Live data from Hacker News

87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

pipersandler.com

481–490 of 812 posts

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#481
post #322

Americans, do people not use whatsapp over there? In Europe everyone uses whatsapp for literally everything, with a sprinkling of Telegram if you are into something a little subversive and Signal if you actually care about privacy. The only time I use text/sms is to recieve codes for things, and I'm doing that less and less.

Lifelong US citizen here - I've barely heard anyone mention it in person my whole life. If it wasn't for reading about it in discussions like this, I would probably never even think about it. iMessage, social media DMs, and regular SMS seem to be the most common in my experience. Signal/Telegram are pretty much only used here by tech people and/or people discussing not-so-wholesome things and I'm always surprised to see people on HN talk about moving their whole family to one of these apps or using them more casually in general.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#482

I tried avoiding the iPhone bandwagon for practically a decade, going from flip phone to the HTC Droid Incredible, to some HTC M , to Samsung S4, and then a series of Pixel phones, starting with the OG Pixel, and ending with the Pixel 3. I have to say: besides a few clunky swipe experiences, the iPhone is better in every single way. The camera opens when I click the camera button. The phone pairs wonderfully with my…

I am on an Android bandwagon since first Samsung Galaxy. The sheer joy of being in a total control of my hardware and software is still here. I am installing some apps directly from vendors and thus avoiding big companies censorship. My current phone is more than four years old for now and I am thinking about buying a new one only because the battery is slightly degraded. This is just a phone, a tool, used mostly for communication (including right now).

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#483
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Never buy a new $20 phone - it's subsidized by all that tracking and pre-installed shitware and it won't be getting updates soon, if it ever got even one, and the hardware is going to be absolutely terrible too. Buy a second hand one if $20 is all you can spend.

Your Samsung has more tracking and spyware installed you won't be able to uninstall. Never buy a Samsung and expect privacy.

Samsung has unlockable bootloader and good LineageOS support. Unheard of with these $20 phones. And even without flashing, I'd still rather be tracked by Samsung than whatever they put into these $20 ones.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#484
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new unlocked iPhone 13 Mini device is $850 in Canada. I can buy an unlocked Android smartphone for under $80 that'll do what I need. Though I splurged and spent just under $200 on my last phone. Something that costs 4x as much as a decent mid-range model that will meet most people's needs is luxury. Most people do not purchase phones and service plans the way I do (separately - I buy an unlocked device up-front the…

> A new After having owned a what was already considered 'old' used iPhone for three years, I finally bought a new iPhone, which I expect to use for the next five years.

FWIW - my 5-year-old "original" SE, which was Apple's cheapest phone when I bought it, finally stopped supporting the new iOS version early this month.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messaging network effects, if you're in an iMessage conversation and an Android user joins, suddenly the conversation becomes SMS only with photo and video sending being crippled. Its the same as a social network, if all your friends use it, you almost have to in order to communicate with them.

They don't use FB Messenger, Discord, Telegram, Whatsapp? People are really out here using the default sms app? lmao Not a thing here, but we do love to ape america so its comming. Its gonna be one shows ppl whatch and then its over.

Pretty much every iPhone user in the US uses exclusively iMessage.

> People are really out here using the default sms app?

Well no, they're using the iMessage app and not communicating with people who don't have iPhones.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#486
post #2

My two oldest children - 13 and 15 - have loudly proclaimed that having a "green bubble" would be worse than death .

Everybody should just install Signal and be done with this nonsense. Teach children that when they use Imessages, Apple can intercept them. This is not a complete endorsement for Signal as decentralized E2EE protocols are better for other reasons, but Signal is the easiest for people to adopt.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#487
post #41

1/3 of my kids have iPhone. The use of iPhones amongst them and their peers is directly related to their level of IT/Tech knowhow. Long story short the kids on android are probably gonna wind up building the tech the kids on apple consume. Or atleast that's how it's playing out amongst them atm. iPhone kids legit just take photos and short vidyas mostly of themselves. It's like you can correlate an iPhone with a toxi…

But the kids with the iPhones will be the financier controlling the purse strings. See the Commodore vs. IBM clones vs. Mac in the early 1980s. Apple wins because wealthy people use them, it's Apple's advantage.

What's your evidence that Apple "won" because of computers bought by rich families in the 80s because last I knew after the mid 90s Apple got (checks notes) massacred in the computing world by Microsoft and the rest and really only won in the mid 2000's via consumer electronics with the creation of new markets that they've largely dominated since.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is free to open the iMessage ecosystem if they'd like to allow Android to send encrypted messages to iPhones as well. The truth is that Apple isn't doing this to help customers identify unencrypted messages. They are doing this for the network effect.

They are doing this for the network effect. This is what people in the hate-Apple echo chamber like to chant, but it's wrong. When Apple started doing it, there was no network effect. The color choice was made years before everyone started freaking out about green and blue bubbles. It was done to show that a message went over SMS, and not iMessage at a time when many Americans paid for each SMS sent, but iMessages we…

Before iMessage (yes it existed) all text messages were green. Blue denoted iMessage. There was no evil plan from Apple like bloggers love to conceive for attention - it’s merely what was originally chosen and they wanted to differentiate iMessage when they released it.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "green bubble"?

Yeah, I had to google it too: "If you see a green message bubble instead of a blue one, then that message was sent using MMS/SMS instead of iMessage. There are several reasons for this: The person that you sent the message to doesn't have an Apple device. iMessage is turned off on your device or on your recipient's device." So apparently iPhone users see text messages from us Android users in a green bubble instead o…

Your quoted source has that backward -- messages you've received always appear in light grey bubbles, regardless of whether they came in via SMS or iMessage.

It's only messages which you *sent* which appear in green or blue, to let you know whether each message was sent via SMS (which may have incurred a charge from your telco) or iMessage (which is free). At least to a casual glance, there's nothing on received messages to indicate whether they came in via SMS or iMessage.

Re: 87% of American teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone

#490
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We like to fingerwag at social media companies for knowingly negatively impacting children's mental health and self-esteem, yet Apple is aware of how their systems ostracize children, in their own peer groups, who can't afford to carry around luxury phones. It's one thing to be ostracized by strangers on social media, it's an entirely other thing to be ostracized by your own friends and peers. The latter is tragicall…

Humans will invent indicators of social status whether you like it or not. Get rid of green bubbles and something else will rise to take its place.

They'll just look at what's in each other hands. Or what's on their feet. Or what clothes their draped in. All as they always have.
Post reply on HN