The article tries to portray blue vs. green as Apple’s plan to create an in-group vs. out-group dynamic that leaves non-Apple users feeling left out. This narra

The article tries to portray blue vs. green as Apple’s plan to create an in-group vs. out-group dynamic that leaves non-Apple users feeling left out. This narrative feels incomplete for a few reasons. First, the article itself describes how the original engineers defined different colored bubbles so they themselves could differentiate between iMessage and SMS/MMS during development. This color indication stuck around in production, let customers differentiate just like the engineers did, and eventually grew into an instinctual association between color and messaging protocol. It doesn’t sound like there was intentional UX design to create a positive association with blue bubbles. Second, I would argue that positive association with blue bubbles arises from positive experience with iMessage features, not from some in-group vs. out-group dynamic. Using iMessage means having delivery confirmations, typing indicators, read receipts (if desired), and encryption. The first — having reliable delivery and knowing it — was a killer feature when iMessage was first released. But all of the original features, along with newer ones like tapbacks, are enhancements and not requirements that leave out non-Apple users. Seeing a friend join iMessage feels about the same as seeing a friend join another messaging service. It’s not so much ”wow I can finally message you and you are so cool now” but more ”wow I could always message you before but we can now use these cool features together”. Third, based on the internal emails cited by the article, Apple’s decision to keep iMessage for Apple users was an ongoing discussion years after iMessage was released. In particular, two years after release, Eddie Cue was actually arguing for making iMessage available to Android users. From his standpoint, it was an opportunity to make iMessage the “industry standard” which might or might not be monetized in the future but “it doesn’t cost us a lot to run”. Finally, as mentioned by sibling comments, iMessage is widely used in only a few geographic locales. It’s just one of many Apple apps (Keynote, Numbers, Pages, Notes, Preview, Reminders, Podcasts, Safari) and services (Apple Music, Apple TV, iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, Private Relay) that can add value for users who buy Apple devices. Some of those apps and services will provide more value than others and iMessage is probably not the top one for most people. One part of the article that did grab my attention was the graph of iPhone market share among Americans age 18 to 24. The climb from 45% in 2017 to 75% in 2021 is striking and impressive. That’s certainly not attributable to iMessage alone and I would enjoy a deeper dive on all the potential causes. (Disclaimer: Current iPhone user, former Android and Blackberry user, and potential Librem or PinePhone user in the future. I use iMessage but it wasn’t a factor I considered when switching to iPhone.)