iOS 19 to Improve Texting With Android Users in Five Ways

[Chungry]

no way here in west europe. i am admin of several whatsApp groups. nobody would switch to a new conversation because of „new apple features“ because everybody is in other whatsapp groups etc etc. yeah and i am a zuck hater. nobody cares.

I think most people outside of tech enthusiasts don't equate WhatsApp with meta/Facebook. And those that do, don't care because that's where everyone is. Apple made a big mistake not cornering the market and going cross-platform with iMessage.

Probably could have sold stickers and other nonsense through iMessage for all platforms. I like being able to color my chats based on types of chats/groups like work and home.

 

[subjonas]

Apple could end the blue bubble / green bubble issue so easily, as with so much other low hanging fruit they ignore.

Just let people set it to whatever color they want. How hard is that? I can set my watch complications to a jillion colors, I can make my Home Screen look absolutely awful in whatever shade of color I want.

Why can't I just customize my Messages colors? It even says right there in the compose field, for every single message every single time, "iMessage" "Text Message" or "RCS".

Do you mean if you and I were texting, you want to set what color your bubbles appear as on my phone? I don’t think I would like that. If anything I would want control of how your bubbles appear on my phone. But I would leave it as default.
But choosing how it appears on one’s own phone doesn’t solve the complaint many people have of the green bubbles “outing” them as Android users, which I don’t even understand why they aren’t proud of, assuming they chose Android because they believe it’s better.

 

[DakotaGuy]

no way here in west europe. i am admin of several whatsApp groups. nobody would switch to a new conversation because of „new apple features“ because everybody is in other whatsapp groups etc etc. yeah and i am a zuck hater. nobody cares.

West Europe is not the world. Just because this won’t be used where you live doesn’t mean it won’t be used by millions of people in other places. In the U.S. the use of iMessage, RCS and SMS/MMS is huge. People just use the stock phone number based texting service here for the most part.

Every time any iMessage or RCS topic comes up the WhatsApp's users always have to make comments that nobody should care because they or anyone they know use the service. There’s a lot of things that I don’t use, but I don’t post that it’s pointless because there are a lot of people who do use it.

 

[Chungry]

Do you mean if you and I were texting, you want to set what color your bubbles appear as on my phone? I don’t think I would like that. If anything I would want control of how your bubbles appear on my phone. But I would leave it as default.
But choosing how it appears on one’s own phone doesn’t solve the complaint many people have of the green bubbles “outing” them as Android users, which I don’t even understand why they aren’t proud of, assuming they chose Android because they believe it’s better.

All android messaging apps allow you to control what color bubbles are. I use all sorts of color coding and love it. It's only on my side. Don't know how you'd change what someone else sees, that doesn't make sense.

 

[Chungry]

West Europe is not the world. Just because this won’t be used where you live doesn’t mean it won’t be used by millions of people in other places. In the U.S. the use of iMessage, RCS and SMS/MMS is huge. People just use the stock phone number based texting service here for the most part.

Every time any iMessage or RCS topic comes up the WhatsApp's users always have to make comments that nobody should care because they or anyone they know use the service. There’s a lot of things that I don’t use, but I don’t post that it’s pointless because there are a lot of people who do use it.

Truth is it's an American-centric sort of thing, while the sample is admittedly big(ish) due to the population, it's still niche comparatively when considering a global market. It's absolutely NOT a thing in the 20+ countries I message people in. WhatsApp is by far the big one, followed by a smattering of other apps.

I'll say it again, Apple's big mistake was not doing cross-platform iMessage.

 

[subjonas]

Don't know how you'd change what someone else sees, that doesn't make sense.

That’s kinda what I would think too but OP seemed to be saying otherwise.

 

[tgwaste]

Apple could end the blue bubble / green bubble issue so easily, as with so much other low hanging fruit they ignore.

Just let people set it to whatever color they want. How hard is that? I can set my watch complications to a jillion colors, I can make my Home Screen look absolutely awful in whatever shade of color I want.

Why can't I just customize my Messages colors? It even says right there in the compose field, for every single message every single time, "iMessage" "Text Message" or "RCS".

But I like knowing if the person I'm talking to is poor.

 

[Chungry]

That’s kinda what I would think too but OP seemed to be saying otherwise.

I think they misspoke or didn't communicate it clearly. Google messages, Samsung messages. WhatsApp, telegram and signal all allow you to change bubbles but it usually says something along the lines of "only you will see this theme"

 

[Astuces iOS]

I never text with android users

 

[Chungry]

I never text with android users

Classic!

 

[Premium1]

Hopefully this arrives sooner than the AI they promised in IOS18...

 

[Premium1]

Apple could end the blue bubble / green bubble issue so easily, as with so much other low hanging fruit they ignore.

Just let people set it to whatever color they want. How hard is that? I can set my watch complications to a jillion colors, I can make my Home Screen look absolutely awful in whatever shade of color I want.

Why can't I just customize my Messages colors? It even says right there in the compose field, for every single message every single time, "iMessage" "Text Message" or "RCS".

I feel like the only ones who care about the colors of the bubbles are teens and hipsters. Could just remove the iMessage, Text Message, or RCS if it was that big of an issue. I welcome these additions but not sure why everyone gets so hung up on the bubble color. The real fix would be allowing users to remove/add people to a group chat even if it isn't an iMessage.

 

[ifxf]

Many years late. This isn’t going to displace Whatsapp or Wechat as the texting apps used in the rest of the world.

 

[jdavid_rp]

I agree, I also demand that Apple give me the option to customise the colours of the Dynamic Island privacy indicators from Orange for microphone and Green for Camera—I want Purple for Microphone and Brown for Camera. I also demand the ability to rotate all message bubbles by 12° as a customisation feature in the Messages app, and I want to change the colour of all notifications so they appear with pink text instead of white

You would surely loved the jailbreak scene 😂.

 

[Endymion.dark]

WhatsApp works way better than iMessage. Voice messaging, file management, photos processing, chat settings, customisation… no-thing works better on iMessage.

 

[TheGenerous]

while outside the US everybody has been using Whatsapp or something similar for years

 

[WarmWinterHat]

while outside the US everybody has been using Whatsapp or something similar for years

That's cool. In the US and Canada, they don't. I have near 300 contacts on my phone, and five of them are on WhatsApp.

How is your comment relevant?

 

[Sippincider]

Apple this week said that it plans to add support for end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to the Messages app in future iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS software updates

Has Apple learned nothing from the current AI situation, and their own rewording and backpedal??

Announce it when it's in the OS, not as "plans" for "future updates". No idea what they're thinking at this point.

 

[bmark]

The only worthwhile feature coming to iOS 19!

 

[macfacts]

You are annoyed because you had to deal with poor people? Please tell me you’re being sarcastic.

They annoying part was seeing the "typing msg" indicators, (I don't know why they were typing so slow) I don't know how to turn off RCS on my android phone.

 

[dominiongamma]

Same in Australia. Nothing has changed since iOS 18 and RCS support. All messaging between Apple and Android is still SMS with no RCS support, it’s literally 1990s tech where you can’t even send anything more than 120 plain text characters

There is a reason why WhatsApp is so popular outside of the USA. Apple has ignored the messaging between the 2 platforms for years allowing competitors to take over. The amount of Apple users outside the USA who use other messaging apps instead of iMessage is staggering.

I don’t trust WhatsApp with my data

 

[xmarcuswildx]

Thanks for making the choice for me for a pixel 10 pro XL.

 

[kalsta]

no way here in west europe.

West Europe is not the world.

No that’s right. USA is the world. That’s why NBA and NFL winners are called World Champions.

Here in Australia we keep track of US politics in ABC’s show ‘Planet America’. (Great show BTW.)

 

[klasma]

There are poor iPhone users too. I recently bought my mom an iPhone 16 so I had the experience of selling her old iPhone 13 on Craigslist, so I had to deal with poor iPhone users. I know they were iPhone users cause their email has the "sent from IPhone " signature. Very annoying to deal with them.

Let’s hope that Apple ups their prices further and disallows account switching, so that “poor iPhone users” becomes a thing of the past.

 

[klasma]

Apple could end the blue bubble / green bubble issue so easily, as with so much other low hanging fruit they ignore.

Just let people set it to whatever color they want. How hard is that? I can set my watch complications to a jillion colors, I can make my Home Screen look absolutely awful in whatever shade of color I want.

Why can't I just customize my Messages colors? It even says right there in the compose field, for every single message every single time, "iMessage" "Text Message" or "RCS".

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple introduces customizable bubble colors — but only per Focus Mode.