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Due to Apple's intentional design choices and the psychology of in-groups & out-groups; having a non-Apple phone as an American teenager appears to be a gruelin
by sangnoir 7y ago
Due to Apple's intentional design choices and the psychology of in-groups & out-groups; having a non-Apple phone as an American teenager appears to be a grueling experience, even for the most well-adjusted kids. Group texts mark you out with green bubbles when everyone has blue, and sometimes you wont receive the messages on time. I remember reading how one teen had been assigned a group for schoolwork, and their colleague created a secondary iPhone-only group chat without him.
- jedieaston 7y agoI don't know how much Apple has to do with it, I think most of the problem is that SMS is hot trash and nobody seems too concerned with getting a replacement out network-wide (if AT&T said that they were getting rid of SMS for RCS, Apple would build it into the phone. But due to the fragmentation of the current implementation(s), nobody seems too concerned). Most people don't think about that, they just think green bubble bad, blue bubble good, but this is one of those rare instances where it's actual technical issues causing the hangup.
- lotsofpulp 7y agowhatsapp and signal are also easily available as alternatives.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoWhy do people in the US limit themselves to SMS or Apple's proprietary messaging platform? That's sounds bizzare to me. In Europe everyone texts on WhatsApp so nobody is left out.
- jedieaston 7y agoThat's interesting, here we use SMS so nobody is left out. You don't have to download an app for it and just about every plan for the last decade has had unlimited texting (or a ridiculously high limit).
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoYeah, but you can't easily create and manage groups with SMS or share photos and videos conveniently and absolutely everyone owns a smartphone now from the wealthy to homeless people so downloading a cross platform app is not a barrier
- ido 7y agoI think still the biggest effect (e.g. for my parents when they started using whatsapp a few years ago) is that it was free & sms wasn't.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoYes, whatsapp was the first nice and easy to use free Multimedia Messaging Service worldwide. It was so refreshing to be able to send messages to anywhere In the world and not worry about international charges. Also it was mostly spam free due to being tied to a phone number.
- sangnoir 7y agoWhatsApp ran quite well on Nokia's S40 for many years - so even those with 3-day battery, $20 featurephones could use it. Unfortunately, after the Facebook acquisition they deprecated support in favor of feature-bloat based on smartphone capabilities (IMO)