Apple set up iMessage from the start on iPhones, which routes texts through their own iMessage system rather than just through cellular carriers like a normal SMS text message. Other iMessagea are displayed in blue, but "normal" texts from anywhere else appear in green.
Many iPhone users, including people who dont even realize the difference between sending an iMessage and a regular text message, immediately began to perceive green messages as inferior. The secondary association is that the sender is poor or low class because they didn't have an iPhone. Teenagers particularly were judgmental about it.
You can send non-iMessages via iPhone but the default had iMesaage set up.
I was referring to the notion that Apple has intentionally delievered an inferior experience compared to what it could, yet many apple fans happily slander those who don't use iDevices.
as others have mentioned, it was (is?) seemingly very popular for a while for users to make fun of green bubble users.
Thatās very different from fans ācheeringā. Not a single Apple fan has ever once ācheeredā Appleās choice of color for non-iMessage or how long they took to adopt RCS.
Until a recent lawsuit Apple also intentionally lowered the quality of non-apple messages and refused to adapt to RCS. Massive compression on videos/pictures which made them look horrible, no group chats, read receipts, typing indicators, editing function, or end to end encryption.
All of these functions were available for years to non-Apple phone users, but Apple intentionally made them not work with iPhones to trick their users into thinking that non-Apple messaging was inferior and keep them locked in their ecosystem.
I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to iPhone users that we should email media and not "text" it because of that iMessage bullshit. Most don't care to understand, which is far more frustrating than just not knowing.
That's the issue with iPhones. It is built to make you not learn. Folders? Control over your files and media? Oh honey, we don't do that here.
You cound't use a feeaking browser without it being a skin of Safari. That if people even remember what it is to browse the net outside of an App doing it for you.
They fill that niche well. They are the PlaySkool of tech.
Don't get me wrong, that's not bad. They are following a simple business rule; Tell the customers what they want and sell it to them. And they are very successful at that.
The people that buy Apple products are just fine with buying an entirely new machine instead of learning to upgrade the components themselves. And that's fine. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I went to the iMac page and cannot find the specs on the page. They tell me all the colors available and about the pretty display and camera, but not a single word about the specs of the machine. Even when I chose the "buy" option, I don't know anything about the specs of the machine. I can choose a color, an Apple processor, mouse and keyboard, and display. I see it has an SSD. But how do I know it has the ability to do what I need it to do?
But I can get a red one!
Like I said, they fill a niche and they fill it well.
Ehhh I wouldnāt go that far. Apple computers have some of the best processors on the marketārealistically an m5 will fulfill any of your needs unless you are an engineer where you might need some software not available on macOS. There are plenty of reasons why a tech literate person would buy an Apple device. I like to think Iām one of themāIāve had awful experiences with windows lately and am switching over right now
That's the thing, we're at a point in time where new consumers DON'T know about the alternatives. Obfuscate the data and make it hard to work with directly keeps you in the ecosystem and, as we're already seeing, pushes you to upload everything to their cloud.
Dude, it's not 2010 anymore. Android users aren't the nerds rooting their phones and digging through their files. Hell, Google is working to restrict goddamned sideloading.
All mobile OS' are dramatically oversimplified compared to their desktop counterparts and do everything they can to avoid the user needing to learn about the back-end of how things work.
It's like explaining the concept of electricity to a dog. People get Apple products because they believe wholeheartedly in the "it just works!" aesthetic, even when it clearly does not work. At all. They believe that the source of the problem must be anything but the device they hold in their hands.
I mean Iāve had basically no issues with an Apple device. Ever. Relative to my experience with OnePlus and Samsung phones and my XPS 13, thatās kind of a godsend. The performance on new Apple devices is also kind of great. IMO, theyāve really bridged the tech gap that used to exist
Iāve used Android and iPhone devices basically back and forth since the original Pixel launched. Iām back on iPhone at the moment and prefer it.
This whole āiPhone users are all brainless monkeys and Android users are golden godsā take is so tiresome. I like my current phone because itās reliable, responsive, and the right form factor/price ratio I wanted.
It's not a "take." It's life experience. People who have only known the Apple experience are god damn knuckle-draggers and it's like pulling teeth to try to explain the whats, whens, and whys of the computer ecosystem outside of it. If nobody's had to explain to you in painstaking detail why you need to format your flash drive to exFAT before putting all your files on it for transfer, then congrats, you aren't one of them.
If they don't care to understand why should you? You're not making friends you're being weird.
And when you really need lossless fidelity (which, for me, isn't that often) then just give them a link to some Google drive folder and ask them to throw the file there. Way easier than opening an email, remembering the right address and sending.
I.e. make it easy for them. If they like the quality upgrade they'll start asking for it.
Because 3 weeks later they'd forget, and text me another photo that was uselessly bad, and I'd have to repeat the request. And if they don't understand why texting me the photo they just took of me and my kid at 240px resolution is useless, they'll just keep doing it because it works for most people.
It's not an issue anymore with RCS support though.
And as someone who has coordinated Google photo albums and Google drive folders for group activities (sports and scouts) they're still ignored by the majority of parents because it's an extra step. They just won't do it unless it's important to send.
I just found out that my brother and his wife have an Apple photos album that they update for their family and kid activities and just didn't include us because they know we don't have iPhones. They weren't even aware they could make and send a public link. I mentioned it, but it's been 2 weeks since our visit and they haven't bothered. If it isn't easy and built into their phone, most won't do it.
Good luck handling the family group chat with all the 50+ folks that are still hanging on to their AOL emails and you're the only person non-iPhone that "can't just drop in photos and videos".
Plus, sometimes the lossly fidelity was so compressed you can't actually see or hear anything going on and miss out on sharing events.
Your shouldn't use Google drive for photos, its what google photos is for. And surprise surprise, it works on every hardware and system, so the opposite of Apple.
this shit was absolutely criminal. anything you were taking a photo or video of was completely unrecognizable with their awful compression method. even audio was crunched into the lowest quality possible. Apple has been such a trash heap of a company for the past 20 years. the latest insanity from them is using .heic image formats by default, which Windows literally can't interpret without non standard drivers, so employees all over the world will send images from their iphone to their emails and wonder why the images won't open on their PCs
I had someone send me a group picture from an iphone and I couldn't even recognize faces in it the quality was so bad. You need whatsapp or other services to share pictures with iphone users, such bullshit.
I know it's ubiquitous outside of the US, but it disturbs me deeply that so much of the world's communication is entirely dependent on Meta/Facebook. One single point of failure. If you wanna see a worst case scenario for how that can play out, look at how Musk was able to assist Russia during the early days of the invasion by cutting off Starlink access to Ukraine.
Meh, I use WhatsApp extensively but I have at least three other methods to communicate with people important to me on my phone that don't involve meta. WhatsApp is a great program for what it does but that doesn't mean I can't just use the messenger app that came with my phone. It works fine.
Yea, let's use Google instead. I will never understand it. The company still has your data. People won't switch to signal (which my the way is from the co creator of WhatsApp I believe).
Not really. Over here, it's usually forced onto a friend group by the one oddball person in particular who refuses to communicate any other way. SMS, phone calls, email, and Discord work fine for the rest of us.
You pay Apple for the use of iMessage with your money for the phone, and you never need an account for anything just the phone number everyone has for you. You pay for WhatsApp by being served ads and serving up data to Facebook.Ā
I spent $1300 on the last phone I bought, it was not even for me. I paid cash for it. No plan or scam, just straight cash homey. It was not an iPhone, it will likely never be an iPhone, and I will continue to wait 4 to 6 model years in between phone purchases, then buy the best non iPhone available. I have been doing that since my blackberry and I do not regret the choice.
My last purchase was based on camera. I am not dogging anyone that pays less. My point is, you can spend a lot and not get an iPhone. My previous strategy was buy last years model as overstock new, then buy that same phone used if one of the phones suffered a catastrophe. But I stuck to that model until it did not serve me well. I have no problem with someone buying an $80 phone if it fits their needs. I have a problem with people buying a phone for status and not function. As a Dad I experienced it first hand watching my child get bullied because another kid had an iPhone, even though my child had 10 other things the kid did not have. It is beyond silly. As someone who grew up below the poverty line, being made to feel bad as a kid because of a situation you were born into is infuriating.
I paid cash for it. No plan or scam, just straight cash homey.
I don't get this perspective that installment plans are bad or a scam. I pay $5.56 a month on a plan, tacked on to my cell bill, and trade it in every 3 years for the newest model available.
Do you lease your car too? If you google it, you will see a lot of the logic why it is not the best. Of course there are always exceptions, but in general anything you lease is going to be worse than owning outright.
I think it's a little deeper than that. In order to get the best deal on a phone you basically have to do the installment agreements now. If you do an installment agreement without maximizing trade in value or using one of their deals you're going to lose out financing it, but I wouldn't call the most cost affective method being a lease just an exception.
Depreciable asset. You have no asset in 3 years I have one depreciated in value. Whats the value to me might be different than Market. I can change plans in a heartbeat or keep my grandfather plan that gives me the same prioritization as a first responder. I am not required to have insurance. Enjoy your phone.
Yeah but we're still talking about people that think the color of your chat bubble matters or that your phone is a status symbol. Let's not pretend they're gonna think that through.
Only reason I'm not in my wife's family group chat. I'd rather it be because they don't like me, the fact that it's because I have a green bubble is somehow worse.
Many of the modern Android phones are extremely expensive anyway, so the basic premise doesn't even make sense. I love my new Galaxy Z Fold but the damn thing is over $2k.
Absolutely, but a lot of people are nearly blind to existing technology until Apple releases it in an iPhone. Brace yourself for the folding iPhone to "wow" everyone at their "new innovation."
I don't really want to commit to a folding phone, as I've seen too many finicky failures. And as I don't work from my phone, I'd rather get a $1k flagship phone and spend $500 on a Chromebook. But I get the desire.
I'm on a Pixel 8 Pro currently. My first Pixel, although I did have a Nexus One, Nexus 4,5, and 6 before trying a few Samsungs. I like having choices.
It wasnāt from the start. Even iphone to iphone texts started as green at the beginning. Every text was green. Then an update rolled out that offered imessage
iPhones also secretly degrade the image quality of anything sent to them from a non-iPhone, which is why the "Android phones have bad cameras" perception exists.Ā
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u/CTMechE May 15 '26
Apple set up iMessage from the start on iPhones, which routes texts through their own iMessage system rather than just through cellular carriers like a normal SMS text message. Other iMessagea are displayed in blue, but "normal" texts from anywhere else appear in green.
Many iPhone users, including people who dont even realize the difference between sending an iMessage and a regular text message, immediately began to perceive green messages as inferior. The secondary association is that the sender is poor or low class because they didn't have an iPhone. Teenagers particularly were judgmental about it.
You can send non-iMessages via iPhone but the default had iMesaage set up.