6 ms·

I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where eve

I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where everyone not tech literate just thinks it is SMS. Not just that we want a blue bubble, damn it. Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem.

cweagans 3y ago
You can deregister your phone number from iMessage on the web now, fwiw. https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
- cozzyd 3y ago
  yes, this is super obvious for everyone I'm sure... (I remember my wife having this problem like, 6-7 years ago when she switched away from an iphone...it took a while for her to figure out she wasn't getting "texts" from her sister)
  - cweagans 3y ago
    I’m not disputing that it’s a problem. Only pointing out that there is now a workable solution that can be used after you get rid of an iPhone.
    - TiredOfLife 3y ago
      “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- glitchc 3y ago
  I get "error: Service unavailable"
tw04 3y ago
>Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem. Until RCS has native and mandatory encryption (for both 1-1 and group chats), it's just one more really poor attempt at data mining by all involved. Google claiming they want everyone to be all-in on RCS while simultaneously only supporting encryption through their non-standard extension is a bit of a joke. Say what you will about Apple, at least they're pretending to care and insisting on it. https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-support-rcs-in-2024 https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-... >Apple says it won't be supporting any proprietary extensions that seek to add encryption on top of RCS and hopes, instead, to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard. *Personally I think Apple should just create Messages for Android and charge $5/month or make it a part of their paid icloud offering and just embrace services. I get they want to sell iphones but it feels like they're in a bit of a RIM situation at the moment. You can keep fighting the inevitable but only for so long. Ironically enough, if RIM had opened up BBM and email a decade earlier they might still be around today.
- AJRF 3y ago
  > Personally I think Apple should just create Messages for Android and charge $5/month I'd move to Android in a heartbeat if they did this. I think that is the reason why it will never happen.
  - tempodox 3y ago
    So you're on an iPhone just for the bubbles?
    - voakbasda 3y ago
      I think you are joking, as this is actual reality for many younger people, isn’t it?
      - EricHolden12 3y ago
agos 3y ago
I hope that the Apple critics understand that this issue is specific to the USA and the rest of the world has no idea that it even exists
- cwillu 3y ago
  There are more countries in north america than the USA, and some of them have this problem too.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  WAT? Doesn't iMessage work the same everywhere else? None of my family members understand that iMessage isn't just SMS.
  - closewith 3y ago
    I've never come across anyone outside the US who messaged me via iMessage. Almost exclusively used in the US. Recently Apple claimed it didn't have to apply DMA measures to iMessage in the EU because it has less than 45 Million users there, or less than 10% penetration.
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    In the UK it's WhatsApp, in parts of Europe I believe it's Viber, in some communities it's Telegram, in Asia it's WhatsApp or LINE, in China it's WeChat, in some places it's Facebook Messenger. I'm between the UK and Australia, and haven't received an iMessage in years, literally. I get SMS on a daily/weekly basis for 2FA things. It probably has something to do with the fact that outside the US, iPhone market penetration is low, so it's assumed that sending someone an SMS will be an actual SMS, not always upgraded to iMessage.
- mijoharas 3y ago
  Wait, is this whole blue bubble thing US only? I'm not in the US but I use WhatsApp and android and thought it was some kind of iPhone SMS thing. Is SMS in the US different from other countries?
  - 3y ago
baz00 3y ago
As a regular Apple defender, I don't think most of us give a shit. I mean everyone I know uses WhatsApp here. I use iMessage within my family group because we all have iPhones but there appears to be absolutely no problem whatsoever with people anywhere. It goes "hey are you on whatsapp" ... and the problem is sorted. RCS is another one of these shit shows. As I said elsewhere on this thread, I used an Android recently for a couple of months (just so I have a right to bitch about it) and when I switched back it broke SMS for me. I was only using SMS to activate WhatsApp.
- solardev 3y ago
  In the US it's a real pain because we haven't had a popular national IM client since AOL Instant Messenger. Texting is the only way we can reliably communicate with other Americans, but the compatibility isn't great. Group chats, reactions, emoji etc. are all different. When an iPhone user thumbs up a message, all the android users get spammed with a message like "soandso loved: full quote of message". Our culture is really behind the times. I have zero issues communicating with people in Asia over Line or Europeans using WhatsApp. But I can't reliably text the people living in my same town, lol. Welcome to the USA.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  What I find from many of my adult iPhone-using friends is that they've got Whatsapp installed and they'll reply to me if I message them there, but when they want to send me something out of the blue they forget about Whatsapp and it comes through over SMS because they're so used to sharing via 'Messages'. The exception would be the persistent group chats in WhatsApp, they seem to think of these like 'chat rooms' from back in the day. In fact, I would go further to say that WhatsApp is preferred in my age cohort for group messaging and organization purposes because it solves the "green bubble problem".
paganel 3y ago
I am “tech literate” (I’m on this forum, after all) and it took me some good years until I learned that iMessage is not SMS, i.e. when WhatsApp stopped working on my non-updated iOS version and I had to switch to sending photos via “SMS” (which is in fact not SMS). Very recently I’ve also discovered that if I ignore the “log in to iTunes/iCloud” messages for long enough then I won’t be able to send “SMS”-eses anymore, which, when you think of it, technically makes sense but which I found puzzling nonetheless and it took a few hours of head-scratching to figure out (it’s not very intuitive to think that you need to log in to a different platform in order to send messages through the same interface that I had used for more than 20 years before without ever having to do that).
- bsbsbsbsbs 3y ago
  [flagged]
RunSet 3y ago
> I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging Just as bad if not worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software) I presume if they named it Facebook Messenger, more users might shun it.
browningstreet 3y ago
Take your pick: 1) the travails of those who buy android aren’t my concern as an iPhone owner 2) there are a million popular messaging alternatives 3) this is market revenge for “android has the market share and apple has the market share profits” 4) the kids will move past blue and green bubbles before any lawsuits are settled 5) the technically superior solution will prevail 6) are we still talking about this? 7) F Google 8) if I had to pick “n” regulatory interventions in technopolies today this one definitely wouldn’t rank, given just about any potential value of “n” 9) climate change gov & ngo interventions deserve this much iterative, insistent, passionate discussion far more Edit: Adding one more.. 10) Apple’s E2E RCS implementation will spank and embarrass Google’s version of same
- 1oooqooq 3y ago
  F google indeed. Here is how they are rolling out RCS, with the darkest of the dark patterns: https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/11/google_messages_rcs_android_1.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/11/go... note that this was the dark pattern at launch, the "don't agree" button disguised as a negative link is now disguised as greyed out text on their premium pixel UI.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > F google indeed. Here is how they are rolling out RCS, with the darkest of the dark patterns For a proper comparison, you should display that next to the opt-in UI displayed to users when their SMS messages are converted to iMessages.
    - 1oooqooq 3y ago
      feel free to contribute. I have no idea what apple customers see as I am not one.
- cmiles74 3y ago
  I will be very surprised if Apple's RCS support includes end-to-end encryption. Apple has said... "Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users." This doesn't include encryption, that's a Google extension and is not part of the GSMA standard. Indeed, I suspect we'll see only the bare minimum implemented by Apple. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-support-for-imessage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-...
kergonath 3y ago
> I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where everyone not tech literate just thinks it is SMS. Wait, I thought the problem was that it did not look like SMS and that someone somewhere was unhappy about green bubbles? Could you people make up your mind?
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  There's four groups of people here: - "Apple's target demographic". People like my parents, who just know "Open Messages to text people" and don't understand that Apple basically slid themselves in between every iPhone-to-iPhone text conversation - "BMW drivers". Extremely vain people looking for ways to not talk to the poors, who are angry that any sort of fix to this problem would decrease their ability to be classist assholes. Classholes. - "Android users stuck in iPhone families". People angry that their iPhone using friends keep texting them "Liked an image" and then asking why the images they texted them look like ass. Me. - "Whatsapp's data suppository". Western Europeans who would much rather the Americans just shut up and go away[0]. Green bubbles cost them so much money (because European carriers are horrible scum of the earth) that they all migrated to Whatsapp way before iMessage got any traction in Europe. Of course they're all going to have different opinions. We will not 'make up our mind' and it is downright insulting that you demand we make up one opinion with four minds. [0] Which seems to be the argument for a lot of other things America likes, like human rights, immigration, freedom of speech, and more generally, liberal democracy.

cweagans 3y ago

You can deregister your phone number from iMessage on the web now, fwiw. https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/ https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/

cozzyd 3y ago
yes, this is super obvious for everyone I'm sure... (I remember my wife having this problem like, 6-7 years ago when she switched away from an iphone...it took a while for her to figure out she wasn't getting "texts" from her sister)
- cweagans 3y ago
  I’m not disputing that it’s a problem. Only pointing out that there is now a workable solution that can be used after you get rid of an iPhone.
  - TiredOfLife 3y ago
    “But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
glitchc 3y ago
I get "error: Service unavailable"

tw04 3y ago

>Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem. Until RCS has native and mandatory encryption (for both 1-1 and group chats), it's just one more really poor attempt at data mining by all involved. Google claiming they want everyone to be all-in on RCS while simultaneously only supporting encryption through their non-standard extension is a bit of a joke. Say what you will about Apple, at least they're pretending to care and insisting on it. https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-support-rcs-in-2024 https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-... >Apple says it won't be supporting any proprietary extensions that seek to add encryption on top of RCS and hopes, instead, to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard. *Personally I think Apple should just create Messages for Android and charge $5/month or make it a part of their paid icloud offering and just embrace services. I get they want to sell iphones but it feels like they're in a bit of a RIM situation at the moment. You can keep fighting the inevitable but only for so long. Ironically enough, if RIM had opened up BBM and email a decade earlier they might still be around today.

AJRF 3y ago
> Personally I think Apple should just create Messages for Android and charge $5/month I'd move to Android in a heartbeat if they did this. I think that is the reason why it will never happen.
- tempodox 3y ago
  So you're on an iPhone just for the bubbles?
  - voakbasda 3y ago
    I think you are joking, as this is actual reality for many younger people, isn’t it?
    - EricHolden12 3y ago

agos 3y ago

I hope that the Apple critics understand that this issue is specific to the USA and the rest of the world has no idea that it even exists

cwillu 3y ago
There are more countries in north america than the USA, and some of them have this problem too.
mrweasel 3y ago
WAT? Doesn't iMessage work the same everywhere else? None of my family members understand that iMessage isn't just SMS.
- closewith 3y ago
  I've never come across anyone outside the US who messaged me via iMessage. Almost exclusively used in the US. Recently Apple claimed it didn't have to apply DMA measures to iMessage in the EU because it has less than 45 Million users there, or less than 10% penetration.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  In the UK it's WhatsApp, in parts of Europe I believe it's Viber, in some communities it's Telegram, in Asia it's WhatsApp or LINE, in China it's WeChat, in some places it's Facebook Messenger. I'm between the UK and Australia, and haven't received an iMessage in years, literally. I get SMS on a daily/weekly basis for 2FA things. It probably has something to do with the fact that outside the US, iPhone market penetration is low, so it's assumed that sending someone an SMS will be an actual SMS, not always upgraded to iMessage.
mijoharas 3y ago
Wait, is this whole blue bubble thing US only? I'm not in the US but I use WhatsApp and android and thought it was some kind of iPhone SMS thing. Is SMS in the US different from other countries?
- 3y ago

baz00 3y ago

As a regular Apple defender, I don't think most of us give a shit. I mean everyone I know uses WhatsApp here. I use iMessage within my family group because we all have iPhones but there appears to be absolutely no problem whatsoever with people anywhere. It goes "hey are you on whatsapp" ... and the problem is sorted. RCS is another one of these shit shows. As I said elsewhere on this thread, I used an Android recently for a couple of months (just so I have a right to bitch about it) and when I switched back it broke SMS for me. I was only using SMS to activate WhatsApp.

solardev 3y ago
In the US it's a real pain because we haven't had a popular national IM client since AOL Instant Messenger. Texting is the only way we can reliably communicate with other Americans, but the compatibility isn't great. Group chats, reactions, emoji etc. are all different. When an iPhone user thumbs up a message, all the android users get spammed with a message like "soandso loved: full quote of message". Our culture is really behind the times. I have zero issues communicating with people in Asia over Line or Europeans using WhatsApp. But I can't reliably text the people living in my same town, lol. Welcome to the USA.
oldandboring 3y ago
What I find from many of my adult iPhone-using friends is that they've got Whatsapp installed and they'll reply to me if I message them there, but when they want to send me something out of the blue they forget about Whatsapp and it comes through over SMS because they're so used to sharing via 'Messages'. The exception would be the persistent group chats in WhatsApp, they seem to think of these like 'chat rooms' from back in the day. In fact, I would go further to say that WhatsApp is preferred in my age cohort for group messaging and organization purposes because it solves the "green bubble problem".

paganel 3y ago

I am “tech literate” (I’m on this forum, after all) and it took me some good years until I learned that iMessage is not SMS, i.e. when WhatsApp stopped working on my non-updated iOS version and I had to switch to sending photos via “SMS” (which is in fact not SMS). Very recently I’ve also discovered that if I ignore the “log in to iTunes/iCloud” messages for long enough then I won’t be able to send “SMS”-eses anymore, which, when you think of it, technically makes sense but which I found puzzling nonetheless and it took a few hours of head-scratching to figure out (it’s not very intuitive to think that you need to log in to a different platform in order to send messages through the same interface that I had used for more than 20 years before without ever having to do that).

bsbsbsbsbs 3y ago
[flagged]

RunSet 3y ago

> I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging Just as bad if not worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software) I presume if they named it Facebook Messenger, more users might shun it.

browningstreet 3y ago

Take your pick: 1) the travails of those who buy android aren’t my concern as an iPhone owner 2) there are a million popular messaging alternatives 3) this is market revenge for “android has the market share and apple has the market share profits” 4) the kids will move past blue and green bubbles before any lawsuits are settled 5) the technically superior solution will prevail 6) are we still talking about this? 7) F Google 8) if I had to pick “n” regulatory interventions in technopolies today this one definitely wouldn’t rank, given just about any potential value of “n” 9) climate change gov & ngo interventions deserve this much iterative, insistent, passionate discussion far more Edit: Adding one more.. 10) Apple’s E2E RCS implementation will spank and embarrass Google’s version of same

1oooqooq 3y ago
F google indeed. Here is how they are rolling out RCS, with the darkest of the dark patterns: https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/11/google_messages_rcs_android_1.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://9to5google.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/11/go... note that this was the dark pattern at launch, the "don't agree" button disguised as a negative link is now disguised as greyed out text on their premium pixel UI.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > F google indeed. Here is how they are rolling out RCS, with the darkest of the dark patterns For a proper comparison, you should display that next to the opt-in UI displayed to users when their SMS messages are converted to iMessages.
  - 1oooqooq 3y ago
    feel free to contribute. I have no idea what apple customers see as I am not one.
cmiles74 3y ago
I will be very surprised if Apple's RCS support includes end-to-end encryption. Apple has said... "Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users." This doesn't include encryption, that's a Google extension and is not part of the GSMA standard. Indeed, I suspect we'll see only the bare minimum implemented by Apple. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-support-for-imessage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-...

kergonath 3y ago

> I hope the Apple defenders understand that the main problem with iMessage is specifically that it just looks like regular text messaging, to the point where everyone not tech literate just thinks it is SMS. Wait, I thought the problem was that it did not look like SMS and that someone somewhere was unhappy about green bubbles? Could you people make up your mind?

kmeisthax 3y ago
There's four groups of people here: - "Apple's target demographic". People like my parents, who just know "Open Messages to text people" and don't understand that Apple basically slid themselves in between every iPhone-to-iPhone text conversation - "BMW drivers". Extremely vain people looking for ways to not talk to the poors, who are angry that any sort of fix to this problem would decrease their ability to be classist assholes. Classholes. - "Android users stuck in iPhone families". People angry that their iPhone using friends keep texting them "Liked an image" and then asking why the images they texted them look like ass. Me. - "Whatsapp's data suppository". Western Europeans who would much rather the Americans just shut up and go away[0]. Green bubbles cost them so much money (because European carriers are horrible scum of the earth) that they all migrated to Whatsapp way before iMessage got any traction in Europe. Of course they're all going to have different opinions. We will not 'make up our mind' and it is downright insulting that you demand we make up one opinion with four minds. [0] Which seems to be the argument for a lot of other things America likes, like human rights, immigration, freedom of speech, and more generally, liberal democracy.