US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

It's a major bummer that Apple got the network effect bonus for "SMS++" (really any IM solution that has the combo of being ubiquitous, usable without setup/technical skill, and polished).

I have a hunch that most people who use these tools for group chat purposes don't really care about the features of iMessage that make it horribly incompatible with SMS clients (e2ee, pairing with computers), and just want what amounts to a Discord/Slack/whatever non-threaded channel, but on their phones and with good UX. That shouldn't have to mean lock-out.

It's misleading to just say "because of the green text" it's so much more than that. If you have an active iMessage chat and users are using iMessage features, it's a weird experience for the non-iMessage folks. It seemed like a real victory to have emojis in the UTF format, but of course now Apple turns on the big FU and finds other ways to chide non-iMessage users.

Don't blame the kids.

It is interesting that the comments on the Twitter thread are "Just use WhatsApp". Which is basically iMessage but from Facebook. Comparing two, the vendor lock-in from Apple seems much preferable to the one with Facebook in light of the data scandals Facebook has and their ongoing effort to backdoor WhatsApp and integrate it with FB messenger etc. Also a group message is only as secure as its most weakly encrypted member and sms definitely loses there vs iMessage.

I would rather have Apple win the network effect here vs another data pimp like Google (who, ads aside, can't be trusted to maintain any communication platform).

I would much rather this all be standardized with end to end encryption protocols. (C'mon Signal!)

In Europe WhatsApp was huge well before Facebook purchased them. From my own experience, the product has barely changed since then, so I don't really feel like it's a Facebook product (yet), and so while I dislike using Facebook services WhatApp is basically fine for now.

Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don't, and use iMessage instead. This isn't an active choice though, it's that they are on an iPhone and using SMS, so they get iMessage by default.

This is a long way of saying that for many Europeans, "Just use WhatsApp" feels like an obvious response, why wouldn't you?

It's not just about it "being green", the contrast between the text and the background is lower with the green SMS bubbles than the blue iMessage bubbles, making it harder to read. I guarantee you if the SMS bubbles were a shade or two darker green people wouldn't care as much.