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> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creativ

> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just that they use RCS instead of SMS/MMS to talk to Android users. Not an unreasonable ask given RCS is likely to be a widely adopted standard and an non-trivial improvement over SMS. Edit: Color aside, the read receipts, MMS quality, Wifi send etc all seem worth fixing with RCS.

wincy 4y ago
What? I don't even notice the difference in color except that I know not to use the tapback stuff when I'm texting an Android user. Does the green on white actually bother anyone? This seems like grasping at straws to me.
- dymk 4y ago
  I've never heard this issue ever raised by anyone in real life. I've only seen it brought up in internet tiffs about how Apple is using green message bubbles to "shame" non-Apple users. Which is similarly straw-graspy.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    Given how cruel and capricious children tend to be, it would not surprise me in the least that iPhone-using US teenagers ostracize peers with Android devices because of the green bubbles.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      While it doesn't surprise me, if it wasn't one thing it would probably be another. Conversely if you're a parent with a distraught teenager being teased about this, I imagine that's cold comfort.
    - hnburnsy 4y ago
      they are... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
    - dymk 4y ago
      During my highschool years, kids were bullied both for having and for not having both iPhones and Android phones.
  - hnburnsy 4y ago
    yes it is a thing, from January 2022... Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
    - tomjakubowski 4y ago
      That has nothing to do with the readability of the color scheme of your (outgoing!) texts though.
      - Phrodo_00 4y ago
        Yeah, they're separate effects, but both triggered (because I wouldn't say teenagers being cruel is _caused_ by Apple) by the way Apple treats SMSs
- radiojasper 4y ago
  https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=3cd882&fgcolor=ffffff https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=3cd882&fgcolor=... The colours do not pass the A11Y standards, which means people with poor eyesight can't read the messages properly. This did made me curious to see if the blue background passes - and it doesn't either. https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=047aff&fgcolor=ffffff https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=047aff&fgcolor=... At least the blue background passes WCAG AA with larger sized text, while the green doesn't pass at all.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Wrong color, iMessage uses #64C567 for the green background, which has a higher contrast than the pair you supplied (1.85 versus 2.15)
    - radiojasper 4y ago
      Still doesn't pass? Also thanks for pointing out the error!
    - mikewhy 4y ago
      I'm confused by all the mention of "what colour apple uses" in messages, message bubbles are a mask over a gradient
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - kelnos 4y ago
    The funny thing is that simply changing the text color to black causes the green-on-black to pass all those metrics, with the blue-on-black passing everything but WCAG AAA with the normal font (but still passes on the larger font). (Same result using #64C567 for the green bubbles, which a sibling pointed out is the correct value.)
  - applecrazy 4y ago
    There is an "Increase Contrast" option in Settings for visually-impaired users.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I would not discount visibility issues for anyone with a visual impairment. But at the same time there are a lot of issues listed on the page, with the color contrast only being one of them. You may consider the other usability issues more significant, but either way as a whole it seems to be a problem.
- r00fus 4y ago
  Tapback works, too - it just appears to the non-iMessage receiver as an another SMS message with the text equivalent of the tapback emoticon.
nemothekid 4y ago
iMessage was released on iOS 5 with the release of the iPhone 4S. Before then, all messages had a green background. Somehow sticking with the default of more than 10+ years is intentional maleficence by Apple?
- blinkingled 4y ago
  No but not updating the default for 10 years in a way that mostly affects only Android users seems like borderline malfeasance to me.
  - dymk 4y ago
    It's not a "default", it's an indicator of how the message was sent.
    - blinkingled 4y ago
      So every sent message looks white on bright green or just the ones sent over SMS/MMS (I.e. to Android users)?
      - dymk 4y ago
        Messages sent via SMS/MMS are green, messages sent via iMessage are blue. If you send a message via SMS/MMS to an iPhone user, it's green. There is no detection if the user on the other end is an Android user.
        tantalor 4y ago
        So it's a default.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        rootusrootus 4y ago
nomel 4y ago
The green used on the website is significantly brighter than on an iPhone. In fact, on the iPhone, I would say the green gives better contrast than the white text on a blue background. For direct messages, the colored bubbles are only used on messages you send. Messages received are always white text on black background (dark mode) or black text on grey background (light mode). edit: my bad. "increase contrast" option is on, set years ago.
- Phrodo_00 4y ago
  The green (and also the blue, but less so) used by iMessage doesn't even meet the minimum contrast set by apple accesibility guidelines [1] [1] https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343 https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce...
- guelo 4y ago
  It's objectively much worse contrast. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CB781_1017ST_2_20181017204033.jpg https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CB781_1017ST_2_... My contrast tool says the blue contrast is 3.4:1 while the green is 1.9:1
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dfabulich 4y ago
  I just took screenshots of an Android green text bubble and the https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ site, and used Photoshop's eyedropper tool to compare colors. They're the exact same shade of green, #48dd8f. But it's not just you! The green on Google's site looks visually brighter because the entire bubble is on a blue background. On iPhone, the green is normally on a white background. Now, try setting your iPhone to Dark Mode in Settings, and you'll find that the green bubbles are still #48dd8f green and the text is still #ffffff pure white; it's harder to read on a black background, IMO.
  - 4y ago
kingTug 4y ago
The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage always struck me as very intentional.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Before iMessage was released all text messages sent from iPhones were SMS/MMS. They were all green. If an iPhone recipient is unavailable via iMessage a text will fall back to SMS. So green bubbles are intentional, they indicate a text was sent via SMS.
  - rajbot 4y ago
    > The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage This quoted bit is actually incorrect. All messages from android and from iMessage are in identical gray text bubbles. The blue/green bubbles are for your own sent messages only
etchalon 4y ago
The Green is historical, not a specific decision by Apple to hinder reading texts. Before iOS 5, and the release of iMessage, all messages on iOS were green. That Google is painting this as something else speaks to how disingenuous this whole conversation has gotten, in all corners.
- zoover2020 4y ago
  But it turns automatically green when you text a non iPhone device. You have no idea how much of a hot topic this is I modern bullying
  - etchalon 4y ago
    It turns green when the message is sent over SMS, not when you text a "non-Apple device". You can send SMS messages to Apple devices, from an Apple device, if you're not signed into iMessage, or they're not, or if your data connectivity is limited, or theirs is.
    - olyjohn 4y ago
      This! I got sick of iMessage, and I disabled it completely on my iPhone. Everything was SMS, and it made moving my sim card between devices easier. I found that if you don't explicitly turn off iMessage before you ditch your iPhone, no other iMessage users will be able to message you. All my messages were green all the time.
  - pharmakom 4y ago
    If apple made them all the same color I think bullying would change by around 0%
  - riversflow 4y ago
    This is ridiculous. As someone who suffered greatly from bullying throughout their education, the only way to deal with bullying is punishing bullies. Bullies will always find something to bully others for, thats why they are bullies and not just expressing a preference. I’m fairly convinced the bullying problem is a result of a society who treat kids as their parent’s property instead of communal property. Parents enable bullying.
Angostura 4y ago
This is the most trivial complaint I've ever read. I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles - it just means that it hasn't been sent via iMessage - if I send to an iPhone and sending falls back to SMS it looks just the same. I can't believe people get that upset about green v blue.
- dcormier 4y ago
  That’s very ableist of you. About 1 in 12 males are colorblind. I’m in this group. I find white text on a bright green background very difficult to read.
  - joes_hk 4y ago
    So making the bubble blue instead of green without changing the protocol would be already ok for you? How do you cope with this right now, do you and your social group use alternatives to iMessage like signal or telegram?
  - azinman2 4y ago
    It’s the text you send, not incoming, so you don’t need to read it much. There’s also various accessibility features to help with color across the os.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      Not only that, but these are complaints coming from non-iPhone users, by definition, which means it is totally up to Android what color their messages are displayed in.
      - paranoidrobot 4y ago
        iPhone User texts Android user - the iPhone user sees their outbound message as green on white. This is not up to Android, it is up to Apple how their UX displays texts to non-Apple users.
  - 4y ago
NonNefarious 4y ago
Apple commits many UI offenses, but the alleged illegibility of SMS messages is BS. Not to mention that Apple's messaging is hideously broken in more ways than Android integration. iMessage will simply delete your phone number from its "can be reached at" list, which breaks years-long threads with a single (iPhone-using) friend into inexplicable new threads. Ever go overseas? Try putting a local SIM into your USA phone somewhere else, and watch your phone "forget" all of your contacts. Seriously: WTF? Suddenly all of your contacts are unrecognized by number. It's idiotic.
- throwntoday 4y ago
  I have quite literally never had that issue. I think people forget that Apple support a very fragmented and wide range of devices on multiple major OS releases and various version numbers. The long-term support period means some devices can be forgotten about even though they are receiving the latest updates. If you have found some edge-case bug, feel free to submit it. There is almost no other way for Apple to know and bother fixing it if you don't tell them.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    This is not an "edge case." This is a readily reproducible defect. I've encountered it on different iPhones running current iOS in two countries with a gap of at least two years in between. I have a paid-up developer account, so you can be assured that I filed a well-supported bug report on it.
isodev 4y ago
These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything. First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011! “Right now, Google runs three mainline messaging apps: Besides this Google Messages/RCS platform, there's also Google Chat, which is a more traditional over-the-top messaging service, and Google Voice, which is a Google-provided phone number with SMS. Google Hangouts is technically still around as the fourth messaging app, though that's shutting down in November. There are also siloed messaging apps built into Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Stadia, Google Pay, Google Assistant, and Google Phone, and none of them talk to each other. Google's head of messaging also quit last month, so there's no telling what the future of Google messaging holds until someone takes the reins. I would suggest Google get its house in order before it starts throwing rocks at Apple.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs-apple-for-mercy-in-messaging-war/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
- camdat 4y ago
  >First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Is a standard from the 90s acceptable then? Do we say Apple shouldn't migrate to USB-C since it's old-ish? A standard being around a long time is a good thing, but when a better one comes along I don't see what excuse Apple has to not migrate (besides anti-competitiveness, which is a really good reason I suppose). >Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011! The argument in the article could be made irrespective of Google. The article isn't saying "Apple isn't playing nice so use our stuff instead", it's a critique of an obvious attempt by Apple to build a walled garden around messaging. Google is arguing for a standard adopted across the industry, not one of their many messaging apps.
  - 4y ago
lostgame 4y ago
This point is a fallacy. Prior to the invention of iMessage - (iOS 6?) - all iPhone texts were this colour of green. It was the same no matter who you texted. This means Apple never intentionally designed the green bubbles to be more difficult to read.
- throwaway27727 4y ago
  I seem to recall the green being a few shades darker (so there was higher contrast)
  - JoBrad 4y ago
    I don’t think it was a darker green, but the text was black until sometime around iOS 7, I think?
- giobox 4y ago
  The text was black though to be fair: https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-sending-an-imessage-or-a-text-on-ios-5/ https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-sending-a... White text on green is significantly different - the older green bubbles with black text are noticeably clearer IMO, even if I also find it unlikely it was done deliberately to make SMS look bad. That said, Apple will certainly be aware of the cultural thing of the green vs blue bubbles given major news outlets have written on it (in the US anyway), so... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
tomjakubowski 4y ago
The white on green is only used for the SMS messages you sent in the conversation. Incoming messages are always black on grey, for SMS and iMessage both. If the color scheme actually impacts legibility, it would only affect messages which you yourself wrote. It wouldn't have any effect on legibility of messages other people wrote, where that really matters a lot more.
dan-robertson 4y ago
One thing to note is that received texts show up the same, it’s only sent messages that are blue/green.
dataflow 4y ago
> I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. I got the impression RCS de-facto depends on Google servers in some way. Can someone confirm if that's the case?
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  RCS doesn't inherently depend on Google servers. However Google doesn't see eye-to-eye with anyone. The carriers want their own version of RCS and Apple doesn't want to deal with it. Of course it's easier to get clicks by bashing Apple than by holding the carriers accountable (or supporting your own deprecated messaging platforms). https://pocketnow.com/why-you-should-probably-avoid-googles-rcs-text-messaging-chat-feature https://pocketnow.com/why-you-should-probably-avoid-googles-... Google has exactly zero credibility here. Look how many messaging platforms they've created and killed off. Who's to say Google won't kill off RCS when they get a chance? https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- Sunspark 4y ago
  Google's server with Jibe Mobile only exists because the carriers weren't doing anything at all and they needed to have something that worked for everyone. If Apple implemented support, they would have their own server, they wouldn't use Jibe or the carrier's.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wincy 4y ago

What? I don't even notice the difference in color except that I know not to use the tapback stuff when I'm texting an Android user. Does the green on white actually bother anyone? This seems like grasping at straws to me.

dymk 4y ago
I've never heard this issue ever raised by anyone in real life. I've only seen it brought up in internet tiffs about how Apple is using green message bubbles to "shame" non-Apple users. Which is similarly straw-graspy.
- kelnos 4y ago
  Given how cruel and capricious children tend to be, it would not surprise me in the least that iPhone-using US teenagers ostracize peers with Android devices because of the green bubbles.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    While it doesn't surprise me, if it wasn't one thing it would probably be another. Conversely if you're a parent with a distraught teenager being teased about this, I imagine that's cold comfort.
  - hnburnsy 4y ago
    they are... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
  - dymk 4y ago
    During my highschool years, kids were bullied both for having and for not having both iPhones and Android phones.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  yes it is a thing, from January 2022... Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
  - tomjakubowski 4y ago
    That has nothing to do with the readability of the color scheme of your (outgoing!) texts though.
    - Phrodo_00 4y ago
      Yeah, they're separate effects, but both triggered (because I wouldn't say teenagers being cruel is _caused_ by Apple) by the way Apple treats SMSs
radiojasper 4y ago
https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=3cd882&fgcolor=ffffff https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=3cd882&fgcolor=... The colours do not pass the A11Y standards, which means people with poor eyesight can't read the messages properly. This did made me curious to see if the blue background passes - and it doesn't either. https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=047aff&fgcolor=ffffff https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=047aff&fgcolor=... At least the blue background passes WCAG AA with larger sized text, while the green doesn't pass at all.
- dymk 4y ago
  Wrong color, iMessage uses #64C567 for the green background, which has a higher contrast than the pair you supplied (1.85 versus 2.15)
  - radiojasper 4y ago
    Still doesn't pass? Also thanks for pointing out the error!
  - mikewhy 4y ago
    I'm confused by all the mention of "what colour apple uses" in messages, message bubbles are a mask over a gradient
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- kelnos 4y ago
  The funny thing is that simply changing the text color to black causes the green-on-black to pass all those metrics, with the blue-on-black passing everything but WCAG AAA with the normal font (but still passes on the larger font). (Same result using #64C567 for the green bubbles, which a sibling pointed out is the correct value.)
- applecrazy 4y ago
  There is an "Increase Contrast" option in Settings for visually-impaired users.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I would not discount visibility issues for anyone with a visual impairment. But at the same time there are a lot of issues listed on the page, with the color contrast only being one of them. You may consider the other usability issues more significant, but either way as a whole it seems to be a problem.
r00fus 4y ago
Tapback works, too - it just appears to the non-iMessage receiver as an another SMS message with the text equivalent of the tapback emoticon.

nemothekid 4y ago

iMessage was released on iOS 5 with the release of the iPhone 4S. Before then, all messages had a green background. Somehow sticking with the default of more than 10+ years is intentional maleficence by Apple?

blinkingled 4y ago
No but not updating the default for 10 years in a way that mostly affects only Android users seems like borderline malfeasance to me.
- dymk 4y ago
  It's not a "default", it's an indicator of how the message was sent.
  - blinkingled 4y ago
    So every sent message looks white on bright green or just the ones sent over SMS/MMS (I.e. to Android users)?
    - dymk 4y ago
      Messages sent via SMS/MMS are green, messages sent via iMessage are blue. If you send a message via SMS/MMS to an iPhone user, it's green. There is no detection if the user on the other end is an Android user.
      - tantalor 4y ago
        So it's a default.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        rootusrootus 4y ago

nomel 4y ago

The green used on the website is significantly brighter than on an iPhone. In fact, on the iPhone, I would say the green gives better contrast than the white text on a blue background. For direct messages, the colored bubbles are only used on messages you send. Messages received are always white text on black background (dark mode) or black text on grey background (light mode). edit: my bad. "increase contrast" option is on, set years ago.

Phrodo_00 4y ago
The green (and also the blue, but less so) used by iMessage doesn't even meet the minimum contrast set by apple accesibility guidelines [1] [1] https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343 https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce...
guelo 4y ago
It's objectively much worse contrast. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CB781_1017ST_2_20181017204033.jpg https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CB781_1017ST_2_... My contrast tool says the blue contrast is 3.4:1 while the green is 1.9:1
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dfabulich 4y ago
I just took screenshots of an Android green text bubble and the https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ site, and used Photoshop's eyedropper tool to compare colors. They're the exact same shade of green, #48dd8f. But it's not just you! The green on Google's site looks visually brighter because the entire bubble is on a blue background. On iPhone, the green is normally on a white background. Now, try setting your iPhone to Dark Mode in Settings, and you'll find that the green bubbles are still #48dd8f green and the text is still #ffffff pure white; it's harder to read on a black background, IMO.
- 4y ago

kingTug 4y ago

The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage always struck me as very intentional.

giantrobot 4y ago
Before iMessage was released all text messages sent from iPhones were SMS/MMS. They were all green. If an iPhone recipient is unavailable via iMessage a text will fall back to SMS. So green bubbles are intentional, they indicate a text was sent via SMS.
- rajbot 4y ago
  > The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage This quoted bit is actually incorrect. All messages from android and from iMessage are in identical gray text bubbles. The blue/green bubbles are for your own sent messages only

etchalon 4y ago

The Green is historical, not a specific decision by Apple to hinder reading texts. Before iOS 5, and the release of iMessage, all messages on iOS were green. That Google is painting this as something else speaks to how disingenuous this whole conversation has gotten, in all corners.

zoover2020 4y ago
But it turns automatically green when you text a non iPhone device. You have no idea how much of a hot topic this is I modern bullying
- etchalon 4y ago
  It turns green when the message is sent over SMS, not when you text a "non-Apple device". You can send SMS messages to Apple devices, from an Apple device, if you're not signed into iMessage, or they're not, or if your data connectivity is limited, or theirs is.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    This! I got sick of iMessage, and I disabled it completely on my iPhone. Everything was SMS, and it made moving my sim card between devices easier. I found that if you don't explicitly turn off iMessage before you ditch your iPhone, no other iMessage users will be able to message you. All my messages were green all the time.
- pharmakom 4y ago
  If apple made them all the same color I think bullying would change by around 0%
- riversflow 4y ago
  This is ridiculous. As someone who suffered greatly from bullying throughout their education, the only way to deal with bullying is punishing bullies. Bullies will always find something to bully others for, thats why they are bullies and not just expressing a preference. I’m fairly convinced the bullying problem is a result of a society who treat kids as their parent’s property instead of communal property. Parents enable bullying.

Angostura 4y ago

This is the most trivial complaint I've ever read. I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles - it just means that it hasn't been sent via iMessage - if I send to an iPhone and sending falls back to SMS it looks just the same. I can't believe people get that upset about green v blue.

dcormier 4y ago
That’s very ableist of you. About 1 in 12 males are colorblind. I’m in this group. I find white text on a bright green background very difficult to read.
- joes_hk 4y ago
  So making the bubble blue instead of green without changing the protocol would be already ok for you? How do you cope with this right now, do you and your social group use alternatives to iMessage like signal or telegram?
- azinman2 4y ago
  It’s the text you send, not incoming, so you don’t need to read it much. There’s also various accessibility features to help with color across the os.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Not only that, but these are complaints coming from non-iPhone users, by definition, which means it is totally up to Android what color their messages are displayed in.
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      iPhone User texts Android user - the iPhone user sees their outbound message as green on white. This is not up to Android, it is up to Apple how their UX displays texts to non-Apple users.
- 4y ago

NonNefarious 4y ago

Apple commits many UI offenses, but the alleged illegibility of SMS messages is BS. Not to mention that Apple's messaging is hideously broken in more ways than Android integration. iMessage will simply delete your phone number from its "can be reached at" list, which breaks years-long threads with a single (iPhone-using) friend into inexplicable new threads. Ever go overseas? Try putting a local SIM into your USA phone somewhere else, and watch your phone "forget" all of your contacts. Seriously: WTF? Suddenly all of your contacts are unrecognized by number. It's idiotic.

throwntoday 4y ago
I have quite literally never had that issue. I think people forget that Apple support a very fragmented and wide range of devices on multiple major OS releases and various version numbers. The long-term support period means some devices can be forgotten about even though they are receiving the latest updates. If you have found some edge-case bug, feel free to submit it. There is almost no other way for Apple to know and bother fixing it if you don't tell them.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  This is not an "edge case." This is a readily reproducible defect. I've encountered it on different iPhones running current iOS in two countries with a gap of at least two years in between. I have a paid-up developer account, so you can be assured that I filed a well-supported bug report on it.

isodev 4y ago

These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything. First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011! “Right now, Google runs three mainline messaging apps: Besides this Google Messages/RCS platform, there's also Google Chat, which is a more traditional over-the-top messaging service, and Google Voice, which is a Google-provided phone number with SMS. Google Hangouts is technically still around as the fourth messaging app, though that's shutting down in November. There are also siloed messaging apps built into Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Stadia, Google Pay, Google Assistant, and Google Phone, and none of them talk to each other. Google's head of messaging also quit last month, so there's no telling what the future of Google messaging holds until someone takes the reins. I would suggest Google get its house in order before it starts throwing rocks at Apple.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs-apple-for-mercy-in-messaging-war/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

camdat 4y ago
>First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so. Is a standard from the 90s acceptable then? Do we say Apple shouldn't migrate to USB-C since it's old-ish? A standard being around a long time is a good thing, but when a better one comes along I don't see what excuse Apple has to not migrate (besides anti-competitiveness, which is a really good reason I suppose). >Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011! The argument in the article could be made irrespective of Google. The article isn't saying "Apple isn't playing nice so use our stuff instead", it's a critique of an obvious attempt by Apple to build a walled garden around messaging. Google is arguing for a standard adopted across the industry, not one of their many messaging apps.
- 4y ago

lostgame 4y ago

This point is a fallacy. Prior to the invention of iMessage - (iOS 6?) - all iPhone texts were this colour of green. It was the same no matter who you texted. This means Apple never intentionally designed the green bubbles to be more difficult to read.

throwaway27727 4y ago
I seem to recall the green being a few shades darker (so there was higher contrast)
- JoBrad 4y ago
  I don’t think it was a darker green, but the text was black until sometime around iOS 7, I think?
giobox 4y ago
The text was black though to be fair: https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-sending-an-imessage-or-a-text-on-ios-5/ https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-sending-a... White text on green is significantly different - the older green bubbles with black text are noticeably clearer IMO, even if I also find it unlikely it was done deliberately to make SMS look bad. That said, Apple will certainly be aware of the cultural thing of the green vs blue bubbles given major news outlets have written on it (in the US anyway), so... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

tomjakubowski 4y ago

The white on green is only used for the SMS messages you sent in the conversation. Incoming messages are always black on grey, for SMS and iMessage both. If the color scheme actually impacts legibility, it would only affect messages which you yourself wrote. It wouldn't have any effect on legibility of messages other people wrote, where that really matters a lot more.

dan-robertson 4y ago

One thing to note is that received texts show up the same, it’s only sent messages that are blue/green.

dataflow 4y ago

> I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. I got the impression RCS de-facto depends on Google servers in some way. Can someone confirm if that's the case?

inferiorhuman 4y ago
RCS doesn't inherently depend on Google servers. However Google doesn't see eye-to-eye with anyone. The carriers want their own version of RCS and Apple doesn't want to deal with it. Of course it's easier to get clicks by bashing Apple than by holding the carriers accountable (or supporting your own deprecated messaging platforms). https://pocketnow.com/why-you-should-probably-avoid-googles-rcs-text-messaging-chat-feature https://pocketnow.com/why-you-should-probably-avoid-googles-... Google has exactly zero credibility here. Look how many messaging platforms they've created and killed off. Who's to say Google won't kill off RCS when they get a chance? https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
Sunspark 4y ago
Google's server with Jibe Mobile only exists because the carriers weren't doing anything at all and they needed to have something that worked for everyone. If Apple implemented support, they would have their own server, they wouldn't use Jibe or the carrier's.

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