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One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

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Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#141
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that. Yea but that's a problem too.

WhatsApp doesn't have anywhere near the same lockin as Apple. You can run multiple messaging apps even on a low end android phone.

I can run WhatsApp on my iPhone. I cannot get my kids' school parents-group not to use WhatsApp. It was a pain to get even my best friends in Europe to use anything except WhatsApp.

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#142
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no one uses plain sms messages across the pond any more. And sms group chats? I only know about sms group chats from US posters. You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.

How do you message when you don't have wifi/data? I can SMS from more remote places than I can any internet-based service.

You don't. But in the US I'm rarely in a place where I have no data but SMS still works. And Europe has more effective telecom service.

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#143
post #134

Whenever I see this iMessage/SMS, blue/green topic come up I descend into an internal debate that, as I get older, I am becoming increasingly familiar with. The debate is that one where I am forced to reconcile whether I am too far removed from popular culture to see how this is a real issue versus accepting that the issue is entirely contrived.

I would love to see a survey of mobile phone users to see if this matters to them. I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results. As for negative effects on kids. There’s more than just phones. Clothes, cars, vacations, social media posts, tutoring, sports. Maybe we should put everyone in uniforms, don’t allow kids drive to school, ban sports, and forbid them from talking about the…

> I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.

I'm not sure how easy that would be - 'Apple will make you more popular if you use an iPhone instead of Android!'...'No no, that's bad, you don't want that, don't buy an iPhone!'

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#145

What are the chances that the EU will come in a year and mandate that “all messages must have the same color” and use it as an excuse that having some blue bubbles and some green colors is harming the mental health of children?

The contrast between your perception of the EU and their actual positions is pretty entertaining to me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-act...

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#146

This seems to be mostly a US American thing, mainly because of the same reasons BBM was a thing: lots of chats over SMS used to be a thing, and then chats over iMessage, which like BBM, you can only join if you have a device from a specific vendor. That means that you can only be in a special social circle if you buy the same stuff. That won't change because of some colours, because it's not the colours causing the t…

I agree that this is a middle school level analysis, but I've seen it a couple times in practice during my career. 1. In the dating scene, I have heard women remark that it was a red flag (Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android) 2. A manager at my old company was advised to get an iphone for communication with VCs. One of our old leaders had heard commentary from a V…

#1 is great. A gold digger (and a low intelligence one at that) waving their red flag at first contact.

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#147
At the time the green/blue distinction appeared in Messages, it was widely reported that the green color for SMS messages represented the fact that most cellular plans in the US at the time charged a fee for each SMS message sent, or had a higher monthly rate for "unlimited" texts. It would seem that very few people remember the days before "unlimited data/text/minutes".

(US currency is typically associated with the color green in a way that probably doesn't apply elsewhere in the world. Also, the actual color of green on US paper currency is quite different from the green bubbles... but I digress.)

Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

#149
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this is a middle school level analysis, but I've seen it a couple times in practice during my career. 1. In the dating scene, I have heard women remark that it was a red flag (Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android) 2. A manager at my old company was advised to get an iphone for communication with VCs. One of our old leaders had heard commentary from a V…

I've legit had 1 girl say "I don't know about these green bubbles" after we started texting...

How did it end? Was she worth an iPhone?
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