1y ago

Is having an Android really a deal-breaker for some people?

I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.

In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.

Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?

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If they don’t want to text you because you don’t have an iPhone they’re not friends you want to have.
- Seen this sentiment that green bubbles = bad a few times online but never it's never come up for me. I assume this is a teen - early adult specific issue where the idea is mostly to be part of the group
  
  It's been happening in high schools, to the point teens are bullied and pushed out of peer groups if they have Androids. It's frankly disgusting that apple willingly creates this division to profit off teenagers bullying each other, and they don't get called out for it enough.
  But in the larger picture, it's definitely going to be more common among the young, because iPhones themselves are ubiquitous among the younger. It's something the tech space is slowly starting realize: Apple has almost total market dominance among the rising demographic, and this has led to increasing tech illiteracy due to the way Apple designs its software, and inability/refusal to learn anything else. That is a huge problem for the tech industry when the only thing they can do to find customers is dumb their software down to appeal to people that don't know how to use anything other than iOS
  
  Perhaps in the US but it's not so pronounced elsewhere. I think I only know one person with an iPhone.
  
  It's still about 30% here in Germany. It is rising though. And I think this is because of "clever" marketing. The highschools here in Germany started forcing parents to buy Ipads for their children a couple of years ago. Children with low income parents get it from the city for free. Nominally it is, because it is "easier to maintain", but I honestly really doubt this.
  
  Yeah easier to maintain lmao. You mean to spy on their students.
  
  These schools are using iPads in place of computer labs. I’m old enough to have actually managed a computer lab, and I can tell you that a fleet of managed iPads is way easier to maintain than a computer lab.
  
  But you don't understand! The USA is the entire world! Everybody else in the world is just like Americans or wants to be!🙄
  I know five people with iPhones here. I interact with almost three orders of magnitude more people than five...
  
  You interact with 5000 people?
  
  About that, yes. Not in-depth and not each day, obviously, but I have quite a sizable crowd I deal with on a regular basis. Comes from having a lot of former students I keep in touch with.
  
  If you think that the reason Apple makes the bubbles different colors is “to profit of teen bullying” then I think perhaps you might want to go back to reddit or Twitter.
  What a ridiculous statement.
  
  Everyone 30 and under at my office prefers Macs, to the point of bringing in their own machines to do 90% of their work and falling back to the Windows laptops issued by IT for the remainder.
  
  ...I feel like bringing personal machines to work in order to do work is causing chaos with IT and network security
  
  BYOD has been a huge shift in corporate IT over the last 10-15 years; mostly because if people bring their own gear, you don’t have to lease it.
  How do you think Citrix is still in business?
  
  They could be accessing virtual workspaces using a company VPN client. Or perhaps logging into a Citrix Receiver Workspace. Could probably access a VDI environment as well. 2FA with a work cell etc
  Lots of ways for personal devices to be used in the work setting. Would I recommend it or do it myself? Nah. But it can be done.
  
  To be fair, as a work machine, I far prefer macs. And there's a reason why Windows has been implementing steadily more and more MacOS features into their OS over time.
  For a personal machine I'd rather Windows.
  
  100%
  I’m a software developer. MacOS is my choice for corporate dev (cause Linux isn’t an option) because it’s Unix based and has a working command line. Windows causes so many problems around dependency installs and frameworks.
  Windows is still on my home machines, but they’re edging closer to going linux too.
  
  This is hilarious to me because I’m the exact opposite.
  Windows for work (and gaming) MacOS or iPadOS for personal use for me.
  
  Windows is emphatically not the same thing as Android. They're two entirely different OS's. No doubt you know this, it just seems like you momentarily lost the plot and made it about Windows vs Mac, when what we're really talking about is iOS vs Android.
  
  Oh c'mon now, Apple and iOS apps have too good of a user experience? That's the issue? You call it "dumbing down software", I call it implementing user experience research and design.
- If anybody wants to judge me based on the brand of electronics I use, my favorite band or the brand of clothes I wear, I have no interest in interacting with them lol. This whole consumerist worship-culture is just toxic.
  
  The worst thing you can do as a consumer is be (blindly) loyal to a brand.
  E.g. I like Columbia jackets, footwear, outdoor wear, etc. If however their quality goes down, or there is another comparable product that happens to be on sale (and assuming I like the look/style) I wouldn't NOT get it because it isn't a Colombia product.
  
  Also Columbia owns brands like Prana and Mountain Hardware, so if you want higher quality stuff that's still basically Columbia, you have plenty of options.
  The same is true of many other companies.
- I am an Android user but this comment should be taken very lightly. As this is not the cause the truth is that Apple is at fault here for still using SMS as the default messaging protocol. However, with that being said, SMS breaks messages on iPhone and the devices have been geared towards iPhone users in away that makes it seem like Android is the issue with image quality and texting. The marketing is excellent on Apple's end towards the competition and it is working.
  However, that doesn't mean iPhone isn't the problem. I have a sibling who got bullied for having an iPhone. Apple's answer to these problems is just, "get an iPhone." This is equivalent to, "can't figure it out? Just Google it." The problem with this mentality is it gives more power to monopolizing platforms. Apple is a growing giant and if they had their way you would just have an iPhone and if Apple has expressed anything in the past 8 years it's that they aren't exactly the innovators with mobile devices anymore. To me the problem is on an iPhone nothing would change.
  A little irrelevant rant but my point is that the average iPhone consumer has been given a marketing ploy so it is a deal breaker because they think it is an issue and in all fairness it is one but only Google is trying to fix. Issue is that Google should have tried to fix it years ago. You can't blame iPhone users for wanting to use other platforms to message you if your message is compressed heavily by Apple's shitty and stupid fucking decision to keep using SMS to control the market. The care about user experience is overshadowed by the desire to use that as a means to make money off of a user that doesn't understand messaging protocols. Fuck Apple.
  
  Keep using SMS? What are Apple's other alternatives, exactly? RCS is still a mess, the only way it has e2ee is if you use Google's messaging app, and there's no way you will see Apple adopting Google's standard without having a say in it, and rightfully so - Google locks tons of proprietary features out of their APIs - EXIF data for Photos, Categories in Gmail, etc.
  I think this is actually more of a comment on Google's lack of direction with messaging - how many different messaging apps have they sunset by now? Half dozen or so? Messaging has always been a cluster on Android. WhatsApp is supposedly e2ee, but they have backdoor bugs being patched on a nearly basis - ask Jeff Bezos how his dick pics got hacked.
  
  I mean you can install Google messaging apps on iOS (not that I would want to use them...). But try that the other way around. Apples option to not using SMS would simply be to provide iMessage for Android. Problem solved. They would very likely become the main messaging platform by doing so. Currently the majority of the market is likely split between WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat.
  But obviously they fear that this would hurt iPhone sales. At the same time this also leads to iMessage being irrelevant in the majority of markets where iPhone isn't as dominating as in the US.
- Maybe the post has been edited between when you posted and now, but that’s not what OP is saying.
  He’s saying that people don’t want to use SMS. They want to message him via some other platform.
  Honestly, I’m the same way. I don’t like SMS and talk to my friends on Android via WhatsApp.
  Especially for group chats of any kind, SMS is garbage compared WhatsApp, Signal, or Threema.
- If they don't want to text you because they care what your device is, they're not friends you want to have.
  (this goes both ways. Lots of apple hate in this thread but, wtf, just get on with life folks. if you give a shit what hardware I run, or think i care about your choices, we're probably not going to be friends).

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