I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
If they don’t want to text you because you don’t have an iPhone they’re not friends you want to have.
Seen this sentiment that green bubbles = bad a few times online but never it’s never come up for me. I assume this is a teen - early adult specific issue where the idea is mostly to be part of the group
It’s been happening in high schools, to the point teens are bullied and pushed out of peer groups if they have Androids. It’s frankly disgusting that apple willingly creates this division to profit off teenagers bullying each other, and they don’t get called out for it enough.
But in the larger picture, it’s definitely going to be more common among the young, because iPhones themselves are ubiquitous among the younger. It’s something the tech space is slowly starting realize: Apple has almost total market dominance among the rising demographic, and this has led to increasing tech illiteracy due to the way Apple designs its software, and inability/refusal to learn anything else. That is a huge problem for the tech industry when the only thing they can do to find customers is dumb their software down to appeal to people that don’t know how to use anything other than iOS
Perhaps in the US but it’s not so pronounced elsewhere. I think I only know one person with an iPhone.
It’s still about 30% here in Germany. It is rising though. And I think this is because of “clever” marketing. The highschools here in Germany started forcing parents to buy Ipads for their children a couple of years ago. Children with low income parents get it from the city for free. Nominally it is, because it is “easier to maintain”, but I honestly really doubt this.
These schools are using iPads in place of computer labs. I’m old enough to have actually managed a computer lab, and I can tell you that a fleet of managed iPads is way easier to maintain than a computer lab.
Yeah easier to maintain lmao. You mean to spy on their students.
But you don’t understand! The USA is the entire world! Everybody else in the world is just like Americans or wants to be!🙄
I know five people with iPhones here. I interact with almost three orders of magnitude more people than five…
You interact with 5000 people?
About that, yes. Not in-depth and not each day, obviously, but I have quite a sizable crowd I deal with on a regular basis. Comes from having a lot of former students I keep in touch with.
Everyone 30 and under at my office prefers Macs, to the point of bringing in their own machines to do 90% of their work and falling back to the Windows laptops issued by IT for the remainder.
…I feel like bringing personal machines to work in order to do work is causing chaos with IT and network security
If you think that the reason Apple makes the bubbles different colors is “to profit of teen bullying” then I think perhaps you might want to go back to reddit or Twitter.
What a ridiculous statement.
If anybody wants to judge me based on the brand of electronics I use, my favorite band or the brand of clothes I wear, I have no interest in interacting with them lol. This whole consumerist worship-culture is just toxic.
I am an Android user but this comment should be taken very lightly. As this is not the cause the truth is that Apple is at fault here for still using SMS as the default messaging protocol. However, with that being said, SMS breaks messages on iPhone and the devices have been geared towards iPhone users in away that makes it seem like Android is the issue with image quality and texting. The marketing is excellent on Apple’s end towards the competition and it is working.
However, that doesn’t mean iPhone isn’t the problem. I have a sibling who got bullied for having an iPhone. Apple’s answer to these problems is just, “get an iPhone.” This is equivalent to, “can’t figure it out? Just Google it.” The problem with this mentality is it gives more power to monopolizing platforms. Apple is a growing giant and if they had their way you would just have an iPhone and if Apple has expressed anything in the past 8 years it’s that they aren’t exactly the innovators with mobile devices anymore. To me the problem is on an iPhone nothing would change.
A little irrelevant rant but my point is that the average iPhone consumer has been given a marketing ploy so it is a deal breaker because they think it is an issue and in all fairness it is one but only Google is trying to fix. Issue is that Google should have tried to fix it years ago. You can’t blame iPhone users for wanting to use other platforms to message you if your message is compressed heavily by Apple’s shitty and stupid fucking decision to keep using SMS to control the market. The care about user experience is overshadowed by the desire to use that as a means to make money off of a user that doesn’t understand messaging protocols. Fuck Apple.
Keep using SMS? What are Apple’s other alternatives, exactly? RCS is still a mess, the only way it has e2ee is if you use Google’s messaging app, and there’s no way you will see Apple adopting Google’s standard without having a say in it, and rightfully so - Google locks tons of proprietary features out of their APIs - EXIF data for Photos, Categories in Gmail, etc.
I think this is actually more of a comment on Google’s lack of direction with messaging - how many different messaging apps have they sunset by now? Half dozen or so? Messaging has always been a cluster on Android. WhatsApp is supposedly e2ee, but they have backdoor bugs being patched on a nearly basis - ask Jeff Bezos how his dick pics got hacked.
I think this must be a cultural thing because no one in the UK sends SMS messages. Everyone just uses WhatsApp or signal or telegram. I’m android and have literally never had anyone mention the colour of my bubble. I didn’t know this was a thing!
I think it’s mostly an US thing. The rest of the world has moved away from SMS.
It’s mostly a US thing because Android is the standard pretty much everywhere except the US.
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that’s because other countries have affordable data & available wifi…
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Lol not true
this is definitely not true.
Android makes up over 70% of the global phone market, what’s not true?
I use SMS in Denmark with people I don’t know personally. Apps like Telegram or WhatsApp aren’t common here (yet) unfortunately.
Everyone has Facebook and uses Messenger. The absolute worst of all the choices…
I would never install any of the Meta shit apps no matter what. I quit FB in 2017 and never looked back
Yeah, this is definitely a US-centric thing. Almost nobody I know (UK) uses SMS as their default, it’s usually the last resort before just ringing the person.
I think the only SMS messages I get are from the Doctor.
I’m from the US and people are using SMS less and less I feel like (though again, I’m biased because Android). Even most of my networking for work is done on Instagram, which to me is incredibly bizarre.
Canada too, but at least we don’t rely on whatsapp/meta
I don’t understand the apple cult. I’ve tried their phones. I prefer Android phones.
I have heard of some people who think non apple users are subpar, but those are the ones you want to avoid.
I worked for Apple for about 4 years and few people had Apple devices, despite the discount. I was supplied an iMac and MacBook Pro, but also a Windows PC and notebook that most work was done on because of software support. Most employees were obviously into their tech, so Android was by far the most popular for mobile devices. I remember a guy with a Windows phone.
No one judged, though. Having obviously used a lot of gadgets extensively, people understood that people land on what they like the most and there’s no right or wrong with personal opinion.
This is the key. Different products are intuitive for different people. Some people prefer less customizability with less barrier to entry. I recommend Apple products for a lot of users even though I strongly prefer Android/Linux/Widows. I also strongly prefer the Mac trackpad and gesture support. I use a Mac laptop for anything not work related because I hate the way trackpads work on Windows (even using the superior Mac trackpad).
All that said, if someone else prefers iOS, or Windows trackpads (or even likes those awful little buttons on Lenovos), then they should use them! Use what works for you!
If you think you’re better than me because you have an iPhone and I run an Android, I don’t want to talk to you anyway.
People are so fucking petty and elitist over the dumbest fucking things.
Messages is better than text. Is requesting a switch to telegram not ok? I do that mostly so we can share pictures and videos that don’t look horrible.
I use Telegram for videos also. RCS on Android has been pretty great and image quality hasn’t been an issue.
I don’t think you can use RCS unless both of you are on android though. So isn’t it reasonable to ask to use telegram or some other messaging all if you don’t both have the same platform?
Correct, RCS is only for Android. Right now it’s limited to Google Messages app and Samsung’s default texting app.
My wife has an iPhone and I run Android. Been that way for a decade or more now. Never an issue for her what colour my texts were.
And these days we use Telegram. Signal, FB Messenger, WhatsApp… There are dozens of chat apps out there that work cross-platform easily.
Sure, but that isn’t the issue that’s being discussed. Unless I’m reading this whole thing wrong, this has more to do with people excluding others, WHOLLY, because they don’t have an iPhone.
The op is conflating two different things weirdly.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
I totally understand wanting to move the conversation to a different platform or format.
The last line about it being a friendship dealbreaker is weird though.
Last line and title are the same.
Now you’re just being pedantic. Both points were made. I was talking about one of them.
If you live anywhere outside of the US, the question is irrelevant, because everyone uses whatsapp etc.
Within the US, if you are over the age of 30, it probably doesn’t matter.
if you are under the age of 30 AND in the US, I mean, if someone does judge you for it, you at least have a great way to filter shitty people out of your life lol.
I’m over 30 (in the US) and have an iPhone, but before I got my current job I was almost never reachable by phone, either out of service range or phone was dead, so I give out my google number so that messages and calls go to my email and get forwarded to my phone. So I make green bubbles from my iPhone.
When people see me pull out my phone for the first time they get SO MAD. “WHY ARE YOUR BUBBLES GREEN?! YOU HAVE AN iPHONE!!” I don’t understand. I know I could reverse things so that my cell number forwards to my google number instead of the other way around, but it’s just not something I’ve ever gotten around to. Why you so mad bruh?
I live in the US and this was never a problem for me? If it is then these people aren’t really your friends. Think of it as a litmus test for finding friends.
I did run into some friends who were just surprised people bought phones outside of iPhone. But they were still my friends. It didn’t matter to them they just hadn’t thought of a world without iPhone users
no I’m not saying that there aren’t non ahole iphone users but there outliers it seems like. I guess me and you got lucky because it seems like for the average teenager in the states your “friends” treat you poorly if you have an Android.
in my experience nobody texts anymore anyway, its all signal or some other messenger.
I mean I was born in 98 so I’m just barely Gen Z and even when I was in middle school and high school SMS and MMS was the predominant way students communicated with each other. this was around mid 2010s so not that long ago HS and middle. schoolers were using SMS. the amount of people using non SMS messaging services is a lot less than you think. the most. The USA has 259mil active users sending 2 trillion texts every year. as. of 2023 in the USA signal has a 100mil downloads but only 40mil active users. the two most. popular non SMS service in the USA are Facebook messenger at 52% of the population using it and WhatsApp at 25%. so no it’s not all signal or some other messenger not by a long shot
Let me guess, you are from the United States? Every time I heard about this is only from the US, never see anyone outside giving a single fuck about that.
Also, do you really wanna be friend with someone that choose friendship by the phone their friend uses? WtfIf your “friends” make so much fuss over text bubbles, probably the best course of action is to find better friends.
I’m an Android user and I have no idea what any of this means.
When on Apple and texting another apple user the text bubbles are one color. When texting any other brand it shows up another color. So iPhone users can act like dicks because they are the in crowd when messaging eachother.
So iPhone users can act like dicks because they are the in crowd when messaging each other.
They can interact with their messages in more ways than others. Direct message reactions (like, heart) and they can see the dot-dot-dot when another iPhoner was typing. I actually had a girl give me a hard time over this because she was iPhone and I’m android.
Yes, but it’s a feature, not a bug.
It’s a super low investment and quick way to identify people you should avoid.
iPhone user Most of the world uses Whatsapp, so this is a non issue for me
I live in a country where the dollar value of iPhone makes them more of a luxury item, sought by people of means or by hipsters.
Most people here tend to communicate via WhatsApp. People with iPhones probably discriminate others for many other reasons before even reaching the bubble color for messages, so they self-select out of the lives of most people.
Apple is deliberately not supporting the global standard of RCS for exactly thai reason. They want green bubbles to stay.
I’m not sure if it is possible for me to care less what type of phone somebody uses.
If I found out somebody was judging me based on my phone I would seriously consider breaking up with them.
I’m surprised and dismayed we are even having this conversation, and some of the other replies are deeply troubling.
It is a pain in group chats. That one green bubble means the chat falls back to basic text. That means I effectively cannot send a video (possible, but unusable quality).
At that point I would rather use something like WhatsApp. Which is fine if everyone in the group has it. At least it is cross platform.
But I am seriously considering buying my sister, who has a cheap husband, an iPhone just so she does not mess up a family group chat.
