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One trick Apple uses to make you think green bubbles are “gross”

• PaulHoule 4y ago
  It would be an interesting test to make the green bubble dark and the blue bubble light.
• jasonjamerson 4y ago
  I disagree with two things here. Green IS traditionally an off-putting color, when we're talking about light: aliens, x-files, goo, and everything witchy. But in this context the thing that's harder on the eyes is the bubble itself. So the lighter one is easier for me. Although I'd rather see no bubbles at all.
  • 0898 4y ago
    Texts have been green before iMessage came out though
  • Double_a_92 4y ago
    Nature is green though...
    • jasonjamerson 4y ago
      That's why I said green light, which is unusual in nature. Sure, it's a little green when it filters through leaves, but that's very hard to perceive because the yellow of the sun or the blue of the sky usually cancels that out. It's almost never enough to light up another object with green.
  • martin_a 4y ago
    > Green IS traditionally an off-putting color I don't think that's true for the reasons you put up. Our eyes are specialized to distinct more shades of green from each other than with other colors. That's a useful evolutionary feature when you are an animal and have to hunt in the wild. For humans that leads to the point that we're rather good in picking "unnatural" shades of green (gooish ones and self-emitting shades of green).
    • jasonjamerson 4y ago
      Absolutely, I'm referring to emission of green light, which is unnatural.
• edf13 4y ago
  Ermmm. Wasn’t it green for sms way before iMessage was launched?
  • Hamuko 4y ago
    Yes. https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=1863 https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg?t=1863
    • croes 4y ago
      But black text
    • bongobingo1 4y ago
      Funny to see even Jobs hit `return` to send the message initially.
  • randomdata 4y ago
    Yes. From the article: "To be clear, it is not that green is gross. It is the low color contrast of the green Apple picked and used against white text is gross." The original design used black text, for one thing.
  • angulardragon03 4y ago
    Yes and no. It used to be black on green (with imo a way worse green). https://www.oreilly.com/api/v2/epubs/9780133016529/files/graphics/03fig02.jpg https://www.oreilly.com/api/v2/epubs/9780133016529/files/gra...
  • tpmx 4y ago
    Yes, but the contrast was good. iOS 4, green Aqua-ish bubbles with black text: https://d2bs8hqp6qvsw6.cloudfront.net/article/images/750x750/dimg/m_img_29352.jpg https://d2bs8hqp6qvsw6.cloudfront.net/article/images/750x750... iOS 5, introducing blue iMessage bubbles (still good contrast in both colors): https://images.anandtech.com/doci/4956/IMG_0907.PNG https://images.anandtech.com/doci/4956/IMG_0907.PNG The change in contrast came with Ive's "flat" iOS 7: https://i.insider.com/5df902c5fd9db27769749a5f?width=1300&format=png https://i.insider.com/5df902c5fd9db27769749a5f?width=1300&fo...
• occamrazor 4y ago
  On my iPhone the green bubbles are much more saturated and legible than in the posted article.
  • malshe 4y ago
    Same here. https://imgur.com/a/7k5dMtm https://imgur.com/a/7k5dMtm
    • graeber_28927 4y ago
      I checked those background colors with this contrast calculator [0] against white: - Contrast of your iPhone: 2.21:1 (#35c759) - Contrast that's "poor": 2.17:1 (#65c466) - Contrast that's "good": 2.93:1 (#3bac3c) - Contrast of the blue: 3.95:1 (#367bf5) Based on this I would say that the Contrast of your green and the "gross" one from the article are actually pretty close, both being very far from the contrast that blue provides. Not even the good green from the article does match the contrast of the blue. They are being lenient I'd say, not misleading. [0]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
  • null_object 4y ago
    Exactly - the author fictionalized some examples for his phony thesis.
    • stjohnswarts 4y ago
      phony... I see what you did there.
• frabia 4y ago
  mmm I really doubt that was the real reason why you "dislike" the green message and that it was purposefully designed like so by Apple. I think this is a case of learned significance, for which you know that a green bubble means a message sent via SMS rather than the "smarter" message. Added to the fact the blue is often used by tech companies due to its fresh and modern connotation, you have the full picture on why your brain prefers the blue to the green message. That being said, I think Apple should have been more careful about making their message bubble pass contrast tests. But I doubt there was an "evil designer" carefully planning to make that bubble with lower contrast on purpose to make you dislike it.
• henriquez 4y ago
  It reminds me how MacOS has the icon for any networked Windows PC as a “blue screen of death” monitor
  • detritus 4y ago
    I had to check to see if you were kidding. You're not. That's hilarious. Petty, and hilarious.
    • bitwize 4y ago
      That's almost as good as the Windows Vista/7 icon for "Network" -- computers connected to a pneumatic tube (referencing Senator Ted Stevens and his "series of tubes" comment).
  • s3p 4y ago
    Actually love this one lol
  • stjohnswarts 4y ago
    they want to prepare you :)
  • rsfinn 4y ago
    ...which suggests that the notion that some designer at Apple subtly decreased the contrast on green bubbles to make them look "gross" is ridiculous -- if they really wanted to make SMS messages look bad, they could be much less subtle about it...
    • 8jef 4y ago
      Be less subtle? Serving what purposes? Getting slammed by the EU and the like? They have to be very, very subtle, and ride the fine line between effectiveness and outrage, never going too much on a side or the other. The best and most enduring conspiration theories have originated from such deliberate and surgical manipulations. The goal they are after: most people will unknowingly abide and be manipulated, while the minority will go nuts proclaiming they know the truth. Welcome to propaganda 101, aka destructive marketing.
• scarface74 4y ago
  Green was the original color of text messages when the iPhone was introduced. When Apple introduced iMessages four or five years later they made iMessages Blue. This isn’t some great conspiracy.
  • 1over137 4y ago
    Did you RTFA? It's not about the colour, it's about the contrast. I wonder if the contrast has changed over the years. It could be a worse green today than originally.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Have you thought that screen technology used in iPhones may not be the same since 2007? The original iPhone had a resolution of 320x480 with much worse color reproduction.
  • croes 4y ago
    But the text was black
    • scarface74 4y ago
      And the screen had much worse color reproduction, a lower resolution, and much worse text rendering. There are a million reasons to change the color than to make your kids feel bad.
  • nixpulvis 4y ago
    I have no idea why this comment is downvoted. This is exactly the question you should be asking if you care about Apple's intent as the article claims.
• rubyist5eva 4y ago
  It's because the plebes that can't afford iphones are gross. /s
• dimitrios1 4y ago
  Nice theory, but the reality of how these decisions get made is usually far less interesting. Some product owner probably wanted the iMessage enabled texter to "pop" and the designers usually take that and roll with it usually through some combination of boldening one, and deemphasizing the other to give the overall desired effect. It's a good call out for them to improve the color contrast, but you can adjust the contrast yourself through the accessibility options.
• unknownaccount 4y ago
  When will people realize that the point of differentiating between Android/iOS bubbles isn’t about discriminating against teenagers, but rather it’s about security. If my messages are being sent through an insecure protocol that leaks my messages to the police, carrier, and skids with a rtl-SDR (SMS) rather than a secure encrypted protocol (iMessage), I want it to be obvious. They have every reason to make “green bubbles” look toxic and off putting, because unencrypted SMS is genuinely hazardous.
  • asdajksah2123 4y ago
    The point is to make non iPhones uncool.
    • unknownaccount 4y ago
      No, it’s to indicate when you are texting someone over an insecure protocol. This is just like saying the colored HTTPS symbol in the browser toolbar on websites that support SSL was designed to make websites without SSL look uncool.
  • MAGZine 4y ago
    RCS has end to end encryption. When I text other android users, my messages are encrypted. When I text an iPhone, they are not. Stop supporting closed protocols and bad-faith actors.
    • unknownaccount 4y ago
      RCS isn’t anywhere nearly as widely adopted as SMS, depends entirely on the carrier setting it up properly, and didn’t get end to end encryption until relatively recently. Many years after this whole green vs. blue debacle started. Once 99% of phones and carriers support RCS then maybe you could make this argument, but it won’t be for several years.
      • MAGZine 4y ago
        anecdotally, in the US/Canada, everytime I text someone running android, I get e2e encryption. Most US carriers have rolled it out by now (or can be completely circumvented by using Android Messages app) and the green bubble teasing seems like a USA specific phenomena. Anyhow, so what you mean to say, is that it's not about security (because it's present and accessible), but it's about appearances. And worst, the platform perpetuating the the appearances is not making any moves to secure it's messaging to non-Apple devices. Unacceptable.
• samiam_iam 4y ago
  Green is not a negative color in all cases. Green also signifies good to go
  • bongobingo1 4y ago
    The fine article makes no mention of green being a "negative color", it's not even about the color, try giving it a read.
• yalogin 4y ago
  The author is just overthinking things here. If anything, green is the color used to indicate “go”, a positive sign that has been etched into our minds. The reason is very clear as already mentioned “it doesn’t support messages”. Why isn’t that explanation enough? EDIT: to clarify here, the author does explain his point about the color and the contrast of the text. He may have a point there but IMO, the main issue was that it’s not messages. The thing I should have added is that back when it was implemented people had to pay real money per message to send as a text message. That means everyone in the group had to feel uncomfortable sending frivolous messages when it costs someone money. I think that is the real reason for the bifurcation and not the color choice.
  • volleygman180 4y ago
    The article elaborates, however. It's not a problem that green is used. It's that Apple chose a lightness/shade that is less accessible. Given their attention to detail in design (see the rabbithole of their Human Interface Guidelines - https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/guidelines/overview/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...), I agree with the author in that this was an intentional design choice that Apple made.
  • afavour 4y ago
    I don't mean to sound like an asshole here but did you read the article? The author outlines that the contrast applied to the green is less readable than the blue, to the point where it falls below accessibility guidelines. I personally am not convinced by the theory that Apple is doing this deliberately (though it doesn't sound impossible to me either!) but either way it's something they should change.
    • malshe 4y ago
      The author's example of the green text looks pale compared to what it really is.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Well seeing that every one of the authors images don’t jibe with reality - ie his images aren’t what are actually on iPhones in terms of saturation - it kind of makes his entire thesis moot
• arikr 4y ago
  The author should’ve included an example of a green with great contrast.
  • sainotbot 4y ago
    It's in the first image, the one that says "Good".
  • 1ko 4y ago
    It's there, in the first image of the article.
• lifeformed 4y ago
  No one here read the article, it has nothing to do with it being green but with it being low contrast.
  • pipeline_peak 4y ago
    To be fair, he could’ve cut to the chase sooner. Since it was a UI UX article, HN readers probably aren’t aware that it’s a contrast between fonts and background, not blue vs green or green vs dark green.
    • onychomys 4y ago
      He could have cut to the chase sooner than the header to paragraph 2?
    • sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
      It opens with an image of two green bubbles, one higher contrast than the other. The higher contrast one is labeled "Good" and the lower contrast "Gross". After a two sentence paragraph expressing how the green/blue technical differentiation has become a social one, it then asks the question "Why is green worse than blue?" The next line: "The answer is color contrast." What could they have realistically done to cut to the chase sooner in a meaningful way? The only real thing is ditching those two context building sentences. But it's two short sentences, providing relevant context. Doesn't really feel like a valid criticism IMO.
    • stjohnswarts 4y ago
      They could sum it up in the first paragraph and then extrapolate, but like most of these things they stretch it out until the bottom.
    • r12343a_19 4y ago
      HN readers are aware about poor contrast. Eg, your comment (which seems tame) is downvoted and has some lovely light color on light background combo.
      • 4y ago
• bombcar 4y ago
  I wish Apple accessibility let you change the colors.
• pdpi 4y ago
  A large problem with this whole idea is that there is no one single blue or green involved. iMessage shades the bubbles depending on position, and shows both the blue and green bubbles as darker at the bottom of the screen, and lighter at the top.
  • tpmx 4y ago
    So, then compare them at a similar position? A side-by-side screenshot of iOS 7, when this design was introduced: https://i.insider.com/5df902c5fd9db27769749a5f?width=1300&format=png https://i.insider.com/5df902c5fd9db27769749a5f?width=1300&fo...
    • nyuszika7h 4y ago
      That's definitely not iOS 7. Those screenshots are from a notched device, which means at least iOS 11, and based on the app drawer on the bottom it looks more like iOS 12 or above.
      • tpmx 4y ago
        Should have been "the design introduced with iOS 7".
• jmbwell 4y ago
  Summary: the green bubbles have lower contrast than the blue bubbles. Lower contrast is associated with lower accessibility, according to published Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Tricks, purpose, and grossness are speculative.
• pipeline_peak 4y ago
  At first, it sounded like a stretched out conspiracy theory. When I looked at the "correctly" contrasted green in the first image that was darker, it made more sense. The lighter greyish green gives off a lower standard, almost as if the Android user was a guest user or in free trial mode.
• null_object 4y ago
  Ye article is complete bullshit and makes-up some fictional examples: for instance the bubbles supposedly on a “brighter screen” are shown as totally desaturated and ‘blown-out’ but unfortunately for the author’s thesis, screen brightness does not affect UI elements in this way, at all. Edit: Haha thx for the downvotes but the article is still lying with phony made-up images.
  • martin_a 4y ago
    It does affect your visual impression in the eye, though. If you're using a bright screen in a dim environment, your eyes will be hurt by the bright light, you flinch and that will reduce the perceptive contrast.
    • null_object 4y ago
      > It does affect your visual impression in the eye, though. If you're using a bright screen in a dim environment, your eyes will be hurt by the bright light, you flinch and that will reduce the perceptive contrast. See a few posts above where someone did the hard work of taking real screenshots instead of the totally bullshit fictional ones the author has in the article.
• oneplane 4y ago
  This seems to be mostly a US American thing, mainly because of the same reasons BBM was a thing: lots of chats over SMS used to be a thing, and then chats over iMessage, which like BBM, you can only join if you have a device from a specific vendor. That means that you can only be in a special social circle if you buy the same stuff. That won't change because of some colours, because it's not the colours causing the tribalism, it can exist perfectly fine without it. In Western Europe, South America and Asia it's mostly just some specific app (WhatsApp for example, or Signal, or WeChat or LINE) and as a fallback SMS. And if SMS turns from one colour bubble to another colour it doesn't really do anything for users on either end. This deep integration with colours and status symbols does remain in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
  • nottorp 4y ago
    Yeah, no one uses plain sms messages across the pond any more. And sms group chats? I only know about sms group chats from US posters. You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.
    • ericmay 4y ago
      > You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that. Yea but that's a problem too.
      • scatters 4y ago
        WhatsApp doesn't have anywhere near the same lockin as Apple. You can run multiple messaging apps even on a low end android phone.
        • kube-system 4y ago
          Lock-in through the network effect is lock in. The fact that it’s the de facto standard outside the US is quite a network effect. SMS by contrast is an open standard.
• travisgriggs 4y ago
  This article is weird to me. On one hand, it’s interesting science about color perception. Good stuff. But on the other hand, it assumes an unsubstantiated motive for why it is as it is. I’ve worked with designers a bunch, and they have all kinds of reasons for why they choose as they do. I would not put this past apple at all. But given there’s no quotes from the original designers, I’d go with “Do no attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence.”
  • nerdponx 4y ago
    > Do not attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence. IMO this is only good advice there's no obvious motive for malice. When big corporations are involved, cynicism is absolutely warranted.
• leobg 4y ago
  Might it might it not also be just conditioning? Users have learned to associate green messages with all of the limitations that SMS impose. Hence they perceive it as bad. If that was true, they could’ve picked a higher contrast version instead, and people would still feel the same way.
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    Correct. Users don't need any color tricks to associate SMS with reduced functionality.
• bfgoodrich 4y ago
• leobg 4y ago
  Also, I suspect the association of blue as modern and green as outdated might also stem from LEDs. Early LEDs were green or red. It took many years until blue LEDs became available, and those, at first, were much more expensive.
• IYasha 4y ago
  The bubble chat interface itself is gross. Terrible. Disgusting. Unusable. Distracting. Eye-hurting. Illogical. Counterproductive. Log-unfriendly. Code-offensive. Intolerable. Since day one.
  • snarf21 4y ago
    Serious question: What would be better? What would that look like? (I think the current one is perfect for 1:1 conversations .. Multiple people is more of an issue visually)
    • stjohnswarts 4y ago
      A lot of people won't be happy until their phone is just a bash terminal.
      • IYasha 4y ago
        No, I'm not one of those either. :) I'd love to write an article, but currently have no platform (server, site, blog), time and physical power to do so, sadly. I would propose full-width scalable interface with basic formatting (like Telegram has), without wasted space... but it has to be drawn, words can't show. (
        • IYasha 4y ago
          There's more to it, unfortunately. As if it wasn't obvious, I've seen private studies confirming that balloon/bubble/whatever comic-like interface was carefully invented to limit people's attention timespan and granulate thoughts. For example, on your average phone you have 3-4 short messages and TONS of empty space around. You don't have the whole line of conversation before your eyes, you have ridiculous limits to text width and height, etc.etc. which makes it irritating to read and write something longer than "Hi", forcing you to write very short messages. (I won't go deep into this, to not to be instantly labeled a conspiracy theorist, but it has enormous psychological impact, not just UX).
• scarface74 4y ago
  What are the chances that the EU will come in a year and mandate that “all messages must have the same color” and use it as an excuse that having some blue bubbles and some green colors is harming the mental health of children?
  • schroeding 4y ago
    Very slim, as this is appears to be a very american problem. It's normal for teenagers (and people in general) to have an Android phone in Europe. It isn't anymore in the US.
    • scarface74 4y ago
      But yet, the EU is mandating the USB C “standard” without going into details about which part of the standard is required still requiring you to know whether the USB C cable will actually transmit data and at what speed will it transmit video (something that USB required iPads already do and is a standard), etc
  • stjohnswarts 4y ago
    More than likely it would start in California. I say we start a petition that the colors be indistinguishable. Be the change that you want to see, I'm looking at the man in the mirror.
  • enragedcacti 4y ago
    The contrast between your perception of the EU and their actual positions is pretty entertaining to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-act...
    • scarface74 4y ago
      So you mean my perception that the EU is run by a bunch of bureaucrats who don’t understand technology, stymie innovation and don’t think about unintended consequences? Do you think there may be a reason that hardly any successful technology companies come out of the Eu?
• malshe 4y ago
  This is a clickbait. On my iPhone the green color is much darker than what the author shows in the article. Here are some images with the hex color codes for example: https://imgur.com/a/7k5dMtm https://imgur.com/a/7k5dMtm
  • tpmx 4y ago
    A comparison between blue and green bubbles on your phone would be more relevant. Color space handling makes direct comparisons between screen grabs (from different devices) tricky.
    • malshe 4y ago
      The author used the screen grabs from different places too. On iPhone you can't have the blue and green bubbles side by side
      • tpmx 4y ago
        A reasonable start would be screen grabs of both blue and green bubbles, grabbed from the same phone in the same way. (And vertical placement; see the other comment.)
  • zzot 4y ago
    It's actually really cherry-picked samples. All messages (blue and green) in the Messages app fade out slightly as you scroll. The author picked a blue message from the bottom of the screen and a green one from the top. If only they scrolled around a bit... they would have noticed.
    • malshe 4y ago
      Great point. I just now confirmed that as well. The bottom message is much darker than the one on top
    • s3p 4y ago
      Also the article doesn't mention that the iMessage blue also fails the same WCAG test. I just ran it myself.
• jeremy0x4a 4y ago
  Whenever I see this iMessage/SMS, blue/green topic come up I descend into an internal debate that, as I get older, I am becoming increasingly familiar with. The debate is that one where I am forced to reconcile whether I am too far removed from popular culture to see how this is a real issue versus accepting that the issue is entirely contrived.
  • randomdata 4y ago
    The nice thing about getting even older is that you soon won't care about such reconciliation.
    • jeremy0x4a 4y ago
      I appreciate this, but I will still cherish the joy of yelling at the children on my lawn, as I slowly descend into comfortable curmudgeonhood.
  • idk1 4y ago
    It's certainly an issue with a lot of teenagers. Speaking broadly, social status and brands say a lot at that age, and you could miss out on friends or social occasions based on it. As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter, we grow up and realise that, but it certainly is a significant issue if it's affecting young peoples lives. So I'd say it's somewhere inbetween what you descibe, perhaps a bit contrived, but also could have a significant impact on some people. Side note - I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people, but of course if someone takes that point of view as an adult then it's a good indicator to show how they think.
    • browningstreet 4y ago
      > I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people But how many times, really? It's like the missing iPhone headphone jack. The press and bloggers hammered away at it for years, making sure it was an ongoing meme in all coverage, but... do people really care? Some people, sure.. but enough for the coverage? Same with bubbles.
• freeplay 4y ago
  It's not the color or contrast of the bubbles that make me think negatively, it's the fact that once I see a green bubble in a group text, I know it's going to be a bad experience. Any photo, video, or reaction gif that people send will be compressed down a couple of pixels and replies will often be out of chronological order.
  • joshenberg 4y ago
    I take so much shit for 'ruining the group chat' when it's always the complainants devices that is blocked from sending high resolution pics to poor people. Drives me fucking bonkers when I point out that their reactions to it are precisely why it's not being fixed.
• at_a_remove 4y ago
  If it doesn't pass an accessibility suite, that's fine. Point it out, mock, and so on. Perhaps a shame into action. But that word choice ... Low contrast is now "gross." Yikes!
• brap 4y ago
  A few weeks ago I went over my SMS history, going back several months. About 99% of the SMS I get is bots. The vast majority was spam (making me wish I could disable SMS altogether), then some alerts (e.g from my bank) and 2SV codes. The other 1% were delivery people. Exactly 0.0% were people in my contacts.
• denismurphy 4y ago
  why does this even matter? As a european i just don't get it, i use a iPhone have in the past used Android most of my friends and family use Android no one cares.
  • booleandilemma 4y ago
    The problem for us was not the color of the bubbles but the issue of android users not being able to join imessage group chats. My family solved the problem by using whatsapp.
  • stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Basically US teens/kids assume you're poor and not cool if you have a green bubble. It really is as simple as that. It's exactly as shallow as it sounds and is not actually as big of a deal as the article makes it out to be.
    • denismurphy 4y ago
      Where i live Schools have banned both phones and social media because it greatest source of bullying/harassment. The kids have iPad's in class for educational purposes https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2018/0419/955622-kerry-school-technology-ban/ https://www.rte.ie/news/munster/2018/0419/955622-kerry-schoo...
• SllX 4y ago
  Yeah no. The iMessage white-on-blue isn’t a significantly better contrast ratio. I would actually prefer black text here. Low contrast UI elements are the calling card of Alan Dye’s design team. The iMessage and SMS contrast ratio doesn’t rank because there are so many other UI issues that have crept in from this team over the years. If the blue provides a slightly better contrast ratio, it is bound to be incidental and if I were a betting man, I would bet that someone actually likes the green used for SMS. This entire message style by the way is a direct descendant of iChat AV where you could actually choose your message color. When Apple developed SMS and then iMessageS for iPhones, they chose basically iChat’s design, and picked their favorite bubble colors and what we have today evolved from that. E.g.: [1] https://osxdaily.com/2011/02/14/prevent-annoying-im-text-styling-with-ichat/ https://osxdaily.com/2011/02/14/prevent-annoying-im-text-sty... (note the drop-down menu with “Lime” selected, you can Google around for other colors). [2] https://flylib.com/books/en/1.463.1.538/1/ https://flylib.com/books/en/1.463.1.538/1/
• intrasight 4y ago
  I've never heard an actual human express noticing or caring about the color of the bubble.
  • MerelyMortal 4y ago
    Me either, and the adults I know, don't even seem to know the difference. I often get people trying to send me videos or files via SMS (I have an Android, and I guess it normally works for them when sending to other Apple users). (I say adults, because I often hear kids use it as a status symbol or way to exclude other kids from group messages. I will have to ask the kids I work with what they think about message color bubbles.)
  • stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Kids do it, I've heard it, it's an actual thing in that age group, adults don't care. It's like having a collection of gobots instead of transformers if you're an 80s kid.
    • School-Cotton 4y ago
      I care, and I’m an adult. I don’t care a lot, certainly not so much that I’d exclude someone from a social group, but I do get slightly annoyed when I have to communicate with someone via SMS because it’s so much slower, less reliable, less featureful etc. than iMessage.
  • nrb 4y ago
    The main annoying thing when added to a mixed group of SMS and iMessage group chats is that you cannot leave them, or add anyone after the fact without creating an entirely new chat with all the contacts from scratch.
  • extragood 4y ago
    It was commented on frequently when I was online dating, to the point that it got annoying. I've had a few friends mention it and jokingly tell me to give in and get an iPhone. I'm mid-thirties.
• badwolf 4y ago
  This seems super cherry picked and disingenuous. The colors of both blue and green messages fade as they scroll up. Looking at my phone right now, the lighter contrast the author seems to be calling out is only shown on a message that is scrolled up. This is the same with blue imessage bubbles, they also fade and have lower contrast when scrolled up.
• CharlesW 4y ago
  I have a problem with the thesis statement that people think green bubbles are "gross", which uncritically parrots Google's "Get the Message" PR campaign. I know that iPhone-using teens don't care about this in SoCal, the virtue signalling capital of the world. Their group chats with friends are all green, so if anything's "gross" it's the blue bubbles of their parental conversations. In the meantime, RCS is missing really basic capabilities. For example, RCS encryption only works for 1:1 conversations, so things like family chats are not private. Even Android publications are asking if RCS is too little, too late. https://www.androidpolice.com/android-iphone-rcs-give-up-messaging-platform/ https://www.androidpolice.com/android-iphone-rcs-give-up-mes...
  • pkulak 4y ago
    > which uncritically parrots Google "Get the Message" PR campaign. You're misunderstanding the order of events here. "I don't talk to green bubbles" has been a thing for at least five years now, which Google has very recently used in an ad campaign.
    • snowwrestler 4y ago
      Have you ever actually used Messages? “I don’t talk to green bubbles” can’t be a thing because your own messages are the ones that are blue or green. The bubbles for everyone else (the people you are talking to) are always all the same color: dark grey.
    • CharlesW 4y ago
      > "I don't talk to green bubbles" has been a thing for at least five years now… Almost always as a joke. And if you search HN, nearly all conversations about this PR-manufactured "green bubbles" outrage have happened since the launch of Google's campaign.
      • pkulak 4y ago
        Nearly all the conversations about the PR have been since the PR? I don't doubt it. I'm saying the green bubbles thing has existed since long before that. Google ticked it up a bit, but come on. Let's not give Google PR too much credit here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=green%20bubbles https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
• stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I don't think I've seen this much speculation without a single source in a long time...
• xnx 4y ago
  If Google didn't have so many messaging apps, they could counter by putting messages from non-Android users in comic sans.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  But I want to know is, who cares? I have yet to find a single person who says to me that they think it’s unfair that their text messages come across as a green bubble on my iPhone instead of blue. Why is this even an issue?!?
• whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  At this point the fact they're using this as a product differentiator is so blatant they may as well make a fart sound when they appear if they're green.
• wrs 4y ago
  Given all this swirling cultural context, doesn’t it seem odd that the icon for the Messages app is still green?
• rsfinn 4y ago
  At the time the green/blue distinction appeared in Messages, it was widely reported that the green color for SMS messages represented the fact that most cellular plans in the US at the time charged a fee for each SMS message sent, or had a higher monthly rate for "unlimited" texts. It would seem that very few people remember the days before "unlimited data/text/minutes". (US currency is typically associated with the color green in a way that probably doesn't apply elsewhere in the world. Also, the actual color of green on US paper currency is quite different from the green bubbles... but I digress.)
• swamp40 4y ago
  They also flash "Android Sucks" in large Arial letters on the screen for 30ms once every 5 seconds when you have green bubbles. Subliminal messaging work better than poor contrast.
• aoeusnth1 4y ago
  Besides the cherry-picked colors of green from the top of the screen, the author assumes turning up the screen brightness reduces contrast in the same way that applying a brightness filter in photoshop does. That’s obviously not true - a given colorspace has less dynamic range if you make everything brighter in photoshop, but turning up your screen backlight brightness makes everything brighter by a constant factor, which doesn’t change the dynamic range.
  • sliken 4y ago
    Assuming a perfect screen, yes. But at some point the brightest pixels on the screen will get no brighter, but all the other pixels will. So the dynamic range decreases. Similar happens when dim enough.
    • machinawhite 4y ago
      I just checked and there's a significant difference between full brightness and a little less than full brightness so I'll just assume the screens Apple is using are pretty good at that
    • aoeusnth1 4y ago
      Does a blank white screen not get brighter on your phone when you turn up the brightness?
      • sliken 4y ago
        I have a pixel 6 pro, and it does look like I can't wash out the brightest. However on a grey scale test image I can lose the bottom 1/3rd of the range by going too dark. Maybe the brightness cap is to save battery.
• drcongo 4y ago
  This article is absolute nonsense from start to finish. If this was remotely true, they'd have done a side by side of a low contrast blue with good contrast green, but they didn't, because everyone would have seen exactly how wrong the article is.
• nrvn 4y ago
  I have just compared the “gross” bubble from the article with my “real” bubble. Made a screenshot of both and used the ios color picker. “Gross”: #7EC170 Real from the bottom of the message reel: #65C466 Real from the top: #73E173 No issues with contrast in either case. Also keep in mind that those color hexes will slightly vary depending on where exactly you decide to pick since bubbles are filled with gradients. Not sure where author gets his bubble from but in real life they look as “good” bubbles at the bottom of the screen that makes me think the article itself is gross.
  • simonh 4y ago
    I'm not so sure, I just looked at some chats in iMessage, both to other iPhones and Android phones, and there's no doubt to me that the blue bubbles give much better contrast and readability, even comparing only messages at the bottom of the screen.
  • somedude895 4y ago
    Yeah seems really far-fetched. The whole idea that Apple did the green bubbles with the purpose of branding kids with Android phones as poor as some way of bullying them into getting an iPhone is borderline conspiracy theorist, possibly stemming from some anti-capitalist sentiment. It's kids being kids and seems like an exclusively US thing.
  • abracadaniel 4y ago
    It’s worth pointing out that text message bubbles were always green from the first iPhone as well. Coloring iMessages as blue was done so you knew whether you were getting billed for that text or not.
• alfor 4y ago
  I dislike most Apple software even if I like their hardware. From Itune and podcast that always try to sell me something instead of just letting me use my library to mail or safari to iCloud. Seems to me they are good at pushing the boundaries in hardware and integration, but the software make me run in the other direction. Is there value in their software?
• samatman 4y ago
  Interesting that reducing contrast is the exact 'nudge' Hacker News uses to inform us that a comment is less credible.
  • samatman 4y ago
    Although this comment leads me to think that either this has changed in subsequent iOS releases, or the author has issues with telling the truth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33178848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33178848
  • sangnoir 4y ago
    in HNs case, I suspect it's deliberately intended to lower interaction with grayed out text (to avoid pile-ons and low-quality/flamey discussions rooted on such comments)
• School-Cotton 4y ago
  > This segmentation has then evolved into discrimination against green bubbles, especially among young smartphone users in the U.S¹. The footnote is a link to a WSJ article that doesn’t back up that sentence at all, i.e. makes no claim that the issue is most prevalent in the US.
• daniel-cussen 4y ago
• thenerdhead 4y ago
  I don’t know. The green always looked like the Android logo green back in the day. Less about contrast.
• isitmadeofglass 4y ago
  I really hate this conspiracy. Before iMessage all messages on iPhones where green. And when they needed to differentiate they chose to make the new ones blue.
• viridian 4y ago
  As a counterpoint to everyone saying they've never heard of anyone caring about the bubbles; back when I was in college my fraternity sent out big group messages via iMessage only. If you wanted to know about events and didn't have an iPhone, you needed to check your email or hear about it second hand. No one wanted to deal with broken MMS, formatting, etc, so that's how things were handled. Some folks with Android phones were annoyed, but the official stance is that your email should be the place you check for this stuff anyways.
• ogab 4y ago
  As noted in one of the article comments: One of the first settings I change on my iPhone is "Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Increase Contrast" for this very reason. It darkens both the blue iMessage and green SMS colors, but I mostly do it because I do find that green color "gross" and annoying/distracting.
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  Solution: The EU should mandate that all chat messages be yellow with black text. (Coming off the success of USB-C, now is the time for them to maintain their momentum!)
• dirtyid 4y ago
  I wonder if kids will grow out of bubble tribalism as they get older the same way youth ditched FB.
• de6u99er 4y ago
  If I were at Apple and my job was to make non iMessage messages bad I would also make them a little bit off center. Maybe even randomly off center. I vuess people like me with OCD would never again message someone without an iPhone LOL
• cma 4y ago
  White / green, blue / black, are the hardest combinations to read due to distribution of cone cells in the retina (though fine if it is light blue / black, or dark green / white). This is compounded even more by pentile on certain Apple phones once they moved to OLED.
• lizardactivist 4y ago
  You don't have unlimited text messages on your mobile plans? I've never ever heard anyone care about, discuss, or even mention chat bubble color. All of this sounds like something that only US American teens and kids would react to, like they judge people by their skin color or what kind of clothes they're wearing.