7 ms·

But not many people use iMessages in EU to begin with. Its more of an American thing because of history of texting and the iMessage color phenomenon.

ghaff 4y ago
Some of it is probably history in US. Texting used to be very expensive. Admittedly, I couldn't even tell you what I pay--if anything--in non-iMessage texts these days on a bog-standard AT&T plan but it's not something enough to take note of and I don't take the color into any account when texting.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I feel like texting was unlimited by the time iMessage became prominent. At least I do not recall text costs being a concern for domestic texts anytime in the 2010s. I do remember international texting costs driving adoption of WhatsApp though. It was a killer app that everyone knew how to instantly use, not have spam, and the contacts/pics/video/group sharing just worked across all phone OSs. Edit: In fact, the exact opposite is what I think happened. Texting was unlimited in the US, or effectively unlimited because it was so cheap, that people in the US did not bother to look into a non default SMS/MMS apps to message others, since Americans are mostly contacting other Americans. All the people I knew who had international contacts jumped on WhatsApp, but a huge portion of Americans never contact anyone outside America, so they never cared about international messaging costs, and never bothered with WhatsApp/Viber/Tango/Skype/whatever other chat app was out there to bypass text costs. This gave Apple an advantage because they can implement their own iMessage in the default SMS/MMS app, and ramp people up onto iMessage without people even choosing it.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah, I'll use WhatsApp or something like Facebook Messenger for the maybe handful of international folks I sometimes text with. But I don't care if Americans are texting green or blue--and that's 99% of the people I text with. I communicate with Europeans in particular all the time. But those are via Gmail/Gchat or Twitter mostly.
  - dahart 4y ago
    > I feel like texting was unlimited by the time iMessage became prominent. […] In fact, the exact opposite is what I think happened. Texting was unlimited in the US No I don’t think this is accurate. I remember US cell providers charging for text message when iMessage was released. iMessage mattered to me initially, and I did use iMessage WiFi texting to avoid SMS charges and overages. Here’s an article from 2013 (two years after iMessage started) talking about telcos deciding to stop charging. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2486212/at-t--t-mobile--sprint-to-stop-charging-for-most-premium-text-messages.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2486212/at-t--t-mobile... Don’t forget that at the time there was a big distinction between SMS and MMS (anything longer than 160 chars, anything with images, movies or audio, etc. I have no doubt that WhatsApp, in addition to iMessage, contributed to the telcos realizing that charging for messaging was no longer a good idea. But messaging was not effectively unlimited before iMessage came around.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      You may recall correctly, but that article is about Premium SMS, something I did not even know about. But it does not say anything about SMS/MMS. This link from Jul 2012 says ATT/Verizon were offering unlimited talk and text at that time: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/att-shared-data-plan/ https://www.wired.com/2012/07/att-shared-data-plan/ This link from Dec 2015 claims 90% of people had unlimited plans and they started being offered a few years ago: >But in the last few years, “Unlimited Talk and Text” has become an increasingly common phrase. https://instantcensus.com/blog/almost-90-of-americans-have-unlimited-texting https://instantcensus.com/blog/almost-90-of-americans-have-u...
      - dahart 4y ago
        2015 is long after iMessage started, and “unlimited plans” were something that you had to pay a premium price for, they cost extra money. When iMessage first came out, unlimited texting was not available on the standard/budget plans, and today it is. I mean, WiFi texting was a selling point of iMessage for a reason. They made a big deal out of being able to send messages for free. From my perspective in the US, I wasn’t even aware of WhatsApp at the time, and so it felt like iMessage was the primary force causing telcos to back off. (That and the fact that charging for SMS was stupid because the cheaper alternatives used more bandwidth.) WhatsApp might have in reality been a larger force, but I’m skeptical because WhatsApp was an app you had to go get, while iMessage was the built-in default way to send text messages. IPhone user base in 2011 was more than 2x larger than WhatsApp user base at the same time.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  Texting was free-ish (unlike in Europe, which is why WhatsApp & Co were so successful there but not in the US), but I think Multimedia messaging or some other extra features either cost money or didn't work outside of iMessage.
goldcd 4y ago
It's very much a US-centric thing. Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never going back. I think maybe the worst decision Apple made was not trying to push out their service (with maybe a few limitations to upsell the hardware) - although I guess blackberry tried to do that and it didn't work out.
- MAGZine 4y ago
  blackberry's effort wasn't honest. They only opened it up after their platform had been bleeding users for a while. If they were first to market with an app for android and ios I feel like things might have gone very differently.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never going back. I mean, I wouldn't install any FB software on my phone. I'm not sure "we just use WhatsApp" is the flex you think it is. But the "US teenagers bullied" is one of those BS stories that is blown out of proportion because in a country roughly the size of the EU, you can find a lot of idiots. And US news loves stories about how your children are in some kind of peril - often peer related.
  - nr2x 4y ago
    Good points all, but the issues are real wrt interoperability. I switched from iPhone to pixel and it was a huge pain in the ass for my friends and family, 90% of whom are iPhone.
    - morepork 4y ago
      The silly thing is it would be easy to fix this from Apple's side. They know if a phone has connected to the messaging backend in X days, they could easily fall back to SMS if the recipient hasn't connected in say a week, and then keep using SMS until a phone for that user reconnects. They choose not to deliberately to tie people into iPhones.

ghaff 4y ago

Some of it is probably history in US. Texting used to be very expensive. Admittedly, I couldn't even tell you what I pay--if anything--in non-iMessage texts these days on a bog-standard AT&T plan but it's not something enough to take note of and I don't take the color into any account when texting.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I feel like texting was unlimited by the time iMessage became prominent. At least I do not recall text costs being a concern for domestic texts anytime in the 2010s. I do remember international texting costs driving adoption of WhatsApp though. It was a killer app that everyone knew how to instantly use, not have spam, and the contacts/pics/video/group sharing just worked across all phone OSs. Edit: In fact, the exact opposite is what I think happened. Texting was unlimited in the US, or effectively unlimited because it was so cheap, that people in the US did not bother to look into a non default SMS/MMS apps to message others, since Americans are mostly contacting other Americans. All the people I knew who had international contacts jumped on WhatsApp, but a huge portion of Americans never contact anyone outside America, so they never cared about international messaging costs, and never bothered with WhatsApp/Viber/Tango/Skype/whatever other chat app was out there to bypass text costs. This gave Apple an advantage because they can implement their own iMessage in the default SMS/MMS app, and ramp people up onto iMessage without people even choosing it.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah, I'll use WhatsApp or something like Facebook Messenger for the maybe handful of international folks I sometimes text with. But I don't care if Americans are texting green or blue--and that's 99% of the people I text with. I communicate with Europeans in particular all the time. But those are via Gmail/Gchat or Twitter mostly.
- dahart 4y ago
  > I feel like texting was unlimited by the time iMessage became prominent. […] In fact, the exact opposite is what I think happened. Texting was unlimited in the US No I don’t think this is accurate. I remember US cell providers charging for text message when iMessage was released. iMessage mattered to me initially, and I did use iMessage WiFi texting to avoid SMS charges and overages. Here’s an article from 2013 (two years after iMessage started) talking about telcos deciding to stop charging. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2486212/at-t--t-mobile--sprint-to-stop-charging-for-most-premium-text-messages.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2486212/at-t--t-mobile... Don’t forget that at the time there was a big distinction between SMS and MMS (anything longer than 160 chars, anything with images, movies or audio, etc. I have no doubt that WhatsApp, in addition to iMessage, contributed to the telcos realizing that charging for messaging was no longer a good idea. But messaging was not effectively unlimited before iMessage came around.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    You may recall correctly, but that article is about Premium SMS, something I did not even know about. But it does not say anything about SMS/MMS. This link from Jul 2012 says ATT/Verizon were offering unlimited talk and text at that time: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/att-shared-data-plan/ https://www.wired.com/2012/07/att-shared-data-plan/ This link from Dec 2015 claims 90% of people had unlimited plans and they started being offered a few years ago: >But in the last few years, “Unlimited Talk and Text” has become an increasingly common phrase. https://instantcensus.com/blog/almost-90-of-americans-have-unlimited-texting https://instantcensus.com/blog/almost-90-of-americans-have-u...
    - dahart 4y ago
      2015 is long after iMessage started, and “unlimited plans” were something that you had to pay a premium price for, they cost extra money. When iMessage first came out, unlimited texting was not available on the standard/budget plans, and today it is. I mean, WiFi texting was a selling point of iMessage for a reason. They made a big deal out of being able to send messages for free. From my perspective in the US, I wasn’t even aware of WhatsApp at the time, and so it felt like iMessage was the primary force causing telcos to back off. (That and the fact that charging for SMS was stupid because the cheaper alternatives used more bandwidth.) WhatsApp might have in reality been a larger force, but I’m skeptical because WhatsApp was an app you had to go get, while iMessage was the built-in default way to send text messages. IPhone user base in 2011 was more than 2x larger than WhatsApp user base at the same time.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Texting was free-ish (unlike in Europe, which is why WhatsApp & Co were so successful there but not in the US), but I think Multimedia messaging or some other extra features either cost money or didn't work outside of iMessage.

goldcd 4y ago

It's very much a US-centric thing. Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never going back. I think maybe the worst decision Apple made was not trying to push out their service (with maybe a few limitations to upsell the hardware) - although I guess blackberry tried to do that and it didn't work out.

MAGZine 4y ago
blackberry's effort wasn't honest. They only opened it up after their platform had been bleeding users for a while. If they were first to market with an app for android and ios I feel like things might have gone very differently.
HWR_14 4y ago
> Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never going back. I mean, I wouldn't install any FB software on my phone. I'm not sure "we just use WhatsApp" is the flex you think it is. But the "US teenagers bullied" is one of those BS stories that is blown out of proportion because in a country roughly the size of the EU, you can find a lot of idiots. And US news loves stories about how your children are in some kind of peril - often peer related.
- nr2x 4y ago
  Good points all, but the issues are real wrt interoperability. I switched from iPhone to pixel and it was a huge pain in the ass for my friends and family, 90% of whom are iPhone.
  - morepork 4y ago
    The silly thing is it would be easy to fix this from Apple's side. They know if a phone has connected to the messaging backend in X days, they could easily fall back to SMS if the recipient hasn't connected in say a week, and then keep using SMS until a phone for that user reconnects. They choose not to deliberately to tie people into iPhones.