If it doesn't pass an accessibility suite, that's fine. Point it out, mock, and so on. Perhaps a shame into action. But that word choice ...
Low contrast is now "gross." Yikes!
One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
61–70 of 354 posts
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#62The bubble chat interface itself is gross. Terrible. Disgusting. Unusable. Distracting. Eye-hurting. Illogical. Counterproductive. Log-unfriendly. Code-offensive. Intolerable. Since day one.
Serious question: What would be better? What would that look like?
(I think the current one is perfect for 1:1 conversations .. Multiple people is more of an issue visually)
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#63This 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…
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.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#64The author is just overthinking things here. If anything, green is the color used to indicate “go”, a positive sign that has been etched into our minds. The reason is very clear as already mentioned “it doesn’t support messages”. Why isn’t that explanation enough? EDIT: to clarify here, the author does explain his point about the color and the contrast of the text. He may have a point there but IMO, the main issue wa…
If you don't think Apple had the same thoughts OP did during the design process, you don't know Apple.
Seeing that the change in saturation happened when Ives took over the iPhone UI when iOS 7 was introduced, it was just one of many poorly thought out decisions that were made under Ives leadership.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#65When will people realize that the point of differentiating between Android/iOS bubbles isn’t about discriminating against teenagers, but rather it’s about security. If my messages are being sent through an insecure protocol that leaks my messages to the police, carrier, and skids with a rtl-SDR (SMS) rather than a secure encrypted protocol (iMessage), I want it to be obvious. They have every reason to make “green bub…
RCS has end to end encryption. When I text other android users, my messages are encrypted. When I text an iPhone, they are not. Stop supporting closed protocols and bad-faith actors.
RCS isn’t anywhere nearly as widely adopted as SMS, depends entirely on the carrier setting it up properly, and didn’t get end to end encryption until relatively recently. Many years after this whole green vs. blue debacle started.
Once 99% of phones and carriers support RCS then maybe you could make this argument, but it won’t be for several years.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#66I disagree with two things here. Green IS traditionally an off-putting color, when we're talking about light: aliens, x-files, goo, and everything witchy. But in this context the thing that's harder on the eyes is the bubble itself. So the lighter one is easier for me. Although I'd rather see no bubbles at all.
Nature is green though...
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#67A few weeks ago I went over my SMS history, going back several months.
About 99% of the SMS I get is bots. The vast majority was spam (making me wish I could disable SMS altogether), then some alerts (e.g from my bank) and 2SV codes.
The other 1% were delivery people.
Exactly 0.0% were people in my contacts.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#68When will people realize that the point of differentiating between Android/iOS bubbles isn’t about discriminating against teenagers, but rather it’s about security. If my messages are being sent through an insecure protocol that leaks my messages to the police, carrier, and skids with a rtl-SDR (SMS) rather than a secure encrypted protocol (iMessage), I want it to be obvious. They have every reason to make “green bub…
The shade of low-contrast-y green is similar to the one used by some browsers not too long ago when an EV TLS certificate was used, to underline the security of the connection.
If it's the goal to implicate danger, this strikes me as a weird colour choice for dangerous messages, to be honest.
This whole "thing" around "bad" green vs blue message bubbles appears a bit, for the lack of a better word, insane to me as a non-american. The bubbles are fine. IMO, the problem is very obviously that kids can be cruel jerks and "not having an iPhone" is a social stigma for US teenagers, just like "not having a flashy cell phone with Bluetooth and MMS" was 15 years ago. Changing the colour will not fix this stigma, there still isn't an Apple on the back of the Android phones.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#69Might it might it not also be just conditioning? Users have learned to associate green messages with all of the limitations that SMS impose. Hence they perceive it as bad. If that was true, they could’ve picked a higher contrast version instead, and people would still feel the same way.
Correct. Users don't need any color tricks to associate SMS with reduced functionality.
Re: One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”
#70This 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…
> in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
Surely it's not middle school when people try to project wealth the most.. kids care more about who has an iPhone than adults but adults project wealth _a lot_ more than kids overall: fancy cars, homes, holidays etc. More expensive things are also nicer than their cheaper counterparts but I think most people would be lying if they don't say having access to them also gives them some status boost, if only internally. Can't turn off the monkey in the head easily.