this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What's the point of even using iMessage when there's so many better options for messaging.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"It's installed by default and all my friends are on it" - 50% of Americans

They don't need to worry about the fact that the other half of Americans are not able to comfortably message them, or participate in group chats, because those are people poorer than them that they might not even want to interact with anyways. Some of them might even be not white.

This becomes even more extreme as ages become younger, with around 98% of college age students and younger having iPhones (this is obviously biased to higher income colleges in metropolitian area but the data is still useful). The peer pressure of not having an iPhone is genuinely incredible (trust me, i experience it). I have genuinely had people stop wanting to be friends with me once they learned I had an Android phone.

Apple has a monopoly so powerful that they influence the social circles of almost every grade schooler and college student in America. This is why they don't want to give it up.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can afford Apple products. I dont buy them, because, fuck Apple.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If someone offered me a free iPhone on the condition that I use it, I'd decline.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same. My plan would be to sell it so I could buy something else lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Fuck. I sent a comment with my old account.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I did get given a free iPhone! I opted not to use it.

  • Terrible email client options
  • Can't rearrange your home screen beyond changing the icon order a bit
  • Firefox is just Safari with a groucho marx fake nose and glasses
  • Notifications are laughable by comparison
  • Share options are laughable by comparison
  • Camera is supposed to be better than any Android device ever invented, yet somehow managed to take blurry photos ~50% of the time so I'd end up taking 6 photos in every situation to make sure I got one where you could use it. I may be an edge case here as I'm mostly taking photos of name plates and technical documents where crisp detail is super important... iOS just wanted to make pretty colours and boke the world, even if it meant half a name plate was in focus and the back was artificially blurred for that sweet Instagram professional photographer look.
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have genuinely had people stop wanting to be friends with me once they learned I had an Android phone.

Fuck those horrible people. They don't deserve to be anyone's friends with such a shitty attitude.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You have just described 98% of Americans.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The peer pressure of not having an iPhone is genuinely incredible (trust me, i experience it).

I wanna talk a bit about where this comes from. There are what, two or three models of iPhone that you can buy off the shelf right now?

Think about grade school kids and their first phone. What do they get? Well, parents almost expect them to break the phone. If it's an iPhone, then it's one of the three, expensive models. If it's an Android, it's probably a cheap piece of shit (because on Android those are an option). It's certainly not a Pixel or the latest Samsung.

So grade school kids learn that iPhone = quality, and Android = cheap pieces of shit. And even if at the high end Android is better, young people by and large don't experience that. And it sticks with them. Apple did a similar strategy with putting Apple computers into every grade school in the 1980s.

And Apple is doing everything they can to reinforce this marketing and peer pressure, especially the iMessage thing. The only reason the iMessage "issue" exists is because Apple wants it to exist. They want the $700 cosmetic for chat to continue to exist. It's a large part of their business model.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most of my tech friends bought their babies iPad pros. As in, they crawled on them. I was told this will help them become programmers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

is like they don't know addiction exist

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As an adult with Android, I can say this is real. I was on Safari in Africa and everybody else with me had iPhones. They were airdropping pictures to each other and I was reduced to begging for somebody to email them to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

We were on a tour and the guide had an iPhone, but we have Android phones. He took some photos and said "Oh if you had an iPhone I could just Airdrop them to you" and we said "If you had an Android phone you could Nearby Share them to us".

Then there was much explaining about how Airdrop was better because it works with iPhones, and Nearby Share is no good because it won't work with iPhones.

Couldn't quite get them to see the irony about that complaint.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have never had an issue with messaging anyone in iMessage, regardless of what platform they are using. Serious question: is there something I am missing out on with iMessage that warrants investigating alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The ability to message people who don't own the same phone as you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m not sure why you think I can’t do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

iMessage can only send SMS messages to non Apple phones, which suck. And if you have friends in other countries get crazy expensive and suck even more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually had no idea anyone still charged money for SMS

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also if you're in another country almost everyone charges for roaming sms but you can use messaging apps on WiFi for free.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

You also cannot call someone who has a different name or model phone as you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

If you don't have a blue bubble on your friends phones, they will bully you until you take an AR-15 to school and kill everyone.

Either that, or suicide. Blue bubbles are a leading cause of suicide among tweens and teens in the US.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have Andriod and my wife's got iPhone. IMessages don't deliver.. or deliver hours later. Images don't make it.. or make it xna they are potato.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You aren’t sending iMessages. You’re sending text messages, and vice versa. Old school SMS and MMS (from the days of the first cameraphones…the standard hasn’t changed much since then) are the best common language between your phones.

Google/Android support RCS, the open modern protocol to replace SMS/MMS, and Apple is being sluggish to implement. Apple also supports iMessage, the default enhanced language to replace SMS/MMS, but that’s a closed protocol, and as such only supports Apple.

Sent from wefwef for iOS, but I’d still say Apple are the assholes here. The only reason I even have a damn iPhone is because most of the people I exchange pictures/videos with, and the people they exchange pictures and video with, happen to use iPhones. So there’s no incentive for all of them to switch to a third-party platform for just me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My mom had the same problem. She has a 6 year old iPhone and sometimes my messages are delivered days after I send them. Happened a lot last year...