@Marianne Suesli Yeah! That is an issue for everyone, therefore everyone just defaults to one, but in other countries it defaults to WhatsApp (mainly) therefore nobody thinks on what messaging app you use. I only use 3 apps, WhatsApp for personal reasons, Teams for work reasons and Signal if I need my boss ASAP (like a permit or something like that)
Meine Tante, mein Onkel und meine Kusine benutzen beide ein iPhone, aber ich glaube sie wissen nicht einmal, was iMessage ist, sie verwenden WhatsApp. (Österreich)
genuinely fascinated about the green vs blue thing as a US android user who never even realized this was a thing. def encountered the groupchat issue but it's usually not hard to find an app everyone can use instead when that does come up
I just love how Apple convinced people to blame Android users for this when this is literally 100% Apple's fault for not allowing anyone else to use their applications
@jens4president Actually you should try to make her understand, if you can that being odd is at times better. Helps to stand out! Its not easy but way better in the long run. Like the country am from, I owned various iterations of iPhone from 2010 to 2018, I was an odd one out coz most of my peers were on the droid. Now iPhones have become super popular and I use an Android. I just don't want to give my money to a shady company like Apple anymore. When I was young I didn't realise how they use human slaves to make their devices or how they used low quality products (antenna gate), or how they didn't add a proper t9 dialer in their phones or how you could not access the meta data of snaps in the default photos app and many such examples. Now Apple as per me is just a designer company who happens to make tech devices. Same like Red Bull.
@halycon404 No, no, no. The truly sad thing is people like my 15 year old daughter get bullied because they are a green bubble. I just cannot fathom that. She wants an iphone for Christmas. Why? So she doesnt get bullied or made fun of. So, if I get her an iphone, Apple wins. And what a terrible way to win.
I'm from Switzerland. The iPhone is about as popular here as it is in the US but our default messaging app (for better and for worse) is in fact WhatsApp. That's the messaging app that everybody and your mom uses and that you kinda have to have, especially for group chats. While I absolutely detest the fact that a service from Meta has become the de facto standard in my country, I'm still glad that we don't have a problem with school bullying over the color of bubbles - at least as far as I know
@StarkWurst My gf and I wanted to give Signal a try, just to message between ourselves, but the app made the phones (both of them) super hot and drained the battery so we went back to whatsapp lol
Yeah in Germany (your neighbour) its the same, all use whatsapp, cool people telegram and even cooler ( and probably weirdos) signal or god forbid threema. I dont like whatsapp but i find the idea of getting all my boomer relatives introduced to another messenger too troublesome (and then they all habe to convince their boomer friends etc.). So as digitaly flexible as I am, I use 3 different Messengers.
For what I can remember here in Spain whatsapp became popular as a "free" alternative to SMS around the years 2010 and 2011. When iMessage released most (young) social circles where already on whatsapp even if everyone had an iPhone, and I believe that by then most smartphone users where using Android.
Similar story here in Bulgaria - since people used Facebook messaging a lot back in the keyboard phone era, once smartphones started kicking in everyone just continued with messenger, and thus the iMessage blue/green bubbles trope never became a thing. Nowadays probably around 40-50% of teenagers/college students have iPhones, yet I don’t know a single person that actively uses iMessage. We all just use Facebook messenger (or instagram chats, but that’s just horrendously bad 🤮)
@M. M. B. in the art world there are some amazing apps that seem to only be available on ios. But i use a tablet for that. My phones are always androids.
@espanoza i had android for 8 years then got an iphone 13 a year ago just to try it out because over a decade ago i was a huge apple fanboy. id agree on overpriced tbh.
Android is actually used by smart people, Apple the ever closed system, user friendly (for simple people) very good explanation of the Apple prison wall. And I have been with way too many women.
Corrections: • An SMS is 140 bytes, not 160. For English text, they use GSM-7, which is a *7-bit* encoding, turning 140 _bytes_ into 160 _characters._ Alternatively, if you need (partial) unicode support, they use UCS-2, which is 16-bit encoding, resulting in 70 characters. • You do non need an MMS to send emoji. Emoji are just unicode characters. You can use them in a standard SMS, if you're willing to go from 160 characters to 70 (as described above). • iMessage _is_ end-to-end encrypted, however, if you enable iCloud backups, the encryption key is backed up there. So Apple has your encrypted messages _and_ the encryption key, so they can read them. And even if you don't have iCloud backups enabled, if the person you're talking with does, Apple will still see those messages.
When you said blue bubble vs green bubble I thought you meant iMessage vs whatsapp... That's how much we don't care about those things here in Europe 👀😅 we just all use WhatsApp 🤔
I was unaware of this being an “issue” until just recently. It’s not a big deal, but it w oh I’d be nice if something was done, but Apple has no reason to change
For my lifeguarding job my boss didn’t add me to the group chat that we posted our schedules because he “didn’t wanna deal with the green text.” And half the time i was never sure of my schedule. And my coworkers always made fun of me saying i should just get an iPhone and the green text is soo annoying. Just made me realize how brainwashed people are here in the US. Long story short, I spent my next paycheck on a iPhone 💀
@RealSupaHotFireVEVO iPhones have barely any customization at all , if you prioritize having no freedom with your phone then yes Iphones are better phone's for people who just want something for Imessage and do the bare minimum you could use a phone for.
Yeah. I switched from Apple to Android and have experienced the resulting blue bubble backlash first hand. Apples aversion to work with other brands has ensured that I will never be buying their products until something changes.
As an American, after I met my boyfriend who is Japanese, he introduced me to LINE. It is SO much more appealing than default messaging. Plus the stickers are on point lol. It also can act as a mini, completely closed social media with ONLY close friends on it. Living in Japan now, most people around me never use their default messaging whatsoever with even notifications from services, doctors offices/appointments, restaurants, coupons, retail stores, etc all use LINE codes to message you info rather than your phone number. Even the post office gives you updates through LINE and allows you to choose the time and date that your package Is delivered so that they know when you are home, straight through using LINE. I’ve also scheduled my dental appointments directly through LINE app.
@1silenthunder1 This is true. Kakao is basically Korean equivalent of LINE. If you have friends in Korea or plan on traveling there (even for vacation), it's beneficial to have Kakao
This is crazy! I'm American and an Android user and never knew about this. I attribute this to being in the let's play/gaming community where we all use Discord and/or Snapchat to set up play schedules with people all over the world to stay in contact without giving people our phone numbers.
Yeah, Android user here too. I'm not in the gaming community but none of my friends or coworkers are big enough dicks to make fun of me for using a different phone than them. I definitely never knew this was a thing.
This was such a interesting analysis of the whole text messaging issue. Something I never thought about. Seeing the blue and green bubbles simply let me know if they use an iPhone or not. Didn’t care about the silly status symbol it represents. So weird how people fall into that hole.
Google has failed to convince people on security and privacy. Android to me feels like a loose framework with too many moving parts. One analogy I can think of is, Apple feels like a cold forged wrench, solid where as android feels like a flimsy multi-tool.
Wow, blows my mind as a non-American that this is an issue. Always interesting to hear about weird cultural aspect of countries though, even though this is a particularly crazy one! Thanks for the video Marques!
Grew up in the US, but have family in Europe and currently live in Europe so having What'sApp was just always a thing for me and like it so much better than the default app
@Teej I came to comment this. I use wired headphones in the studio for latency issues. But I haven’t connected wired headphones to my cell phone in like 5 years
Very understandable, it should be shocking because it's extreme behavior from people on that side of the ocean. They live in a bubble and live with blinders on their eyes. They definitely aren't well cultured or socially experienced.
Thanks for this video. I didn't know that the whole blue vs. green bubble was an issue. Part of the reason is that I just do basic texting so the fancier functions (such as read receipts) are something I don't use. Another twist to mention is that I use a flip phone (Cingular Flip IV) so my bubble colors are green with white text for my texts, and grey with black text for other people's texts
This would be so embarrassing to explain to aliens. Imagine you go to visit "the neighbors" just to meet them, and they tell you that an extremely rich group of people that controls almost half of the world's communication, is so greedy that they don't bother making their communication system universal for everyone on the planet. We would look like primitive peasants to them
Great video! it explains very clearly what a lot other concepts are not just Blue vs Green bubbles I would include in the description such as - SMS, MMS, RCS, Android Messaging, iOS messaging, Android vs iPhone messages. And I also love the way you present the whole situation explaining why iMessage, what apple doesn't want to do, what Android users are trying to do and your take on the conflict. And also the fact that you mention that this is a very common thing among people 18-24 across the US.
I’m considering switching to an android but losing that functionality when my college friends and I FaceTime to stay in touch and have an iMessage group chat that has existed since middle school- as well as my family group chat- is seriously the only thing keeping me tied to Apple because it’s such a big hurdle to overcome. It’s real…
@David Avila Actually, thanks to EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), iMessage may soon be more open (same thing for WhatsApp and others): "The law will start to apply from May 2, 2023, after a six-month implementation stage."
I do agree, in fact those things, plus the fact iMessage is closed, are things that shouldn't happen and lose all your memories EU should step in, but since there they use WhatsApp, they see no issues...
I finally switched to Android about 2 years ago and have been happier for it. My family and friends adapted without much difficulty. Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, etc. I'm in my late 20s so it may be different for different age groups though
Great video and break down, but a very important detail is missing from this discussion. Apples iMessage implementation meant users got a better messaging experience and also let iOS users not be robbed by the wireless carriers for text messaging plans. To this day, I carry ATT text starter plan for 5$ because majority of my messages are all iMessage that go across on our data plans. So the carriers pricing also helped spur iMessage adoption so we could avoid paying huge data plan and 20$ a month for SMS. Just something that should be part of conversation as well as androids numerous half baked message solutions that none really resonated with users.
Yeah, but Apple could still just adopt the RCS protocol for texting with Androids and keep iPhone to iPhone texting as iMessage. Sure, iOS to Android texting might still be a bit worse than iOS to iOS, but it would bring it closer.
Super informative and interesting video!!! I have been seeing a lot of calls for Apple to make a change and move away from SMS and towards a solution like RCS - I think it certainly wouldn't hurt their bottom line too dramatically honestly (and truly how many more iPhone versions do we need to see, I say this as an iPhone owner and fully in the ecosystem) I think it might actually be a great business movie that shows efforts towards safety, security as you mentioned and a spirit of collaboration (I can dream!)
I'd actually forgotten about the paid vs free messages thing. I can see some truth in that backstory since iMessages were sent over the data plan - that was a huge draw in its growth. Back then I recall some carriers had limited SMS and unlimited data (mostly 2g speeds, but 3g was up and coming).
I was able to convince my mom to use Signal instead of (or alongside) WhatsApp. No idea how I made that possible. Must have been a chain of fortunate events.
As a former iPhone owner converted to Android, I love pointing out to iPhone users how it must suck to have to deal with green messages when all texts to me appear the same and function just as well. Using the Google messaging app has given me everything I had on iPhone
I just listened to 20 minutes about text messages, and never felt bored. Your video format and storytelling are top tier - Not to mention the production quality, which is off the charts!
such a well informed video. you get into it, the nitty gritty & break things down in such a interesting way. i love your videos. im not subscribed to many people of this tech genre but you are the first person i go to for new tech. your opinion & the facts are why i watch your videos
I don’t think there was ever bad intent about the messages being green. They were green before imessage even became a thing. The psychological association of blue good and green bad is just a natural consequence of the benefit of using imessage over sms. It could have been any colour
I like how he's aware that in every other country it isnt the same. In my country we all just use 3rd party, no matter android or iphone, because everyone has their preferences and texting shouldnt be a reason to get the other phone
Before I start this video just wanna say this is one of if not my favorite tech channel! Love the work you’ve put in brotha! Keep it up and blessings to you and yours
It's so weird from a European standpoint to know lot of people use the default messaging app. Here is something you need to use only when grandma text you
@danullb For us in Europe built in messaging tools are just full of spam and authentication messages. It's just nice to know this app has all the useless spam and the other is where I contact family and friends regardless of which country they are currently in without worrying that I accidentally send a 5 euro MMS to them because they didn't have internet at that moment in time. I get that if you have no Latino friends and never leave the us, iMessage seems fine. But as soon as you get a bit more world friendly and less ethnocentric, iMessage seems useless.
Why? iMessage works great. I also use WhatsApp and MarcoPolo and a couple others but... iMessage works just fine (as do the others) I honestly don't understand the "oMg i cant believe youre using iMessage" comments. yeah, I do. And so do tech industry / developer friends who work in the Bay Area. bfd either way
Dude you're good. I saw 20 minutes and thought there no way I'm watching all of this. Needless to say I made it to the end. No long winded talking, just straight to the point. Awesome content!
This isn't really related to the blue/green messages, but when I was a junior in high school, I remember walking out of the school cafeteria. On my way out, I walked past a girl. She dropped her phone and the it popped open with the battery flying out. There was a small group of 3 male freshmen students, shoulder to shoulder, that were walking behind her. They walked right by her when she dropped her phone, and the one in the middle, turned his head, looked down on her trying to pick her phone up, and he says, "Fucking android" and scoffs as he and his friends kept walking. I stood there watching them as they went by me. I then turned and saw the girl speed walking the opposite direction. I was so mad, and I felt so bad for her. Go home freshmen.
Other great decentralized options would be Matrix or XMPP, as anyone can self host them and they can work in a federalized manner. My family uses Element with Synapse running on a server at home with port forwarding and it works well. As a bonus, big files send instantly in the local network.
It reminds me of the Lightning connector story. They did not care about splitting the world in two as long as they had an edge. Ultimately USB-C caught up, and it's now mandatory on devices in Europe. Ultimately Apple will have to move away from a technology they could have imposed to everyone. I understand that for a time you would want to keep things to yourself, but they totally lack vision when it's time to let go.
I’ve always seen the blue/green bubble debate used as a joke from people in the US where I live. Like the majority of my friends and family use iPhone so whenever there is a green message bubble people jokingly give the other shit about it but I didn’t think it was a big enough deal for people to be so superficial about it with regards to dating. That’s absolutely silly.
You are always so insightful and so awesome. I never really thought much about this until I heard something in the news about it. Really kinda crazy, but when I think about it…it’s like WOW! My children and I keep trying to get my husband to switch to iPhone, and you just summed up things about the messaging that made this whole thing connect. My husband it NOT going to any apple product, and our children and I are NOT going to android. Guess we’re going to have a standoff🤣. Thank you so for the video.
That pressure is ridiculous, out of all my friends, I'm one of the few who have android and they all give me a hard time about it. I've actually been thinking about switching to Iphone. The deal breaker for me is you can't even double tap the power button to open up the camera...that has saved me so much time in capturing moments that go by so fast!
i love the part where you explain why videos and image files come up so depleted in quality when exchanging from iPhone to Android. Do you have a video that talks about the video/image quality suffering when uploading to social (i.e. Instagram) with iPhone vs. Android?
As an Android user who never experienced this issue due to having no friends, it baffles me how materialistic people can be over the colour of a text message, this is MLK Jr's nightmare.
This is pretty interesting, how different cultures/countries/regions behave on that alone. In Europe, I don't think I know anyone using their default messaging app. Everyone is on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal (or all of them) The only messages I get over the default app are like parcel delivery updates lol
Lots of people in France still use the default messing app. I‘ve been there on school exchanges two times and we did most of our messaging via Snapchat or the default app
it started with the apple vs android craze I remember when this first started happening. but def not as big of a deal as it use to be. I actually forgot about this until I seen this video. and I've never felt left out I actually like the differences. I don't notice the difference honestly. I don't notice a sleo down on my Samsung when sending messages. it works great to me
Everytime I get an iPhone, no matter how deep into the ecosystem I get, I always end up drifting back towards Android. If RCS gets implemented into iPhone, it's basically a done deal as iMessage was the main thing drawing me in there lol
"So, what's the solution?" STOP BUYING APPLE PEOPLE! They come out with features later then Android. They lock down features, like NFC which can do more then just pay for stuff. You wouldn't know that if you have iPhone. And they don't have the best Camera, screen, and apples phone processors are just as fast as latest as androids latest. There is nothing truly that special about Apple devices. They simply do things the locked down "Apple" way while everyone else is out here liberated with awesome devices that we are freely able to do much more with.
This is very interesting to see in the USA. Here, we use mostly google hangouts and discord to message, and I never use my messages app since I have limited texts and stuff
Switched to Android about two years ago and all my friends immediately made fun of me for having a green bubble. It was in good fun but definitely got annoying around the sixth time
Android users feel left out? I guess that depends on the person. It always feels good to me to know I spent less than $200 for my phone and about $25/mo for my service while so many around me are paying monthly for their phones and service often about five times the amount I pay or more. I feel bad for people who really feel like they're missing out because they don't have an iPhone.
I'm someone from Europe, and I have a total of four messaging apps, including the default android SMS app (used to be more, but I cut out a bunch of apps). That's because I know people who aren't that tech savvy, whom I text through SMS, then I have people who prefer different ones and it ends with me having all these different apps so that I can talk to people via their preferred mediums. I think the closest we have to a multi-platform, universal messaging app at this point, is the default one. It's not universal, but the majority of android users most likely use it, and the majority of iOS users use iMessage. I wish there was one app that everyone used, but so many people have so many different preferences, that I don't think that'll ever happen.
This reminds me of when one family member wanted to use FaceTime and then one by one, the rest of the family bought iPads to do just that. And that’s how the iPads dominated our family. However, other then the original person, we don’t even use FaceTime as a regular video chat. We use Google’s or Signal’s to video chat😂. In Canada, apparently we are the biggest consumer of Apple products (over 59% of our population). But in our household, we have all Android phones with the exception of the iPads. And nope, I have never heard of this green vs blue bubble until here. So this was quite interesting!
I know the feeling of trying to get people to use discord. We had a group that was exclusively organized via a facebook page and it was AWFUL. I made a discord and did everything I could to get people to come over. I got somewhere around half of them to come over and after maybe a week of complaining about a new thing, all of them noted without provocation about how much better it was in pretty much every way. The other half were too stubborn to even give it a chance so now they still live on facebook with all the fun quirks like new messages just not showing up on timelines at all and things being displayed out of order.
The bubble thing is so weird to me as someone from Europe where literally everyone uses WhatsApp and it doesn't matter what phone you have. I think more people use Android here these days too.
Same here in Mexico. Most of the people use WhatsApp and Telegram. It's almost surreal to hear that this is an issue in the US when the answer seems so simple
Plus if you use a app vs texting (on Android at least) then you use data vs texts. For those on limited data, that's a pain. My Android has no color, could send read messages (I turn it off😆). I can see reactions on a message bubble vs another text. Really had thought they were using messenger instead lol Now I know!😉
Most carriers let you grab an iPhone rather easily as part of some plan, so almost anyone can get one, and one thing I keep hearing is how iMessage can still send and receive messages through Wi-Fi to other iPhone users. In other words, anyone can look at this and think that iPhones are for people who sometimes cannot afford to pay their phone bill due to whatever reason. And yet Android is labeled as the "peasant" option. Edit: I know you can do the same with WhatsApp or any other messaging app on Android, but I don't hear anyone bragging about this nearly as much to my knowledge.
As a middle school educator, I’ve heard quite a number of students make fun of kids that have an android phone because of the green bubble. They would say their phones are slow, ugly, or cheap. It really is a problem.
@Chet Patel that is way too bad! People may criticize WhatsApp all they want, but it is the same experience regardless of the OS your phone has. And for God’s sake, she is a girl! How can they left her out just because she uses a different phone? US regulators should intervene and demand Apple to adopt same standards or launch iMessage on Android
I always wondered what the noise around iMessage is, since here in EU pretty much everyone is automatically on WhatsApp. Nice that you did you research and mentioned that in your vid! It's kind of paradoxical that people may use $1000+ on a phone and can't even be bothered to install an app that makes it better.
@EZWS WhatsApp is owned by Meta. I don't think I need to elaborate any further, but I will tho xD. Meta is the mega company owned my Mark Zuckerberg, he owns facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and basically tens of other companies. Social networks work with data, every "politic of privacy" we sign, is us giving away our data. Every single thing you post, text to a friend, every single picture you send, they have it all. It can do positive things like catching criminals through their social media (Andrew Tate moment) but it's also undeniably "selling your soul" in a way.
Very good topic, not sure why I missed this one half year ago. Yes Apple is very smart to combine sms/I message into the same app, as for what's app and wechat, I decided to stay away from it, we are so busy with the smartphone already...
Just switched from droid to iProduct - and I will say, I don’t realize how much I was missing just with iMessage. Especially when working and being able to manage texts on my MacBook and instantly move files from phone to MBA. I def see why they’re a $3 Trillion company.
It completely blows my mind that someone would turn down a potential relationship based on the color of their message bubble. Discrimination has hit a new low.
@Leera I would never use my messaging app. If someone wanted my phone number and than sent me a sms because they only use iMessage I wouldn't even notice it since I blocked my messaging app from being able to notify me about anything. Only discord, WhatsApp and telegram can get my attention. If you write me a sms you will be ignored.
@Imjashingyou ah but you see we have risen above our instincts to higher intellect. we cannot use primitive nature as an excuse anymore because we are beyond animals.
@Imjashingyou which if it's because of money is just stupid. I don't own but the galaxy fold is $2k while the iPhone is $1200. The S series runs about $1400.
@Ekyanso Not that agree with him or anything but saying "I know far, far more men who love their partners for their personality rather than looks." only means that you find these women unattractive, and since beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, these men could've found them gorgeous, they must have since they noticed their looks before their personality.
I remember being in my late teens when i first got an iphone and the biggest draw about imessage back then was that it was free. maybe this is very geospecific but in my country the phone operators used to charge for sms messages, with the imessage suddenly you could message that person as much as you wanted without caring But that was back then
It seems that back in the day, interoperability between devices was a huge part of networking communications. Email, sms, mms, calling, etc. were all designed with specific protocols so that any device that wanted to opt in could do so. Unfortunately this has fallen to the wayside as new internet protocols and standards are too slow for innovation, and so all these companies have built their own walled gardens for people to use instead. They could create a new standard that improves upon MMS, but even that will become out of date. And they will also only get adopted if there is a financial incentive
Are you going to do a video on how the blue bubbles are allowing the green bubbles into the walled garden with iOS 15? And what that experience is like? I noticed when I send a link for my friends and family that have android phones they never click the link!
i was actually gonna say like "can't we just make a new, free and open source standard that works in a decentralised manner and can be implemented by anyone" and the next second you started talking about rcs
as a person from a country where virtually everyone and their mom uses whatsapp, its difficult for me to comprehend the scale of the blue bubble - green bubble problem. from a consumer perspective, apple should add rcs support, but from their perspective, it seems like they're better off not adding it because it strengthens their "walled garden". awesome video as always marques :)
Thanks for this. I've been in the dark on the messaging issue. I am an Android user and only recently have seen the blue bubble on texts? My phone is coming up on 5 years(One Plus 6t) could that be the reason why? Odd.. However I've experienced being a recipient of an iPhone generated group chat that was driving me mad. On the last point you made, I personally have been feeling great pressure for the last couple of years to switch to iPhone and all 🍎 products. I am an Android and pc user on principal, not wanting to do what everyone is doing and also Android feels way more intuitive than an iPhone imo. However I long for the video quality and imagery of their camera. But it's definitely a strong energy they are transmitting to get everyone over to 🍎.
The color bubble issue only affects iPhone users. It's basically an indicator on iMessage telling them that they are communicating with a non-iPhone users. So all the iMessage features will not get used with someone that has a green bubble. On Android the color of bubbles means nothing.
Very strange to see that SMS became even more popular in the US with the advent of the smartphone. In many other places, particularly the UK where I am from, third party messaging services made SMS practically obsolete for personal messaging, starting even before smartphones came along. This is because SMS messages were pretty expensive, could be around 15p per message.
@2freeIvX That's not true for the UK, we had free unlimited SMS included in a lot of plans and then unlimited data was being offered at affordable prices and that's when SMS became more or less irrelevant. Since then messaging apps increased in popularity and variety.
So coming from the telecommunications world... Sms was actually a mistaken discovered backend on cell feed and cost companies nothing. So it was given in the USA as most companies didn't think consumers would use it, I'm willing to be had they known how popular over taking it would become they would have charged like Europe for it.
@Ē Nihil depends, if it's for business purposes yeah, phone number/whatsapp and e-mail. If it's for friendship or flirting definitely IG and once you prove worthy then you can have the phone number/WhatsApp
I've successfully made my main friend group all use discord and it's awesome. Although in my other social circles including clubs, sports, and anyone not in my main friend group I'm always the one to go "I have an android", see their disappointment, and then everyone immediately wants to use snapchat. I, as a highschool girl, really don't like snapchat (and normal social media) and have uninstalled it, so I end up that not communicating with that group outside of in person and dms.
as a high school student in Australia, instagram is like the default app for chatting in group chats. I never thought iMessage would be so popular in America
I’m from the US and have always thought this whole “controversy” was so stupid. It’s literally not that deep and doesn’t matter in the long run. I don’t give a shit if the text is green or blue. I just need my message to go through, doesn’t matter what form it takes to do that 😂 I personally have an iPhone but basically all of my friends and family have an android. My bubbles are almost exclusively green and it makes no difference to me. The people that have strong opinions about texts being green are just rude since not everyone can (and/or wants) to spend upwards of $700 on a phone
One point that was missed was that Google didn't originally set out to make their own RCS servers. RCS was supposed to be run by the phone companies, just like SMS and MMS. But the phone companies didn't see any profit in it, and very few bothered to implement it. After a few years of no progress, Google decided to bypass the phone companies.
Weird apple snobs will never understand how much google does for the betterment of society while Apple (like Microsoft before it) is just out to fleece you for every dollar they can get. The entire android platform was a gift to humanity that people don't truly appreciate.
I remember when Google messages released the beta version with RCS support a few years ago. Greatest thing they ever did, and once it went fully live, suddenly every US carrier supported it. Shocking
@Laden Just curious, what carrier do you have. I'm on AT&T and one of the few people I know that uses Google Messages on a Samsung phone has been on both Verizon and T-Mobile and we were able to chat using RCS.
Apple will never add RCS support simply due to the fact that it adds all of the most wanted features such as read receipts, file sizes, typing indicators, etc. With that being said, if they added support for that, many users who have been wanting to switch to Android but felt like they couldn't just because of iMessage will switch to an Android device.
For me is the contrary. I live in Mexico and all my friends use android I feel really bad that I can’t use or experience iMessage with all that really good stickers.
I love how much of a US problem this thing is. In Indonesia, literally no one uses their phone's Messaging app to text anyone on anything. It's mostly just used for checking how much data you have, your login codes, packet delivery notification, et cetera. For actual messaging people just use third-party apps like WhatsApp or Telegram; both of which are end-to-end encrypted. Some even use Signal and Facebook Messenger.
initially people were divided to use Line (espc young person) and whatsapp (older), but i think most people are just use their whatsapp rn in Indonesia. i too have a friend that use their imessage, but that's definitely won't be me for sure since almost all people i communicated to are using android phone with whatsapp lol :)
This is the same in most LATAM countries. Literally no one ever messages anyone using the default text apps unless it's emergency and they can't seem to get a hold of me thru any other means.
Facebook messenger is actually great. Being in the chat screen, seeing everyone online, feels like I'm in an actual chat room. But my messaging app feels like a dark wasteland lol.
In my country (Czech Republic), I'd say about 80 % of people use WhatsApp. It's the default way of texting and calling people here. You're pressured to download the app here since it's the only place people use group chats. But you get used to texting through the app so we use it for everyday texting and calling too. I think it's one of the only places where nobody uses SMS or iMessage. So technically it is possible to get people using 3rd party apps for texting.
I had an iphone and switched back to android. I went back because the phone I had broke down within a year, and I hated the interface. I MUCH prefer the samsung/android interface. Apple's general philosophy of locking you into their ecosystem is also just gross to me. I'm not switching to iphone, and frankly, I shouldn't have to in order to avoid being harrassed by text messages.
This reminds me about a time in college when I went to a conference in Philly for a nonprofit organization I was involved in. The organizers set up a group chat over iMessage to give all the participants updates about the activities that would take place over 3 days. Out of over 20 participants from chapters all over the country, I was the only one with an Android phone. I missed out on a lot of the features in the chat and trying to text back was a nightmare. The person I got assigned as a roommate was kind enough to pass over some of the information that was being discussed, but I can't emphasize how dystopian and isolating it felt to be there with all these people while feeling like I was outside of a bubble. The insight in this video was real 😶
This is how the US government and Apple trap users for surveillance purposes. People need to start using 3rd party apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Once Facebook added end-to-end encryption to WhatsApp, the US government started enforcing regulations on Facebook.
@jelaninoel _> "why should the other NINETEEN people have to use inferior telegram because ONE guy has Android?"_ Yeah, why should we accommodate the 5 %, that's just a minority. We can just ignore the minority ... right ...?
Those walls made me claustrophobic so I switched and never thought of switching back. People around me have a hard time believing it, since anyone they have seen and had been using iphone, they never wanted to switch back. I like the UI tho, it's so crisp, I miss only that. But I can download a launcher and switch anytime
In Germany it is the opposite 😅 no one uses only iMessage.
It's WhatsApp, Telegram and Wire/Threema/Signal for everything
@Marianne Suesli Yeah! That is an issue for everyone, therefore everyone just defaults to one, but in other countries it defaults to WhatsApp (mainly) therefore nobody thinks on what messaging app you use.
I only use 3 apps, WhatsApp for personal reasons, Teams for work reasons and Signal if I need my boss ASAP (like a permit or something like that)
This sounds awful having to use all of these different apps. I’m glad we just use iMessage!
Meine Tante, mein Onkel und meine Kusine benutzen beide ein iPhone, aber ich glaube sie wissen nicht einmal, was iMessage ist, sie verwenden WhatsApp. (Österreich)
This sounds terrible, having to use so many extra apps just to text people. I’m glad here in the US everyone uses iMessage and that’s it.
in spain we only use whatsapp and telegram
genuinely fascinated about the green vs blue thing as a US android user who never even realized this was a thing. def encountered the groupchat issue but it's usually not hard to find an app everyone can use instead when that does come up
Yea I mean there’s tons of social media with messaging in them
I just love how Apple convinced people to blame Android users for this when this is literally 100% Apple's fault for not allowing anyone else to use their applications
Steve jobs wouldn’t stand for this lol
@jens4president Wow I get teased as well I begged my mom but she refused. I just upset bc a phone is a phone but apparently not
@jens4president Actually you should try to make her understand, if you can that being odd is at times better. Helps to stand out! Its not easy but way better in the long run. Like the country am from, I owned various iterations of iPhone from 2010 to 2018, I was an odd one out coz most of my peers were on the droid. Now iPhones have become super popular and I use an Android. I just don't want to give my money to a shady company like Apple anymore. When I was young I didn't realise how they use human slaves to make their devices or how they used low quality products (antenna gate), or how they didn't add a proper t9 dialer in their phones or how you could not access the meta data of snaps in the default photos app and many such examples. Now Apple as per me is just a designer company who happens to make tech devices. Same like Red Bull.
@halycon404 No, no, no. The truly sad thing is people like my 15 year old daughter get bullied because they are a green bubble. I just cannot fathom that. She wants an iphone for Christmas. Why? So she doesnt get bullied or made fun of. So, if I get her an iphone, Apple wins. And what a terrible way to win.
It's basically one of the most Apple moves of all time.
I'm from Switzerland. The iPhone is about as popular here as it is in the US but our default messaging app (for better and for worse) is in fact WhatsApp. That's the messaging app that everybody and your mom uses and that you kinda have to have, especially for group chats. While I absolutely detest the fact that a service from Meta has become the de facto standard in my country, I'm still glad that we don't have a problem with school bullying over the color of bubbles - at least as far as I know
@StarkWurst My gf and I wanted to give Signal a try, just to message between ourselves, but the app made the phones (both of them) super hot and drained the battery so we went back to whatsapp lol
Yeah in Germany (your neighbour) its the same, all use whatsapp, cool people telegram and even cooler ( and probably weirdos) signal or god forbid threema. I dont like whatsapp but i find the idea of getting all my boomer relatives introduced to another messenger too troublesome (and then they all habe to convince their boomer friends etc.). So as digitaly flexible as I am, I use 3 different Messengers.
For what I can remember here in Spain whatsapp became popular as a "free" alternative to SMS around the years 2010 and 2011. When iMessage released most (young) social circles where already on whatsapp even if everyone had an iPhone, and I believe that by then most smartphone users where using Android.
same one malaysia.. we only use whatapps.. when people send msg from default app.. we call it skema.. mean it too old skooll
Similar story here in Bulgaria - since people used Facebook messaging a lot back in the keyboard phone era, once smartphones started kicking in everyone just continued with messenger, and thus the iMessage blue/green bubbles trope never became a thing. Nowadays probably around 40-50% of teenagers/college students have iPhones, yet I don’t know a single person that actively uses iMessage. We all just use Facebook messenger (or instagram chats, but that’s just horrendously bad 🤮)
ive heard the "android users get less dates" thing before. trust me guys, if they dont like you because of your phone choice, you dodged a bullet.
@M. M. B. in the art world there are some amazing apps that seem to only be available on ios. But i use a tablet for that. My phones are always androids.
@M. M. B. never get too nerdy with the family. they wont understand
@espanoza i had android for 8 years then got an iphone 13 a year ago just to try it out because over a decade ago i was a huge apple fanboy. id agree on overpriced tbh.
I tried to just get my family to open 1 extra free protonmail account, explaining privacy… impossible
Android is actually used by smart people, Apple the ever closed system, user friendly (for simple people) very good explanation of the Apple prison wall. And I have been with way too many women.
Corrections:
• An SMS is 140 bytes, not 160. For English text, they use GSM-7, which is a *7-bit* encoding, turning 140 _bytes_ into 160 _characters._ Alternatively, if you need (partial) unicode support, they use UCS-2, which is 16-bit encoding, resulting in 70 characters.
• You do non need an MMS to send emoji. Emoji are just unicode characters. You can use them in a standard SMS, if you're willing to go from 160 characters to 70 (as described above).
• iMessage _is_ end-to-end encrypted, however, if you enable iCloud backups, the encryption key is backed up there. So Apple has your encrypted messages _and_ the encryption key, so they can read them. And even if you don't have iCloud backups enabled, if the person you're talking with does, Apple will still see those messages.
When you said blue bubble vs green bubble I thought you meant iMessage vs whatsapp... That's how much we don't care about those things here in Europe 👀😅 we just all use WhatsApp 🤔
Lately in America it’s also becoming more common when I’m exchanging contact info for them to want to communicate on what’s app or even instagram
I was unaware of this being an “issue” until just recently. It’s not a big deal, but it w oh I’d be nice if something was done, but Apple has no reason to change
For my lifeguarding job my boss didn’t add me to the group chat that we posted our schedules because he “didn’t wanna deal with the green text.” And half the time i was never sure of my schedule. And my coworkers always made fun of me saying i should just get an iPhone and the green text is soo annoying. Just made me realize how brainwashed people are here in the US. Long story short, I spent my next paycheck on a iPhone 💀
I use a iPhone simply because I prefer iOS over android. However I purposely turn off iMessage just to Piss people off
@RealSupaHotFireVEVO iPhones have barely any customization at all , if you prioritize having no freedom with your phone then yes Iphones are better phone's for people who just want something for Imessage and do the bare minimum you could use a phone for.
@Sexy scientist bro really said discord
@Rishabh Sahlot happens all the time. I've been excluded from group chats a number of times.
That person should be fired
its funny bc on android, my bubbles are color assigned to the contact. meaning I don't even have to read the name.
Yeah. I switched from Apple to Android and have experienced the resulting blue bubble backlash first hand. Apples aversion to work with other brands has ensured that I will never be buying their products until something changes.
As an American, after I met my boyfriend who is Japanese, he introduced me to LINE. It is SO much more appealing than default messaging. Plus the stickers are on point lol. It also can act as a mini, completely closed social media with ONLY close friends on it. Living in Japan now, most people around me never use their default messaging whatsoever with even notifications from services, doctors offices/appointments, restaurants, coupons, retail stores, etc all use LINE codes to message you info rather than your phone number. Even the post office gives you updates through LINE and allows you to choose the time and date that your package Is delivered so that they know when you are home, straight through using LINE. I’ve also scheduled my dental appointments directly through LINE app.
@1silenthunder1 This is true. Kakao is basically Korean equivalent of LINE. If you have friends in Korea or plan on traveling there (even for vacation), it's beneficial to have Kakao
@David Avila I believe Kakao talk is Korea's number one messaging app
Interesting!
So basically in Japan they use LINE, but is it the same in Korea for example? Or just a country thing?
This is crazy! I'm American and an Android user and never knew about this. I attribute this to being in the let's play/gaming community where we all use Discord and/or Snapchat to set up play schedules with people all over the world to stay in contact without giving people our phone numbers.
That's because your friends aren't 12 years old
@stop oh yeah it's believable that it happens. People are jerks!
@Bryan M it's mostly teenagers, if you aren't in that demographic you won't experience it but trust me it happens
Yeah, Android user here too. I'm not in the gaming community but none of my friends or coworkers are big enough dicks to make fun of me for using a different phone than them. I definitely never knew this was a thing.
In Europe we mostly use Whatsapp. It's free, international and it's the default for everyone here.
@Musqul "Free-to-use" in this context.
It's not free. They collect massive amount of data from you. There is no such things as a free service.
This was such a interesting analysis of the whole text messaging issue. Something I never thought about. Seeing the blue and green bubbles simply let me know if they use an iPhone or not. Didn’t care about the silly status symbol it represents. So weird how people fall into that hole.
Google has failed to convince people on security and privacy. Android to me feels like a loose framework with too many moving parts. One analogy I can think of is, Apple feels like a cold forged wrench, solid where as android feels like a flimsy multi-tool.
Wow, blows my mind as a non-American that this is an issue. Always interesting to hear about weird cultural aspect of countries though, even though this is a particularly crazy one! Thanks for the video Marques!
It's not an issue. At all.
Grew up in the US, but have family in Europe and currently live in Europe so having What'sApp was just always a thing for me and like it so much better than the default app
@Teej I came to comment this. I use wired headphones in the studio for latency issues. But I haven’t connected wired headphones to my cell phone in like 5 years
Probably the same to an extent in UK.
Very understandable, it should be shocking because it's extreme behavior from people on that side of the ocean. They live in a bubble and live with blinders on their eyes. They definitely aren't well cultured or socially experienced.
I can't get my parents to drop their land line... it hasn't been used for years
Thanks for this video. I didn't know that the whole blue vs. green bubble was an issue. Part of the reason is that I just do basic texting so the fancier functions (such as read receipts) are something I don't use. Another twist to mention is that I use a flip phone (Cingular Flip IV) so my bubble colors are green with white text for my texts, and grey with black text for other people's texts
This would be so embarrassing to explain to aliens.
Imagine you go to visit "the neighbors" just to meet them, and they tell you that an extremely rich group of people that controls almost half of the world's communication, is so greedy that they don't bother making their communication system universal for everyone on the planet.
We would look like primitive peasants to them
Great video! it explains very clearly what a lot other concepts are not just Blue vs Green bubbles I would include in the description such as - SMS, MMS, RCS, Android Messaging, iOS messaging, Android vs iPhone messages. And I also love the way you present the whole situation explaining why iMessage, what apple doesn't want to do, what Android users are trying to do and your take on the conflict. And also the fact that you mention that this is a very common thing among people 18-24 across the US.
I’m considering switching to an android but losing that functionality when my college friends and I FaceTime to stay in touch and have an iMessage group chat that has existed since middle school- as well as my family group chat- is seriously the only thing keeping me tied to Apple because it’s such a big hurdle to overcome. It’s real…
@David Avila Actually, thanks to EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), iMessage may soon be more open (same thing for WhatsApp and others): "The law will start to apply from May 2, 2023, after a six-month implementation stage."
I do agree, in fact those things, plus the fact iMessage is closed, are things that shouldn't happen and lose all your memories
EU should step in, but since there they use WhatsApp, they see no issues...
Facetime is dumb AF.
I finally switched to Android about 2 years ago and have been happier for it. My family and friends adapted without much difficulty. Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, etc. I'm in my late 20s so it may be different for different age groups though
@Fire It doesn't take time, you just mention it to your friends
Great video and break down, but a very important detail is missing from this discussion. Apples iMessage implementation meant users got a better messaging experience and also let iOS users not be robbed by the wireless carriers for text messaging plans. To this day, I carry ATT text starter plan for 5$ because majority of my messages are all iMessage that go across on our data plans. So the carriers pricing also helped spur iMessage adoption so we could avoid paying huge data plan and 20$ a month for SMS. Just something that should be part of conversation as well as androids numerous half baked message solutions that none really resonated with users.
Yeah, but Apple could still just adopt the RCS protocol for texting with Androids and keep iPhone to iPhone texting as iMessage. Sure, iOS to Android texting might still be a bit worse than iOS to iOS, but it would bring it closer.
Apple makes everything so easy. 📱⌚️
apple's sounding more and mroe like evil overlords in a dystopia
I love how Marques is actually aware of the international community and doesn’t just assume everyone is from America
@Or Kanner Don't worry the world also doesn't care much about America either,oh and the world is larger outside the not so intelligent states
He’s human just like the rest of us
He’s aware he has viewers outside the US and I’m sure he has friends and family that don’t live in US
Yeah I hate US-Centrism!
@Chantz No, SMS was.
@Devansh Mehrotra Isn't he from Zimbabwe?
Super informative and interesting video!!! I have been seeing a lot of calls for Apple to make a change and move away from SMS and towards a solution like RCS - I think it certainly wouldn't hurt their bottom line too dramatically honestly (and truly how many more iPhone versions do we need to see, I say this as an iPhone owner and fully in the ecosystem) I think it might actually be a great business movie that shows efforts towards safety, security as you mentioned and a spirit of collaboration (I can dream!)
I'd actually forgotten about the paid vs free messages thing. I can see some truth in that backstory since iMessages were sent over the data plan - that was a huge draw in its growth. Back then I recall some carriers had limited SMS and unlimited data (mostly 2g speeds, but 3g was up and coming).
I was able to convince my mom to use Signal instead of (or alongside) WhatsApp. No idea how I made that possible. Must have been a chain of fortunate events.
As a former iPhone owner converted to Android, I love pointing out to iPhone users how it must suck to have to deal with green messages when all texts to me appear the same and function just as well. Using the Google messaging app has given me everything I had on iPhone
I just listened to 20 minutes about text messages, and never felt bored. Your video format and storytelling are top tier - Not to mention the production quality, which is off the charts!
@Ant Man 2
True. Packed with in-depth info yet the storytelling is always compelling. This guy has squared the content-form circle.
Oh wow, didn't noticed it was 20 minutes long and I even saw the whole thing. Had to scroll up to the video to see the tracking duration 😅
man i was so genuinely interested in the way he narrated...it was amazing. : D
Didn't realize it was 20 mins until reading this comment lol
such a well informed video. you get into it, the nitty gritty & break things down in such a interesting way. i love your videos. im not subscribed to many people of this tech genre but you are the first person i go to for new tech. your opinion & the facts are why i watch your videos
I don’t think there was ever bad intent about the messages being green. They were green before imessage even became a thing. The psychological association of blue good and green bad is just a natural consequence of the benefit of using imessage over sms. It could have been any colour
I like how he's aware that in every other country it isnt the same. In my country we all just use 3rd party, no matter android or iphone, because everyone has their preferences and texting shouldnt be a reason to get the other phone
Before I start this video just wanna say this is one of if not my favorite tech channel! Love the work you’ve put in brotha! Keep it up and blessings to you and yours
It's so weird from a European standpoint to know lot of people use the default messaging app. Here is something you need to use only when grandma text you
@Anon Nymous "a bit more world friendly, and less ethnocentric"
:] I have many friends around the world that I text with regularly.
Cheers.
@danullb
For us in Europe built in messaging tools are just full of spam and authentication messages. It's just nice to know this app has all the useless spam and the other is where I contact family and friends regardless of which country they are currently in without worrying that I accidentally send a 5 euro MMS to them because they didn't have internet at that moment in time.
I get that if you have no Latino friends and never leave the us, iMessage seems fine. But as soon as you get a bit more world friendly and less ethnocentric, iMessage seems useless.
Why? iMessage works great. I also use WhatsApp and MarcoPolo and a couple others but...
iMessage works just fine (as do the others)
I honestly don't understand the "oMg i cant believe youre using iMessage" comments.
yeah, I do. And so do tech industry / developer friends who work in the Bay Area. bfd either way
@qiX2wf48 nobody uses the default messenger because people still assume it costs money to send a SMS.
In Italy whatsapp is the real standard, you don't get sms unless it's your operator
Dude you're good. I saw 20 minutes and thought there no way I'm watching all of this. Needless to say I made it to the end. No long winded talking, just straight to the point. Awesome content!
This isn't really related to the blue/green messages, but when I was a junior in high school, I remember walking out of the school cafeteria. On my way out, I walked past a girl. She dropped her phone and the it popped open with the battery flying out. There was a small group of 3 male freshmen students, shoulder to shoulder, that were walking behind her. They walked right by her when she dropped her phone, and the one in the middle, turned his head, looked down on her trying to pick her phone up, and he says, "Fucking android" and scoffs as he and his friends kept walking. I stood there watching them as they went by me. I then turned and saw the girl speed walking the opposite direction. I was so mad, and I felt so bad for her.
Go home freshmen.
Other great decentralized options would be Matrix or XMPP, as anyone can self host them and they can work in a federalized manner.
My family uses Element with Synapse running on a server at home with port forwarding and it works well. As a bonus, big files send instantly in the local network.
It reminds me of the Lightning connector story. They did not care about splitting the world in two as long as they had an edge. Ultimately USB-C caught up, and it's now mandatory on devices in Europe. Ultimately Apple will have to move away from a technology they could have imposed to everyone. I understand that for a time you would want to keep things to yourself, but they totally lack vision when it's time to let go.
I love this video, didn’t realize this monstrosity was US specific. As a tech head I always thought this was ridiculous.
It's also kind of the same story in Scandinavian countries, everyone uses iMessage
I’ve always seen the blue/green bubble debate used as a joke from people in the US where I live. Like the majority of my friends and family use iPhone so whenever there is a green message bubble people jokingly give the other shit about it but I didn’t think it was a big enough deal for people to be so superficial about it with regards to dating. That’s absolutely silly.
@Mies van der Lippe threema
@Ana *All of YOUR data is already on the internet. And *YOU* would rather give them your data
@Ryseabtw you're absolutely right! We need to protect our privacy as much as we can. Thank you for the awesome discussion!
I’ve been in the industry for 12 years. This video was brilliantly explained. iMessage is def. the top shelf messaging app
You are always so insightful and so awesome. I never really thought much about this until I heard something in the news about it. Really kinda crazy, but when I think about it…it’s like WOW! My children and I keep trying to get my husband to switch to iPhone, and you just summed up things about the messaging that made this whole thing connect. My husband it NOT going to any apple product, and our children and I are NOT going to android. Guess we’re going to have a standoff🤣. Thank you so for the video.
I sorta wanna buy an iphone but i know android is superior.
Any thoughts?
That pressure is ridiculous, out of all my friends, I'm one of the few who have android and they all give me a hard time about it. I've actually been thinking about switching to Iphone. The deal breaker for me is you can't even double tap the power button to open up the camera...that has saved me so much time in capturing moments that go by so fast!
i love the part where you explain why videos and image files come up so depleted in quality when exchanging from iPhone to Android. Do you have a video that talks about the video/image quality suffering when uploading to social (i.e. Instagram) with iPhone vs. Android?
That’s hilarious the crap phones developed a knockoff iMessage app🤣😂🤣😂 Did anyone notice?
You’ve explained the differences perfectly! Thank you.
As an Android user who never experienced this issue due to having no friends, it baffles me how materialistic people can be over the colour of a text message, this is MLK Jr's nightmare.
This is pretty interesting, how different cultures/countries/regions behave on that alone.
In Europe, I don't think I know anyone using their default messaging app. Everyone is on WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal (or all of them)
The only messages I get over the default app are like parcel delivery updates lol
Same here in India. I'm shocked to know people favour a device on the basis of default messaging service. 😂
In Norway people use standard SMS.
Some kids use other silly stuff, but mostly it's normal SMS.
Everyone that I know here in Switzerland use WhatsApp
@Jake Wallace The majority of smartphones in the UK are iPhone. Don't use anecdotes
Lots of people in France still use the default messing app. I‘ve been there on school exchanges two times and we did most of our messaging via Snapchat or the default app
it started with the apple vs android craze I remember when this first started happening. but def not as big of a deal as it use to be. I actually forgot about this until I seen this video. and I've never felt left out I actually like the differences. I don't notice the difference honestly. I don't notice a sleo down on my Samsung when sending messages. it works great to me
Everytime I get an iPhone, no matter how deep into the ecosystem I get, I always end up drifting back towards Android. If RCS gets implemented into iPhone, it's basically a done deal as iMessage was the main thing drawing me in there lol
"So, what's the solution?" STOP BUYING APPLE PEOPLE! They come out with features later then Android. They lock down features, like NFC which can do more then just pay for stuff. You wouldn't know that if you have iPhone. And they don't have the best Camera, screen, and apples phone processors are just as fast as latest as androids latest.
There is nothing truly that special about Apple devices. They simply do things the locked down "Apple" way while everyone else is out here liberated with awesome devices that we are freely able to do much more with.
This is very interesting to see in the USA. Here, we use mostly google hangouts and discord to message, and I never use my messages app since I have limited texts and stuff
Switched to Android about two years ago and all my friends immediately made fun of me for having a green bubble. It was in good fun but definitely got annoying around the sixth time
@sandtanmaroon immature af
@moodrevolver no no, u got it backwards. Real friends make fun of each other.
Oh yeah. It got really annoying. I had to switch
Time to get better friends.
@moodrevolveridk what friends you have but friends roast you, its not like fairytales
Android users feel left out? I guess that depends on the person. It always feels good to me to know I spent less than $200 for my phone and about $25/mo for my service while so many around me are paying monthly for their phones and service often about five times the amount I pay or more. I feel bad for people who really feel like they're missing out because they don't have an iPhone.
I'm someone from Europe, and I have a total of four messaging apps, including the default android SMS app (used to be more, but I cut out a bunch of apps). That's because I know people who aren't that tech savvy, whom I text through SMS, then I have people who prefer different ones and it ends with me having all these different apps so that I can talk to people via their preferred mediums. I think the closest we have to a multi-platform, universal messaging app at this point, is the default one. It's not universal, but the majority of android users most likely use it, and the majority of iOS users use iMessage. I wish there was one app that everyone used, but so many people have so many different preferences, that I don't think that'll ever happen.
This reminds me of when one family member wanted to use FaceTime and then one by one, the rest of the family bought iPads to do just that. And that’s how the iPads dominated our family. However, other then the original person, we don’t even use FaceTime as a regular video chat. We use Google’s or Signal’s to video chat😂. In Canada, apparently we are the biggest consumer of Apple products (over 59% of our population). But in our household, we have all Android phones with the exception of the iPads. And nope, I have never heard of this green vs blue bubble until here. So this was quite interesting!
I know the feeling of trying to get people to use discord. We had a group that was exclusively organized via a facebook page and it was AWFUL. I made a discord and did everything I could to get people to come over. I got somewhere around half of them to come over and after maybe a week of complaining about a new thing, all of them noted without provocation about how much better it was in pretty much every way. The other half were too stubborn to even give it a chance so now they still live on facebook with all the fun quirks like new messages just not showing up on timelines at all and things being displayed out of order.
The bubble thing is so weird to me as someone from Europe where literally everyone uses WhatsApp and it doesn't matter what phone you have. I think more people use Android here these days too.
Same here in Mexico. Most of the people use WhatsApp and Telegram. It's almost surreal to hear that this is an issue in the US when the answer seems so simple
Whatsapp was a Chinese company... Makes one wonder why did Meta want to buy it
America is always behind the times with there degenerate population.
too bad WhatsApp was taken over by Facebook (Meta)
South Africa too
Plus if you use a app vs texting (on Android at least) then you use data vs texts. For those on limited data, that's a pain.
My Android has no color, could send read messages (I turn it off😆).
I can see reactions on a message bubble vs another text. Really had thought they were using messenger instead lol Now I know!😉
Most carriers let you grab an iPhone rather easily as part of some plan, so almost anyone can get one, and one thing I keep hearing is how iMessage can still send and receive messages through Wi-Fi to other iPhone users.
In other words, anyone can look at this and think that iPhones are for people who sometimes cannot afford to pay their phone bill due to whatever reason.
And yet Android is labeled as the "peasant" option.
Edit: I know you can do the same with WhatsApp or any other messaging app on Android, but I don't hear anyone bragging about this nearly as much to my knowledge.
I just want them all to be blue because it looks nicer
If i text with my dad ( on iphone for 14 years ) we have a blue bubble. BUT for some reason, we had a green bubble couple months ago. Any guess why ?
bad service probably
As a middle school educator, I’ve heard quite a number of students make fun of kids that have an android phone because of the green bubble. They would say their phones are slow, ugly, or cheap. It really is a problem.
Nah iPhones way slower tf they sayin💀
@Chet Patel that is way too bad! People may criticize WhatsApp all they want, but it is the same experience regardless of the OS your phone has.
And for God’s sake, she is a girl! How can they left her out just because she uses a different phone? US regulators should intervene and demand Apple to adopt same standards or launch iMessage on Android
@Donna Woodward Well they're not wrong lol
That's really awful...
@Abhijit Prajapati They aren't wrong lol
I always wondered what the noise around iMessage is, since here in EU pretty much everyone is automatically on WhatsApp. Nice that you did you research and mentioned that in your vid!
It's kind of paradoxical that people may use $1000+ on a phone and can't even be bothered to install an app that makes it better.
They spend $1000 but the way they use it a $200 phone would be the same.
God I'm so glad to live in a country where WhatsApp is the default (even though we're basically selling our souls)
@EZWS don't mention it, it's no problem :)
@Sly Blue gotchu, thanks bud🤝🏽
@EZWS WhatsApp is owned by Meta. I don't think I need to elaborate any further, but I will tho xD. Meta is the mega company owned my Mark Zuckerberg, he owns facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and basically tens of other companies. Social networks work with data, every "politic of privacy" we sign, is us giving away our data. Every single thing you post, text to a friend, every single picture you send, they have it all. It can do positive things like catching criminals through their social media (Andrew Tate moment) but it's also undeniably "selling your soul" in a way.
How are we selling our souls?
Very good topic, not sure why I missed this one half year ago.
Yes Apple is very smart to combine sms/I message into the same app, as for what's app and wechat, I decided to stay away from it, we are so busy with the smartphone already...
Just switched from droid to iProduct - and I will say, I don’t realize how much I was missing just with iMessage. Especially when working and being able to manage texts on my MacBook and instantly move files from phone to MBA. I def see why they’re a $3 Trillion company.
Did you know you can do both of these things with almost all androids with minimal effort?
It completely blows my mind that someone would turn down a potential relationship based on the color of their message bubble. Discrimination has hit a new low.
@Leera I would never use my messaging app. If someone wanted my phone number and than sent me a sms because they only use iMessage I wouldn't even notice it since I blocked my messaging app from being able to notify me about anything.
Only discord, WhatsApp and telegram can get my attention. If you write me a sms you will be ignored.
@Imjashingyou ah but you see we have risen above our instincts to higher intellect. we cannot use primitive nature as an excuse anymore because we are beyond animals.
its funny bc on android, my bubbles are color assigned to the contact. meaning I don't even have to read the name in a group chat.
@Imjashingyou which if it's because of money is just stupid. I don't own but the galaxy fold is $2k while the iPhone is $1200. The S series runs about $1400.
@Ekyanso Not that agree with him or anything but saying "I know far, far more men who love their partners for their personality rather than looks." only means that you find these women unattractive, and since beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, these men could've found them gorgeous, they must have since they noticed their looks before their personality.
I remember being in my late teens when i first got an iphone and the biggest draw about imessage back then was that it was free. maybe this is very geospecific but in my country the phone operators used to charge for sms messages, with the imessage suddenly you could message that person as much as you wanted without caring
But that was back then
It seems that back in the day, interoperability between devices was a huge part of networking communications. Email, sms, mms, calling, etc. were all designed with specific protocols so that any device that wanted to opt in could do so. Unfortunately this has fallen to the wayside as new internet protocols and standards are too slow for innovation, and so all these companies have built their own walled gardens for people to use instead. They could create a new standard that improves upon MMS, but even that will become out of date. And they will also only get adopted if there is a financial incentive
Are you going to do a video on how the blue bubbles are allowing the green bubbles into the walled garden with iOS 15? And what that experience is like? I noticed when I send a link for my friends and family that have android phones they never click the link!
i was actually gonna say like "can't we just make a new, free and open source standard that works in a decentralised manner and can be implemented by anyone" and the next second you started talking about rcs
as a person from a country where virtually everyone and their mom uses whatsapp, its difficult for me to comprehend the scale of the blue bubble - green bubble problem. from a consumer perspective, apple should add rcs support, but from their perspective, it seems like they're better off not adding it because it strengthens their "walled garden". awesome video as always marques :)
@saikat bag is this a serious question?
@Nico C. Fuck that I still ain't buying no shit ahh Android💀
@Deniz Yazar I mean, back when we're all working from home, getting people to use zoom or discord wasn't difficult
@Greg Jones no wonder Australia is weird 😂
@Chaitanya Joshi it depends where in Europe here in France it's SMS and MMS are free still everybody use what app.
The worst part of the blue-bubble green-bubble debate for me is that I'm colorblind.
This is a well made video. Nice one MKBHD team👍🏻
Thanks for this. I've been in the dark on the messaging issue. I am an Android user and only recently have seen the blue bubble on texts? My phone is coming up on 5 years(One Plus 6t) could that be the reason why? Odd.. However I've experienced being a recipient of an iPhone generated group chat that was driving me mad. On the last point you made, I personally have been feeling great pressure for the last couple of years to switch to iPhone and all 🍎 products. I am an Android and pc user on principal, not wanting to do what everyone is doing and also Android feels way more intuitive than an iPhone imo. However I long for the video quality and imagery of their camera. But it's definitely a strong energy they are transmitting to get everyone over to 🍎.
The color bubble issue only affects iPhone users. It's basically an indicator on iMessage telling them that they are communicating with a non-iPhone users. So all the iMessage features will not get used with someone that has a green bubble. On Android the color of bubbles means nothing.
8:10 shoutout to the Blue (Da Ba Dee) album art making a sneaky cameo in the video about blue bubbles 😉
Very strange to see that SMS became even more popular in the US with the advent of the smartphone. In many other places, particularly the UK where I am from, third party messaging services made SMS practically obsolete for personal messaging, starting even before smartphones came along. This is because SMS messages were pretty expensive, could be around 15p per message.
Yess
@2freeIvX That's not true for the UK, we had free unlimited SMS included in a lot of plans and then unlimited data was being offered at affordable prices and that's when SMS became more or less irrelevant.
Since then messaging apps increased in popularity and variety.
So coming from the telecommunications world... Sms was actually a mistaken discovered backend on cell feed and cost companies nothing. So it was given in the USA as most companies didn't think consumers would use it, I'm willing to be had they known how popular over taking it would become they would have charged like Europe for it.
@André Malerba exactly my thoughts.
@Ē Nihil depends, if it's for business purposes yeah, phone number/whatsapp and e-mail.
If it's for friendship or flirting definitely IG and once you prove worthy then you can have the phone number/WhatsApp
I've successfully made my main friend group all use discord and it's awesome. Although in my other social circles including clubs, sports, and anyone not in my main friend group I'm always the one to go "I have an android", see their disappointment, and then everyone immediately wants to use snapchat. I, as a highschool girl, really don't like snapchat (and normal social media) and have uninstalled it, so I end up that not communicating with that group outside of in person and dms.
as a high school student in Australia, instagram is like the default app for chatting in group chats. I never thought iMessage would be so popular in America
I’m from the US and have always thought this whole “controversy” was so stupid. It’s literally not that deep and doesn’t matter in the long run. I don’t give a shit if the text is green or blue. I just need my message to go through, doesn’t matter what form it takes to do that 😂 I personally have an iPhone but basically all of my friends and family have an android. My bubbles are almost exclusively green and it makes no difference to me. The people that have strong opinions about texts being green are just rude since not everyone can (and/or wants) to spend upwards of $700 on a phone
I don't think I've EVER used a "default" messaging app in my entire life... All I've used for messages was Whatsapp 🙃
One point that was missed was that Google didn't originally set out to make their own RCS servers. RCS was supposed to be run by the phone companies, just like SMS and MMS. But the phone companies didn't see any profit in it, and very few bothered to implement it. After a few years of no progress, Google decided to bypass the phone companies.
@Ragnarok Google wants every dollar they can get too. They just have a different way of getting it.
Weird apple snobs will never understand how much google does for the betterment of society while Apple (like Microsoft before it) is just out to fleece you for every dollar they can get. The entire android platform was a gift to humanity that people don't truly appreciate.
I remember when Google messages released the beta version with RCS support a few years ago. Greatest thing they ever did, and once it went fully live, suddenly every US carrier supported it. Shocking
@Justin Price underrated comment.
@Laden Just curious, what carrier do you have. I'm on AT&T and one of the few people I know that uses Google Messages on a Samsung phone has been on both Verizon and T-Mobile and we were able to chat using RCS.
Apple will never add RCS support simply due to the fact that it adds all of the most wanted features such as read receipts, file sizes, typing indicators, etc. With that being said, if they added support for that, many users who have been wanting to switch to Android but felt like they couldn't just because of iMessage will switch to an Android device.
It's precisely because of Apple's lock-in mentality that nothing would ever persuade me to use any of their products.
For me is the contrary. I live in Mexico and all my friends use android I feel really bad that I can’t use or experience iMessage with all that really good stickers.
nah but seriously in Britain we do have this debate. I personally prefer iphone
lol
I love how much of a US problem this thing is. In Indonesia, literally no one uses their phone's Messaging app to text anyone on anything. It's mostly just used for checking how much data you have, your login codes, packet delivery notification, et cetera. For actual messaging people just use third-party apps like WhatsApp or Telegram; both of which are end-to-end encrypted. Some even use Signal and Facebook Messenger.
initially people were divided to use Line (espc young person) and whatsapp (older), but i think most people are just use their whatsapp rn in Indonesia. i too have a friend that use their imessage, but that's definitely won't be me for sure since almost all people i communicated to are using android phone with whatsapp lol :)
This is the same in most LATAM countries. Literally no one ever messages anyone using the default text apps unless it's emergency and they can't seem to get a hold of me thru any other means.
Facebook messenger is actually great. Being in the chat screen, seeing everyone online, feels like I'm in an actual chat room. But my messaging app feels like a dark wasteland lol.
@Liggliluff is snapchat popular at there?
For real? I use those apps for my plugs.
In my country (Czech Republic), I'd say about 80 % of people use WhatsApp. It's the default way of texting and calling people here. You're pressured to download the app here since it's the only place people use group chats. But you get used to texting through the app so we use it for everyday texting and calling too. I think it's one of the only places where nobody uses SMS or iMessage. So technically it is possible to get people using 3rd party apps for texting.
In Japan, Line is everywhere and it has RCS features. It's great. I feel like if my phone can generate it (photo, video, whatever), Line can send it.
I had an iphone and switched back to android. I went back because the phone I had broke down within a year, and I hated the interface. I MUCH prefer the samsung/android interface. Apple's general philosophy of locking you into their ecosystem is also just gross to me.
I'm not switching to iphone, and frankly, I shouldn't have to in order to avoid being harrassed by text messages.
I love both Google RCS and iMessage.. I'm waiting for their crossover
This reminds me about a time in college when I went to a conference in Philly for a nonprofit organization I was involved in. The organizers set up a group chat over iMessage to give all the participants updates about the activities that would take place over 3 days. Out of over 20 participants from chapters all over the country, I was the only one with an Android phone. I missed out on a lot of the features in the chat and trying to text back was a nightmare. The person I got assigned as a roommate was kind enough to pass over some of the information that was being discussed, but I can't emphasize how dystopian and isolating it felt to be there with all these people while feeling like I was outside of a bubble. The insight in this video was real 😶
@KD iPhones are popular lmao wdym
@nothing to see here they're all built on the open source signal protocol! Signals end to end encrypted by default and has soo many more features.
This is how the US government and Apple trap users for surveillance purposes. People need to start using 3rd party apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Once Facebook added end-to-end encryption to WhatsApp, the US government started enforcing regulations on Facebook.
@Liggliluff clearly cuz thats what they did lol
@jelaninoel _> "why should the other NINETEEN people have to use inferior telegram because ONE guy has Android?"_
Yeah, why should we accommodate the 5 %, that's just a minority. We can just ignore the minority ... right ...?
Those walls made me claustrophobic so I switched and never thought of switching back. People around me have a hard time believing it, since anyone they have seen and had been using iphone, they never wanted to switch back.
I like the UI tho, it's so crisp, I miss only that. But I can download a launcher and switch anytime
The stuff about the lock-in rings so true. iMessage is pretty much the sole thing keeping me from switching to Android.
Androids (dragon ball reference)saved the world but Iphone didn't