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US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

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Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#41

Post by pcmoney »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #34
pcmoney wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is 100% a Facebook product. It is FB. I 100% guarantee all data mined from your WhatsApp account is linked either to your FB account or your shadow FB account if you never signed up. Sure maybe the "experience" hasn't changed from a UI standpoint but FB is weakening WhatsApp's end to end encryption and mining your conversations so under the hood the experience is radically different. There is a reason the founders…

is there any evidence of WhatsApp conversations being monitored?

Last I checked:

Actual text of convo: not yet but soon. Metadata: yes.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#42

Post by anchpop »

word-reader wrote: post #10

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.

Its pretty interesting that Apple, who pride themselves so much on form, chose that undeniably unpleasant shade of green.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#43

Post by CDSlice »

damnyou wrote: post #26
pcmoney wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sell your data and is not secure. What $750 dongle? You can get an iPhone for like $300 these days. Forces itself into your life? How? Apple's data security is better than literally every other smart phone provider and its OS is fundamentally less intrusive than Android.

You are forced to buy apps from Apple if you want to use iMessage. Forced to use Apple's crappy voice software. Forced to use Apple's crappy TV box if you want to mirror your screen.

You don't buy apps from Apple, you buy them through Apple's app store (an important difference).

You can use other voice assistants, you just can't set them as the default (which is a reasonable complaint)

As an Android guy, I have to say that after trying Rokus, Fire TVs, and chromecasts the Apple TV is far from crappy and is honestly one of the best smart TV boxes. Anyway, you can also buy a lightning to HDMI adapter if you want to mirror your screen.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#44

Post by anchpop »

rolltiide wrote: post #37

Everytime I post about "green bubble" discrimination on hackernews, people act so surprised just like this father on twitter, and then talk about how vapid and fake people must be to care about that You know what people - iphone users - actually say when there isn't mixed company? "Android users, especially self-identified ones, lack social cues in many areas" It goes way beyond an android user letting people know ab…

Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues? I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism. Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android. And my group chats with them work pretty well since android supports the open standard RCS

[0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#45

Post by asclepi »

joekrill wrote: post #23
pcmoney wrote: post #6

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 m…

The most significant difference is that WhatsApp is at least platform independent. iMessage simply is not an option on Android - it's limited to iPhone users only and it doesn't seem like Apple has any intention of changing that. WhatsApp, on the other hand, can be used by whoever wants to download it. It's still vendor lock-in. Just not to the same extent.

iMessage reverts to SMS when the recipient doesn't have an iPhone. All within the same app.

To what does Whatsapp revert when the recipient doesn't have Whatsapp?

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#46

Post by pcmoney »

anchpop wrote: post #44
rolltiide wrote: post #37

Everytime I post about "green bubble" discrimination on hackernews, people act so surprised just like this father on twitter, and then talk about how vapid and fake people must be to care about that You know what people - iphone users - actually say when there isn't mixed company? "Android users, especially self-identified ones, lack social cues in many areas" It goes way beyond an android user letting people know ab…

Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues? I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism. Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android. And my group chats with them work pretty well since android supports the open standard RCS [0]: https://gs.statcounter.…

I don't think it is a social cues thing either. I switched back and forth between Droid and Apple for awhile until I read some fairly disturbing predictions on how all these personal data warehouses could be used to digitally enslave us. I am not sure it is a social cues things, although I will concede frothing at the mouth Android and Apple fans are not people I like to be around.

TBH the biggest driver towards Apple for me (aside from privacy) is now that I am older and have kids and more responsibilities at work and don't have time to tinker I don't want to have to figure out what the best messaging app for my phone is. (I gave up using Linux in favor of MacOS as well for similar reasons).

(Cue all the neckbeard Linux/Droid guys without a family or kids saying "its not hard you just need to...")

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#47

Post by rolltiide »

anchpop wrote: post #44
rolltiide wrote: post #37

Everytime I post about "green bubble" discrimination on hackernews, people act so surprised just like this father on twitter, and then talk about how vapid and fake people must be to care about that You know what people - iphone users - actually say when there isn't mixed company? "Android users, especially self-identified ones, lack social cues in many areas" It goes way beyond an android user letting people know ab…

Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues? I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism. Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android. And my group chats with them work pretty well since android supports the open standard RCS [0]: https://gs.statcounter.…

> I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism.

It is also classism, but not just.

> Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues?

No, but they are getting weeded out all the same along with the privileged enthusiasts that do miss social cues.

> Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android.

Yes, android use, and continued aversion to switching, will more often tell you a lot about someone's price sensitivities and not just their preferences. Its usually the HTC Obsolete, not the sexy flagship device. We all know people have payment plans or some other kind of multi-year lockin for a lot of their phones or got them for free in the bad part of town from some group trying to provide basic opportunities, so its not a cheap decision to get an older cheap iphone (assuming they actually wanted that). So its always a mixture of price sensitivity and preference which people weed out from their social circle since the beginning of time, with few exceptions. Throw in a worse user experience for mixed company on top of that and its the perfect storm.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#48

Post by jki275 »

danfang wrote: post #33
jki275 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/927/

Love this XKCD. My response, as it might apply to what I'm working on, is that I don't just want to build a new messaging standard. It has to be radically better than alternatives to be sticky.

Yeah, I hear you -- but it was just so perfectly set up for it..

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#49

Post by rolltiide »

pcmoney wrote: post #46
anchpop wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues? I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism. Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android. And my group chats with them work pretty well since android supports the open standard RCS [0]: https://gs.statcounter.…

I don't think it is a social cues thing either. I switched back and forth between Droid and Apple for awhile until I read some fairly disturbing predictions on how all these personal data warehouses could be used to digitally enslave us. I am not sure it is a social cues things, although I will concede frothing at the mouth Android and Apple fans are not people I like to be around. TBH the biggest driver towards Appl…

> (Cue all the neckbeard Linux/Droid guys without a family or kids saying "its not hard you just need to...")

Now we're talking, and this is a social cues thing.

For example, a discussion about airdrop - which many android users don't know they are missing - often has an android user rationalizing their existence about some other convoluted way to share images maybe offline that is still worse.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#50

Post by pcmoney »

rolltiide wrote: post #49
pcmoney wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is a social cues thing either. I switched back and forth between Droid and Apple for awhile until I read some fairly disturbing predictions on how all these personal data warehouses could be used to digitally enslave us. I am not sure it is a social cues things, although I will concede frothing at the mouth Android and Apple fans are not people I like to be around. TBH the biggest driver towards Appl…

> (Cue all the neckbeard Linux/Droid guys without a family or kids saying "its not hard you just need to... ") Now we're talking, and this is a social cues thing. For example, a discussion about airdrop - which many android users don't know they are missing - often has an android user rationalizing their existence about some other convoluted way to share images maybe offline that is still worse.

I do know that type of person and yes it is not fun. Or they recite all the specs of a new Android vs iPhone and how you are such an "idiot" for being an Apple sheep. When really you don't care that much and the price difference isn't significant. Not to mention side by side your iPhone is noticeably faster in a real world test of launching the same app, browsing etc.

Convincing those people that specs are mere indicators and do not matter in the face of objective UX...impossible.

Really comes down to what you are optimizing for.

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