it comes to iMessage. They wouldn’t outright tell people to bully, but they are doing as much in an underhanded way.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/07/tim-cook-explains-why-apple-refuses-to-adopt-rcs-buy-your-mom-an-iphone/
[2] https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343
[3] https://www.thurrott.com/apple/248931/apple-didnt-bring-imessage-to-android-because-of-its-lock-in-strategy
That’s some head-empty logic.
“Preferred Company doesn’t do bad because they don’t outright admit it!”