Comment on Why do most Americans use an iPhone?
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week agoI still find this hard to believe. It’s just a visual indicator whether the conversation is encrypted or not, but who would actually judge partners with this.
When I checked with my kids, since we know teenagers can be very shallow bullies, they said there is some light teasing but it was really started by online crap like this. Not even teenagers care. I mean, they don’t usually use iMessages anyway, so many probably never noticed. “Blue texts” is a fake issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was started as a prank, or by Google, and no one cared until it was all over the internet
artificialfish@programming.dev 1 week ago
It’s not just a visual indication of if it’s encrypted. SMS sucks, truly, compared to apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, etc. so it’s actually annoying to message people with green text. Now that Apple does RCS it’s not a big deal, but in the USA there’s no default internet messaging app like WhatsApp, to the extent that there is one, it’s iMessage.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
SMS is default texting for all phones of all types all providers in the US. Its main advantage is ubiquity and it is the only ubiquitous text protocol. SMS was always owned by cell providers.
While I also am disappointed that ubiquitous text protocol owned by cell providers never progressed, can’t blame Apple for that. They could have used their influence to push harder but bottom line is the change needed to be at cell providers. They may also have seen that even Google with all its influence wasn’t able to make it happen (without taking it proprietary, owning it, centralizing it).
But let me ask this: what other texting provider includes a fallback to incorporate texters outside their network? At all? Does WhatsApp include users of iMessage? SMS? RCS?
artificialfish@programming.dev 1 week ago
You can literally blame Apple for that, because that standard did progress, and they did not incorporate it into their default messaging app for years due to anticompetitive marketing practices. To compare the responsibilities of a default and only (since you can’t sidecar on iPhone) text messaging app on a phone with 50% market share with a third party app is bad faith.
Did you just reverse your position? I’m confused.
AA5B@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Different bubbles are a visual indicator whether the messages are encrypted.
Apple is a good faith participant in that they support a fallback to the texting standard supported by every mobile vendor.
It’s not bad faith on my part when you brought up WhatsApp. Sure they don’t have blue but bubbles, but that’s because they don’t support an open standard at all, they don’t have an inclusive mode at all, they only support their own users on their own proprietary protocol.
Most importantly I don’t see how it’s Apple’s responsibility to push mobile vendors to modernize. Blame them if vendors were modernizing and they pushed back