14 ms·

I quite literally don't need to care about the blue bubble nonsense. It's a great flag for a person I can happily ignore.

orangepanda 5y ago
For 1:1 messages it doesnt matter, but breaks group chats when a green bubble is added
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kop316 5y ago
  uhh...no it doesn't? I have a lot of group chats as the only Android (soon to be Pinephone) user. Group Chats work fine.
  - prepend 5y ago
    And you likely miss a ton of group chats where there are no android (or Pinephone) users because you’ve been excluded because group chats don’t work fine.
    - kop316 5y ago
      ....what? I am honestly having trouble parsing your meaning. My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.
      - ncw96 5y ago
        There are some features for group messaging on iMessage that aren’t available in Group MMS. If you add a non-iMessage user to your group, the group downgrades to using Group MMS, which does still work for basic messaging, but the group loses all of its iMessage-exclusive features.
      - rblatz 5y ago
        I bet they also have side groups without you in it for when they want to share videos/photos or not deal with MMS jank. Nothing personal, we had to do the same thing to my brother and his fiance. Group MMS is busted it has inconsistent delivery, videos and images are compressed to the point of being basically worthless. Sometimes I'll get 3 of 4 people's messages leaving me with a partial conversation, then hours later I'll get the 4th person's messages. Sometimes they never come through. Sometimes I just don't get images, sometimes my wife and I will get different parts of the conversation and can piece it together. And the thing that causes all that friction is including an Android user in the group text. It's entirely not your fault, but also it's very natural for people to want to exclude Android users when the majority of the group uses iPhone.
        kop316 5y ago
        I'm really not sure how to respond to this, because you are assuming a lot of unheatlhy family dynamics there. I will say would hope if you value you relationship with your brother and his fiance, that you actually told him you do that and offered a comprimise on how to chat.
        prepend 5y ago
        I’d like you to query your family and find out. Of course this is not a reasonable request and I’ll likely never know. This isn’t to mean you have poor relationships. It’s just extremely likely as it happens in every other group. I have friends and family who I don’t include in group chats because we’re using iOS features. It’s nothing significant so I don’t tell them about it. I also have group chats with them. An example is there’s a family group chat about a planned vacation, everyone is on it. It’s pretty important. I have numerous other group chats with hiking photos and kid photos that don’t include them because they can’t do moment shares and all the stuff that my family members send out from their iPhone. I don’t think this means we have a bad relationship. I also don’t text my elderly family members who don’t have mobiles, I call them. It’s just a function of using convenient tools and what’s available. Similarly I have friends and business groups that only communicate through discord or whatsapp or viber, etc. I would never feel bad because a subset of my friends started a chat on Facebook and didn’t include me. I don’t use that app. But I also don’t believe that I’m in all group chats with all people I think are important.
      - ArchOversight 5y ago
        I have many iMessage groups, but it is an almost unspoken rule that you do NOT add a green bubble user to the group. It downgrades to standard MMS which doesn't have all of the features, AND delivery is hit or miss. With iMessage I can be fairly sure that all messages will arrive, with MMS groups... it's a shit show. There's been plenty of times where someone whose a green bubble will receive only part of the group messages, or none of them whereas the rest of us do. It all depends on the carrier.
      - ubercore 5y ago
        I've been silently dropped from group chats with iphone users. Never knew I was missing until they asked me in person.
oneplane 5y ago
I suppose you are one of the special few in that case. In other social groups people tend to gravitate towards a common messaging infrastructure, only sharing the absolute essentials when reminded of those that are not part of that shared system. This means that while you might be part of the group while physically present, you are not a part of the group outside of that. For billions of people around the world that is a problem (not the tech, but the isolation), and as such, that is where a good deal of focus goes towards. This isn't about selecting your friends or social groups based on tech, but about groups of people dynamically interacting. Replace the applied construct with something else and it still applies. (you don't like smoke signals because big smoke is evil to you, so you use carrier hawks, but al your friends still use smoke signals and can't be bothered to learn how to maintain a hawk)
- musingsole 5y ago
  Eh, if you aren't able to stay connected to a group despite not using that group's chosen technology, you're not that critical to the group. I'm not advocating to hold your participation hostage, but someone organizing a group to use exclusionary practices despite knowing specific members can't or won't participate is a classic bullying tactic. Family members employ it often.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    Eh, a social group isn't a business gathering nor is it a calculated construct. We're talking about people following their natural attraction. People don't consciously 'organise' a group with some 'group manager' and a nice hierarchy, technology choice panels, and acquisition procedures. There isn't some grand evil plan where the 'group CEO' selects the technology that everyone now has to use. This is just users using an end-user service on their end-user device that doesn't cause them friction and makes them happy. People don't think "I want to send an instant message to my group-colleagues on their mobile OS on their mobile hardware over their WWAN link to setup a meeting in our shared calendar for a ninety minute gathering for a consumption of nutrients". They generally think: "I could go for a bite, I'll let my friends know so we could go together". Everything that makes that harder just gets thrown out.
afavour 5y ago
I have a family, small children, relatives. Grandparents loves to see videos of their grandchildren. Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage. iMessage works every time. I'm not dismissing your experience but the green vs blue bubbles do make a big difference for many of us.
- jonp888 5y ago
  There are many popular messaging applications(Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp) that are cross platform and handle multimedia content well. This is what is used outside of the US.
  - afavour 5y ago
    I'm very aware of that. Convincing an entire extended family to switch app is not simple. Making sure they are all set up with an alternative messaging app is not simple. Getting them to remember to use it with your specific chat while they use the default app for other conversations is not simple. Using an iPhone is simple.
  - rrrazdan 5y ago
    They don't. Whatsapp degrades image/video quality massively. Just a choice they made given that a lot of their customers are bandwidth constrained. If I have to send a photo that I took with my high quality phone camera, I prefer to use iMessage.
  - vegardx 5y ago
    There are, but... Incoming rant: The one big thing about iMessage is that it never really changes. And it cannot be hijacked by some other application like on Android. For better or worse, and for basic services like text messages I'm erring on the side of better. I have no idea how many times I had to go fix messaging issues when my grandparents were using Android. Facebook tried to take over all messaging. Then it was Google, with whatever iteration of failed messaging application they were pushing out. Or when they had phones that actually received updates it would suddenly drastically change the user interface. We're having weekly video calls on FaceTime, and the superior sound quality of a FaceTime Audio has made it possible to even have a phone call with my hard of hearing grandpa. They don't even know they're using it. I send them high resolution pictures and videos of my hikes, that they can enjoy on their iPhone or iPad, whenever they want. Pictures and videos stay there without them having to do a ton of complicated tasks in a forever changing user interface, like Snap and the likes. The Apple Watches lets them know when someone is calling, and it gives us peace of mind knowing that they always have it with them. Everything uses a format they're used to from long before smart phones was a thing: Phone numbers. My grandmother is writing her life story on her now 7 years old MacBook Air. All their devices are backed up to my iCloud-family subscription. We've started using AirPods with Live Listen to include my grandpa in our conversation when I'm visiting them. If you haven't tried this, you should. It's mind boggling good. The amount of time spent fixing things for them have gone from an almost weekly thing to non-existing. Being seniors they also have a lot of time on their hands, and Apple-partnered stores, at least around here, provide excellent support for anyone that owns an Apple device, regardless of where it was bought. All their devices are updated almost effortlessly: They get a notification about a pending update that tells them exactly when the device will be updated and what they need to do. The one big wish I have would be to postpone major updates for a couple of months. The recent trend of Apple radically changing the user experience is not a welcoming trend. There's a lot of things I've really started to hate with Apple. And to be honest, at this point the things I just listed are more or less the only things holding me back. But the things mentioned in this post is such a huge quality of life improvements for all of us, almost like a cliché of Apple advertising. It's almost embarrassing.
vmception 5y ago
"Does the person appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations, or houses of worship?" https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficking https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficki...
- musingsole 5y ago
  The weirdest thing is how gleeful you are in supporting socially exclusionary practices.
patja 5y ago
I feel exactly the same. But it was a bit infuriating to realize how huge an impact it was having on my kids who were being socially excluded for the sin of Android. Many children have ipads and hand me down iphones with no SIM just for iMessage, which they all just refer to as texting.

orangepanda 5y ago

For 1:1 messages it doesnt matter, but breaks group chats when a green bubble is added

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kop316 5y ago
uhh...no it doesn't? I have a lot of group chats as the only Android (soon to be Pinephone) user. Group Chats work fine.
- prepend 5y ago
  And you likely miss a ton of group chats where there are no android (or Pinephone) users because you’ve been excluded because group chats don’t work fine.
  - kop316 5y ago
    ....what? I am honestly having trouble parsing your meaning. My family mostly has iPhones, and we have several group chats with me in it on Group MMS. They work fine.
    - ncw96 5y ago
      There are some features for group messaging on iMessage that aren’t available in Group MMS. If you add a non-iMessage user to your group, the group downgrades to using Group MMS, which does still work for basic messaging, but the group loses all of its iMessage-exclusive features.
    - rblatz 5y ago
      I bet they also have side groups without you in it for when they want to share videos/photos or not deal with MMS jank. Nothing personal, we had to do the same thing to my brother and his fiance. Group MMS is busted it has inconsistent delivery, videos and images are compressed to the point of being basically worthless. Sometimes I'll get 3 of 4 people's messages leaving me with a partial conversation, then hours later I'll get the 4th person's messages. Sometimes they never come through. Sometimes I just don't get images, sometimes my wife and I will get different parts of the conversation and can piece it together. And the thing that causes all that friction is including an Android user in the group text. It's entirely not your fault, but also it's very natural for people to want to exclude Android users when the majority of the group uses iPhone.
      - kop316 5y ago
        I'm really not sure how to respond to this, because you are assuming a lot of unheatlhy family dynamics there. I will say would hope if you value you relationship with your brother and his fiance, that you actually told him you do that and offered a comprimise on how to chat.
        prepend 5y ago
        I’d like you to query your family and find out. Of course this is not a reasonable request and I’ll likely never know. This isn’t to mean you have poor relationships. It’s just extremely likely as it happens in every other group. I have friends and family who I don’t include in group chats because we’re using iOS features. It’s nothing significant so I don’t tell them about it. I also have group chats with them. An example is there’s a family group chat about a planned vacation, everyone is on it. It’s pretty important. I have numerous other group chats with hiking photos and kid photos that don’t include them because they can’t do moment shares and all the stuff that my family members send out from their iPhone. I don’t think this means we have a bad relationship. I also don’t text my elderly family members who don’t have mobiles, I call them. It’s just a function of using convenient tools and what’s available. Similarly I have friends and business groups that only communicate through discord or whatsapp or viber, etc. I would never feel bad because a subset of my friends started a chat on Facebook and didn’t include me. I don’t use that app. But I also don’t believe that I’m in all group chats with all people I think are important.
    - ArchOversight 5y ago
      I have many iMessage groups, but it is an almost unspoken rule that you do NOT add a green bubble user to the group. It downgrades to standard MMS which doesn't have all of the features, AND delivery is hit or miss. With iMessage I can be fairly sure that all messages will arrive, with MMS groups... it's a shit show. There's been plenty of times where someone whose a green bubble will receive only part of the group messages, or none of them whereas the rest of us do. It all depends on the carrier.
    - ubercore 5y ago
      I've been silently dropped from group chats with iphone users. Never knew I was missing until they asked me in person.

oneplane 5y ago

I suppose you are one of the special few in that case. In other social groups people tend to gravitate towards a common messaging infrastructure, only sharing the absolute essentials when reminded of those that are not part of that shared system. This means that while you might be part of the group while physically present, you are not a part of the group outside of that. For billions of people around the world that is a problem (not the tech, but the isolation), and as such, that is where a good deal of focus goes towards. This isn't about selecting your friends or social groups based on tech, but about groups of people dynamically interacting. Replace the applied construct with something else and it still applies. (you don't like smoke signals because big smoke is evil to you, so you use carrier hawks, but al your friends still use smoke signals and can't be bothered to learn how to maintain a hawk)

musingsole 5y ago
Eh, if you aren't able to stay connected to a group despite not using that group's chosen technology, you're not that critical to the group. I'm not advocating to hold your participation hostage, but someone organizing a group to use exclusionary practices despite knowing specific members can't or won't participate is a classic bullying tactic. Family members employ it often.
- oneplane 5y ago
  Eh, a social group isn't a business gathering nor is it a calculated construct. We're talking about people following their natural attraction. People don't consciously 'organise' a group with some 'group manager' and a nice hierarchy, technology choice panels, and acquisition procedures. There isn't some grand evil plan where the 'group CEO' selects the technology that everyone now has to use. This is just users using an end-user service on their end-user device that doesn't cause them friction and makes them happy. People don't think "I want to send an instant message to my group-colleagues on their mobile OS on their mobile hardware over their WWAN link to setup a meeting in our shared calendar for a ninety minute gathering for a consumption of nutrients". They generally think: "I could go for a bite, I'll let my friends know so we could go together". Everything that makes that harder just gets thrown out.

afavour 5y ago

I have a family, small children, relatives. Grandparents loves to see videos of their grandchildren. Sharing a video via group MMS is fraught with problems, it often doesn't work, or the resolution is garbage. iMessage works every time. I'm not dismissing your experience but the green vs blue bubbles do make a big difference for many of us.

jonp888 5y ago
There are many popular messaging applications(Signal/Telegram/WhatsApp) that are cross platform and handle multimedia content well. This is what is used outside of the US.
- afavour 5y ago
  I'm very aware of that. Convincing an entire extended family to switch app is not simple. Making sure they are all set up with an alternative messaging app is not simple. Getting them to remember to use it with your specific chat while they use the default app for other conversations is not simple. Using an iPhone is simple.
- rrrazdan 5y ago
  They don't. Whatsapp degrades image/video quality massively. Just a choice they made given that a lot of their customers are bandwidth constrained. If I have to send a photo that I took with my high quality phone camera, I prefer to use iMessage.
- vegardx 5y ago
  There are, but... Incoming rant: The one big thing about iMessage is that it never really changes. And it cannot be hijacked by some other application like on Android. For better or worse, and for basic services like text messages I'm erring on the side of better. I have no idea how many times I had to go fix messaging issues when my grandparents were using Android. Facebook tried to take over all messaging. Then it was Google, with whatever iteration of failed messaging application they were pushing out. Or when they had phones that actually received updates it would suddenly drastically change the user interface. We're having weekly video calls on FaceTime, and the superior sound quality of a FaceTime Audio has made it possible to even have a phone call with my hard of hearing grandpa. They don't even know they're using it. I send them high resolution pictures and videos of my hikes, that they can enjoy on their iPhone or iPad, whenever they want. Pictures and videos stay there without them having to do a ton of complicated tasks in a forever changing user interface, like Snap and the likes. The Apple Watches lets them know when someone is calling, and it gives us peace of mind knowing that they always have it with them. Everything uses a format they're used to from long before smart phones was a thing: Phone numbers. My grandmother is writing her life story on her now 7 years old MacBook Air. All their devices are backed up to my iCloud-family subscription. We've started using AirPods with Live Listen to include my grandpa in our conversation when I'm visiting them. If you haven't tried this, you should. It's mind boggling good. The amount of time spent fixing things for them have gone from an almost weekly thing to non-existing. Being seniors they also have a lot of time on their hands, and Apple-partnered stores, at least around here, provide excellent support for anyone that owns an Apple device, regardless of where it was bought. All their devices are updated almost effortlessly: They get a notification about a pending update that tells them exactly when the device will be updated and what they need to do. The one big wish I have would be to postpone major updates for a couple of months. The recent trend of Apple radically changing the user experience is not a welcoming trend. There's a lot of things I've really started to hate with Apple. And to be honest, at this point the things I just listed are more or less the only things holding me back. But the things mentioned in this post is such a huge quality of life improvements for all of us, almost like a cliché of Apple advertising. It's almost embarrassing.

vmception 5y ago

"Does the person appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations, or houses of worship?" https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficking https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficki...

musingsole 5y ago
The weirdest thing is how gleeful you are in supporting socially exclusionary practices.

patja 5y ago

I feel exactly the same. But it was a bit infuriating to realize how huge an impact it was having on my kids who were being socially excluded for the sin of Android. Many children have ipads and hand me down iphones with no SIM just for iMessage, which they all just refer to as texting.