17 ms·
iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android when everyone else in a social circle has it. Why should Apple give up on that? What will App
by est31 6y ago
iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android when everyone else in a social circle has it. Why should Apple give up on that? What will Apple gain from making it ubiquitous? It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle.
Note that I'm arguing from Apple's perspective here. From my own I believe they should absolutely open it up.
- kelnos 6y ago> iMessage motivates people to people buy iPhones instead of Android Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why? Note that I'm talking about average users. Sure, there are likely a bunch of privacy-conscious users who believe in Apple's commitment to security and privacy and prefer iMessage on those grounds. But otherwise, why? > It would in fact disappoint many people as now they can't use their phone to distance themselves from the people who don't have that blue circle. If that's truly the case, I don't think I'd want to be friends with people who place importance on such superficial, trivial things. Full disclosure: I've been an Android user for 10 years and the closest I ever got to owning an iPhone was an iPod Touch I stopped using in 2012 or so. SMS is fine for my needs most of the time, though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal or WhatsApp for those use-cases. I guess I just don't see a closed iMessage as that huge of a competitive advantage for Apple. But presumably they know better as to what drives sales.
- harpratap 6y ago> Why, though? Does your average iPhone user actually care if the bubbles they see in their chats are blue or green? If so, why? They definitely do. Not sure what your age or demographic is, but young folks do care a lot about higher social status which is tied to blue bubble because of iPhone prices. It has nothing to do with privacy though.
- spideymans 6y agoThey care because the green bubbles indicate a severely impaired user experience. For example, multimedia may not work, and even if it does, its typically very poor quality.
- collegeburner 6y agoHS senior here. Maybe a little, but it's mostly status/class. It's the twenty-first century equivalent of wearing expensive clothes to school.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI don't see how it conveys status when used iPhones are cheap, and brand new ones start at $400 now. My lowest paid hourly employees all have iPhones, even the ones who don't speak English.
- saagarjha 6y agoBut iPhones sell themselves as expensive, and that's really what lingers in people's consciousness, doesn't it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 6y agoNo? Something serves as a status signal when the person who has it has a high probability of being different from someone who doesn’t. A private jet is a status symbol because you have a high probability of assuming the person who owns it has a level of wealth or influence that most don’t. A degree from Caltech has status compared to a degree from random college because there’s a high probability the Caltech degree holder is more competent. An iMessage chat tells me nothing about the socioeconomic characteristics of the owner of the iOS device, unless I am missing something. Edit: although, now that I have read this whole thread, I am thinking that maybe it’s not the economic status people are looking for, but are somehow deriving some assumption about their “socio” part of “socioeconomic” status, as a non iOS user is perceived to be maybe “different” or “weird” in some way for not conforming and having an Android versus an iOS device. I personally have never thought that, since I use Signal/WhatsApp/iMessage, and if you don’t have iMessage, I just use one of the other two, and I don’t care. But evidently, some people do.
- internet2000 6y agoiMessage is a much better user experience. Users associate the blue bubbles with that.
- paulie_a 6y agoLike pretty much every other messaging app on every phone platform currently existence?
- the_snooze 6y agoIt’s the combination of features and the network effect iMessage has. That’s what makes it special to a lot of people. You get rich chat features (especially in group conversations) and you don’t have to negotiate what platform to use if everyone happens to have an iOS device.
- klodolph 6y agoGreat for you if you live in an area where all of your friends have the same messaging app. They’re all a big step up from SMS, but there’s no messaging app I know that will reach everyone I want to talk to.
- spideymans 6y agoOther messaging apps have the same features as iMessage, but not the same user experience. For example, WhatsApp has a pretty massive spam and fake news problem, and Facebook messenger is significantly slower and applies a high degree of compression on media. iMessage offers the best UX, and that’s why, in my experience, iOS users will almost always opt to use iMessage over competitors when communicating with other iOS users.
- gsich 6y agoSpeak for yourself, I have never encountered a spam problem on Whatsapp. Fake news - maybe, but it was from the "usual suspects" ie. people who believe in every conspiracy theory they encounter.
- 6y ago
- improv32 6y agoiMessage has read receipts, faster and more reliable delivery, higher quality images/videos. More than just the color of the bubble
- sandeeps_ 6y agoLooks like you have never used Whatsapp!
- klodolph 6y agoComparing against SMS. Nearly every messaging platform other than SMS has that feature set.
- toasterlovin 6y agoIn the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.
- klodolph 6y agoThe US is a big place. WhatsApp has plenty of users in the US. It’s easily the third messaging app I use, after LINE and iMessage. And the people I talk to on WhatsApp are US natives, it’s not like they picked up WhatsApp in some other country and brought it here.
- Answerawake 6y agoLINE? Really? I have yet to see anyone use that unless it is to talk to friends in Japan or Korea.
- klodolph 6y agoWe use it for the stickers.
- toasterlovin 6y agoIf you're using three messaging apps on a regular basis, you are either an extreme outlier or have lots of contact with people who are in other countries or have strong ties to other countries.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI was thinking about moving to Android about three years back. The thing that stopped me from even seriously considering it was iMessage. Everyone I know uses iMessage. SMS is unreliable, works poorly in group chats, and can't easily be sent/received from my computer. (I will still eventually need to go to Android because I'm not giving up my headphone jack, but I'll be hanging onto my iPhone 6S for as long as possible.)
- the_snooze 6y agoIndividual SMS is fine. Group SMS stinks. You can’t remove yourself from a conversation unless everyone else moves on to a new thread without you. Also, you don’t get contact names for ad hoc group conversations with new people. Trying to get people to agree to a proper chat platform is like wrangling cats. If everyone in the group has an iOS device, then there’s no decision to be made.
- dwaite 6y agoI’ve never seen people exclude someone with a green bubble from a conversation, but I’ve seen this behavior (use iMessage as a high quality default) in spades.
- xenospn 6y agoFor me - it's simply a question of reliability. SMS is not reliable in the US, and I live in an area with poor coverage. My preferred mode of communication is texting but SMS is a no-go.
- AnonC 6y agoIf it’s of any solace, SMS is not reliable anywhere in the world. It may seem reliable sometimes in some places, but that’s mostly a facade.
- xenospn 6y agoAnd iMessage works wherever I might be.
- kiwijamo 6y agoSMS is very reliable here in New Zealand, even more so than any IP-based systems. I've had SMS get through easily in one-signal-bar situations where IP data was nearly inoperable (especially if I happened to be attached to a 2G GPRS cell). Wonder if SMS reliability is really an issue peciular to certain networks. SMS reliability has been good for me both in NZ and all the foriegn networks I have used in my travels around the world. 4G is very good though in low signal situations so IP based protcols are improving in reliability... Just need networks to hurry up their 4G roll out and turn off their 2G/3G networks.
- paulcarroty 6y agoWith SMS you're forced to think about "where's that person live" and "can I send photos/videos and how many" to avoid crazy bills. imessage/whatsapp just does the job without stupid questions.
- fauigerzigerk 6y agoHow do you know that?
- elliekelly 6y agoThey absolutely should care. I’m not adding you to a group text if you have an android. Life is too short to read green text bubbles.
- battery_cowboy 6y agoYou're a moron, I don't even care about any temp ban for saying that, too. Anyone who thinks like you do is a moron.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y agoThe UI/UX cost of Android messages isn’t worth it for acquaintances, but unfortunately, acquaintanceship is a prerequisite to friendship.
- saagarjha 6y agoThere are other people on this site, too, besides you and 'elliekelly. Please don't do this even though you think a ban to punish you is appropriate. (As punishment, it sure doesn't help the people who had their discussion quality lowered…)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y agoWe've banned this account. You absolutely can't do this here, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- partyboat1586 6y agoWhy don't you use WhatsApp?
- elliekelly 6y ago
- servercobra 6y agoDefinitely people care about blue vs green bubbles. Have you ever tried to send videos back and forth between the two? It looks like it was shot on my old Nokia flip phone in either direction. Plus no "typing" bubble, texts seem to take longer to arrive, group chats are degraded if even one green bubble is included, etc. It sounds like Android has finally caught up with RCS, but iMessage was one of my favorite features when I switched years ago.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y agoI would buy an Android if it weren’t for the social force behind iMessage blue bubbles and the smoothness of FaceTime. Green bubbles signal low status. It also makes it more difficult to communicate: no read receipts, no live location, photo/video/audio messages are clunky, worse emojis, no reaction option, and so on.
- RC_ITR 6y ago99% of Americans don’t want to be funneled to WhatsApp or signal for group chat. They want it to live right next to their native texts. Your group is likely different from the mainstream.
- MagnumOpus 6y agoWhich is why 99% of Americans get a to live in a shitty Nash equilibrium of either being socially ostracised and excluded or being locked into an expensive monopoly of a single smart phone vendor.
- paulcarroty 6y agoGood luck to live as Google 1984-like bootnet. Sadly, Librem 5 future is unclear, so Apple is probably less evil here.
- partyboat1586 6y ago99% is hyperbole based on Android market share in the US.
- RC_ITR 6y agoBut that’s not what I’m saying. People buy android phones for all sorts of reasons (in the US, mainly price). But in the US, it’s nearly impossible to have a broad social circle that doesn’t want to ‘text’ so I’d guess at least 99% of US users regularly engage with default messaging apps. if given the choice, of bet nearly all of those users would prefer to centralize their ‘texts’ instead of multi-apping Look what happened to groupme as soon as iMessage group chat got good...
- partyboat1586 6y agoSo you are saying 99% of iPhone users would prefer to use iMessage. Yeah I don't doubt that, it's built in. Still you only need one or two close friends or family members with Android to install WhatsApp. Why don't people use WhatsApp? Do Android users just not have any friends? Or do they use SMS? which is a joke next to WhatsApp and iMessage.
- jtbayly 6y agoYou literally answered your own question. “... though MMS for group texting is ridiculously unreliable so I try to funnel people to Signal.” Group texting between iPhones just works. Add an Android user to the group and all of the sudden it doesn’t work. Ergo, don’t add them.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arkades 6y agoIME there's a loss of a number of features when communicating without someone with "blue bubbles", that you come to take for granted, and that cause a bit of friction when you realize the messages/functionality you took for granted in your exchange aren't there. If I find myself chatting with someone with green bubbles, I find I tend to transition the conversation over to whatsapp. It's not like a "relationship killer" or something, but I imagine it is a low-level contributor to my lock-in to the platform.
- scarface74 6y agoIt’s not about Blue/Green bubbles. Everything messes up once you have one person in a group that isn’t on iMessage - including reactions to messages. Instead of getting an icon on top of message you get “John Doe liked ‘We will be there soon’”.
- jedieaston 6y agoMMS and SMS are extremely unreliable, especially if you were out of the coverage area when a message was sent (half the time I only receive some of a conversation and have to try to interpret what happened). RCS is supposed to fix this, but no carrier seems intent on sunsetting SMS to force Apple’s hand. At least with iMessage, I’ll eventually get the message (they’ll hold it server side, encrypted, until I get back online). I still use SMS a lot, because it’s more important to me that I can talk and send pictures to people than worrying about them being on a certain platform or app (Discord’s notifications aren’t great on mobile if you haven’t opened the app for a while). But it’s super annoying, and if Apple made iMessage an open standard (they probably won’t, since people buy iPhones for it), I think many people on Android would move to it.
- harpratap 6y agoBecause tying your company to one product is an economic disaster. It's very clear that drop in iPhone sales causes a very direct impact on Apple and the reason why they started moving towards SaaS model. But their SaaS isn't big enough yet. If today China retaliates with ban on Apple, the company is pretty much dead because no other country is capable of manufacturing at the scale Apple needs it to.
- scarface74 6y agoAccording to their last earnings - 50% of their revenue was outside of the iPhone. You also have to remember even the Mac by itself brought in higher revenue than all but the top 100 companies in the US and it’s only 10% of Apple’s revenue. The watch is a bigger revenue generator than the iPod ever was.
- harpratap 6y agoThe Apple watch, Airpods and everything else except Macs are tightly coupled to the sale of iPhones. If you stop making iPhones, the rest is pretty much dead too.
- scarface74 6y agoAirPods are Bluetooth. The Beats division of Apple was already profitably selling headphones before Apple bought them. You act as if it would be a great technical hurdle to make the Watch work with Android. Apple is making the Watch a more standalone deceive with every release. There is also the iPad that gets you another 10%. If just 10% of Apple’s revenue from the Mac puts it in the top 100, what does 30% do? If Apple created the “Mac company” it would still be the most profitable computer company in the world. It makes more selling Macs than any other company makes selling phones besides maybe Samsung. But isn’t kind of silly talking about Apple being dependent on the iPhone when after two decades and billion of dollars, Google’s profit is still 90% from ads?
- harpratap 6y ago
- paulie_a 6y agoWhy would anyone want to buy an iPhone because of iMessage. It doesn't do anything special
- the_snooze 6y agoThe features aren’t special by themselves. It’s the features combined with the fact it’s the default SMS/chat client on a huge portion of the smartphones market. It’s a social product. You can’t discount its social appeal.
- kalleboo 6y agoNetwork effects. All your friends are using iMessage. This is mostly a US phenomenon because in other countries people had already adopted other messaging apps due to higher text messaging costs and for free international voice/video calls
- xenospn 6y agoThey could offer a proxy service that lets people interact with conversations in a secure way but still keep the bubble green.
- VMisTheWay 6y agoIf you have ever talked to an iPhone user, you will know performance, features, and quality are the last things on their mind. The phone must be pretty and have the Apple logo on it. They might repeat the marketing about privacy and security, but if the person actually cared about either, you'd never use Apple products.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago> They might repeat the marketing about privacy and security, but if the person actually cared about either, you'd never use Apple products. If I cared about security, you’re saying the phone that the FBI famously had trouble breaking into is a bad choice? If I cared about privacy, you’re saying I should prefer Android — an operating system made by the literal inventor of surveillance capitalism?
- VMisTheWay 6y agoThey did break into the phone. So Apple completely failed. Weird narrative here.
- Nextgrid 6y agoMaybe the marketing and “coolness” is what initially attracts them but once they try it they stay because of the user experience. I had a non-technical friend with an Android phone (full of malware btw). She didn’t care about Apple, never used any of their products nor need it for the “social status” or anything (her friends are all on WhatsApp so no issues with iMessage). I gave her an old iPhone 7 to try out, a couple weeks later she would never consider going back to Android ever.
- VMisTheWay 6y agoI had an iPhone for work and it basically solidified the fact that Apple products are low quality. I didn't see any benefits at all. Only annoyances. I don't actually believe your story the way you told it. Was her Android a 50 dollar piece of Chinese junk or Samsung? Only way I could believe it.
- cannaceo 6y agoI have an iPhone. I have a MacBook. I have AirPods. I have the watch. I use a PC for work and am considering moving away from the iPhone because I miss texting on my desktop. They could bind a windows iMessage install to your iPhone the same way Signal/whatsapp do.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoThey could bind a windows iMessage install to your iPhone the same way Signal/whatsapp do. Or make it part of an iCloud subscription.
- baxtr 6y agoI have noticed that many of my iPhone friends start using WhatsApp for group and personal chats as default. I don’t get why. I switch back to iMessage in those cases, which irritates people too. I think iMessage would be way more successful if it was available on other platforms.
- lioeters 6y ago> What will Apple gain from making it ubiquitous? Right, I'm trying to understand Apple's motivations, and this question applies not only to iMessage but their general approach regarding macOS, apps, app store, the proprietary/locked-down nature of their software and hardware. The opposite of ubiquity would be "exclusivity" - and that does explain a lot. The reasoning must be that there is value in making their apps exclusive to their own OS(es). The same way you can't (easily) run macOS on any old PC, or the way their hardware doesn't allow users to repair or extend it.
- monadic2 6y agoYou’re absolutely right, that is a large part of why I keep using iOS. It’s also a very common exciting part of switching from android based on my own social circle.
- sgt 6y agoiMessage is ABSOLUTELY brilliant if your family and friends are all on iPhones, which I'm pretty sure is fairly common in most Western countries. Regardless whether you agree with that, it is super practical for me and my family. It also means we don't have run other chat software like WhatsApp. The whole experience is just so seamless and well integrated across your devices. Everything from regular messages, voicenotes, sending cute animojis to your wife, or doing a FaceTime with my 102 year old grandmother. I do that on a daily basis. And I can easily continue a conversation from my computer, or even respond from my Apple Watch when exercising. I am still on WhatsApp though as there are millions of users worldwide, but I keep notifications off and check it only once a day.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago> brilliant if your family and friends are all on iPhones, which I'm pretty sure is fairly common in most Western countries iOS market share is 60% in the US which is the highest worldwide, and only above 50% in a handful of other countries (UK, Japan, Oz, Canada)[0]. If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American, there's a good chance they won't iMessage you but try to add you on WhatsApp. [0]https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share
- arkades 6y ago>If you have any friends who are not rich, or are European or South American One: 55-60% market share in the US, by definition, is not confined to "the rich." As to the other categories: my personal answer to "If you have any friends that aren't American" is "that's what whatsapp is for." I imagine for a lot of people the answer is that, or "I don't, actually." Like, all the teenagers in my family. Their list of non-US friends is near-zero. Their non-US family are all on whatsapp. They don't experience a gap.
- fauigerzigerk 6y agoIn my social circle everyone uses something completely different, not just for messaging. I need all of Threema, Signal, Skype, iMessage and email just for my closest friends and family. I also need Google Photos, Google Drive and OneDrive to share data with them. Apple is the most anti-social platform of them all. I can't even use it to share photos with my wife. I have never used FaceTime with anyone, because no one uses it, not even those who do have iPhones, because they all have to use something else to communicate with others.
- amaccuish 6y agoYepp. We went through the exact same debate with BBM 10 years ago.
- mmcnl 6y agoDoes it? iMessage is really US thing. The consequence of this strategy is that no one uses it outside the US. Whatsapp is a lot bigger and the leader in this market. Zero chance that will change because of this strategy.