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US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In
- zbentley 7y agoIt's a major bummer that Apple got the network effect bonus for "SMS++" (really any IM solution that has the combo of being ubiquitous, usable without setup/technical skill, and polished). I have a hunch that most people who use these tools for group chat purposes don't really care about the features of iMessage that make it horribly incompatible with SMS clients (e2ee, pairing with computers), and just want what amounts to a Discord/Slack/whatever non-threaded channel, but on their phones and with good UX. That shouldn't have to mean lock-out.
- pardavis 7y agoI’m 24 and this is why I switched to iPhone 6 or 7 years ago, I was being left out of group chats.
- iamwpj 7y agoIt'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.
- damnyou 7y agoThe 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.
- piker 7y ago> But the kids want to discriminate Nah it's just easier to have it baked-in as native functionality.
- damnyou 7y agoWhy does approximately no one outside the US use iMessage then? Yes, it's easier if you have $750 to spend and are willing to cede control to a trillion dollar megacorporation. It's impossible if you're already on a different platform. Sometimes being inclusive means doing some work, going out of your way a little. Having to download another app is not a huge burden. The fact that kids aren't doing it is an indictment of American culture first, Apple second, adults third, and finally the kids themselves.
- mdszy 7y agoyeah fuck americans am i right totally has nothing to do with the fact that it's a built in app where you don't have to do anything extra to set it up no-sir-ee it's the americans who are bad!
- tpush 7y agoEffectively no human with a smartphone outside the US finds having to install an app to communicate with other people in a cross platform way a burden enough to stay with iMessage. Either Americans are uniquely lazy when it comes to installing apps on their phone, or this argument doesn't hold any water.
- piker 7y agoA false dichotomy. One third option: there are network effects at play in America that aren't at play in Europe. Consider the relative market shares of the iPhone. US: ~58%, e.g., Spain: 25%. [1] Thus, when one boots an iPhone in the US, roughly 60% of one's friends already have this functionality. And that market share likely skews towards self-selecting groups such as teenagers. Also note that sending an SMS doesn't have as significant of a historical drawback in the US as it does in Europe. There may be some limitations, but, again, given the market share, it's unlikely one is going to reach one's SMS limit texting grandma. Thus, because US people can be more accommodating in terms of messaging with other phones without a third-party app, it's a perceptively useless install in America. Pretty much apps like WhatsApp are only used by US people with Android devices for communicating outside of the US. Otherwise, it's unlikely a US person needs to do anything other than send an SMS, and, hence, the green bubble. [1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share
- mdszy 7y agoor maybe, since it's already built in and works just fine for them, they use it most people don't give enough of a shit to install another app to chat with people when what they have is just fine friendly reminder that most people don't give a shit about tech in general and just want to use things that work you can calm your hate-boner for america whenever you want
- asclepi 7y agoThat'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).
- damnyou 7y agoYes, as I said, the kids are just picking up patterns from adults. Ultimately this is a larger societal problem of exclusion. America has taken it to its extreme, with racial segregation, redlining and the prison industrial complex. This iMessage nonsense is just a small and relatively benign symptom of the fundamental problem with America. As a left-libertarian who believes in inclusion, I'm sure not going to encourage this with my own kids.
- Terretta 7y agoPlus, by ensuring your kids use SMS instead of iMessage, you can be assured of your own ‘inclusion’ in their text chat logs through the cell carrier’s parental log.
- viraptor 7y agoNon-imessage doesn't mean SMS. There's lots of e2e solutions that work cross-platform.
- axaxs 7y agoYou can't seriously be comparing iMessage usage to racial segregation. I refuse to believe this is a real comment.
- damnyou 7y agoI very specifically said that iMessage is a small example of a general pattern of exclusion. (But yeah, people of color are less likely to use iPhones. I thought this was well known.)
- NobodyNada 7y agoIt's not just a weird experience for "the non-iMessage folks," it's a weird experience for everyone just because MMS is missing so many features in comparison to iMessage. Last I checked, it wasn't even possible to add or remove someone from an MMS group without creating a new group from scratch. Additionally, MMS is unreliable in my experience -- oftentimes, messages are delayed by upwards of 15 minutes, and it doesn't work at all if I'm somewhere with less-than-perfect cell coverage (including my home and work).
- d-sc 7y agoEmojis are a Japanese thing. Apple didn’t enable them at first in the States. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji
- lobstercat 7y agohonestly havent been in an imessage group chat since groupme came out
- throwaway123x2 7y agoGroupme came out before iMessage
- pcmoney 7y agoThey never had a monetization plan and don't charge for use and their last re-design was in 2012? How do you think they make money? Either they don't and they are going to disappear soon or they do and they are just another data pimp. They got bought by Skype awhile back which is being shelved in favor of Teams. I bet MSFT shuts it down once it remembers it still exists.
- olyjohn 7y agoSkype for Business, which is not Skype at all, is being shelved in favor of Teams.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pcmoney 7y agoIt is interesting that the comments on the Twitter thread are "Just use WhatsApp". Which is basically iMessage but from Facebook. Comparing two, the vendor lock-in from Apple seems much preferable to the one with Facebook in light of the data scandals Facebook has and their ongoing effort to backdoor WhatsApp and integrate it with FB messenger etc. Also a group message is only as secure as its most weakly encrypted member and sms definitely loses there vs iMessage. I would rather have Apple win the network effect here vs another data pimp like Google (who, ads aside, can't be trusted to maintain any communication platform). I would much rather this all be standardized with end to end encryption protocols. (C'mon Signal!)
- danpalmer 7y agoIn Europe WhatsApp was huge well before Facebook purchased them. From my own experience, the product has barely changed since then, so I don't really feel like it's a Facebook product (yet), and so while I dislike using Facebook services WhatApp is basically fine for now. Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don't, and use iMessage instead. This isn't an active choice though, it's that they are on an iPhone and using SMS, so they get iMessage by default. This is a long way of saying that for many Europeans, "Just use WhatsApp" feels like an obvious response, why wouldn't you?
- pcmoney 7y agoIt is 100% a Facebook product. It is FB. I 100% guarantee all data mined from your WhatsApp account is linked either to your FB account or your shadow FB account if you never signed up. Sure maybe the "experience" hasn't changed from a UI standpoint but FB is weakening WhatsApp's end to end encryption and mining your conversations so under the hood the experience is radically different. There is a reason the founders of WhatsApp quit FB post acquisition (literally leaving hundreds of millions of dollars behind) in disgust over the privacy abuses Facebook was proposing. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-co-founder-explains-why-he-left-facebook.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-co-founder-explains...
- 7y ago
- 1_player 7y agoIs WhatsApp not used in the US? Honest question. I'm in EU, I moved to an iPhone a few years ago and I've yet to receive an actual iMessage, but my friends, local or international, all use WhatsApp. I just use regular SMS for more "formal" messaging, such as with my boss or landlord, or to receive OTP codes.
- sithadmin 7y agoI see WhatsApp used in the US among folks with relatively large networks of international acquaintances. For those with more domestic social networks, pplain SMS, iMessage, GroupMe, and Facebook Messenger seem to be more common among the general population. Signal, Telegram, Discord, and Slack are pretty prevalent with techies.
- umeshunni 7y agoIs GroupMe having a resurgence? I remember using it in 2011-2012 but it seems to have disappeared with the rise of FB messenger.
- bytematic 7y agoI've never seen anyone use it in the 15-25 age range for U.S. . I downloaded it once to talk to a friend from The Netherlands, but then we switched to Viber
- kitsunesoba 7y agoAside from a couple of friends in Japan, everybody I talk to regularly uses either iMessage or Telegram. I might have used WhatsApp 3 or 4 times in total since I first got a smartphone in 2009.
- amyjess 7y agoI've never met another American that uses it. I use Facebook Messenger for talking to real-life friends and a couple of online friends, Discord for talking to people I only know online, Slack for work, and SMS for talking to my parents.
- drusepth 7y ago
- word-reader 7y agoIt's not just about it "being green", the contrast between the text and the background is lower with the green SMS bubbles than the blue iMessage bubbles, making it harder to read. I guarantee you if the SMS bubbles were a shade or two darker green people wouldn't care as much.
- anchpop 7y agoIts pretty interesting that Apple, who pride themselves so much on form, chose that undeniably unpleasant shade of green.
- n8henry 7y agoIt's very much by design.
- tguedes 7y agoI think its on purpose. Associate an unpleasant color with Android so if you ever switch from iPhone to Android you know you will show up as the same unpleasant green on their phones.
- Terretta 7y agoIn the beginning, the mnemonic was green texts cost money, blue texts are unlimited like blue sky. Also that green was popular then.
- davidy123 7y agoThis has been going on for decades with MS Office. I recently proposed to an elderly acquaintance that they get a Chromebook because a full Windows installation was causing them so much trouble, but they couldn't because their peers edited one specific document using MS Word and for some reason it caused trouble when people edited it online. And that's just at the individual level, MS Office lock-in is a fact for so many organizations. People who really care about consumer choice, competition, and the free/open option should be vigorously working against these issues.
- dunnevens 7y agoI'm sure you already tried this, but did the Word app for Android work for the edited document? With Chrome OS support for Android apps, that might a solution for your acquaintance.
- davidy123 7y agoThis was before Android for ChromeOS was released. But they just wanted a Windows laptop, because they thought it was the only way they could confidently edit documents in their group.
- draw_down 7y agoWell, it is a bit unfortunate they didn’t standardize on something cross-platform like Whatsapp. But if they had, would the situation really be that different?
- Stubb 7y agoIt'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.
- jki275 7y agoiMessage is end to end encrypted by default. Apple couldn't market with it if they wanted to.
- jdgoesmarching 7y agoGood 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.
- sixbrx 7y agoEncrypted unless an Android user is involved which is the case here.
- matz1 7y agoYup, i have group that "Just use WhatsApp", and group that "Just use wechat", the thing is installing and switching app is easy, but with imesssage, you really have to switch phone, thats way more troublesome.
- rolltiide 7y agoEverytime I post about "green bubble" discrimination on hackernews, people act so surprised just like this father on twitter, and then talk about how vapid and fake people must be to care about that You know what people - iphone users - actually say when there isn't mixed company? "Android users, especially self-identified ones, lack social cues in many areas" It goes way beyond an android user letting people know about how much control they have over their phone, which is already missing the cue of nobody caring. It goes beyond green bubbles, which is just the effect and litmus test which has now expanded to a worse user experience in rich interactive group chats.
- anchpop 7y agoAndroid has about 40% market share in the US [0], are you claiming that 40% of the us are unable to identify social cues? I have a hard time believing that this isn't just classism. Most of my friends from poorer areas, especially the ones who grew up without access to the internet, have an Android. And my group chats with them work pretty well since android supports the open standard RCS [0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
- pcmoney 7y agoI don't think it is a social cues thing either. I switched back and forth between Droid and Apple for awhile until I read some fairly disturbing predictions on how all these personal data warehouses could be used to digitally enslave us. I am not sure it is a social cues things, although I will concede frothing at the mouth Android and Apple fans are not people I like to be around. TBH the biggest driver towards Apple for me (aside from privacy) is now that I am older and have kids and more responsibilities at work and don't have time to tinker I don't want to have to figure out what the best messaging app for my phone is. (I gave up using Linux in favor of MacOS as well for similar reasons). (Cue all the neckbeard Linux/Droid guys without a family or kids saying "its not hard you just need to...<vaporize 30 minutes of your Saturday or evening>")
- 7y ago
- goatinaboat 7y agoThose who forget BBM are bound to repeat it
- asclepi 7y agoI 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 what message was sent through iMessage and what message was sent through SMS, because you would often not be able to tell otherwise as it's all in the same interface. A lot of caveats apply here, but broadly speaking, while an iMessage user is typing a message, Messages will contact Apple to check if the recipient is also an iMessage user. If yes, it will try to send the message through iMessage and color the text bubble blue. If no, it will go through SMS and the bubble gets a green color. If iMessage fails in the first scenario, Messages will offer to revert to SMS. So unlike Whatsapp, Messages doesn't care if the recipient has iMessage or not. And it also does not care if the recipient has an iPhone or not. It will get the message over regardless, as long as the recipient can receive SMS, which any Android phone can. Whatsapp, OTOH, does put the onus on the recipient to have the app. In other words: when it comes to the recipient, Messages (the app) is actually a lot more inclusive than Whatsapp (the app). These HS teens aren't locking others out because they can't text their Android friends. They perfectly can, as OP from the Twitter thread also acknowledges, from the same app that they use to text their iPhone friends. They lock them out because Messages colors the bubbles green, which has become a social stigma in our high schools. Nothing more, nothing less. So it is not a technical limitation, and neither is it a cost issue, as virtually all wireless plans include unlimited (SMS) texts in the US. It is purely a human factors issue, which teens of all times and generations have been very prone to. As sad as it is.
- n8henry 7y agoThey are locking their Android friends out of group messages, which are very popular among that age group.
- Bellyache5 7y agoBased on that Twitter thread, they are starting new group messages that don't include their Android friends and abandoning the original group message.
- Kadin 7y agoI 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 Android people out myself, since I've been on the other side of that and it sucks.) But really this is Google's problem, not Apple's. Google could have owned this space if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball and fucked up Hangouts. There was a period of time where everyone used Hangouts, and they did a brilliant job getting market penetration by including it in Gmail. It's cross-platform, so it could have been the lowest-common-denominator in over the top messaging services, the thing that everyone knew everyone else could use when you want something that's not SMS or kludgy MMS. But Google snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, seemingly intentionally driving people off of Hangouts into other apps. This was incredibly stupid -- when you tell your users to switch to a different app, they may well switch to a competitor's. If they wanted to roll out additional features, they should have done it in Hangouts, not by building new services. (And RCS is garbage. I don't know who wants a carrier-dependent, unencrypted messaging service in 2019, but certainly not me.) The lack of a viable iMessage alternative is entirely because of Google's failure to invest in the Android platform and produce one.
- wronglebowski 7y agoI can't imagine RCS getting the momentum to become a real viable platform. Even if it's integrated into Android phones and seamless from the users perspective the major carriers have no interest in putting forth the effort or making it a real thing. I suspect it will be a nice to have feature like "HD Calling" where calls have increased quality. With Google lacking any real leadership in the Android division(See Wear OS) this problem won't be solved anytime soon. I recently switched from Android to iOS because I have faith in their ecosystem and vision. Sure it's a walled garden, but I'd rather have a nice walled garden that's tended to than a forest with no supervision, direction or purpose.
- jvolkman 7y ago
- throw0101a 7y agoLock-in doesn't last forever: just ask ICQ, MSN, and BBM. My sister used all of those things as she was growing up in the 2000s and 2010s. The flavour-of-the-day is now iMessage. She sometimes complains that I'm not on the system (supposedly handy to group chat with our mom), but I can't be bothered to follow the latest fad. We'll see how long that lasts. Maybe at some point the telcos and phone makers will eventually get around to supporting RCS: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
- Infinitesimus 7y agoI'm not sure the comparison is that neat. Everyone was on BBM until most people stopped using a BlackBerry. iMessage will live on until most people stop using an iPhone in the US because iMessage is guaranteed to be present on your iDevice and usually works reliably enough for a vast majority of the population.
- throw0101a 7y agoYes, that's the point: there were, are, and will be, protocols or technologies that are popular and it will be Very Important that you use them. Until they're not important. Maybe Apple will be better at staying relevant than Research in Motion/Blackberry.
- saagarjha 7y agoRCS isn't end-to-end encrypted, unfortunately :(
- throw0101a 7y agoSure, but it'd be nice to have some of the other features that it offers.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIt's not a real solution, but I'm kind of surprised no one has hacked up some type of iMessage forwarder for Android + an old Mac.
- drusepth 7y agoI think I've seen a few on HN over the years. Here's a random one that seems to be recent: https://airmessage.org/guide/ https://airmessage.org/guide/
- imagetic 7y agoI'd like those minutes of my life back.
- klondike_ 7y agoEmbrace, Extend, Extinguish 1. Apple embraced SMS with the original iPhone 2. Apple added encryption and other enhancements to messages which were not compatible with any other phone 3. Extinguish users who use traditional SMS/MMS by downgrading quality of service and disabling enhances features What we really need is a universal internet messaging protocol like Email, something that everyone agrees on and can deliver the rich experiences people expect today
- gen3 7y agoHow did they extinguish anything? The new added features to iMessage are not part of the SMS spec. They didn't take any features away, or degrade the experience.
- gregknicholson 7y ago> What we really need is a universal internet messaging protocol like Email, something that everyone agrees on and can deliver the rich experiences people expect today I believe the lowest common denominator will eventually win, something like HTML or email. That may be Matrix.
- ryandrake 7y agoIf friends decide to exclude you from their group because of what messaging technology you use, then I have some bad news for you: They're not really your friends. That kind of behavior is not compatible with what most of us would expect of a healthy friendship.
- viraptor 7y agoThat would be my response as an adult. I'm not sure if this is as easy to see by kids. But for teenagers, I think it's an interesting conversation: "Your friend will exclude you if you don't spend hundreds of dollars on a tech gadget, even if a no-cost solution exists on their side. What do you think about this?" If it's an activity group they really want to belong to, that's ok. If it's between friends who want to stay close... something's not right.
- ohnope 7y agoI honestly don't mind green texters in my iMessage groups, but when it becomes really apparent is when we forget about the android user and start adding reactions to messages, which come in as texts. Then it becomes really obnoxious. I've never seen people break out into a separate iOS-only group, but chats have definitely devolved into mocking the text-substitution for message reactions by recursively reacting to text reactions, which get absurdly long. And then it ends with someone sarcastically suggesting the android user buy an iPhone. I feel that if I was a teenager and not an adult, this kind of frustration must result in regrouping iOS only.
- newnewpdro 7y agoI don't see how this proves tangible lock-in. Teens can be brutally arbitrary when it comes to finding ways to exclude others or simply manufacture cliques to exert dominance/influence over the lives of others.
- sodosopa 7y agoI don't blame them. If you're in the ecosystem, with an iPad or a Macbook you have iMessage there too without installing a Facebook or any other intrusive or untrustworthy apps.
- 693471 7y agoiMessage is far more reliable, has richer features, never needs app updates (bc they come with the OS), E2E by default, and media attachments send faster and more reliably than SMS. I don't blame them. SMS is terrible. And most of the other apps suck or are from untrustworthy companies. Apple's being rewarded for good behavior.
- viraptor 7y agoBeing integrated into the system is not necessarily a good thing. https://www.phonearena.com/news/iMessage-exploit-allows-hackers-to-hijack-your-iPhone-by-simply-sending-you-a-message_id118049 https://www.phonearena.com/news/iMessage-exploit-allows-hack... In that case you can't even remove it to protect yourself.
- 693471 7y agoApple fixes this stuff quickly enough for it to not be a huge issue, and if they ever needed to make iMessage a separate app like Android does with theirs they could do it. I'm certain they could remotely make it show up in the App Store in a moment's notice if needed. App store has root access, it can do it.
- jdlyga 7y agoGreen bubble means limited features, and accordance with the 1990s SMS standard (who knows if anything over 160 characters will be split up, etc).
- myrandomcomment 7y agoI opened Message on my Mac the other day to type a message to a friend. It switched to green and was not successful. WTH? Grabbed phone and asked him. Oh I moved to an Android. Painful. The fact that I have to use the phone to text him bugs me to no end. My current group of core friends are storing a party tomorrow and it is simple as it is all the blue text and I can read the messages on everything I own. Having to revert to SMS would be painful. The funny thing is a few years ago we would all use Google Talk...yah. Looking at my “chat” folder on my iPad, phone etc, I have Google hangouts (work and gmail friends), LINE (Japan, Korea, Singapore), Meet (google for work meetings), Discord for gaming, and Webex (work for customers that do not use Google for email). It is painful. I did drop IRC a few years ago.. Only if XMPP had really won...oh well.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI can send SMS, MMS, and iMessages just fine from my macOS. Never had an issue. I assume SMS/MMS needs a mobile network connection from your phone though.
- myrandomcomment 7y agoYou have to have the feature on that let’s you take calls from you iPhone on the Mac. I do not want that on, but you are correct.
- qubex 7y agoI’ve been using iOS from the iPhone 3G onwards and have gradually migrated my whole family from a plethora of assorted platforms (my sister was a Blackberry fanatic, my father didn’t want to let go of his Treo) to iOS. However, when it came to creating a “family chat” group, I went with WhatsApp precisely to avoid this kind of lock-in.
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y agoSeems like a US thing - I noticed in Europe most people use WhatsApp for group chats.
- bpye 7y agoWhatsApp and Facebook messenger are the two that seem widely used in the UK. I know a few people using Signal and Telegram too.