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US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

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Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#91

Post by asclepi »

damnyou wrote: post #20
iamwpj wrote: post #4

It's misleading to just say "because of the green text" it's so much more than that. If you have an active iMessage chat and users are using iMessage features, it's a weird experience for the non-iMessage folks. It seemed like a real victory to have emojis in the UTF format, but of course now Apple turns on the big FU and finds other ways to chide non-iMessage users. Don't blame the kids.

The kids could just be inclusive and switch to Telegram or WhatsApp or even Messenger. But the kids want to discriminate — humans, particularly Americans, thrive on excluding other people. the kids are just imitating the patterns they pick up from adults.

That's not how it works. These kids didn't create the stigma for the green bubble. Popular culture did, big-money TV, movie and music productions did, and teens are the most susceptible.

Try finding a recent US-produced music video or hit movie/TV series that shows a green bubble (or Android for that matter, as it still has a higher market share).

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#92

Post by jdgoesmarching »

Stubb wrote: post #21

It's been refreshing moving the majority of my messaging to Telegram with a bit of Signal on the side. No worries about what platform people are using or that our data is being mined and sold to advertisers. Using iMessage is pretty much a fallback to people who are tech illiterate. The user experience on Telegram is so much better than the other options, and its privacy & security are good enough for my purposes.

Good for you that you could convince all of your friends and family to switch messaging services, that’s not realistic for most of us. Not sure what you’re going on about for tech illiteracy, iMessage is end-to-end encrypted and the feature set is perfectly fine.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#93

Post by Wowfunhappy »

nerdjon wrote: post #85
RickS wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced resolution in photos and videos This and group names are the absolute killers. It's tough. My understanding is that SMS is at fault under the surface, requiring that images and videos be compressed to fit a size limit (right?). My preferred solution would be mandated adversarial interoperability. Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the i…

> Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI). I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send…

It's not really public if it's an "unlisted" url with a sufficiently long/random URL. You could also have them expire after some reasonable amount of time.

As far as Google having data... I'm not clear how what OP proposed would give them any more data than they currently have.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#94

Post by alanbernstein »

Barrin92 wrote: post #77
givinguflac wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, you can't be serious.

I'm entirely serious. I have no idea what it even means for android to intrude on me in this context. I know what an intrusive app is, I don't know what an intrusive operating system is.

Android is one arm of Google's data collection apparatus. Using an Android device allows Google to do this: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline?pb. Is this intrusive?

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#96

Post by Barrin92 »

alanbernstein wrote: post #94
Barrin92 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm entirely serious. I have no idea what it even means for android to intrude on me in this context. I know what an intrusive app is, I don't know what an intrusive operating system is.

Android is one arm of Google's data collection apparatus. Using an Android device allows Google to do this: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline?pb . Is this intrusive?

Given that only I can see that data (which is even stated on that very webpage), no I don't consider it intrusive. If the provision of basic services by Google to me without third parties is intrusive, then ios is intrusive in the very same way because it is 'apple's data collection apparatus'. Apple, like Google collects a vast amount of data on its users.

And in addition i'm sure you're aware that google paid apple 9 billion last year to make it the standard search engine in apple's safari browser. Just a week ago we learned that apple stores significant amounts of its icloud userdata on third party servers despite not disclosing that fact to its users. (related article: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apple...)

So if shoving vast amounts of data through the Google ecosystem is your definition of intrusion, you can add apple to the list.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#97

Post by asclepi »

Kadin wrote: post #64

I switched to iOS (via a used iPhone on a BYOD plan) primarily for iMessage. I was tired of being the odd man out, missing out on things that were being planned via group messages, etc. Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake, so the existence of theoretical alternatives doesn't really matter. (And I do try to use Facebook Messenger for group chats, so as not to lock…

> Nobody was going to switch to an entirely different mode of communication just for my sake

Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app.

In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning?

Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#98

Post by nocsi »

asclepi wrote: post #55

I do notice a pattern of misunderstanding that I've also observed when talking with Android users IRL. iMessage is very different from Whatsapp. For starters, there is no dedicated iMessage app. iMessage is managed from the iOS Messages app, which handles both iMessage and SMS. It's very good at managing both from one unified interface. In fact, it's so good that it uses arbitrary coloring of messages so you can see…

Nobody ever mentions the security aspect. The group that would be otherwise e2e encrypted if SMS people aren't involved. Green-texting the entire group chat removes that, so it goes beyond just some visual inconvenience. But more likely, they're locking them out because SMS users cause media in group chat to be down-converted - it's a user-experience factor.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#99

Post by foobarchu »

asclepi wrote: post #45
joekrill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most significant difference is that WhatsApp is at least platform independent. iMessage simply is not an option on Android - it's limited to iPhone users only and it doesn't seem like Apple has any intention of changing that. WhatsApp, on the other hand, can be used by whoever wants to download it. It's still vendor lock-in. Just not to the same extent.

iMessage reverts to SMS when the recipient doesn't have an iPhone. All within the same app. To what does Whatsapp revert when the recipient doesn't have Whatsapp?

Reverting to SMS is the problem, though. It gives participants the illusion that the conversation can be extended to anyone, but once they find out that the platform loses features and degrades with the addition of an android participant, that person is excluded so that the rest can keep using the full-featured platform.

The suggestion of WhatsApp is so that everyone can use their own phone and have full features. If someone wants to join the chat, then its on them to get on board with what everyone else wants.

Re: US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In

#100

Post by RickS »

nerdjon wrote: post #85
RickS wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced resolution in photos and videos This and group names are the absolute killers. It's tough. My understanding is that SMS is at fault under the surface, requiring that images and videos be compressed to fit a size limit (right?). My preferred solution would be mandated adversarial interoperability. Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the i…

> Absent that, I wish android could bundle images into a dead simple hosting site that send me a link to all the images, at max resolution, displayed with zero chrome whatsoever, in a browser window. Then I can download them like normal assets (with my press-and-hold browser utils. no third party UI). I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send…

>I would not be particularly happy to find out that someone I was messaging on an Android phone could easily just send up any images I send them to a public site.

There may have been a misunderstanding here.

I was referring to an android phone sending me (on iPhone) hosted images as a fallback rather then sending them via MMS (lossy) or google photos (bloated).

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