I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
If they don’t want to text you because you don’t have an iPhone they’re not friends you want to have.
Seen this sentiment that green bubbles = bad a few times online but never it’s never come up for me. I assume this is a teen - early adult specific issue where the idea is mostly to be part of the group
It’s been happening in high schools, to the point teens are bullied and pushed out of peer groups if they have Androids. It’s frankly disgusting that apple willingly creates this division to profit off teenagers bullying each other, and they don’t get called out for it enough.
But in the larger picture, it’s definitely going to be more common among the young, because iPhones themselves are ubiquitous among the younger. It’s something the tech space is slowly starting realize: Apple has almost total market dominance among the rising demographic, and this has led to increasing tech illiteracy due to the way Apple designs its software, and inability/refusal to learn anything else. That is a huge problem for the tech industry when the only thing they can do to find customers is dumb their software down to appeal to people that don’t know how to use anything other than iOS
Perhaps in the US but it’s not so pronounced elsewhere. I think I only know one person with an iPhone.
But you don’t understand! The USA is the entire world! Everybody else in the world is just like Americans or wants to be!🙄
I know five people with iPhones here. I interact with almost three orders of magnitude more people than five…
You interact with 5000 people?
About that, yes. Not in-depth and not each day, obviously, but I have quite a sizable crowd I deal with on a regular basis. Comes from having a lot of former students I keep in touch with.
It’s still about 30% here in Germany. It is rising though. And I think this is because of “clever” marketing. The highschools here in Germany started forcing parents to buy Ipads for their children a couple of years ago. Children with low income parents get it from the city for free. Nominally it is, because it is “easier to maintain”, but I honestly really doubt this.
Yeah easier to maintain lmao. You mean to spy on their students.
These schools are using iPads in place of computer labs. I’m old enough to have actually managed a computer lab, and I can tell you that a fleet of managed iPads is way easier to maintain than a computer lab.
Everyone 30 and under at my office prefers Macs, to the point of bringing in their own machines to do 90% of their work and falling back to the Windows laptops issued by IT for the remainder.
If anybody wants to judge me based on the brand of electronics I use, my favorite band or the brand of clothes I wear, I have no interest in interacting with them lol. This whole consumerist worship-culture is just toxic.
I think this must be a cultural thing because no one in the UK sends SMS messages. Everyone just uses WhatsApp or signal or telegram. I’m android and have literally never had anyone mention the colour of my bubble. I didn’t know this was a thing!
I think it’s mostly an US thing. The rest of the world has moved away from SMS.
It’s mostly a US thing because Android is the standard pretty much everywhere except the US.
Lol not true
this is definitely not true.
Android makes up over 70% of the global phone market, what’s not true?
US haven’t moved away from Imperial either 😂
Americans please
Yeah, this is definitely a US-centric thing. Almost nobody I know (UK) uses SMS as their default, it’s usually the last resort before just ringing the person.
If you think you’re better than me because you have an iPhone and I run an Android, I don’t want to talk to you anyway.
People are so fucking petty and elitist over the dumbest fucking things.
Messages is better than text. Is requesting a switch to telegram not ok? I do that mostly so we can share pictures and videos that don’t look horrible.
I use Telegram for videos also. RCS on Android has been pretty great and image quality hasn’t been an issue.
I don’t think you can use RCS unless both of you are on android though. So isn’t it reasonable to ask to use telegram or some other messaging all if you don’t both have the same platform?
Sure, but that isn’t the issue that’s being discussed. Unless I’m reading this whole thing wrong, this has more to do with people excluding others, WHOLLY, because they don’t have an iPhone.
The op is conflating two different things weirdly.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
I totally understand wanting to move the conversation to a different platform or format.
The last line about it being a friendship dealbreaker is weird though.
Last line and title are the same.
Now you’re just being pedantic. Both points were made. I was talking about one of them.
If you live anywhere outside of the US, the question is irrelevant, because everyone uses whatsapp etc.
Within the US, if you are over the age of 30, it probably doesn’t matter.
if you are under the age of 30 AND in the US, I mean, if someone does judge you for it, you at least have a great way to filter shitty people out of your life lol.
I live in the US and this was never a problem for me? If it is then these people aren’t really your friends. Think of it as a litmus test for finding friends.
I did run into some friends who were just surprised people bought phones outside of iPhone. But they were still my friends. It didn’t matter to them they just hadn’t thought of a world without iPhone users
no I’m not saying that there aren’t non ahole iphone users but there outliers it seems like. I guess me and you got lucky because it seems like for the average teenager in the states your “friends” treat you poorly if you have an Android.
in my experience nobody texts anymore anyway, its all signal or some other messenger.
I mean I was born in 98 so I’m just barely Gen Z and even when I was in middle school and high school SMS and MMS was the predominant way students communicated with each other. this was around mid 2010s so not that long ago HS and middle. schoolers were using SMS. the amount of people using non SMS messaging services is a lot less than you think. the most. The USA has 259mil active users sending 2 trillion texts every year. as. of 2023 in the USA signal has a 100mil downloads but only 40mil active users. the two most. popular non SMS service in the USA are Facebook messenger at 52% of the population using it and WhatsApp at 25%. so no it’s not all signal or some other messenger not by a long shot
If your “friends” make so much fuss over text bubbles, probably the best course of action is to find better friends.
Yes, but it’s a feature, not a bug.
It’s a super low investment and quick way to identify people you should avoid.
It is a pain in group chats. That one green bubble means the chat falls back to basic text. That means I effectively cannot send a video (possible, but unusable quality).
At that point I would rather use something like WhatsApp. Which is fine if everyone in the group has it. At least it is cross platform.
But I am seriously considering buying my sister, who has a cheap husband, an iPhone just so she does not mess up a family group chat.
Apple is deliberately not supporting the global standard of RCS for exactly thai reason. They want green bubbles to stay.
How old are you?
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
I think this is one of the most ridiculous, cringe-worthy things I have read in a long ass time.
I also have to say that I have no idea how anyone puts up with iphones. I have both and the iphone experience from a UI perspective is just awful. Yeah, the screen is nice, the battery life is good, the camera is excellent, but holy crap is this phone infuriating to use. You can get Android phones with just as nice hardware, but then you don’t need to deal with that terrible iOS user interface. How is this such a popular device, I will never understand it.
Also, why the FUCK is the iphone so goddamn heavy?! It is smaller than my Samsung and noticeably heavier in my pocket. Just everything about this device is annoying.
i only use android. if someone disciminate you ofr a stupid bubbles color. wth you do with that person???
I mean this came up in a recent group chat we had where I asked who the green text user was. It’s not that we didn’t continue the text. It’s that we have to realize that we are using plain text messages and that our iMessage features no longer work. If your friends don’t text you because you have an android, they’re not your friends.
I have a friend who said he was left out of a lot of group chat with his roommates because he was the green bubble. He switched to iPhone and they still were meeting up without him.
That’s when he realized it was him, not the color of his bubble…
I don’t care what phone you have, but if you have an iPhone, I will assume you are an idiot by default until proven otherwise.
I prefer android’s ability to customize my phone to the point that I can break it, but I respect apples security and can see why some people would prioritize that
