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It’s decent at best on galaxy and pixels and is a fragmented mess. The fragmentation isn’t as terrible as it used to be but it’s still an OS that does so much and yet does nothing actually well.

I cringe when I have to use android as it just feels subpar.



Those stories were exaggerated lmao. If a grown man or woman feels slighted because someone doesn’t want to go on a date with them for a text bubble color that is truly pitiful and they need to spend time in therapy to discuss whatever self esteem issues they have.

Kids also aren’t being left out of group chats because most kids are using snap and messenger and tik tok and insta.

Again this is not 2010 lmao.

See above.

Exactly. Android users think that iMessage is what keeps us here. When I am forced to use android I don’t ever think of iMessage. iMessage is texting to me. I didn’t even realize it wasn’t normal texting until RCS came up on here a month ago.
There is stories are somewhat believable. I've heard anecdotally from a YouTuber they are left out of conversations on their Android phone. Also an 87% market share of iPhones for teenagers in the US seems unnaturally high. iPhones aren't THAT amazing otherwise this would be a global teenager market share stat and not just a US one.
 
It's wait listed. You sure it's going to be free forever?
Yes, they stated… users will be able to use it for free. However, there will be premium features behind a paywall… they haven’t mention what those premium features were going to be.

But they made sure to make a point that those premium features won’t be something retroactive such as features that was already given for free.
 
What a joke! A security nightmare.
Agreed. I wouldn't use my credit card on something that won't work.

I’m in favor of anybody being a pain in the ass for Apple as long as they continue to let this issue fester.

I’m hoping RCS alleviates a lot of the headaches, but if it doesn’t, then the only way Apple can end this stupid issue is to release iMessage for Android.
It is not going to happen.

You are on MacRumors dot com. I think a lot of the people who want iMessage on Android are primarily iPhone users.
Not me.
 
In this cat and mouse game, especially since Beeper plans to profit, one of the next moves likely will be for Apple to file a temporary restraining order. This reminds me of the cat and mouse game of Trilian back in the day with AOL and Yahoo Messenger. I miss those days.
 
I have group chats on iOS which I use all the time. Do you see how this can be a problem?

I think you see the issue and have a crappy workaround, and you conclude that there’s no problem.

If there was no problem, wouldn’t be having these debates!
I have multiple group texts that I use all the time; there is no problem for the non-Apple users in the group. The non-Apple users can read and send messages in the group texts to the entire group fine; and the Apple users can read and send messages to the entire group fine too. It's literally just the reaction functionality from iMessage and the text bubble that the difference is; but it doesn't prevent communication in any way. Ergo, it is not a problem. Just an entitled first-world problem.
 
There is stories are somewhat believable. I've heard anecdotally from a YouTuber they are left out of conversations on their Android phone. Also an 87% market share of iPhones for teenagers in the US seems unnaturally high. iPhones aren't THAT amazing otherwise this would be a global teenager market share stat and not just a US one.

No phone is that amazing. It makes sense that in the united states that iPhones are more popular than android for several reasons.

  1. iPhones were exclusive to one carrier when they came out to the point it built up hype. Everyone want the phone that you can’t get. That’s why people were camping outside.
  2. Celebrities mostly use iPhones. So it was in the early days seen as a status symbol.
  3. Android phones sucked majorly aside from galaxies and now pixels. iPhones have been consistently great.
  4. If you used an iPhone as a teen like I did when they first came out and you have kids you are likely going to have your kids use the phone.
  5. Android is still seen as poor or low quality.
That being said, most kids don’t care about what phone you have as long as they have apps to use. So it is greatly exaggerated. I have two brothers who are under 18. They don’t care about blue or green. They care about snap.

Keep in mind kids today are more attention seeking therefore they want to use whatever gets them
The most attention
 
I have multiple group texts that I use all the time; there is no problem for the non-Apple users in the group. The non-Apple users can read and send messages in the group texts to the entire group fine; and the Apple users can read and send messages to the entire group fine too. It's literally just the reaction functionality from iMessage and the text bubble that the difference is; but it doesn't prevent communication in any way. Ergo, it is not a problem. Just an entitled first-world problem.
Apparently none of you send photos or videos in these group chats, and if so, don't care that they look like they were taken in 2001.
 
In this cat and mouse game, especially since Beeper plans to profit, one of the next moves likely will be for Apple to file a temporary restraining order. This reminds me of the cat and mouse game of Trilian back in the day with AOL and Yahoo Messenger. I miss those days.
I'd imagine that Apple will play whack-a-mole for a little while to determine how to better protect their servers from this kind of access.
 
It’s decent at best on galaxy and pixels and is a fragmented mess. The fragmentation isn’t as terrible as it used to be but it’s still an OS that does so much and yet does nothing actually well.

Except better OS customization like themes or changing the app launcher, different options for navigating the OS, a lot of apps like retro game emulators are available on the Google Play Store but not iOS, and biggest of all the ability to install whatever software you wanted, not confined to a single app store or region locking.
 
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There is stories are somewhat believable. I've heard anecdotally from a YouTuber they are left out of conversations on their Android phone. Also an 87% market share of iPhones for teenagers in the US seems unnaturally high. iPhones aren't THAT amazing otherwise this would be a global teenager market share stat and not just a US one.
It is the same as teenagers wanting to all wear Nike's. Peer pressure is very powerful
 
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Best comment I read on Twitter.. sums it up nicely

"The whole business model for Beeper Mini presupposed that Apple should just foot the bill for the usage of Beeper’s (paying!) customers, as though iMessage is a public resource, or part of your cellular phone service, like SMS/MMS/RCS." Glad someone finally said it. The model was ridiculous.
 
No phone is that amazing. It makes sense that in the united states that iPhones are more popular than android for several reasons.

  1. iPhones were exclusive to one carrier when they came out to the point it built up hype. Everyone want the phone that you can’t get. That’s why people were camping outside.
  2. Celebrities mostly use iPhones. So it was in the early days seen as a status symbol.
  3. Android phones sucked majorly aside from galaxies and now pixels. iPhones have been consistently great.
  4. If you used an iPhone as a teen like I did when they first came out and you have kids you are likely going to have your kids use the phone.
  5. Android is still seen as poor or low quality.
That being said, most kids don’t care about what phone you have as long as they have apps to use. So it is greatly exaggerated. I have two brothers who are under 18. They don’t care about blue or green. They care about snap.

Keep in mind kids today are more attention seeking therefore they want to use whatever gets them
The most attention
None of these reasons explain an 87% market share amongst teenagers. The iPhone is 16 years old now and has been non-exclusice for around 10. Teenagers were toddlers or not even born for the first 3 points. When you were a teen the market share was probably at or under 50% in the US. Finally even after launching a year after the iPhone if Android was of such poor quality it would never have seen much higher market share market share globally at times over the past decade and a half.
 
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It is the same as teenagers wanting to all wear Nike's. Peer pressure is very powerful

Something tells me most of you guys aren’t anywhere near the age of the demographic you claim is being bullied.

Considering nowadays kids are speaking out against racism and other social issues do you think today’s kids would allow classism? Lmao no kids are being shamed anywhere to the degree that you guys are making it out to be over phones.

Men aren’t having trouble getting girls because of a phone. I’d argue it’s likely an issue with them and not the device.
 
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None of these reasons explain an 87% market share amongst teenagers. The iPhone is 16 years old now and has been non-exclusice for around 10. Teenagers were toddlers or not even born for the first 3 points. When you were a teen the market share was probably at or under 50% in the US. Finally even after launching a year after the iPhone if Android was of such poor quality it would never have seen much higher market share market share globally at times over the past decade and a half.

I was 11 when the first iPhone came out. So yes I was in fact the demographic.

It makes sense why iPhone is so popular. People stick with what they know and have very few reasons to change.

I was raised on windows and google/gmail. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned alternatives and found a need to switch.

Android market share globally has nothing to
Do with apple. Android is popular simply because it is cheap and you’re able to buy android phones for like $5. The bulk of android sold is not pixel or galaxies. It’s the low end devices. I’m sure if apple release a $100 iPhone in emerging markets they would have monster rocketshare
 
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“Beeper Mini had the "fastest growing paid Android application in history," with more than 100,000 downloads. This is evidence that Android and ‌iPhone‌ customers "desperately want to be able to chat together" with all of the features available on iMessage.”

Only 100,000? That’s really not that much, especially when all of these iMessage on android applications are going to be completely and totally irrelevant this time next year.
RCS as far as I can tell gives the exact same functionality, outside of no iMessage games (which no one really plays) and no end to end encryption, which can’t even be promised on any of these android iMessage ports.

Ahhhhh but this is Android we are talking about. You don’t pay for apps, you just use a bunch of adware instead.
 
Android users care because enough iPhone users have made it an issue.
I still think it’s funny that people think it’s the color of the bubble and not the functionality why people care.
It literally has nothing to do with the color and is all about the fact that SMS is dated.
If all the bubbles were blue, people would still complain about group chats and media sharing over SMS being awful.

And once Apple enables RCS support, it will matter even less.

Apples blue bubbles have existed since 2011, and I don’t recall there being this much of a conversation about it until at least 2018 at the earliest.

It’s also not a coincidence that around 2018 is when android phones started switching over to RCS instead of SMS. It’s almost like people started noticing how bad SMS was, not how good iMessage is.
 
Perhaps Google is thinking that this cat and mouse game we are currently enjoying will become too much of an annoyance to Apple and hasten adoption of RCS? Has Apple already confirmed that they will adopt RCS?
Oh Apple has confirmed they’ll incorporate RCS, At least as reported be various sources
 
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people fail to understand the following:

1. What iMessage is and what it does
2. What SMS/MMS messaging is, its history, and what it does
3. What RCS messaging is and what it does

I am not going to explain each here -- you can look it up -- and you should before you comment on this thread.

I will say this, Apple is really the only company keeping the ancient SMS/MMS protocol alive (those nasty green bubbles are the fault of APPLE, not Android, and are there by design), which is why I am mildly surprised they will embrace RCS next year. I guess the slogan "Privacy, that's Apple" rings hollow while you are single handedly keeping an insecure messaging system alive for the sole purpose of ecosystem lock in.

Think about this: at the birth of iMessage, way back in 2011, if Apple had made it a separate app (instead of integrating it into the existing "Messages" app, combining it with SMS/MMS texting) - green bubbles wouldn't exist. iMessage would've worked like What's App, Telegram, etc. "Texting" would've been separate. No green bubbles, no envy.

It was a brilliant decision by Apple, and now (in America especially) most people don't know the difference between the three services listed above. They just know blue or green. And they blame their friends on Android (wrongly) for messing up their chats. The world has moved on from SMS/MMS, but Apple still hangs on. Finally, maybe, it may actually end next year.

All this to say: Blame Apple, this is all their doing.
Agree with almost everything said here, although I do have to point out that in 2011 iMessage had a very different purpose than it does now.
I don’t really think Apple was trying to create something to compete with SMS at the time, they were just trying to create feature parity between the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
The iPod touch and iPad were huge at the time, so it made sense to give them messaging capabilities that didn’t involve a cellular network.
This was before most of the biggest chat apps that exist today were around, so it made sense.
It’s also been confirmed via legal documents that there were several people in Apple from 2011-2013 who were all for iMessage on Android.
Of course, Apple’s actions since have created the current mess, and the introduction of RCS support should help create a much more cohesive experience between iOS and Android.

Personally, I’ve been hoping Apple would turn the iMessage app into a portal for all of your messaging services, the way that iChat used to work back in the day, and a bit like the way the TV app works now.
But sadly, they won’t.
 
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Except better OS customization like themes or changing the app launcher, different options for navigating the OS, a lot of apps like retro game emulators are available on the Google Play Store but not iOS, and biggest of all the ability to install whatever software you wanted, not confined to a single app store or region locking

Android users, i really need for you guys to come with a better and NEW argument. All the reasons you listed above are PRIMARILY important to tech fans. The average joe does not care.

I have used Android for over 10 years (unfortunately) and I am now using an iPhone that literally just works with minimal to no tweaking. That is what the primary consumer wants. That is something most androids dont offer.
I used to work in mobile. I am well-versed from RIM and Blackberry to Webos to Windows Mobile 5 and 6, to Windows Phone 7, 8, 8.1 and windows 10 mobile to Android and IOS. Heck, I even have used the Kin phones when they came out.

To counter your points

1. The average consumer does not care about themes and the MOST customization is usually a wallpaper of their significant other, kids, or pets. The averqage android users are not downloading Nova Launcher or Niagara Launcher( my favorite Android launcher that made android look less cheap).

2. Navigating the OS? Again, the average consumer does not want or even need multiple options to navigate the OS. Ease of use is not something ANdroid is known for.

3. Emulators? Your argument is emulators. WHich 98 percent of the people who use Emulators are actually pirating the games lmao.

Again do you think the average consumer CARES if your android can download a PS emulator (if the hardware even supports it) or their iPhone can;t? No.

WHich leads me to

4. The average consumer honestly does not NEED to be able to install any and everything just because they can. In the end, it is their choice to do so but I am not using it as a con against Apple.

I cant tell you the amount of people i had to deal with who installed this app from some shady place not knowing what they were doing only to screw something up. In reality, most users will use the Play store (or Amazon App Store) or whatever comes on their phone.

Android users by default are far less likely to pay for Apps compared to android which goes back to the fact that Apple does not allow third party stores like Android does. Android allows users to freely pirate as they so see fit.

As i said before, Android is an OS that does A lot of things but things that most people dont care about and nothing actually well.

But in true Android fanboy passion, anything that goes against Apple is a gift from the gods.
 
I was 11 when the first iPhone came out. So yes I was in fact the demographic.

It makes sense why iPhone is so popular. People stick with what they know and have very few reasons to change.

I was raised on windows and google/gmail. It wasn’t until I got older that I learned alternatives and found a need to switch.

Android market share globally has nothing to
Do with apple. Android is popular simply because it is cheap and you’re able to buy android phones for like $5. The bulk of android sold is not pixel or galaxies. It’s the low end devices. I’m sure if apple release a $100 iPhone in emerging markets they would have monster rocketshare
Even today iPhone market share in the US including adults is under 60%. If it was organic, as in kids using what parents use, you'd see similar stats among teenagers.

Android reached the market share globally it peaked at because it's a lot more open. Any hardware vendor can release and Android device. The same exact dynamics played out on desktop computing. Windows can be installed on any hardware as long as it has the right specs. We saw closer to 90% market share for Windows. Apple's vertical integration meant Mac OS could only go as far as Apple's ability to sale machines.

In both cases yes this means poor quality devices are allowed. But it also allows for experimentation and features coming to these platforms long before they reach Apple's platforms.
 
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