The green bubble problem is about to get even worse (Apple/Android)

dirtmayor@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 28 points –
The green bubble problem is about to get even worse
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I never understood the complaint. If iPhone users don't like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they can just use an alternative like Whatsapp. Right?

I'm my experience, if iPhone users don't like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they bitch at the person using Android telling them to get an iPhone.

It's interesting how different the experience is inside the US vs the rest of the world. In Europe, where Android holds a majority, basically everyone is using 3rd party chat apps like WhatsApp, Signal, etc...

It is very interesting, I'm south american in my country in particular, everyone uses 3rd party as well, mostly WhatsApp and Telegram (although they are on the rocks legally right now), no one really natively texts anymore. That's for company automated texts, like Google verification codes and spam.

That's not really because of the Apple vs Android ecosystem wars though. My understanding is that most of Europe uses third party apps because, at least until recently, pricing for phone and text plans was exorbitant, when considering that many Europeans are "roaming" and communicating with people in adjacent countries.

It doesn't even occur to them that they also break features on the Android users' ends as well, but I only see iPhone users complaining. It really isn't that big of a deal to share a file over SMS/MMS with a link rather than trying to share the actual file directly. Is that difficult to do on an iPhone?

My dad likes to send me videos. He sent me one yesterday... It seemed like he was at a harbor by the 8 pixels that got through

He also frequently emails me from his phone. I used to ask him to send videos to my email. Even tried to coach him through the process -surely they must have a share button?

I think iPhones are designed around the idea that "either it just works, or you shouldn't be doing it at all".

Even my technical friends seem to forget the fact they understand how all of this works the minute they look at their phone - I had to coach one through uploading a larger video to Google drive and sending me the link. My brother in Christ, we use GitHub together. We use Google meets regularly. We used Dropbox in college. Why are you acting like I told you to put it on a flash drive and mail it to me?

I send photos and videos via MMS all the time and they work fine, but almost everyone I message is an Android user.

Or they can bitch at Apple to fix their SMS/MMS problems.

Why would anyone want to sms? Modern messaging is much nicer experience.

Their problem is that iMessage falls back to that instead of them adopting RCS, and treats MMS in particular way worse (terrible image quality, etc)

They could still keep iMessage, but just automatically fall back to RCS instead of SMS/MMS. God forbid!

I don’t want to sms, but also a lot of my friends aren’t techies, not to mention my family. Convincing them all to download and use the same messaging app is just not going to happen.

It's mostly an issue that android users in the US don't use what's app

Facebook Messenger is more popular than WhatsApp here. So it's not like there aren't alternatives.

The point is that it's not really Android users' problem. There are options for iPhone users and, yes, if they really want to use the native iPhone messaging app they can complain to Tim Apple. Cc: @FuckFashMods@lib.lgbt

Yeah that's what I'm saying. Android users themselves don't care about modern messaging features. Some people do tho.

Are you implying that the RCS that comes with Google Messages is significantly less modern than whatever ships with iPhones?

Edit: Or, are you saying that most Android users wouldn't care if that was the case?

I mean the right answer is something like Signal, but you have to really beat on people for that.