this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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I'm still unclear on why this whole thing is so important that it's worth putting time and money into finding a solution for the color of word bubbles.
Edit: all this time I thought it was just an argument over bubble colors. But no, it's also potato quality videos and pictures ruining every group message with both Apple and Android in the mix.
Its not just the word bubbles. Pictures and videos come through on Android like complete shit. I can't even have my wife send me pictures of the kids cause I can't see them on the other end. Nor can I watch family videos sent to me. Its much more than simple colors, but of course kids are getting bullied for that.
Now this makes sense, thank you. Garbage quality video and pictures are a so annoying. It seems to ruin an entire group chat if one of them is on an iPhone. I often have to wait until I see someone in person or have them send it through a different app for the video to work.
I have yet to get a group conversation to switch to Signal or something to avoid the potato quality videos
Apple could fix this by uploading the photos to iCloud and sending a link. But improving the experience of SMS chats is not profitable, so they instead actively downgrade the experience.
I always send an iCloud link for photos when I know that there’s someone who may not be using an iPhone. I’m not sure why others don’t. It’s especially useful when sending large numbers of pictures.
That's what the Verizon messages app does, just with a Verizon website instead of iCloud. I found it very annoying and slow to use.
Tell the wife to use telegram or another messaging client. There are plenty of perfectly good alternatives to imessages.
We use messenger, which I also don't like. Its ridiculous. If these fucken tech giants aren't going to right interoperability standards then someone needs to force them to. We made all this shit to make life better and somehow have forgotten that was the fucken goal.
For better or worse you happen to be using the one messaging app that is broadly agreed to be worse than iMessage.
Signal and Telegram are far superior, even putting aside the most glaring flaws of the other two.
Signal/Telegram are not very common where I’m at. I have Signal, nobody in my contacts does.
I've successfully converted a spouse, which I don't think is out of the question w.r.t who I replied to.
I've also converted my main friend group, but appreciate that's insurmountable for a lot of people - genuinely, people hate change after all. I'm lucky to have a lot of friends who work in tech and are receptive to trying new things.
Its convenience. Why have both of us download a new app strictly for pictures when she is already on Facebook, and I have a dusty one with no posts for a decade. Plus getting someone in the US to download a 3rd party messaging app is like asking them to respond to the Nigerian Prince for his offers.
Fair enough. It's kind of an oxymoron to worry about the trust of a given 3rd party messaging app while using products from a known, wide scale, repeated privacy intruder like Meta, but you have what you need in terms of convenience so I won't make a further case for an alternative.
Believe me, I know. I wouldn't be using it if the people I need it for would switch. But people don't give a shit here. I gave up trying to move apps. The rest of my shit is arch linux and de googled. This is the last hold out.
I'd say Telegram isn't superior. It's default encryption is nowhere near iMessage.
And if you step up the encryption, you lose group chats.
For it's flaws, iMessage is a very good solution, one that Signal was emulating for a while.
I'm not criticising the UX of iMessage for Apple to Apple comms. It's solid, and was leader-in-class for a very long time.
Why messenger of all things. That's the worst one.
I prefer Signal to telegram and it's been amazing the whole time I've used it
Now if I could just convince more people I know to switch to it that'd be great
The better option is to push Google and Apple to adopt a completely open version of RCS with end to end encryption so that regardless of whatever app someone is using, you know for a fact that they can receive your message.
The broken messaging ecosystem between WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and others is a shit sandwich.
People would lose their minds if email was the same way.
That's certainly less desirable option for many. But why is wanting modern cross platform messaging so bad? It works iPhone to iPhone, works Android to Android, theoretically if there were other players (maybe if BB or Windows still had phones) they could also achieve the same using RCS with Android. This argument is and has always been about default protocols that phone can communicate with. Of course downloading 3rd party chat apps, emailing them, mailing them a letter, using a cup and string, stopping communication because they chose to use a phone from a different manufacture are all still "options".
That doesn’t solve the interoperability problem. You can’t guarantee who has what messaging app. You shouldn’t need a 3rd party app for basic functionality, anyway.
I like Signal better than my standard android SMS app. I can send more pictures at a time, video at high quality, and it does groups well.
Right, right.
Do you hear yourself?
I have a friend who use iMessage on their Mac and will check that more often than their phone. If I text them during work hours, it'll be hours before hearing back from them. Turns out, from what I'm told, iMessage on Mac has a setting to not show SMS on the desktop, so my messages were only going to their phone, which wasn't checked as frequently. I guess when you enable SMS, notifications get messed up, and read SMS on your iPhone aren't synced, and show up as unread (or something like that). In anycase, SMS got turned off at some point.
Obviously, none of this is really my problem, but it's frustrating, more than just the color of the bubbles. The Network effect is real, and asking someone to switch to a new platform is not as easy as it sounds.
If they enable iCloud sync for messages it will update everywhere, they can also make sure they have Text Message Forwarding selected on their phone. They’ll get the messages in a timely manner (I get mine at the exact same time as my phone) and read messages will be reflected in all locations. I’ve been using iMessage on a Mac, iPad, and iPhone in some combination or other since the feature was offered, and the only issue I’ve ever had with sync was when I did a clean setup on a new Mac instead of a setup from backup. The above options weren’t selected.
I’ve found this feature mostly reliable. Those times where it doesn’t work, or I’m travelling, or don’t have phone reception is kinda annoying. But being able to just use my Mac is fantastic.
I'm not either. considering that over 70% of the world is on android, you'd think the compatibility problem would be laid on Apple and not 3rd party applications.
70% of the world is using Google and Apple is giving Google the middle finger.
😂
To be fair, I am using Google (via Android) and am also giving Google (Chrome) the middle finger.
iMessage lock in is almost exclusively a US problem (maybe EU, but i have no experience living there so i'm not sure). I'm from Malaysia and 99% of communication here is done through whatsapp and I know this is true for many other countries too. Line is frequently used in korea, Wechat in china, etc. It was only when I moved to the US that I used iMessage in any serious capacity
But Apple users don't care enough to solve the issue. Partly they see it as an Android problem,if they see the problem at all.
In their defense, they have a messenger that works well, syncs to the desktop, sends high quality, etc, to other iOS users. So I can understand their not wanting to switch, or even seeing an issue.
oh I understand yeah. certainly. but surely it's not difficult to explain it to most users.
them understanding or caring about the issue is another problem. brand loyalty is a thing. but then there's users for whom brand loyalty isn't really a choice, it's just what they're used to or they're not skilled enough to understand what the difference is.
i feel that's a much stronger problem here. that particular subset of people don't understand the device they are using. they're basically angry because the green people in their messages don't look right or don't load right. that makes it "bad" if you don't understand why.
basic understanding of the technology you carry in your pocket is lacking for a huge user base. but apple... kind of relies on people not understanding. it makes it easier for apple to go "Green text bad! hate people with that!" and still keep it's users that might not understand in the dark.
Group chat. You can’t have a properly working group chat if there’s an android in the mix.
Now that people bring up group chat, I realized that the opposite is also true. One apple in the mix will ruin all the videos in a group chat.
This is by Apple's design choice, not because Android.
Android can send as high a quality over SMS/MMS as the network will allow. iPhone can't.
In Apple's defense, you'd still lose all the iMessage features when SMS is involved, because what else are you going to do when one participant doesn't have iMessage? You'll fallback to the lowest common mechanism.
So anything that isn't iOS/iMessage.
Whenever it has to fallback to SMS.
I mean there's really no other realistic way to enable a single app to utilize two very different communication "protocols" (in quotes, because SMS is only nominally a protocol).
I've always though iMessage was the approach to getting away from crappy SMS.
So when Signal did the same, I was very optimistic. It removed a barrier to entry for users by supporting SMS plus an encrypted method for connections that had Signal. And you could enable it to add a signature saying something like "Sent from Signal, this could be an encrypted conversation if you download Signal" or something like that. That was a great idea.
(weird, not sure why these are two comments and it looks like I replied to myself)
The reason is that if they have a solution, people will pay for it, and thus they'll make money.
It’s really about interoperability of systems, protocols, services, and clients. Since we’re both using Lemmy I assume we both understand at least a bit about the significance of interoperability.
I think it’s a shame that effort is put in to reverse engineering.
I mean theoretically it would be possible for people to use apps that are already cross platform, like Signal. People just care less than the inconvenience of installing an app on their phone.
Cross-platform clients, yes, but that's only a (small) part of the way there. For example, Signal is actively hostile to other client implementations just like Apple is with iMessage, unfortunately :(
While it's fine to criticize Signal in that instance, I hope no one discards it because of that. Things don't have to be perfect to be better alternatives, and Signal is so far along to be a good alternative that if you would personally, idk, insist on only using Matrix or whatever and refuse to use Signal, you'd probably be contraproductive for the whole privacy and openness thing.
It's fine to prefer something else but I think it's positive to be fine with using Signal too.
Which is funny considering that apples current implementation is less secure because sending the non-imessage users from iMessage breaks the encryption, meaning everything sent to a non-imessage recipient is sent in plain text.
Seems like it's designed to get Apple users to push away anyone who uses a non-apple device
Because people are stupid and the whole world's gone fucking crazy.
$10 says they want Apple to buy them out.
They intend to work with lots of services, it's just that imessage is getting the most focus right now.
If im not mistaken, they intend to eventually open source the code, so facebook/apple/google better buy quick.