Other The dreaded green bubble.

[oldmacs]

For me its not about the colour of the message, I really don't care what devices other people have, its more about the experience of messaging - iMessage is just better than standard sms for things like read receipts, the typing indicator, knowing something is actually delivered, sending photos, reactions, effects etc.

 

[akash.nu]

This is about the dumbest thing I've read since a long time. Bored wannabe journalist pulls a problem out of the worlds ass.

I read the article until the argument that the "green was intentionally made ugly". It's just ridiculous. Colors have their limited meaning, but it's mostly dictated by context - be it other colors, images, ... And green is in no way an ugly color, even in a poisonously saturated version. If you want to have significant data on this topic, read Beauty by Sagmeister and Walsh, who concluded that most people consider ****-like brown to be ugly, but green was nowhere near that (Blue was by far the favourite though).

From a design perspective its clear, that Apple needs to signal the feature disparity somehow (where the reasons of the disparity might be of technological, design and business related nature). Choosing two different colours with similar saturation and brightness, both of which are consistently used in their design language is the most natural and neutral thing to do (allthough the blue certainly puts a light bias in here).

Now does Apple intentionally segment their user base here? Of course they do. Everybody who utilises the power of branding does it. But in this case they do it as subtly as possible. I really think its design wise one of the best ways to accomplish this task.

The problem described here has nothing to do with Apple. It's purely a matter of the maturity of society. There always has been the rich kids, the wannabe rich kids and the poor kids at school. I was one of the poor kids and i never had fancy brand stuff. And yes, other kids made fun of me. Try being the only one not wearing Nike sneakers, see who's talking to you then - loser.
It's part of life, it's part of economics. As long as there is an income disparity (which is another topic), there will be people buying vanity items. Yes it's painful as a kid, but its better to learn this lesson young than as an adult, because there is no escaping it. Making a whole fuzz about "green message bubbles" out of it is beyond ridiculous... and most likely paid by the competition who would kill to have the same brand power.

Nicely summarised. Couldn’t agree more. I can’t believe people still talking about this crap.

 

[LovingTeddy]

No. iMessage is arguably the only messaging platform that shares pictures in their original quality. The only other app that does this is wechat. The rest (whatsapp, telegram, etc) resized your photos into a low res crap. I have provided the data a while back in the Android sub-forum.

But I won't judge you if you prefer the low quality MMS photos and videos. More power to you.
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True, which is unfortunate.
I see people sharing their important moments, trips, even wedding photos, via whatsapp, not realizing all of them are being resized into low-res photos that are unusable for anything else. Of course, later they are upset why their printed photo album don't look good.

If it is weeding photos or trips that I wanted to share with bunch of people, I uploaded to photo drive and send the share link.
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Be honest, do you try to avoid green bubble texts?

https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-1021350/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

I really care less. I never really cared about iMessages where I can use WeChat and WhatsApp or simply text messages. I carry two phones with me, one is the iPhone 8 Plus and one is Huawei P30 Pro. The first thing I do when I setup my iPhone is turn off iMessage.

 

[ScreenSavers]

I don't have any preference... I'll text any color if needed. That said, there was one person I texted about a year ago that had an Andriod. I remember being really surprised that I was getting read receipts from it.

 

[Never mind]

Not a problem for me. I am an adult and I don’t give a hoot what color it is or what phone you have.

 

[GloriousAndrew]

The only time a green bubble annoys me is in a group chat. I love iMessage group chats. You can leave them. You can invite people. You can remove annoying people. You can rename them so it isn't a long list of names/numbers. You send high quality images and video without it being a grainy 320p piece of trash where you can't even make out what is happening.

Then someone invites the Android user and the group chat turns to ****.

 

[eyoungren]

I don't have any preference... I'll text any color if needed. That said, there was one person I texted about a year ago that had an Andriod. I remember being really surprised that I was getting read receipts from it.

RCS.

Which is finally being implemented by Google itself because it's tired of waiting for the carriers to get to it.

 

[Zaft]

I think it’s funny how cross-platform messaging apps aren’t very popular in the US. Haven’t we learned anything from BBM?


iMessage sucks, especially so if you have many iOS devices.

On the contrary, iMessage is great when you have multiple IOS devices because of hand off and the synchronization.

I live in the US and I would say only one or two contacts are not on iMessage. I simply text them,not a big deal. That's the beauty of iMessage, the user does not have to even think about it.

 

[tps3443]

I’ve been using a iPhone since about 2016. And I’ve just realized the whole controversy about green bubbles vs blue bubbles. I could care less what color they are. It doesn’t affect anything for me.

 

[Pipper99]

I avoid the green bubbles for one reason: I get charged $.20 for each green bubble incoming and outgoing message. I'm on the original iPhone data plan, and I've avoided adding texting to my plan for an additional $20 per month because most of my contacts use Messages, and the Android texts are few and far between, so they cost me only a few extra bucks. When Android users include me in a group text, though, it adds up. When those green bubble messages increase my bill by more than $20 per month consistently (it hasn't happened yet), I'll have to add texting to my plan. Otherwise, I don't care about the bubble color.

 

[a-m-k]

Let me get this right, when you are texting someone who doesn't have an iPhone, you don't like the green bubble when they text back, right?

There is a really easy fix because I wanted to change a setting when someone texted me and it changed the colors of the chat bubble for a non-i-Phone user, too. Do you have a mix of iPhone users, mobile users, or even land line users? If so, the mobile numbers and landline numbers will be green, but obviously the iPhone numbers will be blue. Just change your mobile numbers to iPhone numbers and their texts will be blue.

 

[compwiz1202]

I couldn't care less, it's the snobbery around green bubbles that makes me feel dreadful to no end

Totally agree. The thing that annoys me more is that iOS can't separate yet. Send with iMessage to iDevices and as SMS/MMS to others. Don't downgrade everything because of one greenie.

 

[timeconsumer]

Be honest, do you try to avoid green bubble texts?

https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-1021350/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Yes, I avoid “green bubbles” but only because I don’t need my carrier to have the ability to view my messages. I prefer iMessage, Signal or Telegram. I wish the US would move on from iMessage though and use a cross-platform solution such as Telegram.

 

[pika2000]

If it is weeding photos or trips that I wanted to share with bunch of people, I uploaded to photo drive and send the share link.

You != the lay public. Most will simply share those events in WhatsApp, or at very best, Facebook. Heck, how many people here take up on Google’s free photo storage offer where your photos are resized into few hundred kilobytes?

 

[Harthag]

There are tons of prepaid / MVNO options on the cheap that include unlimited texting. If someone told me I'm not worth a small monthly general SMS fee I would immediately remove that person from my life. Just as annoying to me as NIMBYs.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/NIMBY

I've really grown to appreciate WeChat. Fantastic app that also translates on the fly with a long press. Images and videos aren't compressed as someone else above noted. Sure I love iMessage, but I don't let the tail wag the dog. If I want a phone, I buy the phone regardless of its native messaging platform.

 

[Falhófnir]

I turned iMessage (associated with phone number) off, found it more annoying (missing/ late appearing messages) than helpful tbh. I'm sure if you live in silicon valley and always have great 4G signal it works nicely. If where you live you quite often find yourself down to low bars on 2G or 3G, as I am, it's not so great (whereas I find texts usually work if you have signal at all).

 

[akash.nu]

You != the lay public. Most will simply share those events in WhatsApp, or at very best, Facebook. Heck, how many people here take up on Google’s free photo storage offer where your photos are resized into few hundred kilobytes?

As far as I know, google only compresses pictures if they’re above 5MB. I think most phone pictures are below that these days.

People with full scale cameras probably ain’t using google photos for their usage.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

I don't get why this is even a thing to bother thinking about. I only care I can read/send the message. That's all I care about. If Imessage didn't work or sucked I"d stick to Google Voice Or Google Hangouts or just find some other messenger. In fact I kind of do already use all those at any given time. Simply because I transition from Iphone to Windows, to MacMini and back and forth between different platforms. Imessage doesn't sync with Windows. So this bubble nonsense is completely moot for my uses.

 

[Starfia]

He did say he's using an SE, but he also said he's using it without cellular capabilities, so I was just wondering what, if anything, he uses for a phone.

I get it. I use Skype when I absolutely have to (a couple of times a year), but other than that, nothing. I'm puzzled that the majority of the population still feels it's essential to spend money on phone service.

 

[rican]

No, not an issue.

Same... Never an issue. Doesn't cross my mind ever. Why would it?

 

[Shanghaichica]

I avoid the green bubbles for one reason: I get charged $.20 for each green bubble incoming and outgoing message. I'm on the original iPhone data plan, and I've avoided adding texting to my plan for an additional $20 per month because most of my contacts use Messages, and the Android texts are few and far between, so they cost me only a few extra bucks. When Android users include me in a group text, though, it adds up. When those green bubble messages increase my bill by more than $20 per month consistently (it hasn't happened yet), I'll have to add texting to my plan. Otherwise, I don't care about the bubble color.

I don't spend a lot of time in imessage becuase most of my contacts use WhatsApp even if they have iPhones. I'm reluctant to send Media via imessage because I get charged 55p per item if the recipient is not an iPhone user. So I'd rather send it via WhatsApp albeit in lower resolution for free.

However I do like being able to receive and respond to my messages on my other devices like my ipad, macbook, apple watch and homepod.

 

[Wide opeN]

Glad I don't have that worry with unlimited data.

 

[M5RahuL]

No worries here. Apart from a false proclamation of elitism from some iPhone owners, this is just downright stupid.

Besides, WhatsApp FTW ( txts, pics, videos... voice/videos calls even! ) ..especially for international communication, imo of course.

 

[eyoungren]

I get it. I use Skype when I absolutely have to (a couple of times a year), but other than that, nothing. I'm puzzled that the majority of the population still feels it's essential to spend money on phone service.

Because the majority of the population still operates using voice communications.

I have two kids. If there are problems at school, the school is going to pick up a telephone and call me. They aren't going to text me, iMessage me, WhatsApp me or Facebook Message me. It will be a phone call.

Similarly, there are various other people, organizations and business I deal with that are phone calls only. Even my wife, as much as she likes texting, uses the phone. Her sister is in Georgia, she's in Arizona and they have 2+ hour conversations. And Skype is not something you're going to get them to use.

 

[joeblow7777]

It’s not something I think about. I only know a few people with Android phones and green bubbles are the same as blue ones for me. It’s a text message, not a status symbol.

I don't get the status symbol mentality, but there are legitimate reasons why internet based messaging (iMessage, WhatsApp, etc.) is better than SMS. For example, when travelling. I don't know about in the US, but with Canadian carriers international texting is expensive! iMessage is free anywhere as long as you have wifi or data.
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For me its not about the colour of the message, I really don't care what devices other people have, its more about the experience of messaging - iMessage is just better than standard sms for things like read receipts, the typing indicator, knowing something is actually delivered, sending photos, reactions, effects etc.

Exactly. I don't know how many people actually care what device the other person is using. There's simply limitations to SMS texts that you don't have to worry about with iMessages.