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“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”

android.com

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

#341

Post by peyton »

dcormier wrote: post #169
Angostura wrote: post #160

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.

That’s very ableist of you. About 1 in 12 males are colorblind. I’m in this group. I find white text on a bright green background very difficult to read.

You read the messages you send?

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

#342

Post by snowwrestler »

r_klancer wrote: post #216
Angostura wrote: post #160

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…

SMS is also the fallback protocol for iMessage. If I’m in a place with poor signal, even my texts from the Messages app on my iPhone to my spouse’s iPhone go as SMS.

Edit to add: those bubbles are green too. That’s what the bubble colors really mean. Blue and green are not iPhone vs Android, it’s iMessage (end to end encrypted) vs SMS (less secure, less private).

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

#343

Post by dan-robertson »

blinkingled wrote: post #107

> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…

One thing to note is that received texts show up the same, it’s only sent messages that are blue/green.

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

#344

Post by Spivak »

angio wrote: post #266
RussianCow wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

MMS existed long before phones that had chat apps.

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

#345

Post by selectodude »

oneplane wrote: post #246
ivoras wrote: 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…

This is indeed a US thing (culturally). Most countries seem to have chat culture revolve around Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat or LINE. On top of that, most people don't really care and read whatever comes in regardless of the format. MMS was a failed concept, and so is RCS. Not because the technology is fundamentally bad, it's the implementation that is fundamentally flawed by keeping telcos in the loop. The onl…

BBM was pretty big when I was in high school and college. It died the same death as Blackberry when the iPhone came out.

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

#346

Post by Rebelgecko »

nemothekid wrote: post #121
blinkingled wrote: post #107

> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…

iMessage was released on iOS 5 with the release of the iPhone 4S. Before then, all messages had a green background. Somehow sticking with the default of more than 10+ years is intentional maleficence by Apple?

It's not the same shade of green, IIRC it's been changed 2 or 3 times, each iteration having lower contrast with the text color.

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

#347

Post by m-p-3 »

isodev wrote: post #275
blinkingled wrote: post #107

> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…

These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything. First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separat…

So Apple should stick to en even older standard (SMS/MMS)?

All that Google is asking is for the fallback to be at least in the current century, is that too much to ask.

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

#348

Post by simonjgreen »

abawany wrote: post #296
radiojasper wrote: post #122

I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway? I've been using WhatsApp for ages now and so does everybody else in my country - and every country I've been in, apart from China and Japan. My friend who's from the US once said "I've paid for those text messages, so I'm going to use them!" But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text. WhatsApp is free! Is there any viable reaso…

I've seen this position a lot throughout this thread and I have a question: all of these apps (whatsapp, signal, etc.) appear to be "free" - how do you suppose they will make money? In the US, the users of sms/mms/imessage paid in some way for this service and can have some reasonable expectation for delivery and availability.

In the case of WhatsApp they charge businesses for business features.

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408818454938-...

Prior to business features a long time ago they used to charge a one time $1 fee to download then $1 per year.

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

#350

Post by bentcorner »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #270
chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The thing with accessibility is that it does affect everyone.

If you get woken up by a call and open iMessage in the middle of the night, being able to read the message accurately while blinking away eye gunk matters.

Better contrast helps you read your text message if your phone is on a table across from you lying flat.

There's going to be times you're trying to read a message and your phone won't be 100% in front of you at arms length and you are able to take the time to bring the phone into focus with proper lighting around you.

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