• A new Android app called Beeper Mini allows users to send iMessages as blue bubbles from non-Apple devices.
• Beeper Mini bypasses traditional iMessage hacks by directly sending iMessages from Android devices.
• The app has been praised for its smooth functionality, sending messages seamlessly between Android and iPhone users.
I started using it mainly to not have pictures and videos sent get all degraded, it does work.
Anyhow all my friends were like OMG, YOU GOT AN IPHONE because my messages started coming through blue and I was like, why does that fucking matter?
This is like when I started drinking my coffee black and suddenly I knew the secret handshake at every coffee place I’d order at. Baristas would be like, “the way it should be” and wink and shit. Um. I guess I’m cool now or something
Anecdotally, in my experience everyone in the UK just uses WhatsApp for group chats
I don’t get why Americans are so obsessed with iMessage. There’s like a million chat apps out there.
It’s the status symbolism of the green bubble vs blue bubble. Here in America we try to show off how rich we are by driving fancy cars, live in giant ridiculous houses, and buying all the latest most expensive tech the day it’s released.
You can see me in a fancy car or in front of my mansion, but how do you know i spent way too much money on the phone i text you from? If all texts arrived on your phone in the same color you wouldn’t be able to immediately identify which kind of phone i sent the text from.
Now here’s the magic: if i send your iphone (bc let’s be real, if you don’t have an iphone you aren’t someone worth talking to) a text, you know it came from an iPhone because the text bubble is blue. If you ever received a text and it was this hideous radioactive snot/puke green… Just delete. Just don’t even bother. I can’t believe I’m even typing these letters, it feels so gross… But that green bubble means you received a text from someone with an…Android. 🤮
So there ya go! 😀
But what if you don’t use texts, is there any way Apple could add that knowledge of superiority to other ways of messaging by default?
Sent from an iPhone.
It’s because texting has been very cheap there for a long time. It’s now very cheap where I am too, but in high school everyone was using stuff like MSN Messenger where possible. At that time teens in the US were texting. It became cheap where I am by the time WhatsApp came out, so we have a mix of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and texting
Most Americans aren’t obsessed at all. They just want to use whatever is easiest, and iMessage is preinstalled and mostly works fine with pretty much everyone. The bias toward default is strong.
The fact that people are using iMessage for group chats is which a weird concept to me.
That’s what discord, WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are for.
If anyone adds my primary text message service number to a group chat they are being blocked. Gross.
https://www.androidpolice.com/messenger-wasting-battery-background-tests/
https://www.lifewire.com/how-facebook-messenger-apps-drains-battery-3880043
The app is constantly doing shit in the background (god knows what. You give permission to access your shit when you install it) to the point where there is significant noticeable battery drain. No thanks.
Now, maybe they’ve fixed that issue since, but we know that the “fix” would be focused on hiding it better rather than stopping the activity.
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It’s primarily not an active choice. For most iPhone users, it’s just what’s installed, so it’s what they use. The idea that there might be other options doesn’t really occur to them; iMessage came out before any of the other options really became popular, it worked well enough, and it was preinstalled, so that’s what people learned to use.
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I don’t know what sort of people you are getting into group chats with, but for me it’s not exactly people I can just decide to block on a whim. Family groups, employer groups, friends I was already friends with and would lose contact with if I blocked. I’m not going to torpedo my job and all of those relationships by making a big deal over what messaging service we use, even if their use of iMessage makes my experience worse.
I wouldn’t block them, but I’d be leaving the group chat.
As if i want my default sms texting app to be getting spammed by a big group chat.
Also the default at least here in Australia is pretty much Facebook messenger or maybe WhatsApp not because anyone likes it, but because everyone already has a Facebook account even if they don’t use it much.
Also it means you can easily have group chats with people who you need to communicate with but you don’t really want to have your number.
What a ridiculous notion to be using a platform specific service for a group chat, unless you are deciding your friends group or work colleagues based on the phone they use which again seems unfathomable.
I am an iPhone user, in Australia and i have seen precisely zero iMessage chat groups even attempt to be created. Because everyone knows it’s a shitty pain in the ass service if someone doesn’t have an iPhone.
We all blame apple for that as we should not the android user. How it ended up inverted in the US is beyond me but it’s backwards af.
This whole thing is a non issue being caused by lack of thought and logic of the users apparently almost exclusively in the USA
Personally i wish the default here was discord or signal but messenger is still far better than iMessage at least from a cross platform usability standpoint.
I wouldn’t block them, but I’d be leaving the group chat.
That still means losing out on a lot of general life stuff. Just, overall.
As if i want my default sms texting app to be getting spammed by a big group chat.
I guess I don’t see how that’s made any different by the group chat being in a different app. I can turn notifications off or make them silent in either case.
Also the default at least here in Australia is pretty much Facebook messenger or maybe WhatsApp not because anyone likes it, but because everyone already has a Facebook account even if they don’t use it much.
Right. But everyone who has a phone has a phone number for texting.
Also it means you can easily have group chats with people who you need to communicate with but you don’t really want to have your number.
Yep, that’s definitely an advantage. I’m not trying to sell you on SMS or iMessage, I’m just trying to explain why it’s popular over here.
What a ridiculous notion to be using a platform specific service for a group chat, unless you are deciding your friends group or work colleagues based on the phone they use which again seems unfathomable.
Uh…wait. I don’t see how that’s different from Facebook or WhatsApp. Especially since iMessage does send messages to users on other devices, it’s just a worse experience for the recipient. Meta is still a platform, it’s just one you access by way of a username connected to your web activity instead of one you access by way of purchasing a specific device.
I am an iPhone user, in Australia and i have seen precisely zero iMessage chat groups even attempt to be created. Because everyone knows it’s a shitty pain in the ass service if someone doesn’t have an iPhone.
I’m glad people are so aware over there, but over here it’s very uncommon for people to even be conscious of what phones their friends use. So an app that works well enough, as far as they can tell, is going to be the accepted default.
We all blame apple for that as we should not the android user. How it ended up inverted in the US is beyond me but it’s backwards af.
Because marketing.
This whole thing is a non issue being caused by lack of thought and logic of the users apparently almost exclusively in the USA
No, it’s caused intentionally by Apple. They spent billions of dollars cultivating that perception in America, and it’s paid off for them.
Personally i wish the default here was discord or signal but messenger is still far better than iMessage at least from a cross platform usability standpoint.
Yeah, and I wish the default here was pretty much anything else too. Like I said, I’m not trying to convince you. Just explaining the situation.
Can some American please explain this European why this is such a big deal?
Mostly because the iPhone’s dominance has led to iMessage being a very popular service over here. But Android users on the receiving end of messages from that service get images and videos in much lower quality, among many other quality losses.
I mean it’s kinda a chicken and egg problem but I’d argue that you’ve got it the wrong way around. I think the iPhone is so dominant only because of iMessage. It’s a status symbol to have blue bubbles, and there are people seriously not dating Android users for example.
The iPhone got popular for different reasons but the only reason why it’s so dominant in the states is that people started viewing blue bubbles as something desirable. And that is by design! Apple has deliberately made texting between iPhones and Android phones shit by not updating to newer official texting standards. They stuck with an SMS/MMS protocol from the 90s and early 00s, just so that people keep buying iPhones.
Honestly, if I met someone on a dating app, and she ghosted me early on for “having green text bubbles,” I’d consider that a bullet dodged.
There are lots of factors going into the dominance of the iPhone in the US. Platform lock-in, the ecosystem, the lack of an alternative with similar levels of polish for several of the early years, the mystique, the design, the build quality, Android’s formerly fractured lineup, the rise of the iPad, app development trends that for a while preferred iPhone first; and, yes, iMessage.
All of those have their own complicated and oroboros-like causes and effects, with some being force multipliers, meaning that pointing at any one thing as the cause for any other is a little bit of a fool’s errand, so I’ll just say they’re definitely related.
Which I guess is the chicken and the egg problem.
It’s not, it’s a superficial opinion on color and functionality that apple and Google want you to think is a big deal but in reality it’s two companies using two different protocols and they want you to pick up their product over the over. Even Americans don’t know why it’s a big deal, they see green in iMessage and freak out.
Sounds like you’re an iPhone user, or at least someone who doesn’t have kids with Android phones and doesn’t participate in group activities where the people primarily use iPhones.
I won’t bother explaining it all, but the real issues are group chats that contain both iPhones and Androids, and image/video quality, reactions, etc. The issues are bad enough that kids especially get left out of group chats over it, and bullying incidents are widely reported (and I’ve seen it first hand)
As an android user with a wife and kids that have iPhone, it’s obnoxious that any video my wife and kids attach to a group message gets auto-reduced to sub-potato quality. We send them with Facebook messenger now but I can see where other groups might simply exclude the people with Androids to avoid the need to use alternate apps. Apple k ows what it’s doing.
