Why does this matter? As an android user, I don't really understand iMessage. Are people mad about a text bubble being a different color?
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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I had to click another link within that article to understand what the hell a green bubble is. Apparently messages from people with Android phones are green in iMessage, whereas messages from other iMessage users are blue. And this is something people care about to the point that kids are bullied over it. How pathetic are people? Humanity was a mistake. Lol.
Not really the case.
Green in iOS messaging means it’s an SMS or an MMS. Technically iPhones send them as well, even when communicating with other iPhones, if there is a problem sending the iMessage version.
The issue isn’t really that the color is different, it’s the handling of the messages. Apple is pretty explicit in their divide. They either send iMessages, or bog standard SMS/MMS. They intentionally don’t play nice with RCS.
This causes a lot of headache between iPhone and android users. Any piece of information you want to send that isn’t pure text or a format/size supported by MMS, just isn’t possible. Things like stickers, replies, or reactions all get “lost in translation” as they either aren’t possible, or get a text version “KairuByte reacted with a heart.”
Apple made this choice as an attempt to force people to choose between the two ecosystems. And its pretty shitty.
Some Apple users regard this as a status symbol, some even excluding android users to avoid the green bubbles. This is probably because they perceive android as inferior since green text bubbles are associated with degraded performance largely imposed by apple when falling back to sms for interoperability (crappy pic quality, spammy notifications). Apple uses this to help keep iphone dominance (at least in the US).
Blue bubble in iMessage means the message is encrypted and fully functional. Green bubble means it’s not encrypted and some features (like sharing videos) wont work properly.
Apple has gained a lot of market share in recent years, and apparently it’s a thing to make fun of that one person in a group text who’s using an android and forcing all the bubbles to be green. Kinda silly, and I’m sure Google’s ultimate goal here is getting access to more user data (over any concerns about “openness” or bullying), but there you go.
Oh, no kidding? Encrypted vs unencrypted too, or is that only it? I had no idea.
Totally agree that google just wants info tho.
iMessage does end-to-end encryption by default, but only between iMessage clients (blue bubbles). I believe (someone correct if I’m wrong) that android’s basic messaging app does SMS by default, which does not support encryption. So iMessage can communicate with android phones, but only by falling back to basic unencrypted messaging, which it displays in a green bubble.
There are other proprietary iMessage features too, like animated messages, that don’t work for android at all. And I suppose to be fair to Apple users, it is kind of annoying having an android in a group chat because tagging a message (thumbs up or whatever) doesn’t actually tag it, it just sends a message that says says “so-and-so liked a message”. Not worth bullying someone over, but I get the irritation.
Android does RCS and only falls back to SMS or MMS because that's all Apple will let iMessage use. RCS is an open standard that supports end to end encryption, full video and image sharing, and everything else iMessage does. Android can even translate iMessage message tagging and display them properly, but apple purposefully makes the experience worse if messaging non apple devices.
And here I come to say, what the fuck is Imessager
iMessage is the iPhone’s default texting app. It comes preinstalled on all their phones.
The app is called Messages. iMessages are what are sent through Apples messaging system which is only available to Apple devices.
Or, you know, we could just forget about iMessage, and instead use Signal (or your favorite end-to-end encrypted messenger app) that works on both iOS and Android with no meaningful differences.
Good luck getting your grandma to install signal, and never touch the default messaging app again.
Grandma will install it herself when she feels left out. She managed to install Facebook, she will manage to install something else.
And what happens in five years, after Google has locked customers into their infrastructure, and they drop RCS, like so many other projects?
RCS is a GSM Association standard.
The Internet was all open standards once too.
And which standards did Google destroy?
Signal uses blue bubbles. No Google/Apple required, go thusly!