Apple vs Android with green and blue bubbles: the accusations against iMessage

back to talk about it iMessage – Messages in Italian – Apple’s instant messaging platform is very popular among iPhone owners but has also sparked discussions over the years and is often taken as an example to highlight the Close the ecosystem in Cupertino. Several times in the past there was talk of “Opening up to Android With the release of a release that could also include Google’s operating system, but nothing has been done about it, and most likely will not be done in the future. Because that’s fine with Apple, in short.

Although with the passage of time there was Connectivity improvements between iMessage and rest of the world – See the report with Google Messages, for example There is no doubt that Apple’s messaging platform represents a file “Exclusive” service: It was born on iOS, and only works on iOS. Who has an iPhone knows this very well: Chat with another Apple user is instant, Messages go through the web and are represented by a blue bubble. and the poor friend Android? Simple: He can send messages safely on the platform, but his messages They are traditional SMS messages and are marked with a green bubble.

blue vs green: There are those who even talked about bullying – boil? … – because the different colors of the messages tend to “highlight” those who don’t have an iPhone. The case re-emerged after an in-depth study was published before The Wall Street JournalWho recovered the documents dell’affaire Epic Games It shows details about Apple’s behavior toward iMessage over time. It was even thought that it unlocks on Android When Google was dealing with the acquisition of WhatsApp, but then nothing came of it and we know how it ended: Facebook entered the scene, and Cupertino’s management thought it best to keep its messaging app as a differentiation tool. Indeed exclusive.

The item Apple keeps historically (remember BlackBerry Messages?). The only opening It happened recently with FaceTime, which now – albeit in a different way via a link – also “accepts” Android users. Call to video calling is very powerful In times of pandemic, Apple had to adapt to the market. For the rest, he doesn’t seem to give up: rather, the Wall Street Journal talks about “Click to join the blue text group“: If you don’t have an iPhone, you can’t chat on iMessage with blue bubbles, and if you can’t, you can’t you are different. Probably Verdi.

But on the other hand, if the decision to keep messages on iOS only was the result of a purely economic analysis -”Moving iMessage to Android will do us more harm than helpOn the other hand, Phil Schiller said in the past, a kind of separation was created between blue users and green users. It’s not just color that sets them apart: on the same platform, in fact, Previous access to all features – For example, the recipient sees when the sender is typing – while the latter can only partially exploit the chat.

“Squeeze,” it was said earlier. It’s clearly a more serious problem than one might think – silly, I mean, but it needs to be taken into account Looking at the percentages that you start to get, especially among teenagers. Several students interviewed in the US revealed that they feared being cut off from their circle of friends if their messages kept popping up in ominous green bubbles.

Apple continues to send claims to the sender: “our messages [blu] It protects privacy and is encrypted“, as they say from Cupertino. But there are those who do not believe it, including Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Google, who wrote on Twitter that”Blocking Apple iMessage is a documented strategy.but he talks aboutBullying to sell productsRemember that dayThere are criteria to solve this problem“.

Apple’s iMessage lock is a well-documented strategy. Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equality as an essential part of its marketing. Standards are in place today to fix this. https://t.co/MiQqMUOrgn

– Hiroshi Lockheimer January 8, 2022

iMessage is an important battle, because its use is more widespread than one might think. Some tricks helped Apple expand its reach among young people: an example above all pigeon game, a third party game available on the App Store that can be played directly on the messaging platform and has attracted hundreds of thousands of young people by getting them to talk while playing.

“I don’t know if it’s propaganda from Apple or just a tribal thing going on in a group versus an outside group, but people don’t seem to like the green text bubbles very much and seem to have a negative reaction.‘, a 20-year-old American student explains to WSJ. It is echoed by several other colleagues, who talk about harassment and … the end of love stories.

And to think about it The blue color of Apple Messages was born almost by accident, just to improve the process during the initial development of the feature by making it easier to recognize iMessage from other text formats. The Californian company never thought it would reach anyone Color Bubbles Battle.