5 ms·

It's been that way for awhile, though they do use instagram and/or tiktok for consumption. iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with andr

It's been that way for awhile, though they do use instagram and/or tiktok for consumption. iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion. The kids have been taught the dangers of sharing things on the internet, so the risk is minimized sharing in private chats (though obviously still there).

FireBeyond 1y ago
> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion. Craig Federighi fought against supporting iMessage on Android and RCS for a long time saying, quote, "It would remove obstacles towards iPhone families being able to give their kids Android phones."
handfuloflight 1y ago
> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion. Are kids really that simplistically divided?
- dcchambers 1y ago
  100%. iMessage is THE number one thing selling iphones these days, and has been for a long time.
  - handfuloflight 1y ago
    But why does it matter if the majority of cellular plans provide unlimited texting?
    - tmpz22 1y ago
      Its about the extra features iMessage has because of Apple's superset of the underlying SMS/MMS functionality. Its also about having a blue bubble (not-poor) versus a green bubble (poor). It defies belief how much some demographics care about this stuff, I didn't believe it when I first heard either. Some of it is improving with RCS but its got a ways to go.
      - dcchambers 1y ago
        Exactly this. Even if RCS does everything iMessage does, you still have a dreaded "green bubble" in iOS messaging which is a huge (anti) social signal to teens. Does it justify their reason for hating on Android/green bubbles? Of course not, but that's 100% the reality of the situation.
        frollogaston 1y ago
        Teens care about silly things like that, but a real thing I care about as an adult is group chats working properly. Like, I was looking for a realtor last year when buying a house. One of them had Android, and I really thought about it, do I want to take a nonzero chance of that somehow screwing the plans up on closing? That's not the main reason I went with another one, but I still paid attention to how many group iMessages we were in with lenders, seller's realtor, or just me + wife + realtor. Things really did come down to the hour during negotiating and closing, so it might've mattered.
        zifpanachr23 1y ago
        Worrying about whether or not somebody has an Android is going to be very bad for your mental health given that something like 42% of the US cell phone market is Android. Is it possible that you are living in a bubble of people that are significantly more committed to Apple products than the median person? I don't live in such a bubble, and whether or not somebody has Apple or Android is not something I have ever heard an adult bring up as a serious thing. The most I've ever seen is as an observation about why some sort of thing in a group chat didn't work, but then everyone moves on with their day and the chat continues with the types of text and media that do work.
        frollogaston 1y ago
        It was only important for the home-buying process, and somehow every single person involved happened to have an iPhone. Presumably if they were all on Android, they'd prefer WhatsApp, and that'd be ok too. Outside of that exceptional case, I don't think much about what phone other people have, but I personally want the phone that won't break group chats I get added to. Only about 75% of my friends use iPhones, but there's still a decent chance a group happens to be 100%.
    - frollogaston 1y ago
      It doesn't matter so much for 1:1, but SMS group chat is a mess (or MMS? RCS? idk).
    - tristor 1y ago
      Because people like sharing photos and videos and MMS is hot garbage? My phone can record 4K60 video and take 48 megapixel photos, but MMS can only handle 0.72 megapixel photos under 300KB and 240p video capped at 30 seconds. Why would /anyone/ in 2025 want to use SMS/MMS when they could use iMessage or RCS, or even WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Discord, et al?
  - theshackleford 1y ago
    Maybe in your neck of the woods, I see no evidence for outside of that. iMessage is completely irrelevant where I live. SMS/MMS full stop is irrelevant.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      In the US, people overwhelmingly use SMS/MMS/iMessage by default. It works with every phone, it's the one platform that people won't say "I don't have that" to.
      - theshackleford 1y ago
        I've no doubt it may be the case in the US, I did not mean to suggest it's not. It simply doesnt have the same sway everywhere. I don't know literally a single person who uses SMS/MMS/iMessage where I live. And it's been this way for years. It's easily 99% whatsapp/messenger/discord etc. It's pretty openly joked about that the only thing SMS is still for these days is spam/marketing/political messaging.
        tristor 1y ago
        > I've no doubt it may be the case in the US, I did not mean to suggest it's not. It simply doesnt have the same sway everywhere. You're correct, of course. WhatsApp was significantly more popular than SMS in the majority of Latin American and European countries before iMessage even really picked up steam in the US. But it doesn't matter, because the US, by revenue share, is the world's largest market, full stop. One of the lessons we can learn from the social media business model is that you can get incredibly large entirely off the US market before it even makes sense to engage in the rest of the world. The person you're replying to is correct in context of the US market, which if you're Apple is basically the only market that matters other than China, since in the rest of the world most people use Android, usually due to cost differences (flagship Android models sell extremely poor volumes compared to iPhones, even globally).
      - zifpanachr23 1y ago
        Yep, and I like it this way.
  - te_chris 1y ago
    Only in the US, the rest of us aren’t that petty and just use WhatsApp or signal
- frollogaston 1y ago
  Adults too
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  it's just a new version of "preps don't hang out with goths"
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- procinct 1y ago
  I see this line of thinking online a lot, with people mentioning kids are excluded because they have green bubbles as if it’s some sort of highly superficial exclusion based on only wanting to talk to Apple users. The main issue is that including a non-iMessage user changes the protocol of the group chat from iMessage to SMS and SMS can basically make group chats unusable. I also don’t like that kids who don’t have an iPhone can’t participate in iMessage group chats, but when we make out like it’s just kids being cruel and not an actual functional incentive to not include those kids then we are losing sight of where the pressure should be applied.
  - zifpanachr23 1y ago
    The pressure should obviously be applied on the underage children with the Apple products, or better yet on Apple. Perhaps the children should be punished and have their iPhones taken away and replaced with budget android phones or flip phones. This is good in the long run since the behavior they were engaging in puts them at odds with nearly half the population. Not only is it anti-social behavior, it's mind numbingly stupid and likely to backfire in ways that make their lives worse. ~43% of the cell phones out there in the US are Android phones. To follow their conviction against Android at all convincingly and thoroughly, they would be missing out on a lifetime of opportunities and would live a significantly diminished existence. iPhone is not even close to being a dominant enough platform to be able to enforce this kind of social pressure against anyone but people significantly under the age of 18. Shame them, make sure they feel bad and spoiled (they should feel spoiled for being a child with an iphone), and watch them grow out up to be pro-social adults.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
It literally works seamlessly though? Just converts to MMS and you don't notice outside the "liked BLABLABLA" sort of messages that trickle in without the imessage emoji system.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  I don't think seamless integration with MMS is enough to outweigh being different/not having "the real thing" or the full experience in the eyes of a young teenager. This reads as the HN version of the "but we have iMessage at home" meme (I mean this humourously, not as snark).
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    We are past peak iphone. The actual cool phones of this era like the folding screen phones are all android.
- mckn1ght 1y ago
  Even that has been fixed by now in my chats with android friends. The only reason to display green bubbles anymore is to indicate lack of E2EE. But that will be coming to RCS interop soon as well.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  In theory it's ok. In practice, MMS group chats are broken. It's not even an iPhone thing, as evident in Android-dominated areas still relying on WhatsApp instead.
  - KeplerBoy 1y ago
    That's not why WhatsApp took over. WhatsApp rose to popularity back when texting (especially internationally) was not unlimited and free.
    - frollogaston 1y ago
      Internationally maybe, but if someone in the US is using WhatsApp, it's because of the group texting problem. My family included.
serial_dev 1y ago
Whenever I hear this iMessage thing I’m surprised. Is that a US / Canada thing? Here in Europe, everybody uses WhatsApp and/or similar products for chat and they are all multi platform.
- herbst 1y ago
  This. In 98% of all cases I get away with only having telegram (no phone number even) most people have one or multiple IMs
- hylaride 1y ago
  iOS/iPhones are the majority of phones in Canada and the US (~60%). However, if you take the upper half of household incomes that number skyrockets to 80-90%. Comparatively, in the UK it's 50/50. In the rest of europe android mostly has a 60-75% market share (tends to drift more towards android the more eastern you go - signalling wealth has a lot to do with it). The reasons why are varied (everything from wealth signalling to switching being a pain and iphone mostly had a first mover advantage for quality and availability for the first several years), but it's only in the last two years that I've seen people start to use multi-platform chat apps here. Most of my peer group with other parents all default to imessage group chats for sharing photos, stories of our kids. I am also starting to notice a loosening on apple's services. Spotify is used by more people than Apple music even amungst the apple households I know.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    Kids are ruthless about anti green bubble discrimination and it’s part of the reason for the rise of incels. The overwhelming majority of incels are android users, and the mainstream cultural media likes to make clear that one of the reason for being incels is them using a “poordroid” https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-off-why-some-iphone-users-wont-date-android-users/ https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-... https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-dreaded-green-bubble/ https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-dreaded-green-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-... https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-of-my-green-bubb-1787965756 https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-o... https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bubble-stigma-is-part-of-the-anti-trust-case-against-apple https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub... https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-and-your-android-green-bubbles-in-our-imessage-chat https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-an...

FireBeyond 1y ago

> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion. Craig Federighi fought against supporting iMessage on Android and RCS for a long time saying, quote, "It would remove obstacles towards iPhone families being able to give their kids Android phones."

handfuloflight 1y ago

> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion. Are kids really that simplistically divided?

dcchambers 1y ago
100%. iMessage is THE number one thing selling iphones these days, and has been for a long time.
- handfuloflight 1y ago
  But why does it matter if the majority of cellular plans provide unlimited texting?
  - tmpz22 1y ago
    Its about the extra features iMessage has because of Apple's superset of the underlying SMS/MMS functionality. Its also about having a blue bubble (not-poor) versus a green bubble (poor). It defies belief how much some demographics care about this stuff, I didn't believe it when I first heard either. Some of it is improving with RCS but its got a ways to go.
    - dcchambers 1y ago
      Exactly this. Even if RCS does everything iMessage does, you still have a dreaded "green bubble" in iOS messaging which is a huge (anti) social signal to teens. Does it justify their reason for hating on Android/green bubbles? Of course not, but that's 100% the reality of the situation.
      - frollogaston 1y ago
        Teens care about silly things like that, but a real thing I care about as an adult is group chats working properly. Like, I was looking for a realtor last year when buying a house. One of them had Android, and I really thought about it, do I want to take a nonzero chance of that somehow screwing the plans up on closing? That's not the main reason I went with another one, but I still paid attention to how many group iMessages we were in with lenders, seller's realtor, or just me + wife + realtor. Things really did come down to the hour during negotiating and closing, so it might've mattered.
        zifpanachr23 1y ago
        Worrying about whether or not somebody has an Android is going to be very bad for your mental health given that something like 42% of the US cell phone market is Android. Is it possible that you are living in a bubble of people that are significantly more committed to Apple products than the median person? I don't live in such a bubble, and whether or not somebody has Apple or Android is not something I have ever heard an adult bring up as a serious thing. The most I've ever seen is as an observation about why some sort of thing in a group chat didn't work, but then everyone moves on with their day and the chat continues with the types of text and media that do work.
        frollogaston 1y ago
        It was only important for the home-buying process, and somehow every single person involved happened to have an iPhone. Presumably if they were all on Android, they'd prefer WhatsApp, and that'd be ok too. Outside of that exceptional case, I don't think much about what phone other people have, but I personally want the phone that won't break group chats I get added to. Only about 75% of my friends use iPhones, but there's still a decent chance a group happens to be 100%.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    It doesn't matter so much for 1:1, but SMS group chat is a mess (or MMS? RCS? idk).
  - tristor 1y ago
    Because people like sharing photos and videos and MMS is hot garbage? My phone can record 4K60 video and take 48 megapixel photos, but MMS can only handle 0.72 megapixel photos under 300KB and 240p video capped at 30 seconds. Why would /anyone/ in 2025 want to use SMS/MMS when they could use iMessage or RCS, or even WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Discord, et al?
- theshackleford 1y ago
  Maybe in your neck of the woods, I see no evidence for outside of that. iMessage is completely irrelevant where I live. SMS/MMS full stop is irrelevant.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    In the US, people overwhelmingly use SMS/MMS/iMessage by default. It works with every phone, it's the one platform that people won't say "I don't have that" to.
    - theshackleford 1y ago
      I've no doubt it may be the case in the US, I did not mean to suggest it's not. It simply doesnt have the same sway everywhere. I don't know literally a single person who uses SMS/MMS/iMessage where I live. And it's been this way for years. It's easily 99% whatsapp/messenger/discord etc. It's pretty openly joked about that the only thing SMS is still for these days is spam/marketing/political messaging.
      - tristor 1y ago
        > I've no doubt it may be the case in the US, I did not mean to suggest it's not. It simply doesnt have the same sway everywhere. You're correct, of course. WhatsApp was significantly more popular than SMS in the majority of Latin American and European countries before iMessage even really picked up steam in the US. But it doesn't matter, because the US, by revenue share, is the world's largest market, full stop. One of the lessons we can learn from the social media business model is that you can get incredibly large entirely off the US market before it even makes sense to engage in the rest of the world. The person you're replying to is correct in context of the US market, which if you're Apple is basically the only market that matters other than China, since in the rest of the world most people use Android, usually due to cost differences (flagship Android models sell extremely poor volumes compared to iPhones, even globally).
    - zifpanachr23 1y ago
      Yep, and I like it this way.
- te_chris 1y ago
  Only in the US, the rest of us aren’t that petty and just use WhatsApp or signal
frollogaston 1y ago
Adults too
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
it's just a new version of "preps don't hang out with goths"
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
procinct 1y ago
I see this line of thinking online a lot, with people mentioning kids are excluded because they have green bubbles as if it’s some sort of highly superficial exclusion based on only wanting to talk to Apple users. The main issue is that including a non-iMessage user changes the protocol of the group chat from iMessage to SMS and SMS can basically make group chats unusable. I also don’t like that kids who don’t have an iPhone can’t participate in iMessage group chats, but when we make out like it’s just kids being cruel and not an actual functional incentive to not include those kids then we are losing sight of where the pressure should be applied.
- zifpanachr23 1y ago
  The pressure should obviously be applied on the underage children with the Apple products, or better yet on Apple. Perhaps the children should be punished and have their iPhones taken away and replaced with budget android phones or flip phones. This is good in the long run since the behavior they were engaging in puts them at odds with nearly half the population. Not only is it anti-social behavior, it's mind numbingly stupid and likely to backfire in ways that make their lives worse. ~43% of the cell phones out there in the US are Android phones. To follow their conviction against Android at all convincingly and thoroughly, they would be missing out on a lifetime of opportunities and would live a significantly diminished existence. iPhone is not even close to being a dominant enough platform to be able to enforce this kind of social pressure against anyone but people significantly under the age of 18. Shame them, make sure they feel bad and spoiled (they should feel spoiled for being a child with an iphone), and watch them grow out up to be pro-social adults.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

It literally works seamlessly though? Just converts to MMS and you don't notice outside the "liked BLABLABLA" sort of messages that trickle in without the imessage emoji system.

AlecSchueler 1y ago
I don't think seamless integration with MMS is enough to outweigh being different/not having "the real thing" or the full experience in the eyes of a young teenager. This reads as the HN version of the "but we have iMessage at home" meme (I mean this humourously, not as snark).
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  We are past peak iphone. The actual cool phones of this era like the folding screen phones are all android.
mckn1ght 1y ago
Even that has been fixed by now in my chats with android friends. The only reason to display green bubbles anymore is to indicate lack of E2EE. But that will be coming to RCS interop soon as well.
frollogaston 1y ago
In theory it's ok. In practice, MMS group chats are broken. It's not even an iPhone thing, as evident in Android-dominated areas still relying on WhatsApp instead.
- KeplerBoy 1y ago
  That's not why WhatsApp took over. WhatsApp rose to popularity back when texting (especially internationally) was not unlimited and free.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    Internationally maybe, but if someone in the US is using WhatsApp, it's because of the group texting problem. My family included.

serial_dev 1y ago

Whenever I hear this iMessage thing I’m surprised. Is that a US / Canada thing? Here in Europe, everybody uses WhatsApp and/or similar products for chat and they are all multi platform.

herbst 1y ago
This. In 98% of all cases I get away with only having telegram (no phone number even) most people have one or multiple IMs
hylaride 1y ago
iOS/iPhones are the majority of phones in Canada and the US (~60%). However, if you take the upper half of household incomes that number skyrockets to 80-90%. Comparatively, in the UK it's 50/50. In the rest of europe android mostly has a 60-75% market share (tends to drift more towards android the more eastern you go - signalling wealth has a lot to do with it). The reasons why are varied (everything from wealth signalling to switching being a pain and iphone mostly had a first mover advantage for quality and availability for the first several years), but it's only in the last two years that I've seen people start to use multi-platform chat apps here. Most of my peer group with other parents all default to imessage group chats for sharing photos, stories of our kids. I am also starting to notice a loosening on apple's services. Spotify is used by more people than Apple music even amungst the apple households I know.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  Kids are ruthless about anti green bubble discrimination and it’s part of the reason for the rise of incels. The overwhelming majority of incels are android users, and the mainstream cultural media likes to make clear that one of the reason for being incels is them using a “poordroid” https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-off-why-some-iphone-users-wont-date-android-users/ https://leafandcore.com/2019/08/24/green-bubbles-are-a-turn-... https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-dreaded-green-bubble/ https://outsidethebeltway.com/the-dreaded-green-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-... https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-of-my-green-bubb-1787965756 https://gizmodo.com/im-buying-an-iphone-because-im-ashamed-o... https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bubble-stigma-is-part-of-the-anti-trust-case-against-apple https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241473453/why-green-text-bub... https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-and-your-android-green-bubbles-in-our-imessage-chat https://www.fastcompany.com/90391587/why-we-dont-want-you-an...