The problem that I have with the way Apple does this has nothing whatsoever to do with me. It’s their device, it is not possible for me to care any less about it.
No, the problem I have is that it becomes a severe bullying / exclusion tactic among kids. Now, kids will always find something to bully other kids about, but this one seems to hurt a lot because of the source of the ire and the inability to do anything about it (short of purchasing an Apple device).
My eldest was excluded from group chats with friends because they “ruined” the quality of pictures and videos by being in the group chat. These are friends mind you, not the sort of bullies the rest of us might’ve had. It’s devastating to kids when their friends exclude them like this. What do you do? You can’t complain about the technology not mattering, you can’t reason with it, you can’t say: “it gets better”.
Kids these days have a very different relationship to technology. That relationship can seem weird or “wrong” to folks who remember a time before these ubiquitous devices. Crap patterns like this creating artificial walled gardens are not “novel” or “creative” ways to increase sales.
The EU is already legislating to solve this. They are forcing open APIs on iMessage with the DMA.
So… here’s a hot take I guess (disclaimer: i am an iphone user): People who are actively complaining about Apple having features that are unique to its platform don’t know how products work. Apple created this technology and design themselves and other companies want to leech off the features. We should want competition like iMessage vs whatever Android uses. For anyone to basically say Google doesn’t have the ability or resources to create an actual competitor is silly. They absolutely can make an alternative, but they choose not to. Google becomes complacent and progress slows or completely stops. I’d rather have a product that is FEATURE-FULL than feature-less. Additionally, this contact feature thing is neat, but I wouldn’t call it a “game-changer” or revolutionary. It’s similar to the super old ability that some cellular providers had/have where you could play a specific song instead of the calling tone.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 😒
The issue is that if Google does create a competitor, or an open standards competitor is created, like RCS vs iMessage, Apple isn’t going to implement that, or in any way interoperate with it. So even if Google or someone else made a better system that worked beautifully on Android and any hypothetical alternatives, but Apple only implemented their own system and refused to share, things would remain shit. Which is exactly where we are.
Apple doesn’t want to live in a world where multiple brands and types of mobile phones operating systems exist harmoniously. They want to intentionally make life difficult for anyone who didn’t buy an iPhone. In the process they make it intentionally difficult for people who did buy an iPhone, because their communications with non-iPhone friends are hampered.
They’re also egging easily influenced teenagers on to shame other teenagers for having “worse” phones and creating unnecessary divides and unhappiness among friends. All so kids will bully other kids into buying iPhones.
None of these features are difficult to invent or implement. They should all be open standards and iPhone users and Android users should all together be angry at Apple for putting a malicious profit motive above the creation of a smooth and universally interoperable user experience.
The issue is that if Google does create a competitor, or an open standards competitor is created, like RCS vs iMessage, Apple isn’t going to implement that, or in any way interoperate with it. So even if Google or someone else made a better system that worked beautifully on Android and any hypothetical alternatives, but Apple only implemented their own system and refused to share, things would remain shit. Which is exactly where we are.
If Google had a popular competitor to iMessage, Apple users would feel left out, and that’s what would force integration.
All they had to do was add sms to one of their chat apps, and people would have migrated over word of mouth for the extra features slowly overtime.
This is uniquely an issue in the U.S. because there are plenty of popular cross-platform competitors that are widely used in Europe: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram.
iMessage is unpopular in Europe precisely because it’s not interoperable and your friend group will look at you funny if you want to use some stupid system that only works on iPhones.
Nobody uses SMS for anything here, aside from notifications from businesses and such.
I never understood the complaint. If iPhone users don’t like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they can just use an alternative like Whatsapp. Right?
Or they can bitch at Apple to fix their SMS/MMS problems.
Why would anyone want to sms? Modern messaging is much nicer experience.
Their problem is that iMessage falls back to that instead of them adopting RCS, and treats MMS in particular way worse (terrible image quality, etc)
None of my android friends use RCS
Unfortunately this is what makes iPhones “iPhones”
They bring out features that generally make the phone part of the smartphone better to use.
RCS is still a mess on androids. And calling on iPhones is about to feel very modern while android phones will still be calling people the same way people did 20 years ago.
Is there even a difference between how iPhone and android calling ‘feels’? They’re both the exact same as 20 years ago lmao its a phone call, it’s been replaced by like a thousand apps by now
Most iphone users facetime, and if its another iphone it’ll be clearer than an android.
When you say RCS is a mess on Android, what do you mean? I personally have not had issues.
I have 2 friends with different samsungs and both my parents with newer samsungs. Neither one of them have RCS. Idk if you have to enable it or anything.
