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“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

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Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#261
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Received messages are always black on grey. What on Earth are you talking about?

You only see the colors on messages you send. OP is implying that you wouldn’t know what “color” the conversation is unless you’re actively replying to the spammer.

You can still tell whether it is an iMessage or text message without replying and observing the color. Long-press on the incoming message. If the menu shows: Reply, Copy, Translate, More… then it is an iMessage. If the menu shows: Copy, Translate, More… then it is a text.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#262
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in the US (if there is at least one android user in the chat)

US here. On the old end of "millennial", if that matters. More than 95% of my personal communication with other humans I know (remote communication, that is, not in-person, obviously) is in WhatsApp. The rest is phone and SMS and that's all older family. SMS, like email, is mainly for machines to talk to me.

Yes, "everyone" was an exaggeration. But whatsapp usage in the US is pretty small. iMessage/sms and fb messenger are the only apps with enough market share to matter.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#263
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you have an operator that supports wifi calling and a phone that both supports it and is "whitelisted" (basically USA, Europe does not do such silly things)

> [...] (basically USA, Europe does not do such silly things) What? Europe has Wi-Fi Calling, too [0]. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204040

woosh - read the comment again, it clearly implied the US has a prominent idea of whitelisting "compatible" handsets (ie; those bought from the network because unlocked is a hilariously quaint idea) whereas in Europe, unlocked handsets are generally the default, since people don't like it and regulations prevent it for the most part anyway, in those cases it's just incompatible/old/awful implementations, rather than operators denying said features.

But just in case: the quotes emphasised the act, the parenthesis referenced said nonsense with the target being the first mentioned (it could not possibly be interpreted any other way) as a result of the parent comment likely being from the US as T-Mobile outside of the US does not refer to itself as such, it's either what it became (ie; EE in the UK) or a regional variant.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#264
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US here. On the old end of "millennial", if that matters. More than 95% of my personal communication with other humans I know (remote communication, that is, not in-person, obviously) is in WhatsApp. The rest is phone and SMS and that's all older family. SMS, like email, is mainly for machines to talk to me.

That sounds horrible to be so locked-in.

Locked in to WhatsApp as opposed to iMessage? At least it works on all platforms

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#266
post #205

This is a US thing, right? Haven't received an SMS from a real person (in other words, all SMSes I get are 2FA etc) for, at least 5 years, maybe 10. Even people who use iPhones don't send SMSes, MMSes or anything as obsolete (including RCS). Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber). Locale: Central Europe. So, why would anyone stick to the obsolete stuff? Are there re…

The US market standardized on mobile plans with unlimited texting a long, long time ago, so I think this caused people to mostly stick to SMS/MMS for communication since it was the path of least resistance. I don't know what the situation in Europe is like now, but in the past I remember it being difficult to find plans without very small SMS caps when traveling. That could be why Europeans naturally gravitated towar…

Unlimited SMS plans have been a thing in western europe for the past 15 years, at least. People switched to whatsapp because you can send pictures, not only text.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most trivial complaint I've ever read. I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles - it just means that it hasn't been sent via iMessage - if I send to an iPhone and sending falls back to SMS it looks just the same. I can't believe people get that upset about green v blue.

Let's be clear. Green vs blue is a bit of a red herring. The real issue is that Apple has to have some fallback protocol for texting with non-iMessage devices, but refusing to upgrade the fallback protocol beyond SMS/MMS makes the texting experience worse for everyone, as described in the article. (To avoid additional red herrings. No one is thinking here about opening up iMessage itself to non-Apple clients, just up…

[deleted]

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#268
post #205

This is a US thing, right? Haven't received an SMS from a real person (in other words, all SMSes I get are 2FA etc) for, at least 5 years, maybe 10. Even people who use iPhones don't send SMSes, MMSes or anything as obsolete (including RCS). Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber). Locale: Central Europe. So, why would anyone stick to the obsolete stuff? Are there re…

does WhatsApp still require you to hand over all your contacts to them when you sign up?

None of my contacts gave consent for me to share their private information.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#269
post #234

This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service such as Signal or WhatsApp like the rest of the world has. Why are US citizens so set on having a terrible experience when messaging half of the population? How did other countries decide that using platform agnostic messaging services are better? I believe the UK has a similar s…

Ah yes, whatsapp, that bastion of privacy, and not at all a messaging service that exists primarily for Meta to mine.

If everyone was on Signal, sure, but if everyone's on Whatsapp, maybe not the kind of thing to go "why don't you just do this too, why are North Americans so backward?" for something owned by what is basically still just Facebook.

Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why there are accessibility settings for exactly that.

sure, but why keep an inaccessible default?

Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility?

I do agree that the green bubbles aren’t great looking but thats what they chose for iOS even prior to iMessage existing.

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