(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 think the most frustrating part is Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids and people aren’t like “Oh, fuck them for doing that”, they’re like “Oh, Android sucks.” Like it’s just a wildly successful and incredibly scummy tactic to convince people that Apple devices are superior and people didn’t just fall for it, they’re willfully diving in headfirst.
It’s a shame, really, because I do think they make some pretty good hardware. Might not be my thing, but they make a good phone. That said, I’ll never patronize them because of the bullshit I’ve had to endure trying to communicate with my iPhone-owning family.
i’ve only ever heard about this “green bubble” thing from USA media.
do Americans still use SMS?
why? phone numbers are obsolete. my SMS inbox going back years is just 2FA security codes, and they’re very rare these days, since authenticator apps.
Yeah sms ought to be the standard default. Since companies like apple refused to help improve it, people like you turn to other solutions. If you use WhatsApp, you should know Facebook owns it and uses it to spy on you for profit. I’d prefer “obsolete” sms to that…
RCS should be the default. SMS is the protocol designed for old non smart cellphones.
The exact problem is that Apple DOES default to SMS outside of imessage
Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids
In what way exactly? All the messaging apps I use work fine. I even have the same Signal account logged in through both my Android phone and my iPad.
Nobody I know actually uses iMessage either. It’s a complete non-issue as SMS is quite an outdated technology.
Come back to me after convincing a group of non tech-savvy iPhone-using friends or family to use literally anything but whatever the default messaging app is available on their phone or whatever they’re already used to.
