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Just please stop sending the text that reads as follows, it totally destroys group chats and the amount of information conveyed in a react doesn't require quoti

Just please stop sending the text that reads as follows, it totally destroys group chats and the amount of information conveyed in a react doesn't require quoting back the entire message, eg Liked "I would be surprised if this eliminates green bubbles. iMessage supports many features unavailable over RCS on Android devices. These would still be disabled and Apple needs a way to indicate a degraded feature set to iMessage users."

MBCook 2y ago
I thought Android released an update last year to automatically interpret those as display them as reactions.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  iOS did it too when communicating with Android but also updated.
devilbunny 2y ago
I have never seen a reaction that helped. "OK" is short, it's in plain text, and it works easily. I don't need your thumbs up. Or your like. You want to emoji, go ahead, but I'm getting older and I can't zoom in on them without blowing up general text to the same size. With more complex emoji I have to screenshot the text and then pull up the image to zoom on it to even tell what it is. I'd silence the conversation, except that iMessage won't let you have two identical groups with exactly the same members. So both humorous and serious stuff goes into the same group chat, and it's often very time-sensitive if serious. Then three or four people start joking around, reacting to each other, and suddenly while I'm at dinner (or, my favorite, one hour into a three-hour drive) my phone or watch is going off every twenty seconds for five minutes. I can't ignore them, because one of those dings might be from someone else about something that needs an answer right now. I can't risk forgetting to turn notifications back on. When I still used an Android phone, the max-ten-people SMS rule meant that I was missing important business information - like, for example, I found out that our secretary had cancer when she asked me for restaurant recommendations near MD Anderson Cancer Clinic in Houston. Never occurred to anyone else that I had gotten none of that.
- lxgr 2y ago
  While acknowledging that you might not have any agency about this in your specific situation, this sounds more like a social/boundaries problem than a technical one. If I were in a group chat with people both joking around and sending messages requiring urgent responses, I'd let them know to either cut the banter and keep the channel clear, or contact me otherwise if they need my urgent reaction. Letting people hold my attention hostage like that would drive me crazy.
  - happymellon 2y ago
    It definitely sounds like a technical one if you can't make two groups, one for banter and one for serious talk so you can mute banter when it's not appropriate. How are other people supposed to know that it's not okay for you right now because you are at dinner?
    - devilbunny 2y ago
      We all live in the same metro area. You might eat as early as five, you might finish as late as nine. But if you're going to use the business group, it should be about business. Banter is fine during working hours. People get lazy and just use the "whole group" message rather than send it to those who are working today. And it's much like my problems with Android vs iOS: there are twelve people in this group, eleven of them have iPhones. They are not all going to install and use a separate messaging app for business than for personal communication, especially as iMessage is nominally E2EE. I could adapt or just be completely marginalized. So now twelve have iPhones.
      - jen20 2y ago
        Have you considered using something like Slack or Discord or (can’t believe I’m suggesting this) Teams, all of which sound like they’d be more suited to your use case? This does not sound like an impossible stretch, works on more device types, and in the case of Slack or Teams can also be configured for HIPAA compliance (which while you don’t call it out, seems like it may be useful). Tens of millions of people use a chat system for work distinct from their personal friend groups, even if the venn diagram is a circle.

MBCook 2y ago

I thought Android released an update last year to automatically interpret those as display them as reactions.

mattmaroon 2y ago
iOS did it too when communicating with Android but also updated.

devilbunny 2y ago

I have never seen a reaction that helped. "OK" is short, it's in plain text, and it works easily. I don't need your thumbs up. Or your like. You want to emoji, go ahead, but I'm getting older and I can't zoom in on them without blowing up general text to the same size. With more complex emoji I have to screenshot the text and then pull up the image to zoom on it to even tell what it is. I'd silence the conversation, except that iMessage won't let you have two identical groups with exactly the same members. So both humorous and serious stuff goes into the same group chat, and it's often very time-sensitive if serious. Then three or four people start joking around, reacting to each other, and suddenly while I'm at dinner (or, my favorite, one hour into a three-hour drive) my phone or watch is going off every twenty seconds for five minutes. I can't ignore them, because one of those dings might be from someone else about something that needs an answer right now. I can't risk forgetting to turn notifications back on. When I still used an Android phone, the max-ten-people SMS rule meant that I was missing important business information - like, for example, I found out that our secretary had cancer when she asked me for restaurant recommendations near MD Anderson Cancer Clinic in Houston. Never occurred to anyone else that I had gotten none of that.

lxgr 2y ago
While acknowledging that you might not have any agency about this in your specific situation, this sounds more like a social/boundaries problem than a technical one. If I were in a group chat with people both joking around and sending messages requiring urgent responses, I'd let them know to either cut the banter and keep the channel clear, or contact me otherwise if they need my urgent reaction. Letting people hold my attention hostage like that would drive me crazy.
- happymellon 2y ago
  It definitely sounds like a technical one if you can't make two groups, one for banter and one for serious talk so you can mute banter when it's not appropriate. How are other people supposed to know that it's not okay for you right now because you are at dinner?
  - devilbunny 2y ago
    We all live in the same metro area. You might eat as early as five, you might finish as late as nine. But if you're going to use the business group, it should be about business. Banter is fine during working hours. People get lazy and just use the "whole group" message rather than send it to those who are working today. And it's much like my problems with Android vs iOS: there are twelve people in this group, eleven of them have iPhones. They are not all going to install and use a separate messaging app for business than for personal communication, especially as iMessage is nominally E2EE. I could adapt or just be completely marginalized. So now twelve have iPhones.
    - jen20 2y ago
      Have you considered using something like Slack or Discord or (can’t believe I’m suggesting this) Teams, all of which sound like they’d be more suited to your use case? This does not sound like an impossible stretch, works on more device types, and in the case of Slack or Teams can also be configured for HIPAA compliance (which while you don’t call it out, seems like it may be useful). Tens of millions of people use a chat system for work distinct from their personal friend groups, even if the venn diagram is a circle.