Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is a failure

https://www.macworld.com/article/606152/imessage-google-green-bubbles-sms-rcs.html

by MBCook • 5 years ago

184 461 5 years ago

LesZedCB3• 5 years ago

While blue-bubble FOMO is certainly real, suggesting that it’s the reason people want iPhones is A-grade, uncut “people only buy Apple products because they’re status symbols” kind of delusion.

~ Macworld.com

yeah, ok...

Since Apple made that choice not to support Android, though, it’s probably safe to say that Apple never actually intended for iMessage to compete for instant-message domination over the rest of the world

apple has made exclusive decisions over and over and over again. and i think everybody outside of the apple bubble knows that its because Brand Prestige is a HUGE part of apples branding.

netizen-9368243• 5 years ago

Blue bubble FOMO isn't real though, at least I've never heard of it outside these few articles claiming its a thing

Wowfunhappy• 5 years ago

Well, I've heard of it. And frankly, I have it myself, too.

technothrasher• 5 years ago

I had never heard of it either until I switched to an iPhone for unrelated reasons. Half my contacts suddenly were congratulating me on being "blue". It was... weird.

democra• 5 years ago

Are you really going with "I've never really heard of it, so it isn't real."?

It's not how it works.

vineyardmike3• 5 years ago

anecdata: I heard about it a lot. ESPECIALLY when i was in high school and college.

Definitely heard girls (with iphones) gossip and discussing prospective men and say "but his texts are green". Its not code for "he isn't rich" - I went to a private school and hung out with sorority girls so everyone was well off, but something more ambiguous. Something makes blue bubbles feel better.

Maybe its just that iMessage is a more rich form of communication vs SMS, and people hate needing another app to check for that one android user in their life.

nr2x2• 5 years ago

Switching from iphone, which all my friends and family use, to a pixel caused so many issues with texting I almost went back to iOS solely because I was causing headaches for others.

FOMO is real for sure, but plain old inconvenience is also at play. If your entire family and social circle is on iOS, it's a massive pain to leave. This is by design.

ideamotor2• 5 years ago

Oh it's real. It's very frustrating to text people who can't receive live photos, videos sent are reduced in quality by a significant degree, can't receive replies to specific comments, and can't receive link previews. People don't click links without a preview, period. So no use sending a video or live photo via icloud link either. I have absolutely minimized texting android users due to these issues. It probably helps that 80% of the folks I text regularly (or have at some point) are apple users.

specialp• 5 years ago

On TikTok there's a lot of GenZ videos about green bubbles being ugh. It is definitely a thing with younger people. I got an iPhone after never thinking I'd buy one ever, but decided Apple is the lesser of 2 evils, and everyone I text that has an iPhone immediately recognized the blue bubble. Also, it sucks if you want to send a picture or video to a green bubble.

mcast• 5 years ago

I imagine blue-bubble FOMO is more popular within the US because most younger Americans use text messaging instead of WhatsApp/Telegram like you would find in Europe or South America (aside from occasional group chats or college teamwork)

uxp100• 5 years ago

It gets talked about a lot (I've seen many articles talking about it over years), so I guess I think it must exist. Never ever heard of it in real life. Maybe just Wealthy Zoomers? People from New York? Teenagers? I have no idea, but things keep telling me it is real. Like, I know more people with android than not, I have an iphone, I think I've never been in a group chat that was "blue bubble."

MMS isn't as bad as it used to be, however. Less regions have service that is too poor for MMS to work but SMS works fine I think.

thmorriss• 5 years ago

blue bubble fomo is very real. It is the main reason ~5 of my friends have switched to iphones in my age group (~21) in the last two years

skavi• 5 years ago

If that’s the case, I am fairly confident in saying you were never an American teenager for this past decade.

nhumrich2• 5 years ago

It's a peer pressure thing. I know people who have legitimately bought iPhones because they kept getting left out of group chats.

celestialcheese• 5 years ago

It wasn't FOMO for me, but rather a exhaustion from interoperability between the two platforms. Group chats become impossible with iphone users, so you stop being invited. Texts were constantly dropping, so people would think I was ignoring messages.

Just switched from android to iPhone after 12 years of owning and working with android as a developer. I just got tired of fiddling. Most of my social group and family uses iPhone and there's no way the non-technical folks in my life are switching, so... If you can't beat, join.

So now least you've now heard of it from someone other than these articles :shrug:

parineum2• 5 years ago

There's no FOMO here but when iPhone users bitch about it like it's my fault and not Apple's, I think less of them. It's a shame so many people are allowing themselves to be manipulated by Apple to peer pressure their friends into buying Apple products.

sidlls4• 5 years ago

I can't disagree that Brand Prestige is a big part of their marketing and branding. I used Android phones and linux or MS operating systems on PCs exclusively for my entire life, until the last 2 years or so. I was also quite zealously anti-Apple and anti-Apple-fanboy, and I considered their 1984 ad to be incredibly ironic.

Once the fifth android device in a row bricked on me I made a decision to try an iPhone 11. I couldn't be happier. It just worked, never crashed, and certainly didn't brick during the time I used it, just under 2 years. I recently upgraded to an iPhone 13 and am still thrilled with it. I never had an Android phone that lasted longer than a year before issues started to surface, and I never had one make it 2 years ever.

The performance of the iPhone made the take the plunge to try a MacBook Pro for my personal use. Couldn't be happier with that, either: it offers a linux-like experience on the command line, and provides a mostly great UI (I don't care for Finder--but I haven't any other real complaints).

Edit: my Android phone purchases were top-of-the-line models: Nexus and Pixel phones purchased off Google directly.

knaik948• 5 years ago

I am not sure what budget range you were choosing for these Android phones you mentioned. If you spent the same amount of money that you spend on an iPhone 13/11 on an android, it wouldn't brick. My Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and S2 are still working. They aren't fast but they could be used if I was desperate. I am glad iPhones worked out for you, but I have to say I haven't had any problems with the Androids I have used. I also like that I can root and customize the OS at a deep level. I have an iPad mini and iPod touch. I am familiar with both ecosystems. My iPad mini 4 has crashed on me and it is getting worse with every iOS/iPadOS update. Ram seems to be the limiting factor.

MBCook• 5 years ago

Prestige is great and can really juice sales, but it only works for so long. If your product isn’t good the prestige won’t last.

I’m not saying your product has to be the absolute best, but it needs to somewhat earn its reputation.

Brands have lost their prestige in the past for this exact reason. Some probably are right now.

Apple has been a juggernaut for ~20 years (since the first iPod). The “people just buy for the prestige” argument can’t hold that long if that’s all a brand has.

LesZedCB3• 5 years ago

i have had 4 phones since 2011.

iphone 4 (2011)

iphone 6+ (2014)

nexus 6 (2017 - hand-me-down from my partner)

oneplus 6t - Nov 2018 to present, and i can't justify buying a new phone yet. i will probably need to replace the battery soon though.

my laptop is a mid 2014 macbook pro i traded my unused vacation for when i left that job. still going strong. amazing actually, considering it's 8 years old now.

quiet_cool• 5 years ago

don't care for Finder

have you tried columns view? Command(⌘) clicking on links is also nifty

vagrantJin• 5 years ago

I think you have encapsulated the concept of FOMO.

Undoubtedly, for the money Apple devices cost - they better damn well work flawlessly for the next 10-15 years. But they don't. I use a MBP and iMac for work and I hate it.

pmontra7• 5 years ago

my Android phone purchases were top-of-the-line models: Nexus and Pixel phones purchased off Google directly.

So the problem is with Google's phones not with Android in general. Anecdotally my Samsung Galaxy S2 failed after 6 years (which is sad but fair IMHO), my Sony Xperia Compact still works after 5 years, same for a Samsung A40 after 3 years.

Semaphor3• 5 years ago

Not quite sure what you were doing. I have been using Android since the HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2 in the US) in 2010, I’ve been rooting and installing multiple custom roms (only on my last phone did I switch to just staying on official LineageOS), and I never had a single phone get bricked. I have no idea how you managed to do that while staying on stock, not have I ever heard of people having such issues.

None of my Android phones lasted under 2 years, my last one lasted almost 5 years and only got replaced because I wanted a slightly better camera, and both the battery and USB-C connector started to fail.

We have a box of bricked Google branded handsets in the office. It’s quite normal. They’re not worth repairing or replacing. Conversely we have no dead iPhones at all (apart from where some idiots cratered them). We’re rolling out iPhone 12 and 13 to replace the androids. In fact a friend of mine’s flagship galaxy that is 11 months old dropped dead in the middle of nowhere the other day and left her up shit creek. She went to the apple store on Monday and bought an iPhone 13.

But maybe the issue is just with Samsung or Google phones, Samsung I dislike as much as Apple, Google phones (the Pixel ones, I had the Nexus) seem overpriced for my needs.

zelphirkalt3• 5 years ago

The bricking might have been your usage of it. I own an old Android phone (moto g 1) and it still works just fine. How old is that now? 10 years? Probably. It only has become a bit slow, as apps require more performance.

acchow3• 5 years ago

Wait, people outside the Apple bubble believe that Apple users buy Apple products because of "Brand Prestige"?

Biganon2• 5 years ago

Nah, the 99% of law students in my classes who went for shiny macbooks instead of absolutely any computer that allows its user to take notes and search the web obviously did so after carefully weighing the pros and cons of every solution. Not because they felt compelled to fit in the group.

emptyfile• 5 years ago

Oh no, I know that's why they're buying it. With the caveat that I live in Eastern europe.

Never saw a developer with a mac here.

lwkl2• 5 years ago

Brand Prestige is a HUGE part of apples branding.

I agree it is certainly part of their branding. An iPhone is an iPhone no matter the price you pay. The iPhone SE for $400 doesn't feel any less premium as the most expensive $2000 iPhone. There isn't really a obvious design element that tells you it's the cheap iPhone (except the notch and the camera, but it could just be that you didn't buy a new one) and this is also true for the hardware.

Other manufacturers definitely have a much worse customer experience for people that buy their low-end models. This is understandable because they don't have the margins Apple has.

But pretending that people buying Apple just do so because they are held hostage and they are missing out on a better user experience is delusional. Android and iOS both are trying to lock you into their ecosystem and try to sell you additional services which increase your lock-in. I'm not conviced that they deliberately design their products in a way to increase the lock-in. It probably comes naturaly if you don't have any open standards and interopability as a design goal.

People on here talk about RCS for example but if you look at the Wikipedia page about RCS [1] you can see that carriers started implementing RCS in the last 4-5 years. For my country there is only one carrier listed and they implemented RCS less than 2 years ago. Sure RCS was a standard when Apple released iMessage but at the time most providers were still charging outrageous prices for SMS/MMS. Good luck convincing them a standard which would remove a revenue stream. So iMessage was a good solution to offer a better experience for iPhone users. It just works, no configuration required and you can always fallback to SMS/MMS.

They probably could've made iMessage an open standard or made an Android app. But would've other manufacturers and Google participated in this standard (mind you it would've been centralized, there was no Signal protocol) or would everyone using iMessage be better than what we have now?

I think a lot of the criticism today is hindsight. We know a lot more today and a lot of stuff was in it's infancy when it was released and tried to solve different problems than what we see today.

Sorry for the rant. This post went a bit overboard but I had a lot of thoughts on the topic that ended up in this post. And I'm interested if someone has something to add or disagrees with my assesment completely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#St...

FredPret2• 5 years ago

Let’s start with the obvious: the only people having this conversation about iMessage are Americans

That makes it important. A large section of 300 million of the richest people on the planet want blue text bubbles rather than green ones, and will buy the expensive phone to get it. Fortunes have been made on much less.

nr2x2• 5 years ago

This exact same reason why GDPR matters to tech companies yeah: Europeans are rich.

after_care3• 5 years ago

Apple has >1billion active units worldwide, or one for every three and a half people on the internet. While the USA market is highly profitable their operational scope is much larger.

WoahNoun2• 5 years ago

Units is not the same as actual people. I have a work phone and a personal phone both of which would be considered active Apple units.

badwolf• 5 years ago

I've a work iphone, work macbook, work ipad, personal iphone, personal macbook, personal ipad, apple watch. I am 7 "active units" but 1 person.

nhumrich2• 5 years ago

Even more important is almost all of iPhones market share is in USA. So would apple care about maintaining the market where most of it's phones are sold? Well, ya, of course.

foolfoolz• 5 years ago

this is a dumb take, implying you must have chat presence on every phone in the world to not be a failure. imessage isn’t that product. i think for iphone owners the messages app is still the preferred solution for all messages. you’ll use others if needed, but you’d rather not. it’s a great app because most people use it naturally without even thinking. apple business chat is going to bring in a lot of revenue for apple. i message has a strong future

arvinsim• 5 years ago

i think for iphone owners the messages app is still the preferred solution for all messages.

Only applies to iPhone owners in the USA

jandrese2• 5 years ago

This article basically echos what the Google report said. If you are talking about US teenagers then iMessage is king. If you are looking at the rest of the world then it is kind of a flop because in a lot of the rest of the world SMS is a complete rip off so a message system that falls back to SMS is useless, hence people in those countries use cross platform messaging that eliminates SMS on their phone.

r00fus• 5 years ago

Is it possible that Apple simply doesn't want to dominate messaging? I mean, if they do, what do they gain? (more revenue, more lock-in, more success) What do they risk? (regulatory/anti-trust implications)

Apple can easily be understood by trying to avoid becoming IBM/AT&T. They don't want to be ubiquitous because that has its own regulatory challenges.

mypalmike• 5 years ago

I would be rather surprised if managers at Apple are directed to avoid building features that would help prompt greater sales in the name of avoiding ubiquity.

rodgerd2• 5 years ago

Is it possible that Apple simply doesn't want to dominate messaging?

Yes, but also that Apple don't want to make it easier for Google to get their grubby little fingers inside more of Apple customers' data than they already do.

CRConrad8• 5 years ago

More lock-in = more network effect.

est31• 5 years ago

Also, the USA is one of the countries with the largest Apple marketshare in the smartphone market.

mobilio3• 5 years ago

In Europe many people using iMessage everyday.

Even in mine family we're all on iMessage.

albertopv2• 5 years ago

In Italy no one use iMessage, everyone use whatsapp or telegram or both. I also don't know anyone using signal. I also don't knwo about facebook messenger, I don't use facebook anymore since 9 years ago.

lstodd• 5 years ago

a message system that falls back to SMS is useless

This. Most of the rest of the world ditched SMS a decade or more ago.

CRConrad8• 5 years ago

Eh... No.

saurik• 5 years ago

If you are talking about US teenagers then iMessage is king.

I really don't think this is true: I believe they mostly use the messengers built into TikTok and Instagram or are still on Snapchat.

Jcowell• 5 years ago

As someone probably younger than the lot of you: No. out of all social media messaging , teenagers are not using TikTok for communication purposes. Sending TikToks? Yes. Communication ? No.

orev• 5 years ago

If you want to avoid using SMS in iMessage, you can just turn it off in the settings. Very easy for anyone who wants to avoid it.

colinmhayes10• 5 years ago

Then you can't talk to non-iPhone users?

timbit42• 5 years ago

Lemmings.

ggm• 5 years ago

Children. Never underestimate the role of perceived peer-pressure.

Real or imagined "wrong brand of sneakers" has been going on forever.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 5 years ago

It's the kid version of keeping up with the Jones's

endisneigh2• 5 years ago

An iPad is what, 200 for the old model? If you want blue bubbles it’s cheap

danuker• 5 years ago

Old devices get slower due to mandatory updates.

m-s• 5 years ago

You need an iPhone to link your phone number though.

endisneigh2• 5 years ago

Can’t you mix Apple account with phone numbers if everyone is using iMessage? And if everyone isn’t on iMessage it would defeat the purpose and might as well use an android, no?

alimov4• 5 years ago

You don’t need to link to a phone number for blue bubbles

clpm4j• 5 years ago

Clearly there are some people who value iMessage, for whatever reason. I have to imagine there are also plenty of people like myself who have been using the iPhone since version 4 simply because it's the best phone I've ever used, period. And the user experience of my iPhone + Macbook + Airpods just makes my life easier and more enjoyable in a lot of ways.

And I use iMessage because it's how I 'text' people, similar to how I used to text people on my Blackberry and my Razr and my Nokia before chat apps were a thing. I don't want to download chat apps - I just use what's convenient which is iMessage and it works great for my use case.

arbirk• 5 years ago

Agree. + I don't want to support use Facebook #meta products and I can't get my friends to use Signal

after_care3• 5 years ago

You dropped so many brand names I’m starting to think there is something to this status symbol theory.

truculent• 5 years ago

I'm not trying to snark, but how else are they supposed to report their comparisons?

technojunkie• 5 years ago

RCS sucks, but it's the best path to cross-platform messaging that can (and should) be end-to-end encrypted (RCS already supports the Signal protocol for E2EE).

I'd love to see a better privacy/security messaging standard, but let's get something in there incrementally like RCS.

On a side note, can Google allow Android devs to implement RCS in other apps than Google Messages and Samsung Messages, please?

colinmhayes10• 5 years ago

Blue texts are definitely most of the reason I have an iPhone. It's just not possible to have conversations over text with SMS speeds and 90% of my friends refuse to get messaging apps. I could care less about the prestige, but most of my communication happens over text. Other big reason is how well iOS works with airpods.

duxup• 5 years ago

I just assume iMessage is a polished messaging app that Apple made for their phones….

All these “world domination or bust” ideas I think are silly.

nextos2• 5 years ago

It works. It’s better than anything Google has attempted. The problem is, it’s not good enough.

This is wrong. Google had a very good messaging system, Google Talk. It worked really well, was based on open standards, supported federation, video/audio calls and was making its way into smartphones. For example, the Nokia 770-N9 series supported Google Talk as early as Q2 2006. Calls based on an open standard in a smartphone, already in 2006...

However, internal politics at Google led to the discontinuation of Google Talk in favor of a long stream of confusing and half-finished attempts: Google Chat, Hangouts, Duo, Spaces, Allo and Meet. I've lost track of how many different services they have come up with. Apparently there's more of them I didn't even know about [1]. It's comical and sad, since the first one was great and had tons of users thanks to being embedded into Gmail.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-allo...

kcb• 5 years ago

Google Hangouts was almost there as well. At least in my circle it was actually fairly popular too.

encryptluks22• 5 years ago

The mobile app really sucks though, especially when compared to Telegram.

baby• 5 years ago

I could never understand how to use it personally, people would sometimes message me from gmail, I was utterly confused. I never used it because of that.

eloisius• 5 years ago

At one point I had my Google Voice number tied to Hangouts, so SMS came through that app, and maybe one or two friends that also used Hangouts. I was never sure what client or integration they used, because it always seemed disjointed, like the app was made for someone else and I was an edge case so many of the features didn't make sense or didn't work, but I assume they did for someone. The most confusing part was the contacts tab, which had recommended contacts at the top instead of alphabetic ordering. It never made sense. It had about 50% numbers with no name associated. I assume just phone numbers of businesses I dialed at some point. The rest were a mixture of people I've emailed before but never called, someone I messaged frequently, and a bunch of people I haven't communicated with in any way since before Hangouts was even a thing, which I can't fathom why a recommender would decide I might want to call them now.

anko• 5 years ago

I wonder if the management at google actually use their products. If they did, there is no way they would allow them to be killed.

Apple's senior staff definitely use their products.

encryptluks22• 5 years ago

All that is left to do now really is figure out ways to make deploying something similar easy for the average user without Google.

ip26• 5 years ago

I could be way off base, but I vaguely remember Google Talk being unreliable across multiple clients, something we take for granted now.

oriolid3• 5 years ago

I remember that at some point it felt exceptional that I could switch between Nokia N9 and browser on my desktop, continue the same chat and get new message notifications on the right device. But the integration broke a lot and of course shutting down Talk broke it completely.

jhasse• 5 years ago

To be fair I don't remember any chat client having figured that out at that time.

mobilio3• 5 years ago

I still miss Talk because was so easy and intuitive...

NL807• 5 years ago

I liked its simplicity. It was an efficient app designed for one purpose and did it well.

artursapek2• 5 years ago

I imagine being a product manager at google is a special type of hell

mehrdada7• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say so... It pays well and has relatively little accountability (proof: look at how many chat apps failed while PMs congratulated themselves launching them). You might not be able to have any meaningful impact but you won't suffer much consequences either. Heck if you play your cards right you may even land the CEO spot.

sylens• 5 years ago

They pivoted to Hangouts to boost Google+ when they were chasing Facebook. This is also why they killed Google Reader. So much collateral damage with nothing to show for it.

nextos2• 5 years ago

So much collateral damage with nothing to show for it.

Yes. I think if Google wants to keep its dominant position, they need to rethink how they do management.

What I said in the parent post about Google Talk could also apply to other product lines. They often release good things, like Nexus tablets or the Pixel C, only to kill them shortly afterwards. As a consumer, I don't take most of their offerings seriously because they are so short-lived and confusing. Why shall I put my money on something that might be killed or phased out soon?

From what I've heard from some insiders, other Alphabet branches seem to have equivalent management issues. It's sad because they have a significant amount of resources and they could be delivering tons of value to the society.

michaelbuckbee• 5 years ago

I've always felt that the shuttering of Google Reader really was the end of an "age" of the web. We went from a really vibrant blog culture with a ton of platforms and different setups to the super closed gardens of the social platforms. F'ing painful.

rubatuga• 5 years ago

Google buzz and Google wave are also casualties.

hiptobecubic2• 5 years ago

I wasn't there for the beginning of it, but I was for at least some of it, including the end. Google+ was a devastating event for Google. Like finding out that I can't even imagine how much time and money was wasted on making it, shoehorning it into other products, trying to foster adoption of it and ultimately deprecating it and trying to _extract_ it from those same products.

skinkestek4• 5 years ago

I sometimes wonder if Mozilla conspires to drive Firefox into the ground.

But I also sometimes wonder if someone inside Google and MS are actively sabotaging or if it is possible that all this self harm has been inflicted unintentionally.

Aeolun• 5 years ago

Like a hyperactive toddler that wants all the toys his friends have.

buttocks• 5 years ago

Mobile technology evolved very quickly but XMPP did not. I remember using Pidgin to chat on Google Talk. Then Google decided (rightly) that more secure auth was needed, and implemented an XEP to add OIDC authentication. Now third-party clients had to decide whether they wanted to implement Google's auth, or not. Ultimately it is easier to control the protocol and the app--and along with those, the tracking, the display of ads, the feature set, and so on.

mavhc4• 5 years ago

That's the fundamental problem, non standard products can iterate way faster than standards based products.

Look at all the new features email has!

Of course as we're on HN we obviously hate anything but plain text, but that's not true of most people

winternett2• 5 years ago

I really can't stand texting personally. It astonishes me how much it's a step backwards in innovation for the convenience of companies being able to target and index conversations that people think are private better. Yet still, even voice recognition can't recognize when I say names of my friends that are from foreign countries, and it doesn't connect me with strangers that speak other languages. I think our tech focus on typed text has really stunted the growth of tech in the past few years a lot, also it does nothing to make sure our interaction become easier with differences in learning capabilities and disabilities that exist in our society.

It's really a shame that voice recognition hasn't been pushed further because of all the effort put into requiring everyone to use tiny phone keyboards and frustrating emojis just to convey a message and then waiting for someone else to respond in a way that completely distracts people during normal activities like driving or crossing a street.

It's simply not good progress to continue down that texting-based/focused path in my opinion for future progress.

mehrdada7• 5 years ago

Text is much less disruptive to the people around you and also private. I probably would not be comfortable reading out most of my texts aloud without thinking twice even if recognition were perfect.

(But it is not really just text. People send multimedia content all the time.)

ink404• 5 years ago

Google's stock Android Messages app has been consistently good for the last few years. Simple interface that doesn't try to do too much - good search functionality and a web client if you'd like to send SMS/RCS from your computer.

fuzzylightbulb• 5 years ago

I generally like the app, but I find the search to be hit or miss, and it kills me that I cannot search at all in the web client. It would also be trivial for them to coordinate backups of your messages, but this functionality requires a 3rd party app.

vondro• 5 years ago

Oh Google Talk was sweet :)

Also about Duo - even though I agree that it's kinda half-assed, strange interface app, it consistently has lower latency and better video quality than WhatsApp or Signal. I use it wherever my contact has it.

marticode• 5 years ago

I'll second that. I have found it to have the best quality of all video calling alternatives and handle low bandwidth situations the best too. The interface is weird but focusing on just one thing and doing it well feels like a good choice.

waffle_maniac2• 5 years ago

You can walk out of your house and the call seamlessly switches from WiFi to cellular. Try doing that with WhatsApp or Signal.

pvg• 5 years ago

It didn't have E2E encryption, sync across devices or work as a transparent(-ish) SMS substitute/overlay. It was more of a nice but late-to-the-party AIM clone, which wasn't really the direction of instant messaging was headed. Google's IM strategy was and is a mess but gchat wasn't even in the same category of messenger by the time Apple got serious about iMessage.

headmelted• 5 years ago

This article is quite frustrating in a few ways because I feel like it misses the point on both sides of the fence:

Google’s ethos was clearly to throw a bunch of teams at the problem and see what sticks. From a planning perspective it might seem sensible but for the user it’s deeply confusing: they just want to know from Google which one app is blessed and will be supported for the long haul so they can get on with their day.

Apple OTOH absolutely nailed this. Messages is there, it’s always been there. Sure the i was removed from the word but it was still the same app. Simple, direct, everyone on the same protocol without any confusion.

In terms of the complaints about things like tapbacks - The last thing I want is more than a single row of reactions. The point is for them to be simple and universally understood instantly.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Google Talk had message delivery issues on bad networks. iMessage still works there.

mro_name2• 5 years ago

the first one was great

the curse of too much money at hand. New hires urge to innovate.

nottorp4• 5 years ago

Google Talk was originally just XMPP. Or at least XMPP compatible. I suppose that was too open for them.

pygy_• 5 years ago

They blamed their competitor's embrace/extend/extinguish behavior to pull out of it (IIRC MS and perhaps others had asymmetric compatibility with Google talk, and that's how they justified making Google talk proprietary).

odiroot• 5 years ago

Nokia N900 was my best instant messaging experience ever.

I had Google Talk, Skype, my country's Gadu-Gadu and later Facebook chat in the same app! The same uniform interface with SMS. I had one simple button to switch protocols. I could also easily see online status of my contact on all of these (and fall back to SMS if they weren't online).

theshrike79• 5 years ago

The Nokia N950 was a dream phone, too bad it got killed because of internal company politics.

bni• 5 years ago

I had this too. Too bad normal users didnt value this.

When I showed it to friends at the time they were mostly confused about it, or didnt "get" the value of it.

stackbutterflow• 5 years ago

I remember google talk. There was a time when everything Google released was hip, minimalist, fast and to the point. Google search, maps, Gmail, hangout.

How things have changed.

yftsui• 5 years ago

Google talk was a nice small piece of software running on a computer with limited features comparing with Skype. Even with Gmail auto loading Google talk web app, it did not gain enough traction say replace Skype or MSN messenger.

Saying it is a good mobile phone app is a huge exaggeration, I had used it back in the 2008 era, the experience was horrible, almost exact opposite of “it just works”.

more_corn• 5 years ago

The author ignores strong evidence suggesting that iMessage brings people (especially young people) into the apple ecosystem, locks them in and lands and expands. iMessage is the killer app for iPhone and integrates flawlessly with the desktop app. I hate to disparage the intelligence of the author in general, but in this specific case they are wrong and startlingly ignorant of the market they pretend to understand at an expert level.

bern44444• 5 years ago

Agreed. It's similar to how BBM was a killer feature for blackberry and brought so many people into that ecosystem.

It may not be enough to keep a company going forever - apple has many other ways of propelling itself - but its powerful enough to get people in the ecosystem

yoz-y• 5 years ago

Hm. But as stated this is mostly a US thing because of critical mass. Most people I know already use at least two or three services so honestly they don’t really care what service you are on. I remember that in uni people who didn’t have messenger were “annoying” because it was the service which almost all of the group had (while everybody had also others like WhatsApp, hangouts, kakao and whatnot)

knaik948• 5 years ago

The only group I have seen care about iMessage colors and see it as a status symbol is high schoolers. Once I got to college, no one cared.

People just wanted to be able to talk easily. It was annoying to set up cross platform group messaging at first, but it hasn't been a problem for at least 6 years. The biggest thing pulling people to iMessage now is convenience and not wanting to figure out a different mutual platform.

A large portion of the current generation of kids are actually tied to Discord. I expect Discord to start dominating more and more as time goes on. Hackathons are organized and held on there. Clubs at my university have moved to Discord. There's a specific to my university Math discord and a separate CS one where even teachers interact. A lot of online streamers have set up their own branded discord for their community. I have heard some companies like Amazon even have a new hire Discord. Slack, iMessage, Whatsapp, and Messenger all lack things Discord provides.

I believe Discord is the endgame for group messaging. The way you can organize conversations in to categories and channels is a killer feature that no other service gets quite right. The way Discords use roles to help categorize people into groups and have granular permission control for who can access what content is so useful. It's a matter of when, not if Discord is the best service.

There is one big caveat to Discord right now and that's the lack of End to End encryption. Whatsapp and Signal are the only two messaging services I trust for privacy sensitive communication. I don't really care if government agencies snoop on the fact that I was playing Rocket League for the last two hours though. iMessage is E2E as well but only if you communicate with others that are also tied to the Apple ecosystem which makes it useless for me because a lot of my international friends aren't. I have an ipad that has my contacts synced so I can see who else has iMessage.

fomine33• 5 years ago

Discord lacks multi account feature on mobile (some desktop support had come recently). It enforces use my "gamer" profile to all other community. Slack did it well from very beginning.

knaik948• 5 years ago

I have to disagree, I can setup a profile and name per discord. I strongly dislike Slack's method of having different accounts tied to a single email but each can potentially have a different password. I hate having to switch and log out and log into different Slacks and there's no clear way to see an overview of all of the ones I am in efficiently. It feels like a UX thing more than a functionality thing. Discord's UX for managing notifications and what communities I'm part of is very pleasant.

I am only a "gamer" in the gaming related Discords. There's no cross talk between two Discords unless the other people also share in being a part of both communities. People in a music related discord don't ask about the game I am playing unless they happen to be interested in it.

alvarlagerlof• 5 years ago

Discord seems far to complex and overwhelming for most people.

knaik948• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if I agree that's a valid disadvantage of using Discord though. The basic features of Discord are very easily to learn and you only come across the more complex features by needing to use them. I personally find IRC to be more complex to understand properly for a beginner. Being complex is anti-apple in terms of philosophy but I believe that it gives more usability in the long term.

DecoPerson• 5 years ago

This can help a lot with adoption by “lame-sensitive” users. Snapchat’s confusing and unintuitive design kept “lame” parents, teachers, managers, etc off the platform and helped maintain a kind of exclusivity.

Discord still has that. Instagram is currently losing it. Skype once had it, but has long since lost it.

A platform that figures out how to be cool and stay cool will reap many benefits.

bee_rider3• 5 years ago

Is Discord profitable yet?

I suspect we'll all be very annoyed at whatever they have to do to make money.

faangiq• 5 years ago

Is “writing blatantly wrong headlines for clicks” a thing now?

throwaway7033• 5 years ago

Yellow journalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism) has been a thing since at least the 1890s.

sys_64738• 5 years ago

WeChat is a China based app and most of the rest of then are hoovered up by Facebook Inc. Do you really want an ad company to be greping through all your allegedly secure message? China based apps speak for themselves in the current climate.

iMessage seems like a fine solution to me when I want to send IMs. I'm not interested in all the chaff associated with recent IM enhancements. They all seem pretty irrelevant to the main function: text and photos sending.

paxys• 5 years ago

People use iPhones because they are the best phones. High iMessage usage is the effect, not the cause. I personally don't know any iPhone user who doesn't also have an alternate messaging app installed on their device.

Remember that there was a time when Blackberry had 100% platform lock-in with BBM. I myself got one (including a pricey service plan) just to be able to message my friends in college. Yet everyone left the app (and ecosystem) overnight because there was a better device available.

There was a time when ICQ was unbeatable, and it seemed like people would be using it forever, because how do you move off of a platform that everyone you know is on? Then came AIM. Then MSN Messenger. Then Skype. The Google Talk. Then Facebook Messenger. Then WhatsApp and iMessage. It will be something else tomorrow. There is no such thing as network lock-in for messaging apps, simply because costs to switch to a new one are negligible, and you can use as many of them as you want at the same time.

NicoJuicy6• 5 years ago

I think you seriously underestimate the status factor.

It's not the best phone for the buck, has never been and that's not the goal either.

lanstin• 5 years ago

Best as per specs (Like megapixels and camers zoom and RAM and speed) or best as well integrated, good defaults and reliable?

philosopher1234• 5 years ago

Best for buck isn’t the same as best.

vanilla_nut2• 5 years ago

Tough to say. I’m still using my 2016 SE, which received iOS 15 just a few months ago and updated to the latest release within the last couple of weeks, the same day as the iPhone 13. This phone cost $400. I highly doubt there are many phones out there that beat this “bang for the buck”.

colinmhayes10• 5 years ago

I personally don't know any iPhone user who doesn't also have an alternate messaging app installed on their device.

90% of the people I know with iPhones don't have any messaging apps other than iMessage. I've tried to get them on Signal or WhatsApp, complete refusal.

alphabettsy2• 5 years ago

You don’t know anyone with Snapchat or Facebook? They’re both used pretty heavily for messaging.

alimov4• 5 years ago

Sounds highly unlikely. You surveyed these people? “90%…”

navjack274• 5 years ago

But the critical mistake you're making there is calling iMessage a messaging app when iMessage is actually the default texting application. AOL instant Messenger just was AOL instant Messenger. Same as MSN. Skype let you make phone calls. Google talk let you do some things but it was pretty much just Google talk...

There are non-technical people who use iMessage because it's the default texting application and it's not a messaging platform it is something that Apple has perverted and customized into something that is deliberately incompatible with other anything.

llampx5• 5 years ago

And how is that going for MS Edge marketshare? It is the default browser on Windows.

holler2• 5 years ago

Why can't I delete a message for both sides in iMessage in 2022?

This is why I feel like Telegram is a superior product.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251966734?answerId=2537...

bern44444• 5 years ago

You shouldn't have total control over a shared message. You have no right to delete something that you sent to someone else from their device. Same reason you can't delete an email you sent to someone from their inbox or burn a letter you sent via mail.

This is a bad take.

holler2• 5 years ago

You shouldn't have total control over a shared message.

I don't think we should be beholden to the mechanics of snail mail or email (almost 30 years old) when we're designing technologies in 2022 and beyond.

It's impossible to send hundreds of mail envelopes, and would be hard to send hundreds of emails in a minute, and both take deliberate action to accomplish. But I can easily send 100 chat messages in a minute, and in that mode of communication with its web of connections, mistakes are easy to make and speaking for myself I appreciate the ability to correct them.

With that said using telegram has been a breath of fresh air (and I hear whatsapp has it too)

twobitshifter• 5 years ago

I think the biggest problem is not the green bubbles but the damn group chats. There’s no way to have a group chat with multiple iPhones and androids without it turning into a mess. I don’t know where to point the blame it that situation but it does make you want to stick to the dominant platform.

alimov4• 5 years ago

What kind of a mess are we talking about here? I haven’t had any group chat issues (android and iOS participants) for the last few years.. I do remember it would bug out on occasion but I just haven’t seen any of that in a long time. I have a 3 and a 10 person group chat that has both android and iOS users… dont know if there is some threshold before issues start cropping up.

greatgib• 5 years ago

I can't understand why anyone would like to use iMessage, when you can use Telegram, whatsapp,... except stupidly for status signal.

In non apple world, I think that people almost never use sms anymore. Except for first contact with someone you don't know, or receiving advertisements, one time pin codes,...

For RCS, it is going nowhere because most of the users are not interested to let mobile carriers get back control over any of our non encrypted communications. They want to be more than a pipe to abuse of it for financial gain, we want them to be just a pipe.

eropple2• 5 years ago

I can't understand why anyone would like to use iMessage, when you can use Telegram, whatsapp

People don't use iMessage, we use Messages, and iMessage is one of the protocols that it supports. And I use Messages preferentially because I know everyone will have iMessage or a SMS fallback and it Just Works. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to go to one of four apps to talk to somebody (I have Signal because of That One Friend but I don't open WhatsApp or Telegram ever despite having both). They're all in this one, and it's good enough. (Messages also works on my laptop without me having to install anything, which is minor but handy if I want to dash off a longer message--and just like Messages on iOS it'll send as a SMS or as an iMessage and I don't have to care which is which. And no, nobody I know socially uses email.)

I'm sure WhatsApp is a great alternative if you live in a country where Everyone Has It, but I do not.

knaik948• 5 years ago

Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp all have very feature rich desktop apps. I personally love Whatsapp and the fact that I can go to a webpage, scan a QR code on my phone and have a functioning desktop experience regardless of where I am. iMessage doesn't "just work" if there's degraded functionality for people outside the Apple ecosystem. I'm not sure what good enough means, that's really specific to the features you need. I actually strongly dislike how terrible sharing files between an iOS and Android user is if you choose to stick with iMessage. What's worse is the poor file system structure that iOS exposes where you can't manipulate and share files directly. If I want to share a song I have saved on my phone through a message, I should be able to share it like I would a picture. Having iMessage and sending to another iMessage user doesn't help in that situation. I'm also not sure what country you live in where you imagine everyone has a single messaging platform. Most people I know just use multiple apps and are willing to put in the effort it takes to switch apps.

beamatronic• 5 years ago

Nobody I want to communicate with uses Telegram, WhatsApp, etc. All of those people use iPhones, so we use iMessage.

xcskier56• 5 years ago

I use it bc ~95% of the people that I message with use it as well. It’s a rare day when I text with someone who doesn’t have iMessage. I don’t know for sure, but I’m quite confident that a significantly smaller fraction of those people use any of the other messaging apps with any frequency.

To me it seems less of a status symbol and more driven by network effects. (Say what you will about my network)

asdff2• 5 years ago

People only use it because they have an iphone and that's the default way to try and send a message. No one past maybe high school where you are judged for everything says "I need an iPhone so I can use iMessage." I bet most adults don't even understand that iMessage is its own protocal that is separate from sms because other than the blue color and sending confetti or whatever, it functions exactly the same from the end users perspective as sms. Most people have no clue at all. The only people who care are the people writing these articles and the techie people reading them.

mrintellectual• 5 years ago

I feel like the core premise of the article is wrong. Google's problem is not a lack of innovation, but the complete opposite - there's _too much_ of it. Great Google products come out very often but few get "long term" treatment. Part of it is engineer churn/turnover, but a bigger factor imo is culture.

rodgerd2• 5 years ago

Hangouts was, for a time, fantastic. Integrated SMS/rich messaging (like iMessage). Seamless video calling. Spot on.

Then they started gutting bits of it with no apparent reason beyond supporting empire building by other teams.

User23• 5 years ago

Was anyone else’s first response to this submission something along the lines of, “wow, MacWorld is still around?” I remember when they started muscling in on MacUser with a frankly inferior product, but were so successful that they crushed it. And then MacAddict tried to be the scrappy underdog.

unstatusthequo• 5 years ago

It’s less about blue bubbles and more about functionality. I don’t want WhatsApp as my main messaging app. And I can’t get critical mass on Signal. And sure as shit not FB Messenger or Telegram or Snapchat….

Even if Apple made all chat bubbles blue, I’d still get ultra low shitty videos from my “Android friends” sending a clip and not thinking about SMS limits. Maybe it looks fine on their end. On my end, get the magnifying glass out.

Or having too many people on a text thread? Wtf? Is this 20 years ago?

I also don’t get the hard core Google defensiveness thing. This is a company that mines everything they can get from you to sell ads to you…Who notoriously cancels services or fails to execute fully on them. Google Chat/Talk/Voice was confusing. Which do we use? And what about that bizarre email experiment? Voice is my favorite Google product by far. I don’t use Chrome for privacy reasons, but admit I’m stuck on Gmail. I tried to de Google my email, and then realized that having my email off of Google was cool except so many people I email were on it, so they have it anyway…

I don’t really care if your chat bubble is green or blue or red. I just want it to work with whatever I’m sending and be encrypted. SMS isn’t. Carriers retain. Why subject myself to that?

bern44444• 5 years ago

This article is a bit pretentious.

I had an Android phone when RCS was rolling out. It never worked. Well before then, iMessage - like most message platforms - already did everything that RCS did and far better.

Thank gosh Apple (and other message apps) decided to keep improving instead of waiting on telecom companies to build and support this standard.

No other messaging app is as simple and easy to use as iMessages. I have no inclination to use FB/WhatsApp (though it's popular especially for international cases). I'm never going to convince all my friends to download and switch to something like telegram/signal.

iMessage is simply the best SMS/Rich messaging platform that, like a lot of what Apple does, Just Works.

I will never trust a google messaging service to last and be around in 5 years. They have a massive graveyard here.

what_ever• 5 years ago

I think you are missing the point - quite a bit. No one is asking Apple to give up iMessage and replace it with RCS. The ask is to replace SMS fallback with RCS fallback. When you message someone without an iPhone, you currently use SMS. Even though you are using the iMessage app, the message is sent using SMS.

With RCS instead of SMS, iMessage will continue to "Just Work" as it does right now. iOS<->iOS will still happen over iMessage.

I had an Android phone when RCS was rolling out. It never worked.

It has rolled out now though. No one asked iMessage to support RCS back then. They are being asked now. So it's not relevant what happened with you whenever you had Android phone.

Well before then, iMessage - like most message platforms - already did everything that RCS did and far better.

iMessage did that for iOS<->iOS communication. Not for messages sent over SMS.

No other messaging app is as simple and easy to use as iMessages.

This won't change with RCS.

I will never trust a google messaging service to last and be around in 5 years.

The protocol should stay there as the SMS one is still around. If G gives up support, the fallback for RCS is... SMS which is anyway supported by iMessage already.

Disc: Googler but nowhere close to Android, RCS, any messaging app.

hocuspocus• 5 years ago

It has rolled out now though

Not really. Google is giving the middle finger to carriers who implemented Universal Profile on their own rather than use Jibe. And we now have fragmentation even before there was time for significant adoption.

That said, your points about iMessage are right. I believe RCS support might actually help iMessage in some markets, since SMS fallback is precisely the reason people won't use it.

Lamad123• 5 years ago

This article does not mention the word 'security' even once.. Weird, considering the recent scandals and that company's reluctance to fix them on time.

karmasimida• 5 years ago

Any company has a better messaging software than Google.

Why?

Because Google didn't even have one. Bingo, none of their offering is going to work reliably for whatever purpose and that is not user's fault, and frankly speaking, it is 2022, there is no room for them anymore.

pcdoodle• 5 years ago

I hate both companies for offering zero promise I can have a private conversation.

alimov4• 5 years ago

Afaik iMessage chat is encrypted, unless you have iCloud backups enabled for messages.

kylehotchkiss• 5 years ago

Jumping between iMessage, telegram, WhatsApp, and slack, the big missing feature in iMessage for me is the inability to delete messages. It’s way too easy to select the wrong photo or text the wrong person and have to awkwardly wiggle your way out of it. WhatsApp shows the message was deleted and has (had?) a timeout for the delete which feels like a nice implementation. Telegram’s deletion functionality of your and the recipients messages without leaving a trace might be overkill for iMessage.

firecall• 5 years ago

They might have all lost to Discord and they just don't realise it yet!

My kids / tweeners and their friends all use Discord.

They all have iPads and iPhones too.

All they iMessage for is to message me and ask for food

Discord is fun and encourages community and exploration, as well as one on one messaging.

I can't see why they'd move to iMessage.

And before you claim it's just for gamers... it's not, they are all on it! Boys and girls.

Even the parents who organise for kids to get together k ow to share their children Discord ID!

iMessage is the Facebook of the messaging world.

Used be billions but yesterdays news.

lostmsu5• 5 years ago

Discord is terrible for privacy though. No sane parent should encourage use of Discord for that reason alone. They collect literally everything they can get their hands on.

asdff2• 5 years ago

They will use imessage again when they aren't sitting in their rooms chatting. Waiting for a discord to load on a spotty mobile connection is no fun. Meanwhile imessage, either through its own channels or via sms, just works, and is still the best way to get a hold of people you know in real life, since the audio fallback is just as reliable too.

bee_rider3• 5 years ago

Discord is just the current iteration of the free messaging app treadmill. They aren't (or at least weren't, last I checked) profitable. Eventually they'll be bought and have to monetize somehow, which everyone will hate, and then we'll all move on to some other platform. As long as they are spending investors' money, though, they'll be great!

AniseAbyss• 5 years ago

iMessage being incompatible with different platforms makes it pretty shit compared to other apps that work on everything. Outside of the US iPhone users have other messaging apps on their phone.

But I don't think Apple ever really wanted to corner this market anyway and don't really care. Same way they never wanted to beat Windows or Lenovo with their Macs.

a-dub• 5 years ago

it will be like the subways in new york.

BMT, IND... it will eventually be centralized and run by the government as a public service.

skc• 5 years ago

It's somewhat mind boggling to me that the default messaging app for everyone that I know is WhatsApp. Everyone uses it from old people to young people to businesses. Doesn't matter if you're using iOS or Android or Windows or MacOS. We communicate via WhatsApp and it's just second nature.

But of course, I'm outside the US.

Doctor_Fegg• 5 years ago

I hear this a fair amount on HN and it doesn’t chime at all with my experience (I’m in the UK). WhatsApp is popular with parents of school-age kids but even then there’s no “second nature” expectation that you’ll use it - I don’t and no-one bats an eyelid. I don’t know any older people who use it at all. Facebook Messenger is popular too, and SMS/iMessage is the default for “I just want to contact someone”.

oblio• 5 years ago

It's per country.

Especially poorer countries use it a lot.

ajvs• 5 years ago

Strange, I'm in the UK as well but everyone I know and meet uses WhatsApp. Got a few friends who are on Signal and Telegram also, but those are only in my more technology-oriented circles.

throwaway744678• 5 years ago

French here; my usage is mostly: WhatsApp for group conversations (circle of friends, family, setting up some event/holidays/whatever), SMS for one-on-one conversations. I am definitely not a heavy communicator, though: perhaps younger folks have different usage patterns.

As a reminder: most cell phone plans here include unlimited (free) SMS messages

wodenokoto• 5 years ago

You need to move a little bit out of Europe for WhatsApp to be all encompassing.

In Dubai almost half my bank correspondence has been on WhatsApp. Guy asks me which credit card I want and starts sending me snapshots of a printed brochure.

Advertisements have WhatsApp contact information listed, most businesses has a chat line open in WhatsApp. Delivery drivers will text you on WhatsApp if they have trouble finding your place. It’s really everywhere and that is despite the fact that phone calls on WhatsApp are blocked.

But it’s not like people aren’t on Facebook or nobody snaps or anything.

And of course, in China it’s WeChat, Japan and Taiwan it’s Line and I think South Korea still live and breathe through kakaotalk.

But for the majority of the world WhatsApp is really the first line of contact.

dkdbejwi383• 5 years ago

Another anecdotal UK experience: all contact with humans is via WhatsApp except one older relative. My SMS inbox is 99% 2FA codes, appointment reminders and delivery updates

xbl• 5 years ago

Not my experience at all in the UK, in all my social groups it's basically assumed you have WhatsApp and we aren't all parents

That assumption even extends to the business environments I work in. I'm often in the position of needing to coordinate with groups of customers, third parties and contractors during a change window. WhatsApp is the lowest common denominator

bengale• 5 years ago

Yeah I'm in the UK too, I don't even have whatsapp installed.

rovek• 5 years ago

I'd be interested to know what drives these differences, whether it can be measured, and why there seems to be limited crossover of "circles".

In the UK, I've had WhatsApp for about 12 years since the Nokia N900. If someone gives me their number, it's assumed we will communicate by WhatsApp.

As an interesting crossover, my American friends communicate with their friends/family in the US with iMessage but use WhatsApp for everything else and the only Brit I've met who used iMessage by default had spent significant time in the US in recent years.

mmcnl• 5 years ago

"Outside the US" is a big world where not everyone does things in the same way.

biztos• 5 years ago

I’m in non-Chinese Asia and it’s Line.

In Europe it’s mostly WhatsApp but a surprisingly large number of people use Facebook Messenger. And often both.

dragonelite• 5 years ago

Also in Europe Netherlands its mostly whatsapp and sometimes facebook messenger when going out and adding people. But the talk usually transitions to whatsapp after exchanging phone numbers.

But i prefer telegram more it actually feels like a modern chat application whatsapp feels like a early 2010 app.

PufPufPuf• 5 years ago

Funnily, in my country there's a generation split -- people <40yo use Messenger and >40yo use WhatsApp. Which is funny for several reasons -- Facebook is mostly used by older people nowadays (younger left for Instagram), but the Facebook's Messenger app is the exact opposite. And WhatsApp was never popular in the younger generation, which makes me wonder how the boomers figured out how to use it.

(But the bottom line is, as you can see, that Meta is dominating the market.)

jsolson• 5 years ago

Within the US, with a modest amount of pre-pandemic international travel, WhatsApp was a thing I was aware of, but never had cause to use (or even install). I'm not certain I've even read the name since the pandemic started before today.

Everyone I know uses some other platform, or just SMS because it works.

Zak4• 5 years ago

SMS doesn't work very well when you're not in the same country/region, as international SMS is not free/unlimited for most people.

pjmlp2• 5 years ago

Depending on the European country it is a mix of many apps, regarding my contacts:

With the friends in DACH region it is mostly about Whatsapp.

With the friends in Portugal it is mostly about Whatsapp and Skype.

With the friends in Balcans and east mediterrian it is mostly about Whatsapp and Viber.

With all of them, we still exchange plenty of SMS, as everyone has plenty of free ones on their pre-paid packages.

giansegato• 5 years ago

can confirm for italy: whatsapp is 100% the only expected tool of communication. telegram is making some waves in some circles, but for the most part it's whatsapp only: groups, 1:1, business support, anything

my experience in germany and spain is vastly similar

stephen_g• 5 years ago

Probably depends on who your friends and families are but iMessage is super popular in parts of Australia. Facebook messenger is also quite popular with a lot of people I communicate with. WhatsApp is third for me, where I am in one group as well as individual messaging to to one or two people. It seemed to be getting more popular here over time but some people switched to Signal when WhatsApp made their privacy changes a year or so ago. Seems to have lost some momentum here, but again maybe that’s just my circles.

weberer• 5 years ago

In Finland, Telegram seems to be the dominant messenger nowadays, at least among university and tech workers.

CRConrad8• 5 years ago

Among everybody else, it's Whatsapp. Some tech workers too, BTW.

baxtr• 5 years ago

I try to get people on Signal or iMessage whenever I can. I reply on another messenger whenever I get a WhatsApp. It is not always possible though.

herbst5• 5 years ago

Switzerland here, Telegram seems just as popular as well as Signal having a big community. Many people have WhatsApp sure, but many simply dont.

I am sure this depends on your circle and language region, but this is my POV

nix23• 5 years ago

+1 for Signal also Switzerland...but have seen Threema quite often too (company internal stuff mostly)

jamil7• 5 years ago

Germany too, I don’t even have WhatsApp installed anymore. Telegram then Signal seem to be the most popular amongst younger people.

blackoil• 5 years ago

In India. Whatsapp is defacto for everything. group, 1:1 messages, calling, sharing photos/wishes in family/friend circle. Even for business communication in small orgs, reaching out shops, ordering to local stores.

It works phenomenally on iOS/Android/Windows/Mac and even on Windows Phone till its very end. Call quality is good and messaging is fast and very reliable. When you take phone off aeroplane mode, you receive Whatsapp messages first even before SMS etc.

pier25• 5 years ago

Same in Mexico. Whatsapp is everywhere.

mrweasel2• 5 years ago

Most people I know just use SMS and that's where Apples solutions is brilliant. My mom doesn't know she's using iMessage, nor does she care, she just thinks it's SMS. Personally I believe that the majority of iMessage users are completely unaware that Apple silently upgrades your communication from SMS to iMessage.

throwawayffffas• 5 years ago

Personally I believe that the majority of iMessage users are completely unaware that Apple silently upgrades your communication from SMS to iMessage.

I think the word you are looking for is hijacks.

jakub_g2• 5 years ago

From what I've read, WhatsApp won precisely because of being truly platform independent. 10y+ ago Android/iOS monopoly was not yet that huge, and compared to other apps, WhatsApp had a client (which worked well) on the long tail of cheaper devices/OSes, which drove its adoption, because you could communicate with literally anyone.

mavhc4• 5 years ago

And because there's no username or password, so anyone can use it. Which is its fundamental problem as phone numbers are terrible for everything

swah• 5 years ago

And the final, genius and/or lucky move (in Brazil) was when phone operators started allowing both Waze and Whatsapp [1] to work even when your data plan had ended. Now everyone, even those on the cheapest pre-paid plans, was guaranteed to get your message.

[1] Maybe some federal judge considered those apps essential because someone was unable to text for help due to their data plan, and operators were ordered to allow that traffic to go at all times.

Telegram is faster and adding features all the time - people only it during Whatsapp outages - returning as soon as the service is back.

What Telegram does much better are public groups for creators, but its never the primary channel to communicate with their audiences, since discoverability is much worse than Instagram/Twitter.

danlugo92• 5 years ago

They also had a Blackberry client, Blackberrys were very huge in latin america and I think Asia a while back.

thanatos519• 5 years ago

In Europe. WhatsApp or Signal, and I'm aware of Telegram. iMessage isn't even on my list of "what chat apps do people use?"

toxik• 5 years ago

I use iMessage about 95% of the time I text, in Europe.

iqanq• 5 years ago

Mind boggling why? It's very, very good. They were early to the game. And messengers profit from network effects.

exploderate• 5 years ago

These impressions are extremely dependent on ones bubble. It also differs a lot by country.

pdimitar3• 5 years ago

Eastern European here, both Whatsapp is prevalent and Telegram is gradually gaining ground (although I use it from back to the start of 2016).

Surprisingly to me as a techie, a lot of people outright demand you on Viber or you can't text them. I still refuse though because Viber is crap: it's ad-ridden and can't even sync chats properly when you install it on a new device.

tmm84• 5 years ago

In Japan, most people use Line for messaging and calls. I love it but it is not secure.

teekert• 5 years ago

Hmm, I don't get it, my messages are all dark.

Ah it's my own messages that are green (took me a while to find one). Ok, so I think I used iMessage at some point, not sure though. Have to admit that that green bubble feels a bit dated, so perhaps it's on purpose? Anyway, nobody uses iMessage here, I don't remember ever seeing a blue bubble in the messages app, it's al Whatsapp here, which is actually worse, at least iPhone users seamlessly switch between sms and iMessages, in Whatsapp you're left out with a dumbphone (and I know people with dumbphones still). Then again, they may avoid Whatsapp on purpose.

jl6• 5 years ago

None of my acquaintances use iMessage, so I don’t use it. If they did, I would. The actual qualities of the app are a distant second consideration.

“Competition” doesn’t quite work as expected when network effects are in play.

scaglio• 5 years ago

I live outside U.S. and I had a few iPhones in the last years… I almost never used iMessage. Mostly because 50% of my contacts use Android or other apps on iOS (WhatsApp).

About the apps, I am forced to use WeChat because some of my friends live in China and that is the only communication channel they have… but it is the worst experience I ever had. Even Viber was better. And in China it’s heavily controlled.

Among my contacts in Europe, Telegram is widely used and becoming almost “a standard”… only a very few use Signal.

thom• 5 years ago

It’s for sending text messages. Please can we have some apps that just remain simple and don’t have to metastasise into social networks mining our thoughts?

You know what app I never use on my phone? The phone app. Is there any actual anxiety about this? Does it need to morph into a Clubhouse-style swamp of dark patterns trying to turn audio in money? No. It just needs to sit there for when I might need to phone someone.

nottorp4• 5 years ago

Interesting US only problem. In Europe people use whatsapp. In China they use <whatever's in fashion in China, iForgot the name>.

It's been ages since I've had less than unlimited text messages. I'd still rather not use those because they're crippled, and any "improvement" made by the phone providers will still be crippled compared to what a tcp/ip based app can do.

For example, I'm 100% sure any SMS "improvement" will still be tied to the phone. Even whatsapp is slowly moving away from that.

There's exactly one useful feature in iMessage compared to whatsapp. It recompresses your photos less. I use it when I want to send photos to a family member and that's all.

wruza• 5 years ago

Another big article over a simple thing. Reading these feels like people (not only the author) are focused on problems and not on solutions, and they mix everything together into the political drama.

If the problem is green bubbles being ostracized for some teen-idiotic reason, would you like to know what to do?

Make them all the same color.

Yes, iMessage is SMS. The color is there for you to see if a message will be sent over SMS or over the internet, because SMS may cost money. Specifically, there are two colored things: a message itself and a "send" button, one shows the past, other shows the future. Leave the coloring of the button and own messages intact, and make all incoming bubbles blue. Or green, if you feel funny. There's a reason to see how you send, but no reason to see how it was delivered. That's it. No more issue. End of story.

oxplot• 5 years ago

I'm too old (mid 30s) to waste time chasing apps. If it comes with the OS, namely the default SMS messaging app, I use it. When I was on Android, that's all I used and I could contact everyone. Same on iOS now. If anyone was annoyed at sending me SMS, then it meant their comms wasn't important enough — automatic filtering.

caskstrength• 5 years ago

Is this an American thing to be so hung up on phone's builtin messaging software? Here in Eastern Europe everybody just use third-party messaging providers (Telegram and, unfortunately, Viber) that are available on every (major) platform.

zwkrt• 5 years ago

The vast majority of people in the US don’t use a 3rd party app for messaging. Why this is I can only speculate. My guess is that we were marketed SMS as a “killer feature” of phones and phone plans during the pre-internet days of cell phones

h0nd• 5 years ago

Here in Europe, SMS used to be so expensive that nobody used them anymore when alternatives such as WhatsApp came up. In the meantime unlimited SMS are included in most contracts at no extra cost (or no choice) and still very few people use it anymore.

lwkl2• 5 years ago

I kind of agree with this article. I think Apple doesn't think a lot about their competition in a sense that they solely focus on the user experience of their products and don't worry with trying to push for interopability with other products. But the whole bullying thing because of the background colour seems laughable.

I also think that they have a big advantage because they have a narrow range of products (there aren't 50 different iPhones) that they can sell at a high volume giving them a lot of leverage with suppliers. Additionally they control the whole stack and probably should be able to offer a superior product compared to their competition if they execute right.

I'm not sure if this warrants intervention from regulators. As a consumer I see potential for a great product that simply isn't possible if multiple companies design different elements of the stack. There are much bigger conflicts of interest and you may be using the same software and parts as your competitor so they will never be as specialized.

I'm not sure if these advantages are fair. Should a hardware manufacturer not be allowed to develop an operating system for their hardware? Should the developer of an operating system not be allowed to develop and integrate services into their operating system?

I guess I could extend this thinking to the overall centralization in the tech space. Which is convenient and really worrying at the same time.

yessirwhatever• 5 years ago

The world has spoken
Let’s start with the obvious: the only people having this conversation about iMessage are Americans. In most of the world, iMessage is an afterthought. Platform-agnostic chat apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger dominate, though the particular apps in question vary from country to country.

Excuse me? Anyone using an iPhone and messing someone with an iPhone is using iMessage. I'm in an EU country and I have specifically made an effort to notice what sort of messaging platform people use and by far if they're on iOS they're using iMessage.

Such a bold and impudent statement to make! It's baffling how they can even write such a title and paragraph.

dzhiurgis• 5 years ago

People like to make fun of Slack memory use, but right now Message app uses 1.5GB of memory.

Also, listening to voice messages, especially when some bluetooth device is connected is infuriating experience.

tomcat27• 5 years ago

I used whatsapp exclusively for years before moving to iMessage.

This post misses the point just how much Apple users like iMessage.

The reason iMessage is not popular in other countries is: Ubiquity trumps everything. iPhone is a unaffordable luxury good outside a few rich countries. Apple pricing is horrible.

imo, and most likely all Apple users: iMessage UX is better than WhatsApp

hammyhavoc• 5 years ago

Everything should just be Matrix protocol at this point. 40m users so far. A long way to go until it is anywhere approaching as ubiquitous as email, but I hold hope.

CRConrad8• 5 years ago

The theory goes that in most countries, people fled traditional text messaging faster than in the U.S., due to more onerous per-message fees–and Apple was just too late to the party.

Whose theory? Feels bogus: Here (and in most of Europe AFAIK), SMS has been free-unlimited since Idunnowhen, and hundreds included back when there were still limits shortly after the turn of the century. Pretty much all the whining about limits I can recall has been from Americans.

And that's not to mention the Gruber article they link to as "proof" of the iPhone's general superiority... Say what you want about that "fireball", but for a supposedly independent and critical Apple observer, he doesn't feel all that "daring"... That was the most revoltingly gushing piece of Appleologia I've seen in a long while.

squabble• 5 years ago

Text messaging on cell phones worked fine until Apple got involved. Now when I send a message to a relative, their response goes to my Macbook.

(I have an Android phone, they have an Apple phone)

Google is wrong. Apple’s iMessage is a failure

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