This seems to be mostly a US American thing, mainly because of the same reasons BBM was a thing: lots of chats over SMS used to be a thing, and then chats over iMessage, which like BBM, you can only join if you have a device from a specific vendor. That means that you can only be in a special social circle if you buy the same stuff. That won't change because of some colours, because it's not the colours causing the tribalism, it can exist perfectly fine without it.
In Western Europe, South America and Asia it's mostly just some specific app (WhatsApp for example, or Signal, or WeChat or LINE) and as a fallback SMS. And if SMS turns from one colour bubble to another colour it doesn't really do anything for users on either end. This deep integration with colours and status symbols does remain in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
I agree that this is a middle school level analysis, but I've seen it a couple times in practice during my career.
1. In the dating scene, I have heard women remark that it was a red flag (Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android)
2. A manager at my old company was advised to get an iphone for communication with VCs. One of our old leaders had heard commentary from a VC at one point about the text message colors.
> 1. In the dating scene, I have heard women remark that it was a red flag (Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android)
This is a red flag against the women in question, not the Android user. That attitude/behaviour is a great indicator of a gold digger. You'd be dodging a bullet by avoiding these women.
The only other people that share that attitude are teenagers. So if you go along with this horseshit and buy an iPhone just to feel more comfortable dating, you're courting women with the maturity and intelligence of the average teenager.
> Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android
I haven't lived in a country where text bubbles used to be a thing, but I noticed this. People, even people who are smart and kind in other aspects, still cling to the easiest social cues. Doesn't matter if you wear a Margiela t-shirt or what you drive; your tinder date or a person who you just met in a bar will look at your phone and take notice. Personally, I was quite happy with Samsung flagship phones, and then not less happy with pretty cheap Xiaomi ones — they literally do anything I want in a phone. But after getting frustrated with how people read social cues, I moved back to iPhones and simply got myself the most expensive one, just for the sake of being easier to read for other people.
Obviously, it would be nice to be so laidback and independent as to not care what other people care about your wealth, but sadly, I'm not on that level yet.
I use an iPhone. Not for any philosophical reason. I tried switching to android 3 times over the years since the first iPhone came out. Same plan, same provider, grandfathered in, same house, same spot. Each android phone did not get the same level of cell service in my house as the iPhone. I have side gigs I do contracting for, I have had cases of missing calls where the androids have literally cost me $100's of dollars, phone didn't ring... just a voicemail notification showing up hours later.
After the 3rd attempt, last being a nexus 5, I gave up. I'm sorry but I draw a line when a device messes with my income regardless of my ideological stance on open source and not having a windows device or even an Apple laptop in the house for the last 13 years.
With that said the Pixel 7 Pro looks nice, and I would love to give it a try but I'll only do that if I have it on a separate dedicated line to try out besides my main one that have had for 20 years. Not sure it's worth the effort at this point.
Its ever so fun to have to deal with middle school with green bubbles. Apple is directly responsible for some kids getting bullied, but I guess it works out for them since we had to buy some more Apple devices.
This doesn’t match my experience. Almost everyone I work with has an iPhone.
Anyway, having a good income isn’t the whole story. It’s probably also about willingness to conform to subtle, arbitrary social norms. Plenty of women are more attracted to a guy who dresses well, despite the fact that plenty of techies wear free hoodies. I think that’s a better analogy.
A manager at my old company was advised to get an iphone for communication with VCs.
This doesn't seem very different from a Director of Sales telling the salespeople to upgrade their wardrobe.
Image is important in business. Some people may be uncomfortable with that, but it's a fact. Companies, and people, spend trillions of dollars a year to project an image.
It just happens that blue text bubbles are more in style than green text bubbles.
But Google fell into the same trap that all large companies do: If you can't innovate, litigate.
> This deep integration with colours and status symbols does remain in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
Are the kids wrong?
When I look at my app’s stats, Android users are worse in every way.
More expensive to develop for, pay less or none at all, and their halo effect is sometimes negative: they might word-of-mouth my app to more Android users instead of more iOS users.
As iOS developer i disagree, You can develop android app on any platform that support JDK you pay a one-time registration fee of €25, Google Play is faster at approving apps (anecdotal evidence from working on team that support both iOS and Android)
iOS apps have to be compiled on recent Mac with latest version of macOS, you pay a yearly fee of €100 and AppStore review process is more in-dept especially for new apps
Using Facebook to do messaging? No thanks! Sure, when communicating with international friends I use WhatsApp because that appears to be what the rest of the world uses, but here in the States? No. We don't trust Zuckerberg. And yes, iMessage group chats are very much a thing here in the States and SMS group chats in general. And also yes, there's always that techie friend with an Android and makes your whole conversation go "green." Thing is, only middle schoolers really seem to care. I just know it means the communication isn't secured end-to-end.
Yeah all my group conversations in Ireland are on whatsapp now, but I think this is mostly due to the fact that carriers still charge extra to send photos over sms. It's just not worth it to use sms anymore.
> in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
Surely it's not middle school when people try to project wealth the most.. kids care more about who has an iPhone than adults but adults project wealth _a lot_ more than kids overall: fancy cars, homes, holidays etc. More expensive things are also nicer than their cheaper counterparts but I think most people would be lying if they don't say having access to them also gives them some status boost, if only internally. Can't turn off the monkey in the head easily.
Whenever I see this iMessage/SMS, blue/green topic come up I descend into an internal debate that, as I get older, I am becoming increasingly familiar with.
The debate is that one where I am forced to reconcile whether I am too far removed from popular culture to see how this is a real issue versus accepting that the issue is entirely contrived.
It's certainly an issue with a lot of teenagers. Speaking broadly, social status and brands say a lot at that age, and you could miss out on friends or social occasions based on it.
As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter, we grow up and realise that, but it certainly is a significant issue if it's affecting young peoples lives.
So I'd say it's somewhere inbetween what you descibe, perhaps a bit contrived, but also could have a significant impact on some people.
Side note - I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people, but of course if someone takes that point of view as an adult then it's a good indicator to show how they think.
> It's certainly an issue with a lot of teenagers.
> As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter
I disagree that the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter as an adult. I've had friend groups not include me in group messages because of it. Some have gotten visibly mad at me for having green bubbles and "breaking their chat". There is certain functionality that iPhones don't support in MMS chats that Android phones do (like adding a new member to the group chat).
It does indicate how people think when they buy into the stigma, but also I think it's a general lack of understanding around why Apple keeps iMessage so tightly coupled to its ecosystem and hardware. And many people aren't interested in gaining that understanding.
Social status is very important to many adults, and blue bubbles have become a way to display that social status.
> I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people
But how many times, really?
It's like the missing iPhone headphone jack. The press and bloggers hammered away at it for years, making sure it was an ongoing meme in all coverage, but... do people really care? Some people, sure.. but enough for the coverage?
It's a really really really short article. Really short. Please.
It gets to the point in the second paragraph: the green bubbles have bad contrast. It mentions the design of the green bubbles rank as "very poor" by accessibility standards.
I get it. It should be noted that enabling the Increase Contrast accessibility option in iOS/iPadOS does correct the issue to an acceptable level. Whether that should be necessary is up for debate.
The green texts isn't just branding or aesthetics. iMessage with non iphones is a legitimately degraded experience and the green texts exist to remind you of that, but even if they weren't green the experience would still be bad because apple realizes that forcing people to buy their phone if they want to have texts that send in under 5 seconds is an incredibly successful strategy. Having long form conversations over SMS just doesn't work given the time they take to send, and tons of iPhone users refuse to get a messaging app.
I would love to see a survey of mobile phone users to see if this matters to them. I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.
As for negative effects on kids. There’s more than just phones. Clothes, cars, vacations, social media posts, tutoring, sports. Maybe we should put everyone in uniforms, don’t allow kids drive to school, ban sports, and forbid them from talking about their vacations. And everyone was equal.
It matters to me a little bit. A green bubble means the message is basically a postcard that the carrier can read. A blue bubble means the message is in an envelope that my carrier can’t read.
My school had uniforms, bullying doesn't stop. Kids are honestly just mean, and not idiots. You can dress a wealthy kid and a poor kid in the same clothes and you will not fool anyone in class about which one is the poor one.
> I’ll take a guess it doesn’t matter because Google would be flaunting the results.
I'm not sure how easy that would be - 'Apple will make you more popular if you use an iPhone instead of Android!'...'No no, that's bad, you don't want that, don't buy an iPhone!'
That's almost as good as the Windows Vista/7 icon for "Network" -- computers connected to a pneumatic tube (referencing Senator Ted Stevens and his "series of tubes" comment).
...which suggests that the notion that some designer at Apple subtly decreased the contrast on green bubbles to make them look "gross" is ridiculous -- if they really wanted to make SMS messages look bad, they could be much less subtle about it...
Google offered several times to work with Apple to get full compatibility with their messages. Apple refused every time. This is Apple's deliberate choice.
Be less subtle? Serving what purposes? Getting slammed by the EU and the like?
They have to be very, very subtle, and ride the fine line between effectiveness and outrage, never going too much on a side or the other. The best and most enduring conspiration theories have originated from such deliberate and surgical manipulations. The goal they are after: most people will unknowingly abide and be manipulated, while the minority will go nuts proclaiming they know the truth.
Welcome to propaganda 101, aka destructive marketing.
I have just compared the “gross” bubble from the article with my “real” bubble. Made a screenshot of both and used the ios color picker.
“Gross”: #7EC170
Real from the bottom of the message reel: #65C466
Real from the top: #73E173
No issues with contrast in either case. Also keep in mind that those color hexes will slightly vary depending on where exactly you decide to pick since bubbles are filled with gradients.
Not sure where author gets his bubble from but in real life they look as “good” bubbles at the bottom of the screen that makes me think the article itself is gross.
It’s worth pointing out that text message bubbles were always green from the first iPhone as well. Coloring iMessages as blue was done so you knew whether you were getting billed for that text or not.
I'm not so sure, I just looked at some chats in iMessage, both to other iPhones and Android phones, and there's no doubt to me that the blue bubbles give much better contrast and readability, even comparing only messages at the bottom of the screen.
Yeah seems really far-fetched. The whole idea that Apple did the green bubbles with the purpose of branding kids with Android phones as poor as some way of bullying them into getting an iPhone is borderline conspiracy theorist, possibly stemming from some anti-capitalist sentiment.
It's kids being kids and seems like an exclusively US thing.
This is a clickbait. On my iPhone the green color is much darker than what the author shows in the article. Here are some images with the hex color codes for example:
It's actually really cherry-picked samples. All messages (blue and green) in the Messages app fade out slightly as you scroll. The author picked a blue message from the bottom of the screen and a green one from the top. If only they scrolled around a bit... they would have noticed.
A comparison between blue and green bubbles on your phone would be more relevant. Color space handling makes direct comparisons between screen grabs (from different devices) tricky.
Besides the cherry-picked colors of green from the top of the screen, the author assumes turning up the screen brightness reduces contrast in the same way that applying a brightness filter in photoshop does. That’s obviously not true - a given colorspace has less dynamic range if you make everything brighter in photoshop, but turning up your screen backlight brightness makes everything brighter by a constant factor, which doesn’t change the dynamic range.
Assuming a perfect screen, yes. But at some point the brightest pixels on the screen will get no brighter, but all the other pixels will. So the dynamic range decreases. Similar happens when dim enough.
I just checked and there's a significant difference between full brightness and a little less than full brightness so I'll just assume the screens Apple is using are pretty good at that
A large problem with this whole idea is that there is no one single blue or green involved.
iMessage shades the bubbles depending on position, and shows both the blue and green bubbles as darker at the bottom of the screen, and lighter at the top.
That's definitely not iOS 7. Those screenshots are from a notched device, which means at least iOS 11, and based on the app drawer on the bottom it looks more like iOS 12 or above.
The colors of both blue and green messages fade as they scroll up. Looking at my phone right now, the lighter contrast the author seems to be calling out is only shown on a message that is scrolled up. This is the same with blue imessage bubbles, they also fade and have lower contrast when scrolled up.
Readit News
In Western Europe, South America and Asia it's mostly just some specific app (WhatsApp for example, or Signal, or WeChat or LINE) and as a fallback SMS. And if SMS turns from one colour bubble to another colour it doesn't really do anything for users on either end. This deep integration with colours and status symbols does remain in specific areas like middle school where it is still seen as important to try to project wealth.
1. In the dating scene, I have heard women remark that it was a red flag (Android users are stereotypically poor... despite a large number of techies using Android)
2. A manager at my old company was advised to get an iphone for communication with VCs. One of our old leaders had heard commentary from a VC at one point about the text message colors.
This is a red flag against the women in question, not the Android user. That attitude/behaviour is a great indicator of a gold digger. You'd be dodging a bullet by avoiding these women.
The only other people that share that attitude are teenagers. So if you go along with this horseshit and buy an iPhone just to feel more comfortable dating, you're courting women with the maturity and intelligence of the average teenager.
I haven't lived in a country where text bubbles used to be a thing, but I noticed this. People, even people who are smart and kind in other aspects, still cling to the easiest social cues. Doesn't matter if you wear a Margiela t-shirt or what you drive; your tinder date or a person who you just met in a bar will look at your phone and take notice. Personally, I was quite happy with Samsung flagship phones, and then not less happy with pretty cheap Xiaomi ones — they literally do anything I want in a phone. But after getting frustrated with how people read social cues, I moved back to iPhones and simply got myself the most expensive one, just for the sake of being easier to read for other people.
Obviously, it would be nice to be so laidback and independent as to not care what other people care about your wealth, but sadly, I'm not on that level yet.
I use an iPhone. Not for any philosophical reason. I tried switching to android 3 times over the years since the first iPhone came out. Same plan, same provider, grandfathered in, same house, same spot. Each android phone did not get the same level of cell service in my house as the iPhone. I have side gigs I do contracting for, I have had cases of missing calls where the androids have literally cost me $100's of dollars, phone didn't ring... just a voicemail notification showing up hours later.
After the 3rd attempt, last being a nexus 5, I gave up. I'm sorry but I draw a line when a device messes with my income regardless of my ideological stance on open source and not having a windows device or even an Apple laptop in the house for the last 13 years.
With that said the Pixel 7 Pro looks nice, and I would love to give it a try but I'll only do that if I have it on a separate dedicated line to try out besides my main one that have had for 20 years. Not sure it's worth the effort at this point.
This doesn’t match my experience. Almost everyone I work with has an iPhone.
Anyway, having a good income isn’t the whole story. It’s probably also about willingness to conform to subtle, arbitrary social norms. Plenty of women are more attracted to a guy who dresses well, despite the fact that plenty of techies wear free hoodies. I think that’s a better analogy.
This doesn't seem very different from a Director of Sales telling the salespeople to upgrade their wardrobe.
Image is important in business. Some people may be uncomfortable with that, but it's a fact. Companies, and people, spend trillions of dollars a year to project an image.
It just happens that blue text bubbles are more in style than green text bubbles.
But Google fell into the same trap that all large companies do: If you can't innovate, litigate.
Dead Comment
Are the kids wrong?
When I look at my app’s stats, Android users are worse in every way.
More expensive to develop for, pay less or none at all, and their halo effect is sometimes negative: they might word-of-mouth my app to more Android users instead of more iOS users.
As iOS developer i disagree, You can develop android app on any platform that support JDK you pay a one-time registration fee of €25, Google Play is faster at approving apps (anecdotal evidence from working on team that support both iOS and Android)
iOS apps have to be compiled on recent Mac with latest version of macOS, you pay a yearly fee of €100 and AppStore review process is more in-dept especially for new apps
Maybe because there is always a free alternative that is better than yours.
Whereas iOS users only has the App Store, and if they don’t pay they don’t get app.
> pay less or none at all
Maybe just make the app paid only?
And sms group chats? I only know about sms group chats from US posters.
You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.
Yea but that's a problem too.
Trusting your private conversations to ~Facebook~ Meta is also a signal.
Surely it's not middle school when people try to project wealth the most.. kids care more about who has an iPhone than adults but adults project wealth _a lot_ more than kids overall: fancy cars, homes, holidays etc. More expensive things are also nicer than their cheaper counterparts but I think most people would be lying if they don't say having access to them also gives them some status boost, if only internally. Can't turn off the monkey in the head easily.
Yes, thats exactly whats going on in the US as well
(and yes, we know that Google has recently adopted some other open source messaging standard that now Apple hasn't.)
Dead Comment
The debate is that one where I am forced to reconcile whether I am too far removed from popular culture to see how this is a real issue versus accepting that the issue is entirely contrived.
As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter, we grow up and realise that, but it certainly is a significant issue if it's affecting young peoples lives.
So I'd say it's somewhere inbetween what you descibe, perhaps a bit contrived, but also could have a significant impact on some people.
Side note - I have heard of people saying they won't date green or blue bubble people, but of course if someone takes that point of view as an adult then it's a good indicator to show how they think.
> As an adult of course the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter
I disagree that the green/blue bubbles simply don't matter as an adult. I've had friend groups not include me in group messages because of it. Some have gotten visibly mad at me for having green bubbles and "breaking their chat". There is certain functionality that iPhones don't support in MMS chats that Android phones do (like adding a new member to the group chat).
It does indicate how people think when they buy into the stigma, but also I think it's a general lack of understanding around why Apple keeps iMessage so tightly coupled to its ecosystem and hardware. And many people aren't interested in gaining that understanding.
Social status is very important to many adults, and blue bubbles have become a way to display that social status.
But how many times, really?
It's like the missing iPhone headphone jack. The press and bloggers hammered away at it for years, making sure it was an ongoing meme in all coverage, but... do people really care? Some people, sure.. but enough for the coverage?
Same with bubbles.
It gets to the point in the second paragraph: the green bubbles have bad contrast. It mentions the design of the green bubbles rank as "very poor" by accessibility standards.
That's why it matters.
As for negative effects on kids. There’s more than just phones. Clothes, cars, vacations, social media posts, tutoring, sports. Maybe we should put everyone in uniforms, don’t allow kids drive to school, ban sports, and forbid them from talking about their vacations. And everyone was equal.
I'm not sure how easy that would be - 'Apple will make you more popular if you use an iPhone instead of Android!'...'No no, that's bad, you don't want that, don't buy an iPhone!'
They have to be very, very subtle, and ride the fine line between effectiveness and outrage, never going too much on a side or the other. The best and most enduring conspiration theories have originated from such deliberate and surgical manipulations. The goal they are after: most people will unknowingly abide and be manipulated, while the minority will go nuts proclaiming they know the truth.
Welcome to propaganda 101, aka destructive marketing.
“Gross”: #7EC170
Real from the bottom of the message reel: #65C466
Real from the top: #73E173
No issues with contrast in either case. Also keep in mind that those color hexes will slightly vary depending on where exactly you decide to pick since bubbles are filled with gradients.
Not sure where author gets his bubble from but in real life they look as “good” bubbles at the bottom of the screen that makes me think the article itself is gross.
It's kids being kids and seems like an exclusively US thing.
https://imgur.com/a/7k5dMtm
https://ibb.co/sKfrZ16
iMessage shades the bubbles depending on position, and shows both the blue and green bubbles as darker at the bottom of the screen, and lighter at the top.
A side-by-side screenshot of iOS 7, when this design was introduced:
https://i.insider.com/5df902c5fd9db27769749a5f?width=1300&fo...
The colors of both blue and green messages fade as they scroll up. Looking at my phone right now, the lighter contrast the author seems to be calling out is only shown on a message that is scrolled up. This is the same with blue imessage bubbles, they also fade and have lower contrast when scrolled up.