(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
I know a 46 year old man who constantly complains about green bubbles in group texts. He doesn’t seem to realize that it’s his phone that isn’t following a standard and instead has chosen to refuse the RCS standard and lock him into proprietary bullshit.
Even worse. Over a decade ago, Google offered to integrate with their protocol for a shared improved user experience. Apple forbid it.
It’s not laziness on their part, or “better features” because they get to have control. They literally want the poor user experience to encourage just this kind of bullying.
Funny thing is that Google does the same thing all the time. Back when Microsoft released Windows phone, they had made a few really amazing apps. One of them was their email app. Google went out of their way to ensure Gmail would never work on it past the basic functions of reading and sending email. They also pretty much forbid YouTube from working on windows phones.
The email thing stuck out the most because Google announced they were dropping support to whatever protocol Microsoft was using to communicate with Gmail servers, then Microsoft announced they would use a different protocol and next week Google went “oh right we are also dropping support for this other protocol”.
That’s fair. As a developer that has been burned by Google dropping support for shit they created, I can’t say for certain it was malicious or just Google being Google.
They used to create a ton of tools and protocols and drop support a couple years later because it wasn’t worth it to them to maintain it. Lots of pet projects used to get promotions, but no budget for sustained support.
A big client onboarding and exposing major flaws could absolutely shine and unwelcome light and force them to take a critical eye and come to the conclusion of “yeah, everyone that worked on that has moved on, it’d take too many resources to revive it, and it’s just going to help our competitor anyway. Our business need for it is gone because does similar things. Cut the cord”
It sucks, and isn’t an excuse. I stopped using Google dev tools because of it long ago. Very unreliable. But I don’t think it’s the same intent as Apple by a long shot.
Yep. Apple may be shits for their hand in this, but no one should kid themselves into thinking Google is the “good guy” in this. The only reason they are trying to play the interoperability and open standards card is because they have tried everything else and it has fallen on its face.
Sheep come in many age groups. I have an iphone for work, and I have turned off iMessage.
“why don’t you have an iPhone?”
“I do, unfortunately. But turned iMessage off because it’s shit.”
“But now your messages come in green bubbles. It’s annoying!”
“Send your message in Teams”
“On android phones you can get different messaging apps, and on some of those apps you can change the color of the text bubbles (both send and receive) to suit your needs. If the color is really an issue for you, just change it! Oh iPhones can’t do that? Shame…”
Yup. And one that randomly assigns a color for each chat. It’s nice.
Why do you know this person? Seems like you shouldn’t have to listen to anything he has to say anymore…