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Iphone

Green Texts In iMessages Nudges Teens To Use iPhones (appleinsider.com) 195

Posted by EditorDavid from the peer-pressuring dept.
Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid quotes a report from Apple Insider: Apple's color-coding of SMS communications in green in iMessage plays a role alongside other feature in getting teenagers to switch from Android to iPhone, a report claims, with a pressure to fit in with their peers promoting moves to turn their messages blue. The use of green and blue to show whether a message to a user is made through iMessage or via other devices has become more than a simple convenience indicator for users. It's also a form of status indicator, showing the user not only owns an iPhone, but can also make use of features on the platform that others cannot. In a profile of the color-indication system by the Wall Street Journal, teenagers and students explain how not having an iPhone and seeing green messages are seemingly a negative to them.

New York masters student Jocelyn Maher said she was mocked by her friends and younger sister when dating, if the potential suitor used Android. 'I was like, Oh my gosh, his texts are green,' and my sister literally went Ew, that's gross,'' said Maher.

Apple is apparently well aware that iMessage is a serious draw to its users, with it surfacing in the Epic-Apple trial as part of a series of claims it was used to lock users into its ecosystem. Epic pointed to statements by senior Apple management that the company had blocked the creation of an Android version of iMessage.
The Wall Street Journal headlined its piece, "Why Apple's iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble."
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Green Texts In iMessages Nudges Teens To Use iPhones More

Green Texts In iMessages Nudges Teens To Use iPhones

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  • Dodged a Bullet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @09:39PM (#62158555)

    New York masters student Jocelyn Maher said she was mocked by her friends and younger sister when dating, if the potential suitor used Android. 'I was like, Oh my gosh, his texts are green,' and my sister literally went Ew, that's gross,'' said Maher.

    It looks like that guy dodged a bullet.

    • He could have caught cooties! Sounds like they're badly infected.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Many young people are desperate to fit into a peer group and are more desperate. The decisions they have to make can be overwhelming and they can be equally desperate for social clues to simplify these decisions. It is nice to have people no longer controlling your life, but it sure simplifies things if you can just go to H&M and let them control your wardrobe. A currently accepted haircut. A nice car. An iPhone likely means you date can take you take you somewhere fancy like Red Lobster instead of bein

      • If you do not have an iPhone you cannot join in the IMessage groups that all the cool kids use (when not using Instagram et. al.). So you miss out.

        At least that was the excuse my daughters used to extract an iPhone out of me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fermion ( 181285 )
          One of my colleagues, an immigrant to the US, bought her daughter a car because she said all American kids had cars. My mom told me to take the bus. I use it as an excuse of why I was dateless in high school. And I sucked at sports because she never bought me a pair of Jordans.
          • Those that get their kids anything other than a beater for a car are doing them a disservice. Showing my age here but in the mid to late 80s, only about 15% of High School kids even had a car. You could get some ragged out 1960s/70s vintage car for around $400 that you worked for weeks at a fast food joint to buy. It likely ran on Regular gas (leaded). It was your car outright, it ran, it was nothing fancy. In fact they were so clunky that when Adam Sandler released the song hit 'Piece of Shit Car
            • A big challenge is that there is a wide gulf in safety these days, between the clunkers and the more expensive models. When my kid starts driving in a couple years, Its going to be a challenge to find something under $4000 that has things like side curtain airbags and isn't rusted to nothing.

              I remember driving old cars that cost $700 - $1500 into the ground when I was in high school/college, but the market for used cars has made that mostly inaccessible to teens now. Its pretty hard to ask a kid to buy
              • I had a 2007 VW passat FSI that I out 200,000 miles on. I couldnt afford the stealership, so I did my own maintenance. A couple years ago I had to replace struts so I did all the suspension wear parts. Ball joints, shocks, tie rod ends, CV axles, and wheel bearings. The book value of this car is under $800. So I gave it to my daughter so she had a car for college. She knows its high mileage and that she needs to avoid lengthy trips because its due for the timing belt / water pump maintenance at 250k miles.
              • Fwiw, $600 in 1985 costs $1600 now according to an inflation calculator.

                • "Fwiw, $600 in 1985 costs $1600 now according to an inflation calculator."

                  So like the latest iPhone, 1599$ ? :-)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by bumburumbi ( 1047864 )
          Yes, teenagers are basically herd animals and everything needs to conform to what their group considers cool. Some loose this herd mentality in their twenties but a lot don't, spending their lives trying to keep up with the Joneses.

        • And in my day it was wearing the right shoes or the right brand of clothing. If you didn't have that, you missed out and were mocked by the 'cool' kids. In a few months it will be lame to have blue texts because rebels use android.

          • When android people text each other is it via SMS or their own messenger service? Seems like blue could just represent Enhanced features and green indicates basic SMS. Then you would have Star Bellied Sneeches vs Triangle Bellied Sneeches.

        • That's the best feature of using the basic SMS app on Android instead of messaging. Group texts are the absolute worst. Who are these people? Why are they texting "LOL!! rite?!?" at 3:30 am in response to a message from three months ago?

      • Unrelated, but I still can't wrap my head around the fact that any chain restaurant could be classified "fancy"

    • No, absolutely worth it, briefly (Score:4, Informative)

      by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @11:58PM (#62158839)

      It looks like that guy dodged a bullet.

      You are so, so, wrong. That guy missed out on an exception, amazing, three months before moving on. The crazy ones are absolutely worth it, briefly.

      • Yeah but they leave you twisted, jaded, and with some fetishes that become hard to fulfill when finding a normie.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Yeah but they leave you twisted, jaded, and with some fetishes that become hard to fulfill when finding a normie.

          Not jaded. Again, you are going into this knowing its very short term. With regard to kinks, I don't think percentage that partakes are all that different. "Good Girls" want to be a "bad girl with a bad boy" too at times. Its just not going to happen on the first date or during the "good behavior" period. However after the latter, when there is some trust, the girl next door can be quite the pleasant surprise.

          Then again, YMMV wrt kinks. Mine may be tame despite not running from the crazy ones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      I know, right? That's literally the stupidest criteria ever to judge a person on

  • How tough would it be to spoof this? I mean, if it's just that "Sent from my iPhone" sig, that would be trivial. Is there more behind this green/blue distinction?

    • Green mean the message was sent by SMS. Blue means it was sent by iMessage. So, not really any way to spoof.

    • Re:Workaround? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ameline ( 771895 ) <ian.ameline@nOsPam.gmail.com> on Sunday January 09, 2022 @10:57PM (#62158745) Homepage Journal

      The blue bubble indicates that the message has been end-to-end encrypted via iMessage. The green bubble indicates that it has been sent as plaintext over sms.

    • How tough would it be to spoof this?

      There used to be a jailbreak tweak which would let you customize the message color scheme. Ignoring for a moment the fact that iOS doesn't allow to choose your own color schemes, the green text bubbles are the least of the annoyances when dealing with SMS on an iPhone.

      SMS doesn't work over WiFi (even with WiFi calling enabled), so if you're somewhere with spotty coverage but good WiFi reception (such as inside buildings), you can't receive or send texts. There's no read receipts or delivery confirmation w

      • The jailbreak let you customize colors on *your* phone. It doesn't let you change the color of your texts on *someone else's* phone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by havana9 ( 101033 )
        There's delivery confirmation with SMS since the introducion of GSM phones, actually. For sending an receiving audio message with GSM network (and also for PSTN) there's always the voice mail. Problem is that these services aren't normally free.
        Standard protocols insure interoperability: I could receive an SMS on every GSM-capable cellphone, and I could use Telegram and Messenger with a desktop computer.

      • SMS doesn't work over WiFi (even with WiFi calling enabled), so if you're somewhere with spotty coverage but good WiFi reception (such as inside buildings), you can't receive or send texts

        What?

        AT&T [att.com]:

        Wi-Fi Calling lets you talk and text from indoor locations where it’s hard even for a strong cellular signal to reach.

        Verizon [verizon.com]:

        Wi-Fi Calling (aka Voice over Wi-Fi or VoWiFi) is a built-in feature on most of our current smartphones. Wi-Fi Calling lets you make and receive voice calls, texts and vi

        • Ive got ATT and believe me when I say that in airplane mode on a cruise ship, connected to their wifi, the only people i can text are iMessage people. Otherwise I gotta use AIM to send texts to their devices. Even if i could send a sms, they wont reach me. When I pull into a US port my messages go nuts playing catch-up.
    • Enhanced features. Green means basic SMS and you cannot do all the extra shit. Its like the difference between TN3270 vs RTF or HTML formatting. Even curses looks better. If android used google messenger to communicate between android users they could have extra features beyond basic SMS.

  • ok, you must fear being shunned (Score:3)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @09:59PM (#62158609)

    by both of the spoiled teen girls with iPhones.

    I'll keep that firmly in mind.

    Next!

  • oh the horror (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @10:04PM (#62158619) Journal

    shallow people are shallow. :D Wearing the "wrong" clothes, the "wrong" shoes, using the "wrong" phone. some things stays the same it seems.

  • Brilliantly Evil (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @10:07PM (#62158629) Homepage

    Brilliantly Evil, nothing like using a color to indicate your Social Status by proving you can purchase an Over Priced Device with builtin Obsolescence.

    There are so many things one can say about Apple, but they do have a top-notched Marketing Dept.

    • Brilliantly Evil, nothing like using a color to indicate your Social Status by proving you can purchase an Over Priced Device with builtin Obsolescence.

      This is obviously by design - funny how they, by doing so, also violate accessibility of people with color blindness, since you can't adjust those colors (yeah, I know, you can alter other aspects with the settings, but that's not the point here - some just need to adjust colors instead).

      • What does it make less accessible? Seems like it actually levels the playing field between Android SMS and Apple iMessage if you're color-blind.

    • Brilliantly Evil, nothing like using a color to indicate your Social Status by proving you can purchase an Over Priced Device with builtin Obsolescence.

      Built in obsolescence? Compared to the support history of Android devices?

      Seems like the Apple Kool-aid drinkers aren’t the only Kool-aid drinkers.

    • Most android phones don't even get security updates, much less OS updates.

    • Biantly Evil, nothing like using a color to indicate your Social Status by proving you can purchase an Over Priced Device with builtin Obsolescence.

      It's funny you should say that, because even the oldest iPhones running today would send messages that came up as blue bubbles.

      You claim iPhones include built in obsolescence but you could be perfectly happy running a 10 year old iPhone (4s/5) today, with just some app compatibility issues - but the core iPhone would still work just fine, and they got a lost of

    • Don't know what you're babbling about. You can still run the latest iOS on an iPhone 6 that is coming up on 7 years old now. Hell I think even Pixel phones only guarantee three years of OS updates. iMessage lets me know the message was received. With SMS it's a crap shoot if it went through at all. Plus I don't need to have cell service for texts to go through. Works great in instances where buildings have no cell service but there is wifi.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Yes what an unheard of stroke of genius.

      Its like labels on blue jeans, fancy fenders on cars, starter jackets.

      If there is one thing teens have always loved its conspicuous consumption. This has literally been the preferred method for school age kids to sort themselves into groups since the post war era, maybe before.

      Its been the argument for school uniforms since the start, to try and cut down on the clickiness and create a sense of equality. However I have always argued that is stupid and pointless becaus

    • From what I recall back in the days when carriers charged you per text message, green was an indicator that the messages were costing you money, a useful feature. The fact that carriers stopped charging per message (perhaps as a result of Apple's color coding?) and then vapid people morphed that into a status symbol isn't Apple's fault.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Your carrier probably still charges you for international text messages, pictures, or international messages with pictures. The colour coding is indeed useful, and it's not based on whether you're talking to an iPhone or not. Messages from an iPhone sent via SMS will appear green as well.

  • Blue vs Green divde (Score:3)

    by angryflute ( 206793 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @10:21PM (#62158675) Homepage

    Americans are already divided socially and politically into Red and Blue. And now Green and Blue.

  • I doubt this was some evil scheme by Apple. I think it was actually a byproduct of a useful feature for iPhone users.

    I have plenty of contacts with iPhones and I've learned that sometimes messages go SMS vs. iMessage, which I assume is tied to data connectivity issues on one end or another, and that the ones that go SMS sometimes can be delayed (or indicate a delay). I'd guess this color indication was by design for practical reasons.

    But it's not surprising that it's turned into a status indicator and use

    • From what I can Google, Android users tend to be a bit more downmarket than iPhone users.

      Yeah, they even invented a term long ago to describe the more 'upmarket' (to use your terms here) people: "stuck up".

      • The samsung galaxy S series is not a cheap phone. Are there more low end android phones? Yes. Are their flagship models that compete with iphone? Absolutely. Nothing prevents someone from getting ahold of an iphone 7/8, or the iPhone SE for $5/mo to have all the imessage features that the iphone 13 offeres. Which leads me to believe its more about features than status. Even poorer android uses with crappy phones still go to starbucks or buy packs of smokes. All of that exceeds $5/mo.

    • If mobile data is off (in iOS settings) and no wifi is available, sms messages can not be sent.

    • It could be feature based and not specifically money shaming. Kids dont communicate with actual words anymore. Emojis work on SMS but other Enhanced features do not. Green just indicates its going out SMS and disables features like attaching audio and markups like thumbs up etc. that may be all the intent behind the pressure.

  • So they are applying Microsoft's classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy to the SMS standard.

    It seems they don't "Think Different" when it comes to manipulating and fucking over the user base. Apple prefers to deploy their "Bravery" for that endeavor.

  • We have this too on Android (Score:3)

    by ironicsky ( 569792 ) on Sunday January 09, 2022 @11:00PM (#62158753) Journal

    Android has this. Dark blue = RCS message, light blue = sms message.

    I know when I'm messaging an iPhone user because it's light blue

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      I am aware of several practical differences between RCS and iMessage.

      1. Each carrier must implement RCS routing. A subscriber to a carrier that does not implement RCS cannot use RCS. Nor can a subscriber to home Internet, unless using a mobile phone on a supported mobile carrier (service sold separately) as a proxy the way WhatsApp works.
      2. RCS is encrypted in transit, though not end-to-end. The carrier decrypts and reencrypts each message in order to provide store-and-forward for attachments sent to offlin

    • Android has this. Dark blue = RCS message, light blue = sms message.
      I know when I'm messaging an iPhone user because it's light blue

      That's awesome, so now you can know when the other person is looking down on you for being an Android user.

      • More like "crap that pdf i just sent via message is gonna bounce" or some of the other markup features. Not a huge issue for me since I use full words and rarely abbreviate even my texts. For for teens whose most common offline verbally spoken phrase is "I cant english" they habe a meltdown thst they cant use a feature that enables even less written correspondence.
  • This is so America. Even the phones have to be racist.

  • And this is new? (Score:3)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday January 10, 2022 @12:51AM (#62158951)

    This kind of shallow thinking has been around for a very long time.

    When I was a teen, way before mobile phones, it was things like your shoes, your school bag, haircut or even pencil case that were targets for the shallow minded.
    "Oh my God, look at that nerds shoes, what a loser!"

    The reality is, as it has ever been, that the person instrumental in throwing these insults, is an insecure douchebag - but is somehow popular.
    They'll probably go on to be a politician or even the president of the USA.

    So, yeah, in the modern world, the trick is to use this tactic at every opportunity - be shallow, pick on people, be that douchebag. /s

    • Well sure "shallow thinking" has been around for a long time. The problem is Apple is enabling, and let's call it for what it really is, bullying.

  • Way back in 1961, Dr. Seuss nailed this with The Sneetches And Other Stories. Nothing's really changed since then; just the cast of players. The Sneetches still haven't learned anything.

    • Way back in 1961, Dr. Seuss nailed this with The Sneetches And Other Stories. Nothing's really changed since then; just the cast of players. The Sneetches still haven't learned anything.

      But in today's world, the Sneetches have canceled Dr. Seuss. And such is the power of social media that they could even do it after he died. We used to laugh at the idea of the Holy Inquisition exhuming bodies so they could torture them some more, but now we're doing it too.

      I find the green/blue message distinction useful in knowing that a plain SMS text has limitations inherent in the old standard. The Mean Girls of the teenage world will use any distinction whatever as an excuse for bullying.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        "I find the green/blue message distinction useful in knowing that a plain SMS text has limitations inherent in the old standard."

        And that knowledge is useful for squat.

  • My work brings me in contact with people who have very good reasons to fear the government. Whistleblowers, advocates for asylum seekers, that sort of thing.

    When I get a text message in a green bubble, I know that its contents were, by law, archived and retained by the phone carrier for government eyes. When I get a text message in a green bubble from someone I care about, I respond "let's meet in person and discuss how to correspond safely, don't ever message me like this again".

  • " 'I was like, Oh my gosh, his texts are green,' and my sister literally went Ew, that's gross...''

    No doubt these two people will complain bitterly when young men who meet their rigorous standards (sarc) treat them as convenient nut catchers and discard them after use like a dirty tissue.

  • Maybe if RCS actually existed, then people would move to it?

  • Apparently bears shit in the woods too.

  • and so are most adults, but I know adults who have moved away from iDevices because their messages to Android users get fucked up. Send a photo from an iDevice to an other iFanboy? It works great, because both are using whatever proprietary bullshit Apple has chosen to enable by default. Try to send it to an Android user? It never fucking appears.

    Apple has created this situation deliberately by avoiding standards. Fuck those fucking fucks.

  • drafalski loved "Apple's color-coding of SMS communications in green in iMessage plays a role alongside other feature in getting teenagers to switch from Android to iPhone, a report claims, with a pressure to fit in with their peers promoting moves to turn their messages blue. The use of green and blue to show whether a message to a user is made through iMessage or via other devices has become more than a simple convenience indicator for users. It's also a form of status indicator, showing the user not only

  • They're lost and we're all going to die miserably as systems fail because they're busy on Facebook or bathing in canola oil and lentils as part of the latest tiktok challenge.

    I make text on my phone look the way _I_ want it to look. The way these idiots inflate the importance of such trivial garbage makes me believe that the world would have been better off if Kennedy and Khrushchev pressed the last button.

  • If you're taking the time to note iPhone message colors and disparage others for not buying into your shitty network, then you are probably a loser whose life peaks in high school.

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