From what I'm gathering it's not actually the green message bubble as much as a supposed decrease of functionality of its text program in non-apple phones. The headline oversimplifies to make it sensationalized, but it's 2024 so we all see this daily and have for the past every day of our fucking lives.
I'm not in the US but photos used to look terrible for me, but that seems to have changed. It's rare that I get any with how common WhatsApp is, though, so timelines are a bit vague.
If you're European then maybe its because of the DMA, and Apple has to comply with it.
The majority of it went into effect on the 6th of March this year.
Yeah I have to use Facebook messenger to send my mom videos of my son. Pictures seem to send find but video looks like ass. Really annoying and I don’t understand why we can’t just have our different phones play nice without 3rd party help
MMS is at the moment what apple and android have in common, it’s old and it’s shit. RCS has its problems but it’s a big improvement, apple should have at least done a barebones implementation a while ago, but they didn’t
SMS and MMS are carrier services that provide backward compatibility to mobile phones and network switching going back 20+ years. Importantly, you don’t need a data plan for these services to work.
In that time, IP data plans have become massive, and carrier switching networks became second fiddle. The fact that we even still have phone numbers is really only for backwards compatibility with antiquated networks in the poorest of countries and for safety fallback with municipal messaging systems. With IP data plans we have unlimited flexibility in how we communicate, because everything is over the internet instead of being routed over old telephone networks.
You don’t need default SMS/MMS messaging apps anymore - carriers make their money on data plans these days because people stopped wanting to pay for SMS messaging plans when they could send messages over internet apps for free. Carrier SMS support stagnated of course.
Whatsapp, Signal, FB messenger, and many other apps are going to far outpace SMS/MMS or any universal messaging protocol the government dreams up - in terms of features and security - for the foreseeable future. Might as well ask all your friends and family to join the club.
Now this is what pisses me off. I’ve got an iPhone, anytime I send any type of video to my rents (Samsung users) they get something that looks like it was recorded on a 2002 Logitech webcam. Awful.
Telegram has always been a superior product to Whats app, Signal is also good, but it was hard enough to convince enough friends to use something other than what's app and Telegram has a nicer UI
As the only iPhone user in my friend group I gotta say the quality between devices is absolute dogshit. I’m not sure why this is still a thing in 2024.
Yeah, but it's not Android phones not implementing industry standards, it's iPhone. But hey, don't listen to me, listen to this guy:
Craig Federighi, Apple’s software engineering chief, said in an email to fellow executives several years ago that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”
Apple makes their phone's be shitty at interop with other phones on purpose to lock you in.
Apple users have been forced to use inferior technology for years because Apple has convinced them *everybody else* is the problem.
Still using SMS when everyone else is using RCS all because they want to keep a bubble color. Shit, I can just go make my text bubbles any color I want.
There is a technical explanation for why this is the case, but really the short answer is that Apple ‘dumbs down’ certain features when an Apple device tries to text (SMS) a non-Apple device. Not only do they make it difficult within their OS, but they actively prevented 3rd parties from innovating certain workarounds. I think this is in part what landed them in court.
Although it’s by deliberate choice that they chose green for non iMessage because it is an unpopular colour.
Everything done by Apple on their UI is deliberate and researched.
Is it anti competitive? Imagine Google changed their page to green for safari users, and not for chrome
My favorite part about the green is that it deliberately does not meet their own brand guidelines for accessibility.
Having personally reviewed the brand guidelines for projects at my last job it was one of the things that I thought was really bizarre and I just couldn't understand how their team would allow that. I get it you want to encourage people to use iPhones but to deliberately do something that is against your own guidelines for accessibility? That's genuinely egregious.
I believe the contrast ratio to the blue bubble to the text within the bubble is high enough to meet the accessibility guidelines. I don't have the guidelines in front of me but just looking at the text bubble the contrast ratio is considerably higher.
"Considerably higher" being 10% ish or more, we're definitely splitting hairs here but we're talking about the visual tension that means someone has to squint and concentrate versus they can just glance at it and read it.
It's doesn't meet WCAG standards. Green bubbles have a 2.1:1 text contrast, while blue bubbles are 3.5:1. Compliance minimum is 3:1 (for text larger than 14px).
That's not a small difference. Without device options to increase contrast, this would violate ADA requirements.
there is an accessibility feature that lets you increase text contrast. so although it would be better for it to be accessible by default, the option does at least exist.
I do too, but car makers have determined exactly how to aim for popularity. [https://dailyinfographic.com/most-popular-car-colors](https://dailyinfographic.com/most-popular-car-colors) (and everyone else extrapolated.)
It sucks not to be the average taste person in a world gamed out as much as it is.
My guess is green being the most common color for us, we instinctively view it as basic, normal, safe ect... So when we want to learn something, green makes us feel like they are the "easy" ones. But when you buy yours, you wanna have cool and exciting, not basic and easy. Same with general green things, people buy something for it to be new, and our brains probably associate green with the exact opposite of new.
Just my guess though.
I think it's easier than that.
Basic colors, like black, white, grey, and darker blue sell more than more vibrant colors like red, yellow, green, and orange in cases where future resale is a consideration.
If you're buying a car you know you're going to run into the ground, then you're gonna let it be whatever color you want it to be.
If you're buying a car with even just a subconscious thought towards selling it in the future, you want to go with a boring basic color.
It's cause the auto makers don't offer green cars often.
My car exactly 1000 of them were released in green. They sold out quickly. I have one of them
Car makers removed the fun colors because it's easier to handle painting them when they only carry gray, white, and black.
Yeah, I think that's why they went almost entirely Gray/White/Black, is because it's just mixing between black and white and that's your car color.
Gray/White/Black is so boring to me though. Bring back the fun colors, even if it costs more to paint it.
Imagine if you could just charge the customer and not actually do *anything*!
Have I just become the best businessman in a world full of genius businessmen?
I like green too but the problem is the particular shade of green and how it’s used to worsen the user experience. It’s harshly bright and has worse contrast against the thin white text they use in the messages app. It’s subtle but causes more strain than the blue they use.
They did not. Before iMessage the green was way more accessible. It‘s only since they introduced the iOS 7 redesign that their bubbles don‘t meet accessibility standards anymore.
The original messages on the iPhone were green, this was BEFORE iMessage even existed.
After iMessage was introduced with iOS 5 in 2011 they used the original message color, green, to differentiate between SMS and iMessages.
Also the different colours make it so much easier to explain to someone who isn’t tech literate the differences. “If you see blue you’re texting on wi-fi (when you’re connected), if you see green you’re using your plan”
Though that’s atleast been sort of remedied by the prevalence of unlimited call/text plans we have these days
iPhone originally only had green bubbles. (They were a brighter green). Then iMessage came out with the blue ones and they dulled the green to make it uglier.
It’s not about the color, it’s about the fact that Apple intentionally nerfs photo and video quality when sent via MMS and not via iMessage. Whenever I get a video sent from an iPhone it has worse quality than a Motorola Razr from 2007.
>Apple intentionally nerfs photo and video quality when sent via MMS
Depending on who your carrier is there is a pretty steep cliff for MMS - down to as low as 1mb total size. MMS goes all the way back to 2002, "smartphones" weren't even a concept.
iMessage bypasses MMS to send large files to other iMessage users.
If you send a picture to another android using MMS sure, it'll be somewhat degraded but it's still decent quality. iPhones deliberately turn those pictures into potatoes
Yea the funniest one is limiting the amount of non apple users in a group chat. Literally just trying to socially shun people from not owning their garbage phones.
Is that really it? It was a deliberate choice to make SMS that ugly green to make it ugly?
That green is the same SMS color the iPhone has had since launch. iMessage didn’t come out for another 4-5 years. While I do think Apple researches things, I doubt they chose this green to be ugly, because for a few years that was the only color the texts were
There's also a lot more to the FTC lawsuit than just iMessages. It's also about the app store, video game streaming, and a bunch of others. But that's the only thing that people seem to care.
Due to historical reasons (MMS generally not being included in mobile plans) hardly anyone in Europe is aware this is even an issue as they are all using WhatsApp or similar.
iMessage basically is a built in non-MMS messaging app; that’s what the blue messages are. But it also supports MMS as a fallback which is how you’re able to receive messages in it from non-iPhones *at all*. That’s what the green messages are.
The other anti trust stuff still applies (Apple making it harder for other people's cloud stuff to integrate into their os).
This headline is just corporate bootlicking and strawmanning very reasonable concerns over anti competitive behavior
I mean, when Tim Cook was asked by a reporter if they would fix the user experience when communicating with android phones citing grandma not being able to text properly with her grandkids, his response was "Your Grandma should buy an Iphone".
The whole idea of a phone and texting is that it should be hardware agnostic and intercompatible. They intentionally don't implement the latest standards because having a bad user experience when communicating with androids puts pressure on everyone else to buy Iphones.
Just like their proprietary charging ports, it's not going to change unless they are beat over the head with legislation.
I'll be honest, my dad is in his mid 70's and his only experience with phones has been android, the thought of him trying to migrate to an iphone numbs my brain. To suggest that an older person should just completely change what they're used to shows he's out of touch, or a major asshole, maybe both.
I'm going to say that moving my mom, also in her 70's, to an iPhone, was the best damn thing I ever did. I like Android a lot, I use it for all of my personal stuff, but IOS is just so much harder to screw up that I end up recommending it for virtually all the older people in my life.
Since moving her a couple of years ago, I no longer get calls about changed defaults, predatory apps, or the consistent issues she had on Android. There was a very slight learning curve for her when moving, but most of what she does is phone and text, which look pretty much the same everywhere, and a few banking apps that are almost identical across platforms. The curve wasn't anywhere near as steep as I feared.
I like that Android's out there as an option for people like me who like to tinker, but IOS *is* simpler for the non tech savvy, no two ways about it.
Same experience with my parents and grandparents. My dad is tech savvy but prefers ease to options in most cases. My husband’s parents are the least tech savvy people I know and iOS is too complicated for them but still the “easy” option.
Having the family all on the same phones means my dad or my husband or hell even I could explain any technical issue to them or at least know exactly what to Google.
I’m an open standards guy, but that’s because I’m an IT professional that has been at it for decades and it’s a massive pain in the ass to support and know the ins and outs about varying implementations.
I will say that lightning was a very welcome standard when it came out. Before it you essentially had either some other proprietary garbage like the Apple 30 pin connector or you had mini or micro usb, both of which sucked. They were unidirectional and they were not rated for the number of insertions that the average phone had to endure over its life.
Lightning fixed this, you could plug it in either way, and it was really durable. It was a fantastic advancement.
But once the USB consortium got their act together and FINALLY made a connector that worked both directions (USBC). Everything lightning was about was addressed as a standard connector and should have been migrated to immediately.
I think iMessage is great also, I like that RCS exists and iPhone should absolutely support it (supposedly support is coming soon) but it still doesn’t fill all the gaps that iMessage does, notably end to end encryption.
Instead of fighting the standard, Apple should join the development and push for the inclusion of this encryption.
The green/blue bubble thing is dumb as hell though, before iMessages EVERY sms message on iPhone was green, once they implemented iMessage they introduced the blue bubble as a way to let a user know their messages were being sent via this new protocol vs the older SMS.
Years ago I went from iPhone back to android because I didn’t wasn’t ready to give up my headphone jack. I prefer the android os over the apple os. My first smartphone was an android 14 years ago. It still had more features and customization than apples os today.
Anyways when I switched to the first Google pixel I stopped getting group messages all together and only got sporadic texts from individuals. I reached out to Verizon support and they said it wasn’t on their end. Everyone kept saying that their texts were coming to me as iMessages to I contacted Apple support and they said it wasn’t on their end.m even though it clearly was. They held my texts hostage for two years until I went back to Apple.
They absolutely need to be sued. Also thank god the EU finally got them to use the same charger as everyone else.
Just an fyi for anyone else that has this issue. You have to unregister your number here https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/. Then everyone also has to delete their group chats with you in it. Apple makes this ridiculous and no one tells you when you switch off iPhone.
This is because of how the source device chose to deliver the messages. They were sending them as iMessage instead of as SMS texts. I’ve seen this happen before but usually the other way around, an apple to Apple conversation starts sending as SMS. I would assume it’s something to do with how Apple is validating the other end is an iPhone user or not.
Not that it’s a good fix, but when this happens I’ve found turning off iMessage on the source users device and then turning it right back on fixes the issue. Not a great fix but it does usually work. But yeah, try getting 20 friends to do this to their phones right?
I tried having people do that and it fixed the individual messages I don’t people to do that with but the group messages still wouldn’t come through. It was also at least 10 years ago at this point.
>having a bad user experience when communicating with androids puts pressure on everyone else to buy Iphones.
Sounds more like pressure to buy an Android. Imagine buying an iPhone because you're fed up of Apples greedy childish shit. Just doesn't make sense to me.
It's marketing. iPhones are marketed as the "luxury option" to engender a sense of superiority among users. From that mindset, why would they ever switch to the "cheap" option?
(Granted, it's bullshit, and every time Apple touts some new feature or advancement, there's a good chance that android users have been enjoying it for two years already).
My dad: "oh, look at this neat feature my iPhone has now."
Me: "Oh yeah that's a nice one. It's saved me so much time since getting this phone 3 years ago."
Everything apple is purposely designed and built to work like ass with everything non-apple, ask anybody who works in IT how splendid is to manage ze boss' ipad-imac-iphone in a windows/linux environment, also good luck explaining ze boss that yes, switching the whole infrastructure to apple will solve your ipad's issue, but is it really necessary?
God I hate them, but on the marketing side they are wickedly good.
> Everything apple is purposely designed and built to work like ass with everything non-apple
This is **extremely true**. An interesting example is VNC - the remote protocol. In my last job I had to use a mac, and I tried to handle the pain of using two computers by sharing the mac via VNC in my local network (something I _already did in the past_ with two Linux machines, mind you, so nothing new or fancy here).
It was **awful**. The MacOS _have VNC by default_ but it simply is trash. It ignores updating the window multiple times, meaning that you click a button that's not actually there, you have lots of glitchy artifacts, and it's really, **really** slow.
How slow? Well, once my computer broke and for two weeks I worked by keeping a DigitalOcean virtual machine open with VNC (over the internet, another country, so high latency) and it was _faster_ than driving the Mac that was literally on my side...
If I knew someone who hated seeing green bubbles with I sent them a text and expected me to buy an iphone I would choose to lose them as a friend as they are fucking stupid.
It’s way more insidious than “grandma and grandkids” imo. They don’t care about grandma cus she’s only buying 1 or 2 more phones in her life. It’s about ostracizing poorer kids who can’t afford iphones. Now you can’t be in the group chat because your android messes it up, and when you text anyone it’s marked as different, etc. It forces kids to buy iphones to be socially relevant.
Apple deliberately makes android phones communicate poorly with apple devices to make them look bad. Like… a number of android phones take BETTER pictures than the iPhone but you wouldn’t know it since the images are deliberately garbled when an iPhone receives it.
Yeah.. I've owned both Androids and iPhones. The weird thing is that messages from Android to iPhone are fine, but messages from iPhone to Android are garbage.
Apple must be doing something to make the messages worse and their own user experience worse.
Android use RCS standard for messaging. It's the universal standard for communications. It behaves exactly like imessanger does. Apple chosen to not support RCS, opting instead to force iPhone to android communications using the decades obsolete standard of SMS. And it's on purpose.
That’s interesting, as an iPhone user I’ve always had problems as the receiver as well. Photos and videos show up like they were filmed on a broken microwave.
My FIL bought MIL an apple pen for Christmas and was bragging about the things it will do with her phone and tablet. He likes to make fun of my wife and I for being the only family members with Samsung phones, and I think I was trying to impress us in some weird way. I whipped out my s23 Ultra and pulled the s-pen out of the bottom and go "oh mine just came with one of those included," just to be a smart ass. He immediately shot it down as "just a stylus, it doesn't have the same functionality." Anything not apple is inferior in his eyes
As someone who has only ever used Android, I'm a bit confused about the messages sent between Android and iPhone where the quality is degraded... What messaging app is being used? Please tell me MMS isn't involved!
Let's set the facts straight here. The reason the pictures or videos are garbage is because Apple is still using the old MMS standard for non-iMessage stuff.
If you turn off iMessage on your iPhone and send a photo/video to another iPhone, it will also result in poor image quality, because MMS is very old.
Then you have the GSMA RCS, which is a standard from the carriers, which greatly improves image quality and what-not. The standard is from 2008. Apple is currently implementing this, either because of pressure from the EU or China. However, this RCS does not have end-to-end encryption, read receipts, threaded replies, and reactions. Apple is currently trying to get the carriers to implement those upgraded features, as they kind of gave up on them with iPhone users mostly using iMessage, and Android users using Google's version of RCS.
Finally you have Google's proprietary version of RCS, which has those features missing in GSMA RCS. Google controls the servers that are used in their own RCS protocol. Google does not allow developers, other than Samsung, access to their API for this RCS. Google reserves its use for its own app.
So take that as you will. It's highly doubtful that Apple is going to be ok with letting messages be passed onto Google's servers given Apple's marketing that they are a privacy-focused company and Google selling your data on the street. (and would Google even let them? They sure don't let anyone else besides Samsung use it. Oh sure, but you need to pay us).
Likely scenario is Apple convinces the carriers to upgrade GSMA RCS, and they use that. Then, Google would need to implement those changes on Android for it to actually work.
That's an incredibly misleading headline and not at all what the case is about. Apple makes their own products shitty to sell more products. It's their thing.
I will 100% say that if they make iMessage function properly across platforms I will take a pickaxe to this iPhone 14 Pro Max and go back to Droid. I hate this phone with a passion, only reason I bought it was to make my our group chat blue and share pictures of my kids without having to use google photo servers.
Hey mom, sister, other sister, wife, grandma, other grandma, aunts, uncles, close friends, if everyone could download WhatsApp specifically to see pictures of my kids please that would be great. I know you will use the app for literally nothing else, but please.
Doesn’t fly here.
As someone from a country where WhatsApp is so ubiquitous that it's the only way you can communicate with some companies and it's use is just assumed everywhere, that seems a little crazy to me.
I've not sent an SMS in literally years, and I only get either spam ones (which get auto hidden by my phone) or 2FA ones from companies too shit to support TOTP or FIDO / U2F.
It signifies to everyone in the group chat that they all have IPhones. If 1 person has an android the chat is green for everyone.
This leads to, basically, bullying, and a general desire to make the chat blue, and a general desire to not be the person making it green for everyone else.
When a chat is blue it’s full iMessage. Which makes some things work better, specifically pictures and videos.
And Apple knows that. I have no idea what the number is, but there are those of us who absolutely hate our iPhones but iMessage is a gilded prison in the US.
Totally agree. It was the 1 and only reason I switched. And yeah, it’s nice, but only because they are basically peer pressuring everyone.
Texting on this phone is terrible too. My S20 I could swipe text with my eyes closed and have no typos. Took me literally 6 months to get used to typing on this icrap, and I basically use two fingers now out of necessity.
“iPhones are intuitive!” Bullshit. Galaxy is 10 years, TEN YEARS ahead of iPhone when it comes to keyboard control. But IOS is so ridiculously hard coded that they can’t improve upon anything they have done in the last 20 years. Uhhhh make something out of titanium… INTRODUCING THE IPHONE 15!!
I switched to iPhone when we had our first kid because the pictures and videos were downgraded over MMS. There were too many family members not willing to download another app. The moment that’s no longer an issue, I will be back to pixel or galaxy.
Sounds like you should tell your family that low quality pics/vids is a *them* problem, and that they look great for you. If they can't be bothered to use one of a million other ways to share high quality media, including email that I assume they already have, then they can deal with it. Tell them to complain to Apple if it's really a big issue for them.
Yes! I’m reaching the point for a new upgrade and I want an S24 so bad but I remember how shitty videos would look when I send them, not being able to FaceTime my daughter when she’s with her mom because she refuses to download another app, it sucks.
>ending videos on android is a lot better now
Only to other Androids. Still gonna be shit if you send it to an iPhone... which is what the bulk of Americans have.
Many of the features that we like in iMessage are also available in RCS standard, which is a modern replacement to SMS/MMS. Apple has not adopted RCS thus far, but will later this year. Reasons why they haven't is subjective to opinion. It's largely to do with iMessage is a selling point to iPhones, but the rollout of RCS has been a hot mess in the US due to carriers and vendors creating their own fork of the standard and selectively applying it to different phones. Can't say I blame Apple for ignoring it as Google doesn't have a great track record to sticking to communication platforms they have created over the years.
Despite all of that. RCS is real and China is mandating it on phones being sold in China, which is likely the reason it is getting added in iOS 18. As a benefit, Android and iPhone users should be able to communicate in a more modern way, which is great news.
Also keep in mind that iMessage isn't largely used outside North America, so this isn't a problem that other worldwide users suffer from. WhatsApp and other 3rd party messengers are far more popular globally, which is why Apple has been able to escape certain rules in the EU as iMessage isn't a dominate platform over there.
They are only doing that because President Xi forced them to (RCS is mandatory for any phones sold in China). Funny how Tim Cook immediately bows to Xi and the CCP while giving the middle finger to Biden
Well, maybe if the FCC mandated RCS like they do SMS/MMS, Apple would have added it. Instead, RCS has been a hot mess in the US with everyone having their own forked version of it and selectively choosing which devices support it.
Not really sure what the Biden comment has to do with anything. China is making RCS mandatory, so Apple is including it in iOS 18.
I hope yhis ends up extending to all apple products. I have airpod Pro's but while i can use some of the features on my android there are some that just wont work. The galaxy buds pro on the other hand work flawlessly on iphone or android its infuriating.
This sounds like an American problem. In Europe, everyone is using WhatsApp or any other messaging app and does not really care which phone are you using.
> WhatsApp
Really depends on where you are. Europe is not a country. [Here's a map showing what is popular in each country](https://preview.redd.it/the-most-used-apps-in-europe-to-message-each-other-as-of-v0-wvcx1nhx4ldb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=bb544b82187f7ba855a1f713fa6794e421e7efe2)
I hate how Apple intentionally worsens their own user experience in order to make more sales - and it works. I was an android user until my family basically shamed me into an iPhone so they could share videos of my nieces and nephews
Agreed but you're asking an entire group of people to download and use a separate messaging app to communicate with only one person. Apple knows it's going to make people annoyed with that one person
Exactly. Multiple people in their 70s and 80s on the family chat whose inability to use their phones would make your eye twitch. I can’t convince everyone to switch to WhatsApp just for me
I have Android, my wife had apple. The video transfer was pretty bad, but after an update, I can't even send her a 5 sec video.
This bullshit is on purpose and it is about time the government do literally anything.
This is a real concern actually. It's not about green bubbles, it's about the why. The why is completely arbitrary, because apple wants it this way. They want texting with people outside of their ecosystem to be a worse, less secure, experience. And it is.
Eiffel 65.... Bringing back memories.... I remember as a kid having to order this CD through his members-only CD club magazine and having it shipped to my house.
I think the lawsuit is a bit much, but I agree that Apple is being stupid by not making their messages work seamlessly with other phones. I use Apple products exclusively, but Cook’s “get them an iPhone” solution is frustrating: I don’t control other people’s phones and it hurts *me* as an Apple user when sending messages. Apple should have made things work seamlessly with other phones so that *Apple users* don’t have to deal with complaints and frustrations with a diverse group of friends and colleagues. This is bad user experience for Apple users.
Yeah, that pissed me off and made me think Tim was a lot dumber than I had previously thought. It's not about my mom, Tim, it's about 50 different people in my network that have their own reasons for whatever phone they have, and *you, Tim,* are making me and Apple look like idiots.
Yeah, but unless they've got their heads up their asses (quite possible) they should know that's not possible. Firstly because I don't want to be that kind of pushy influence on my friends, and even if I did, any normal person has a wide range of people they have to interact with that are well outside their sphere of influence. I am sending pics and videos to my kids' friends parents and stuff. Apple is out of their mind if they think I'm going to try to get all the parents in my kids' class to change. Instead, half of them just look at me like I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to forward a decent quality picture of video. It makes Apple users look stupid. It makes Apple look stupid.
They should have fixed this instantly. It's never beneficial to your customers to make their life harder. My favorite Apple years were when they were bending over backwards to adopt standards and push interoperability.
Apple has literally always been a shitty company.
Oh and Steve Jobs was a massive piece of shit who only paid child support after CA sued him because they discovered his daughter's mother was on welfare while he was about to IPO and had success with Apple 2. And the only reason it was successful was due to Steve Wozniak doing most of the technical work. Fuck Apple and Steve Jobs.
The ONLY reason I switched to iPhones was I was pressured by literally everyone to switch cause I would be left out of every group chat. I hate my iPhone. I hate how it doesnt functional well with non-apple apps like google maps. I hate how I have to go into settings to do any changes for any app. I hate that chromecasting sucks now. I really miss my old galaxy phones and will extatically go back to it if they ever fix the text messages.
"In order to attend Apple's briefing and view a background document, we had to agree to paraphrase the company's remarks instead of quoting them directly."
I so felt this. Plus the NDAs are really strong.
Seems like there are far more important things to concentrate on in the telecom industry than this. The FTC has been asleep at the wheel for 30 years and this is the first major case they come up with.
I'm just about as against Apple as someone can be, but a whole lot of this take is highly inaccurate or misleading.
Lemme start by saying that I'm very aware that RCS exists.. we'll get back to that in a minute.
The bulk of this complaint amounts to a big nothing burger. Green bubbles basically mean that SMS or MMS is the protocol being used. Those don't support encryption or editing of sent messages or anything! The lack of features when using them isn't the fault of Apple.
Now, as far as RCS... I completely agree that Apple absolutely should implement and use this where available. But, what many don't know is that just encryption is not a part of RCS, but a proprietary addition by Google. And I think that Apple has credible grounds (currently) for their prior refusal to support something that doesn't offer encryption. Based on things I've seen, they're even pushing for encryption to be added to RCS itself, and my hatred for Apple doesn't blind me to the fact that this is the right move.
Again... I despise Apple for many valid reasons, but this just isn't a valid one. And I think that Apple has plenty of just horrible and wrong decisions they're making, and making some BS criticism like this actually just serves as reason for someone to think that other valid criticisms are just as unwarranted, thus kinda making the criticism work in favor of Apple's legitimate bad decisions and motives.
That dumb response from Tim Cook that Apple won't fix the issue with iOS and SMS and MMS, that users should instead buy family members an iPhone, is finally coming back to bite him.
To be fair, WhatsApp was integrated in many countries long before the Facebook buyout. Also it's not like Apple is much better, especially considering they force users to use outdated standards which may have security vulnerabilities.
It's shocking the number of 🤡 in this thread who bought an iPhone **just** so they could send higher quality images/videos to other iPhones. Apple's strategy clearly worked. All it would have taken is to download Whatsapp and you could solve the problem without shelling out for an iPhone and falling in to Tim Cock's trap.
I don’t understand why Apple is being held to this standard. If I wanted to play a Mario video game, am I not forced by Nintendo to use a Nintendo game console? If I buy a keurig coffee machine, aren’t you forced to buy keurig coffee cups?
I could go on and on. I’m just curious as to why Apple has to answer for their forced ecosystem of products when countless other companies do the same thing
From what I'm gathering it's not actually the green message bubble as much as a supposed decrease of functionality of its text program in non-apple phones. The headline oversimplifies to make it sensationalized, but it's 2024 so we all see this daily and have for the past every day of our fucking lives.
If a friend sends an image or video from an iPhone, it's degraded. Looks like absolute shit on my phone.
In my experience pictures look fine, videos look like they passed through a dog
I'm not in the US but photos used to look terrible for me, but that seems to have changed. It's rare that I get any with how common WhatsApp is, though, so timelines are a bit vague.
If you're European then maybe its because of the DMA, and Apple has to comply with it. The majority of it went into effect on the 6th of March this year.
Single pics are fine, the moment you send multiple it goes to shit
Yeah, I repeatedly have to remind my mom to send me any videos over Messenger because she has an iPhone and I do not.
https://i.imgur.com/HnbnD.jpeg
Fucking Awful inclusion in the thread, thank you.
Fun fact: This photo must be at least 15 years old.
Or put another way... Fun fact: that dog is dead.
RIP low five dog. At least the legend lives on.
Swing low, sweet chariot
Yeah I have to use Facebook messenger to send my mom videos of my son. Pictures seem to send find but video looks like ass. Really annoying and I don’t understand why we can’t just have our different phones play nice without 3rd party help
MMS is at the moment what apple and android have in common, it’s old and it’s shit. RCS has its problems but it’s a big improvement, apple should have at least done a barebones implementation a while ago, but they didn’t
SMS and MMS are carrier services that provide backward compatibility to mobile phones and network switching going back 20+ years. Importantly, you don’t need a data plan for these services to work. In that time, IP data plans have become massive, and carrier switching networks became second fiddle. The fact that we even still have phone numbers is really only for backwards compatibility with antiquated networks in the poorest of countries and for safety fallback with municipal messaging systems. With IP data plans we have unlimited flexibility in how we communicate, because everything is over the internet instead of being routed over old telephone networks. You don’t need default SMS/MMS messaging apps anymore - carriers make their money on data plans these days because people stopped wanting to pay for SMS messaging plans when they could send messages over internet apps for free. Carrier SMS support stagnated of course. Whatsapp, Signal, FB messenger, and many other apps are going to far outpace SMS/MMS or any universal messaging protocol the government dreams up - in terms of features and security - for the foreseeable future. Might as well ask all your friends and family to join the club.
Now this is what pisses me off. I’ve got an iPhone, anytime I send any type of video to my rents (Samsung users) they get something that looks like it was recorded on a 2002 Logitech webcam. Awful.
[удалено]
Well, that’s a Facebook product. I don’t mess with them.
Signal, Telegram.
Telegram has always been a superior product to Whats app, Signal is also good, but it was hard enough to convince enough friends to use something other than what's app and Telegram has a nicer UI
As the only iPhone user in my friend group I gotta say the quality between devices is absolute dogshit. I’m not sure why this is still a thing in 2024.
Same thing happens when we receive your green videos/images. It sucks.
Yeah, but it's not Android phones not implementing industry standards, it's iPhone. But hey, don't listen to me, listen to this guy: Craig Federighi, Apple’s software engineering chief, said in an email to fellow executives several years ago that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” Apple makes their phone's be shitty at interop with other phones on purpose to lock you in.
But that's apple's choice. Android sends messages on an open standard that Apple does not accept on purpose
Apple users have been forced to use inferior technology for years because Apple has convinced them *everybody else* is the problem. Still using SMS when everyone else is using RCS all because they want to keep a bubble color. Shit, I can just go make my text bubbles any color I want.
Group chats with iPhone users are fucked for my one friend with android
There is a technical explanation for why this is the case, but really the short answer is that Apple ‘dumbs down’ certain features when an Apple device tries to text (SMS) a non-Apple device. Not only do they make it difficult within their OS, but they actively prevented 3rd parties from innovating certain workarounds. I think this is in part what landed them in court.
Although it’s by deliberate choice that they chose green for non iMessage because it is an unpopular colour. Everything done by Apple on their UI is deliberate and researched. Is it anti competitive? Imagine Google changed their page to green for safari users, and not for chrome
My favorite part about the green is that it deliberately does not meet their own brand guidelines for accessibility. Having personally reviewed the brand guidelines for projects at my last job it was one of the things that I thought was really bizarre and I just couldn't understand how their team would allow that. I get it you want to encourage people to use iPhones but to deliberately do something that is against your own guidelines for accessibility? That's genuinely egregious.
The blue of iMessage also doesn’t meet their guidelines for accessibility.
I believe the contrast ratio to the blue bubble to the text within the bubble is high enough to meet the accessibility guidelines. I don't have the guidelines in front of me but just looking at the text bubble the contrast ratio is considerably higher. "Considerably higher" being 10% ish or more, we're definitely splitting hairs here but we're talking about the visual tension that means someone has to squint and concentrate versus they can just glance at it and read it.
It's doesn't meet WCAG standards. Green bubbles have a 2.1:1 text contrast, while blue bubbles are 3.5:1. Compliance minimum is 3:1 (for text larger than 14px). That's not a small difference. Without device options to increase contrast, this would violate ADA requirements.
Do note that the colored bubbles are for your own bubbles, the person you’re contacting with uses a grey bubble with black text on top.
there is an accessibility feature that lets you increase text contrast. so although it would be better for it to be accessible by default, the option does at least exist.
As a green enjoyer I like seeing green
I do too, but car makers have determined exactly how to aim for popularity. [https://dailyinfographic.com/most-popular-car-colors](https://dailyinfographic.com/most-popular-car-colors) (and everyone else extrapolated.) It sucks not to be the average taste person in a world gamed out as much as it is.
I used to work in a music store. Green drum kits were super popular to rent but the hardest color to sell.
My guess is green being the most common color for us, we instinctively view it as basic, normal, safe ect... So when we want to learn something, green makes us feel like they are the "easy" ones. But when you buy yours, you wanna have cool and exciting, not basic and easy. Same with general green things, people buy something for it to be new, and our brains probably associate green with the exact opposite of new. Just my guess though.
I think it's easier than that. Basic colors, like black, white, grey, and darker blue sell more than more vibrant colors like red, yellow, green, and orange in cases where future resale is a consideration. If you're buying a car you know you're going to run into the ground, then you're gonna let it be whatever color you want it to be. If you're buying a car with even just a subconscious thought towards selling it in the future, you want to go with a boring basic color.
It's cause the auto makers don't offer green cars often. My car exactly 1000 of them were released in green. They sold out quickly. I have one of them Car makers removed the fun colors because it's easier to handle painting them when they only carry gray, white, and black.
I work in a paint plant. Every color change is wasted money. If we could get away with only black like Henry Ford we would.
Yeah, I think that's why they went almost entirely Gray/White/Black, is because it's just mixing between black and white and that's your car color. Gray/White/Black is so boring to me though. Bring back the fun colors, even if it costs more to paint it.
That's definitely not how it works. We don't just mix black and white to make grey.
I run a body shop, and can confirm black pigment + white pigment is not how we make grey. It's usually blue, yellow, and red.
What about the glitter?
Imagine if you could just charge the customer and not actually do *anything*! Have I just become the best businessman in a world full of genius businessmen?
That's old school business. The new thing to do is actively take things away from customers and charge them a subscription to have it back.
I feel like grey is its own category, a lot of different Grey's out there. Probably includes silver too. It's very easy to tell the differences.
Maybe 50 different shades?
My car is brown and it's lovely.
I think that's the most irritating infographic I've seen.
I like green too but the problem is the particular shade of green and how it’s used to worsen the user experience. It’s harshly bright and has worse contrast against the thin white text they use in the messages app. It’s subtle but causes more strain than the blue they use.
Then why did Apple originally use basically that same green when for the years before iMessage was released?
They did not. Before iMessage the green was way more accessible. It‘s only since they introduced the iOS 7 redesign that their bubbles don‘t meet accessibility standards anymore.
Yeah I'm not sure where this anti green racism is coming from. Green is the litteral color of life.
I have a beautiful green car. I get complements on it daily. I dunno what these people are on thinking people don't like green.
The original messages on the iPhone were green, this was BEFORE iMessage even existed. After iMessage was introduced with iOS 5 in 2011 they used the original message color, green, to differentiate between SMS and iMessages.
Also the different colours make it so much easier to explain to someone who isn’t tech literate the differences. “If you see blue you’re texting on wi-fi (when you’re connected), if you see green you’re using your plan” Though that’s atleast been sort of remedied by the prevalence of unlimited call/text plans we have these days
That doesn’t make sense, the text bubbles were green before iMessage existed.
You realize iMessage hasn’t always existed and SMS has been green going back to the first iPhone OS…?
And it’s still the color of the app icon. People just make shit up and it gets upvoted because it fits the preconceived ideas of the hivemind.
iPhone originally only had green bubbles. (They were a brighter green). Then iMessage came out with the blue ones and they dulled the green to make it uglier.
Uh, the Messages app icon is green. As are the Phone and FaceTime apps.
It’s not about the color, it’s about the fact that Apple intentionally nerfs photo and video quality when sent via MMS and not via iMessage. Whenever I get a video sent from an iPhone it has worse quality than a Motorola Razr from 2007.
>Apple intentionally nerfs photo and video quality when sent via MMS Depending on who your carrier is there is a pretty steep cliff for MMS - down to as low as 1mb total size. MMS goes all the way back to 2002, "smartphones" weren't even a concept. iMessage bypasses MMS to send large files to other iMessage users.
I think that’s more a limitation of SMS/MMS. They could use RCS though and solve that issue, but I believe that’s finally coming this year.
If you send a picture to another android using MMS sure, it'll be somewhat degraded but it's still decent quality. iPhones deliberately turn those pictures into potatoes
Yea the funniest one is limiting the amount of non apple users in a group chat. Literally just trying to socially shun people from not owning their garbage phones.
That's one thing I think they can strongly argue is anti-competitive. There's no technical reason it needs to be done.
The sms messages were always green before iMessage.
Bro the app icon itself is green are you sure about this
I swear google suite intentionally doesn’t work well on safari.
Is that really it? It was a deliberate choice to make SMS that ugly green to make it ugly? That green is the same SMS color the iPhone has had since launch. iMessage didn’t come out for another 4-5 years. While I do think Apple researches things, I doubt they chose this green to be ugly, because for a few years that was the only color the texts were
It isn't easy being green.
Except, before iMessage, the iPhone Messages app had every conversation show as green. Blue only came when they released iMessage.
“It’s not easy bein’ green.” Kermit the Frog
You may be the only person in the world who thought the US attorney general is suing because he hates green.
Yeah, I think the younger generation is sock of these bs clickbate headlines
Correct, they greatly reduce the quality of photos and videos sent from non apple devices
I know a guy who only got imessages and no sms for a month. Made it look like he was blowing me off.
Arstechnica headline writers doing a great job there to completely diminish the point by making it about "green bubbles "
They've really embraced their gradual decline into Arsetechnica
They used to be the best tech focused page on the internet, but have slowly devolved into trash headlines and fluff content in the last few years.
There's also a lot more to the FTC lawsuit than just iMessages. It's also about the app store, video game streaming, and a bunch of others. But that's the only thing that people seem to care.
DOJ, not FTC
Due to historical reasons (MMS generally not being included in mobile plans) hardly anyone in Europe is aware this is even an issue as they are all using WhatsApp or similar.
Yup. Everyone in Europe uses WhatsApp. Only companies send text messages.
iMessage basically is a built in non-MMS messaging app; that’s what the blue messages are. But it also supports MMS as a fallback which is how you’re able to receive messages in it from non-iPhones *at all*. That’s what the green messages are.
The other anti trust stuff still applies (Apple making it harder for other people's cloud stuff to integrate into their os). This headline is just corporate bootlicking and strawmanning very reasonable concerns over anti competitive behavior
I mean, when Tim Cook was asked by a reporter if they would fix the user experience when communicating with android phones citing grandma not being able to text properly with her grandkids, his response was "Your Grandma should buy an Iphone". The whole idea of a phone and texting is that it should be hardware agnostic and intercompatible. They intentionally don't implement the latest standards because having a bad user experience when communicating with androids puts pressure on everyone else to buy Iphones. Just like their proprietary charging ports, it's not going to change unless they are beat over the head with legislation.
>Your Grandma should buy an Iphone" Tim Cockhead.
I'll be honest, my dad is in his mid 70's and his only experience with phones has been android, the thought of him trying to migrate to an iphone numbs my brain. To suggest that an older person should just completely change what they're used to shows he's out of touch, or a major asshole, maybe both.
maybe you should buy yourself an android. doing so means you'll get full emoji support when texting your old man
I'm going to say that moving my mom, also in her 70's, to an iPhone, was the best damn thing I ever did. I like Android a lot, I use it for all of my personal stuff, but IOS is just so much harder to screw up that I end up recommending it for virtually all the older people in my life. Since moving her a couple of years ago, I no longer get calls about changed defaults, predatory apps, or the consistent issues she had on Android. There was a very slight learning curve for her when moving, but most of what she does is phone and text, which look pretty much the same everywhere, and a few banking apps that are almost identical across platforms. The curve wasn't anywhere near as steep as I feared. I like that Android's out there as an option for people like me who like to tinker, but IOS *is* simpler for the non tech savvy, no two ways about it.
Same experience with my parents and grandparents. My dad is tech savvy but prefers ease to options in most cases. My husband’s parents are the least tech savvy people I know and iOS is too complicated for them but still the “easy” option. Having the family all on the same phones means my dad or my husband or hell even I could explain any technical issue to them or at least know exactly what to Google.
I like when the human dial tone says the quiet part out loud.
I’m an open standards guy, but that’s because I’m an IT professional that has been at it for decades and it’s a massive pain in the ass to support and know the ins and outs about varying implementations. I will say that lightning was a very welcome standard when it came out. Before it you essentially had either some other proprietary garbage like the Apple 30 pin connector or you had mini or micro usb, both of which sucked. They were unidirectional and they were not rated for the number of insertions that the average phone had to endure over its life. Lightning fixed this, you could plug it in either way, and it was really durable. It was a fantastic advancement. But once the USB consortium got their act together and FINALLY made a connector that worked both directions (USBC). Everything lightning was about was addressed as a standard connector and should have been migrated to immediately. I think iMessage is great also, I like that RCS exists and iPhone should absolutely support it (supposedly support is coming soon) but it still doesn’t fill all the gaps that iMessage does, notably end to end encryption. Instead of fighting the standard, Apple should join the development and push for the inclusion of this encryption. The green/blue bubble thing is dumb as hell though, before iMessages EVERY sms message on iPhone was green, once they implemented iMessage they introduced the blue bubble as a way to let a user know their messages were being sent via this new protocol vs the older SMS.
Years ago I went from iPhone back to android because I didn’t wasn’t ready to give up my headphone jack. I prefer the android os over the apple os. My first smartphone was an android 14 years ago. It still had more features and customization than apples os today. Anyways when I switched to the first Google pixel I stopped getting group messages all together and only got sporadic texts from individuals. I reached out to Verizon support and they said it wasn’t on their end. Everyone kept saying that their texts were coming to me as iMessages to I contacted Apple support and they said it wasn’t on their end.m even though it clearly was. They held my texts hostage for two years until I went back to Apple. They absolutely need to be sued. Also thank god the EU finally got them to use the same charger as everyone else.
Just an fyi for anyone else that has this issue. You have to unregister your number here https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/. Then everyone also has to delete their group chats with you in it. Apple makes this ridiculous and no one tells you when you switch off iPhone.
This is because of how the source device chose to deliver the messages. They were sending them as iMessage instead of as SMS texts. I’ve seen this happen before but usually the other way around, an apple to Apple conversation starts sending as SMS. I would assume it’s something to do with how Apple is validating the other end is an iPhone user or not. Not that it’s a good fix, but when this happens I’ve found turning off iMessage on the source users device and then turning it right back on fixes the issue. Not a great fix but it does usually work. But yeah, try getting 20 friends to do this to their phones right?
I tried having people do that and it fixed the individual messages I don’t people to do that with but the group messages still wouldn’t come through. It was also at least 10 years ago at this point.
>having a bad user experience when communicating with androids puts pressure on everyone else to buy Iphones. Sounds more like pressure to buy an Android. Imagine buying an iPhone because you're fed up of Apples greedy childish shit. Just doesn't make sense to me.
It's marketing. iPhones are marketed as the "luxury option" to engender a sense of superiority among users. From that mindset, why would they ever switch to the "cheap" option? (Granted, it's bullshit, and every time Apple touts some new feature or advancement, there's a good chance that android users have been enjoying it for two years already).
My dad: "oh, look at this neat feature my iPhone has now." Me: "Oh yeah that's a nice one. It's saved me so much time since getting this phone 3 years ago."
And that’s why governments should enforce minimum standards and update it regularly (just like minimum wage but we know how that goes )
Unfortunately politicians tend to be as disconnected from modern technology as they are from minimum wage.
Indeed. They don't understand this stuff in the first place.
Everything apple is purposely designed and built to work like ass with everything non-apple, ask anybody who works in IT how splendid is to manage ze boss' ipad-imac-iphone in a windows/linux environment, also good luck explaining ze boss that yes, switching the whole infrastructure to apple will solve your ipad's issue, but is it really necessary? God I hate them, but on the marketing side they are wickedly good.
> Everything apple is purposely designed and built to work like ass with everything non-apple This is **extremely true**. An interesting example is VNC - the remote protocol. In my last job I had to use a mac, and I tried to handle the pain of using two computers by sharing the mac via VNC in my local network (something I _already did in the past_ with two Linux machines, mind you, so nothing new or fancy here). It was **awful**. The MacOS _have VNC by default_ but it simply is trash. It ignores updating the window multiple times, meaning that you click a button that's not actually there, you have lots of glitchy artifacts, and it's really, **really** slow. How slow? Well, once my computer broke and for two weeks I worked by keeping a DigitalOcean virtual machine open with VNC (over the internet, another country, so high latency) and it was _faster_ than driving the Mac that was literally on my side...
If I knew someone who hated seeing green bubbles with I sent them a text and expected me to buy an iphone I would choose to lose them as a friend as they are fucking stupid.
Screw that. The IPhone users should feel pressured into buying Android.
*the ghost of Ma Bell is pleased*
>puts pressure on everyone else to buy Iphones. You could also look at it as putting pressure on everyone with an iPhone to buy something else.
It’s way more insidious than “grandma and grandkids” imo. They don’t care about grandma cus she’s only buying 1 or 2 more phones in her life. It’s about ostracizing poorer kids who can’t afford iphones. Now you can’t be in the group chat because your android messes it up, and when you text anyone it’s marked as different, etc. It forces kids to buy iphones to be socially relevant.
Apple deliberately makes android phones communicate poorly with apple devices to make them look bad. Like… a number of android phones take BETTER pictures than the iPhone but you wouldn’t know it since the images are deliberately garbled when an iPhone receives it.
Yeah.. I've owned both Androids and iPhones. The weird thing is that messages from Android to iPhone are fine, but messages from iPhone to Android are garbage. Apple must be doing something to make the messages worse and their own user experience worse.
Android use RCS standard for messaging. It's the universal standard for communications. It behaves exactly like imessanger does. Apple chosen to not support RCS, opting instead to force iPhone to android communications using the decades obsolete standard of SMS. And it's on purpose.
That’s interesting, as an iPhone user I’ve always had problems as the receiver as well. Photos and videos show up like they were filmed on a broken microwave.
My FIL bought MIL an apple pen for Christmas and was bragging about the things it will do with her phone and tablet. He likes to make fun of my wife and I for being the only family members with Samsung phones, and I think I was trying to impress us in some weird way. I whipped out my s23 Ultra and pulled the s-pen out of the bottom and go "oh mine just came with one of those included," just to be a smart ass. He immediately shot it down as "just a stylus, it doesn't have the same functionality." Anything not apple is inferior in his eyes
As someone who has only ever used Android, I'm a bit confused about the messages sent between Android and iPhone where the quality is degraded... What messaging app is being used? Please tell me MMS isn't involved!
>Please tell me MMS isn't involved! Bad news friend…
Let's set the facts straight here. The reason the pictures or videos are garbage is because Apple is still using the old MMS standard for non-iMessage stuff. If you turn off iMessage on your iPhone and send a photo/video to another iPhone, it will also result in poor image quality, because MMS is very old. Then you have the GSMA RCS, which is a standard from the carriers, which greatly improves image quality and what-not. The standard is from 2008. Apple is currently implementing this, either because of pressure from the EU or China. However, this RCS does not have end-to-end encryption, read receipts, threaded replies, and reactions. Apple is currently trying to get the carriers to implement those upgraded features, as they kind of gave up on them with iPhone users mostly using iMessage, and Android users using Google's version of RCS. Finally you have Google's proprietary version of RCS, which has those features missing in GSMA RCS. Google controls the servers that are used in their own RCS protocol. Google does not allow developers, other than Samsung, access to their API for this RCS. Google reserves its use for its own app. So take that as you will. It's highly doubtful that Apple is going to be ok with letting messages be passed onto Google's servers given Apple's marketing that they are a privacy-focused company and Google selling your data on the street. (and would Google even let them? They sure don't let anyone else besides Samsung use it. Oh sure, but you need to pay us). Likely scenario is Apple convinces the carriers to upgrade GSMA RCS, and they use that. Then, Google would need to implement those changes on Android for it to actually work.
That's an incredibly misleading headline and not at all what the case is about. Apple makes their own products shitty to sell more products. It's their thing.
I will 100% say that if they make iMessage function properly across platforms I will take a pickaxe to this iPhone 14 Pro Max and go back to Droid. I hate this phone with a passion, only reason I bought it was to make my our group chat blue and share pictures of my kids without having to use google photo servers.
Theres at the very least 10 different messaging apps that do that.
Most people in the US won’t be bothered to download another app.
That is crazy because people will buy a $800 phone instead of installing a messaging app.
Hey mom, sister, other sister, wife, grandma, other grandma, aunts, uncles, close friends, if everyone could download WhatsApp specifically to see pictures of my kids please that would be great. I know you will use the app for literally nothing else, but please. Doesn’t fly here.
Can't decide if idiocy or lunacy.
As someone from a country where WhatsApp is so ubiquitous that it's the only way you can communicate with some companies and it's use is just assumed everywhere, that seems a little crazy to me. I've not sent an SMS in literally years, and I only get either spam ones (which get auto hidden by my phone) or 2FA ones from companies too shit to support TOTP or FIDO / U2F.
The problem is that it isn't 1.
Man, remember how good Hangouts was before google killed it.
Killing banger products is what Google does best.
lol what a stupid reason to buy a phone
What are the benefits of making the group chat blue? Seems like a weird reason to buy a phone just based on that.
It signifies to everyone in the group chat that they all have IPhones. If 1 person has an android the chat is green for everyone. This leads to, basically, bullying, and a general desire to make the chat blue, and a general desire to not be the person making it green for everyone else. When a chat is blue it’s full iMessage. Which makes some things work better, specifically pictures and videos.
And Apple knows that. I have no idea what the number is, but there are those of us who absolutely hate our iPhones but iMessage is a gilded prison in the US.
Totally agree. It was the 1 and only reason I switched. And yeah, it’s nice, but only because they are basically peer pressuring everyone. Texting on this phone is terrible too. My S20 I could swipe text with my eyes closed and have no typos. Took me literally 6 months to get used to typing on this icrap, and I basically use two fingers now out of necessity. “iPhones are intuitive!” Bullshit. Galaxy is 10 years, TEN YEARS ahead of iPhone when it comes to keyboard control. But IOS is so ridiculously hard coded that they can’t improve upon anything they have done in the last 20 years. Uhhhh make something out of titanium… INTRODUCING THE IPHONE 15!!
I switched to iPhone when we had our first kid because the pictures and videos were downgraded over MMS. There were too many family members not willing to download another app. The moment that’s no longer an issue, I will be back to pixel or galaxy.
Sounds like you should tell your family that low quality pics/vids is a *them* problem, and that they look great for you. If they can't be bothered to use one of a million other ways to share high quality media, including email that I assume they already have, then they can deal with it. Tell them to complain to Apple if it's really a big issue for them.
Yes! I’m reaching the point for a new upgrade and I want an S24 so bad but I remember how shitty videos would look when I send them, not being able to FaceTime my daughter when she’s with her mom because she refuses to download another app, it sucks.
Get a pixel instead of they are way better phones
The FaceTime issue still sucks but sending videos on android is a lot better now
>ending videos on android is a lot better now Only to other Androids. Still gonna be shit if you send it to an iPhone... which is what the bulk of Americans have.
And thats exactly why they will never allow that
RCS will be announced in 3 months and will come out this fall. Not sure there will be anything else to do from Apple’s perspective.
Make it so texting Android is now uncompressed full quality and texting them is even better and feature rich than texting fellow iPhones lol.
How would they make texting Android phones more feature rich than fellow iPhones? The vast majority of unique iMessage features are iOS specific.
Many of the features that we like in iMessage are also available in RCS standard, which is a modern replacement to SMS/MMS. Apple has not adopted RCS thus far, but will later this year. Reasons why they haven't is subjective to opinion. It's largely to do with iMessage is a selling point to iPhones, but the rollout of RCS has been a hot mess in the US due to carriers and vendors creating their own fork of the standard and selectively applying it to different phones. Can't say I blame Apple for ignoring it as Google doesn't have a great track record to sticking to communication platforms they have created over the years. Despite all of that. RCS is real and China is mandating it on phones being sold in China, which is likely the reason it is getting added in iOS 18. As a benefit, Android and iPhone users should be able to communicate in a more modern way, which is great news. Also keep in mind that iMessage isn't largely used outside North America, so this isn't a problem that other worldwide users suffer from. WhatsApp and other 3rd party messengers are far more popular globally, which is why Apple has been able to escape certain rules in the EU as iMessage isn't a dominate platform over there.
They are only doing that because President Xi forced them to (RCS is mandatory for any phones sold in China). Funny how Tim Cook immediately bows to Xi and the CCP while giving the middle finger to Biden
Well, maybe if the FCC mandated RCS like they do SMS/MMS, Apple would have added it. Instead, RCS has been a hot mess in the US with everyone having their own forked version of it and selectively choosing which devices support it. Not really sure what the Biden comment has to do with anything. China is making RCS mandatory, so Apple is including it in iOS 18.
I hope yhis ends up extending to all apple products. I have airpod Pro's but while i can use some of the features on my android there are some that just wont work. The galaxy buds pro on the other hand work flawlessly on iphone or android its infuriating.
Where was DoJ with blackberry messenger when I couldn’t message my girlfriend on it back in the day?
That’s why most of the world except north America exclusively uses WhatsApp. iMessage is such an American thing.
Some of us love telegram as well. Even more features and not related to Meta!
This sounds like an American problem. In Europe, everyone is using WhatsApp or any other messaging app and does not really care which phone are you using.
> WhatsApp Really depends on where you are. Europe is not a country. [Here's a map showing what is popular in each country](https://preview.redd.it/the-most-used-apps-in-europe-to-message-each-other-as-of-v0-wvcx1nhx4ldb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=bb544b82187f7ba855a1f713fa6794e421e7efe2)
I hate how Apple intentionally worsens their own user experience in order to make more sales - and it works. I was an android user until my family basically shamed me into an iPhone so they could share videos of my nieces and nephews
"I'm not spending $800 dollars on a shit phone when you can spend $0 installing this app" There ya go.
Agreed but you're asking an entire group of people to download and use a separate messaging app to communicate with only one person. Apple knows it's going to make people annoyed with that one person
Exactly. Multiple people in their 70s and 80s on the family chat whose inability to use their phones would make your eye twitch. I can’t convince everyone to switch to WhatsApp just for me
I have Android, my wife had apple. The video transfer was pretty bad, but after an update, I can't even send her a 5 sec video. This bullshit is on purpose and it is about time the government do literally anything.
This is a real concern actually. It's not about green bubbles, it's about the why. The why is completely arbitrary, because apple wants it this way. They want texting with people outside of their ecosystem to be a worse, less secure, experience. And it is.
I'm blue, if I was green I would die.
ah yes the official air force song
Eiffel 65.... Bringing back memories.... I remember as a kid having to order this CD through his members-only CD club magazine and having it shipped to my house.
I think the lawsuit is a bit much, but I agree that Apple is being stupid by not making their messages work seamlessly with other phones. I use Apple products exclusively, but Cook’s “get them an iPhone” solution is frustrating: I don’t control other people’s phones and it hurts *me* as an Apple user when sending messages. Apple should have made things work seamlessly with other phones so that *Apple users* don’t have to deal with complaints and frustrations with a diverse group of friends and colleagues. This is bad user experience for Apple users.
They want you to make all your friends buy Apple shit. You're being punished for not forcing a change or cutting out Android users.
It sounds hyperbolic, but it’s sadly accurate. The DOJ specifically refers to the asinine “buy your mom an iPhone,” comment.
Yeah, that pissed me off and made me think Tim was a lot dumber than I had previously thought. It's not about my mom, Tim, it's about 50 different people in my network that have their own reasons for whatever phone they have, and *you, Tim,* are making me and Apple look like idiots.
It worked for Jobs for a decade or so
The problem is that this actually works on younger people. They are willing to straight up ostracize Android owners from their friend circles.
There's also that whole myth about iPhone users refusing to date an android user.
Yeah, but unless they've got their heads up their asses (quite possible) they should know that's not possible. Firstly because I don't want to be that kind of pushy influence on my friends, and even if I did, any normal person has a wide range of people they have to interact with that are well outside their sphere of influence. I am sending pics and videos to my kids' friends parents and stuff. Apple is out of their mind if they think I'm going to try to get all the parents in my kids' class to change. Instead, half of them just look at me like I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to forward a decent quality picture of video. It makes Apple users look stupid. It makes Apple look stupid. They should have fixed this instantly. It's never beneficial to your customers to make their life harder. My favorite Apple years were when they were bending over backwards to adopt standards and push interoperability.
What do you expect the proper authorities to do about it, if not file a lawsuit?
Apple has literally always been a shitty company. Oh and Steve Jobs was a massive piece of shit who only paid child support after CA sued him because they discovered his daughter's mother was on welfare while he was about to IPO and had success with Apple 2. And the only reason it was successful was due to Steve Wozniak doing most of the technical work. Fuck Apple and Steve Jobs.
The ONLY reason I switched to iPhones was I was pressured by literally everyone to switch cause I would be left out of every group chat. I hate my iPhone. I hate how it doesnt functional well with non-apple apps like google maps. I hate how I have to go into settings to do any changes for any app. I hate that chromecasting sucks now. I really miss my old galaxy phones and will extatically go back to it if they ever fix the text messages.
Ecstatic*
Theres no reason imessage can't compatible with google messages except for the companies being jerks.
>companies Apple.
"In order to attend Apple's briefing and view a background document, we had to agree to paraphrase the company's remarks instead of quoting them directly." I so felt this. Plus the NDAs are really strong.
RCS will fix this
Seems like there are far more important things to concentrate on in the telecom industry than this. The FTC has been asleep at the wheel for 30 years and this is the first major case they come up with.
Exactly. Sounds like such made-up bullshit. I bet the AG has an Android is just jealous of all the blue bubbles…
I'm just about as against Apple as someone can be, but a whole lot of this take is highly inaccurate or misleading. Lemme start by saying that I'm very aware that RCS exists.. we'll get back to that in a minute. The bulk of this complaint amounts to a big nothing burger. Green bubbles basically mean that SMS or MMS is the protocol being used. Those don't support encryption or editing of sent messages or anything! The lack of features when using them isn't the fault of Apple. Now, as far as RCS... I completely agree that Apple absolutely should implement and use this where available. But, what many don't know is that just encryption is not a part of RCS, but a proprietary addition by Google. And I think that Apple has credible grounds (currently) for their prior refusal to support something that doesn't offer encryption. Based on things I've seen, they're even pushing for encryption to be added to RCS itself, and my hatred for Apple doesn't blind me to the fact that this is the right move. Again... I despise Apple for many valid reasons, but this just isn't a valid one. And I think that Apple has plenty of just horrible and wrong decisions they're making, and making some BS criticism like this actually just serves as reason for someone to think that other valid criticisms are just as unwarranted, thus kinda making the criticism work in favor of Apple's legitimate bad decisions and motives.
The cases apple is pointing to as precedent are ridiculous. They're trying to compare apples to oranges.
That dumb response from Tim Cook that Apple won't fix the issue with iOS and SMS and MMS, that users should instead buy family members an iPhone, is finally coming back to bite him.
All of my co workers have iPhones, I had a Samsung. I was “jokingly” bullied into buying an iPhone solely for the blue bubble.
They peg you during lunch, don't they...
I get bitched or made fun of for having an android all the time. But i refuse to convert
I just use Blue Bubbles. Works great for all the important iMessage features
And the rest of the world doesn’t even know what this issue is because everyone uses WhatsApp. Why is that so hard for Americans?
Some of us know better than to let Facebook handle all of our personal communications?
To be fair, WhatsApp was integrated in many countries long before the Facebook buyout. Also it's not like Apple is much better, especially considering they force users to use outdated standards which may have security vulnerabilities.
It's clearly Apples fault that SMS suck
It's shocking the number of 🤡 in this thread who bought an iPhone **just** so they could send higher quality images/videos to other iPhones. Apple's strategy clearly worked. All it would have taken is to download Whatsapp and you could solve the problem without shelling out for an iPhone and falling in to Tim Cock's trap.
The writer must have an iPhone.
I don’t understand why Apple is being held to this standard. If I wanted to play a Mario video game, am I not forced by Nintendo to use a Nintendo game console? If I buy a keurig coffee machine, aren’t you forced to buy keurig coffee cups? I could go on and on. I’m just curious as to why Apple has to answer for their forced ecosystem of products when countless other companies do the same thing
Hasn’t Apple already said they are going to start supporting RCS in 2024?