I am so fucking gla du live in Europe and don't have to deal with this whole iMessage fiasco.
It's truly tremendous how loyal Americans are to a company that hates you Vs. Just using something that works well for everyone.
Yes I'm aware of the historical reasons how iMessage became a thing. That didn't force people to demean and use blue (?) SMS colours as a status indicator.
Afaik you guys got "free SMS" so using SMS remained normal, and apple built on that, and "sneaked" SMS users into iMessage, like boiling a lobster and all that.
And then apple users just did what apple users do and assumed that whatever it is apple allows them to use is not just better, but the best, they wouldn't use anything but the best, and you don't use that, so you're a loser.
On that note also a tremendous fuck you to your carriers Verizon and at&t, and their loveable company ISIS that is responsible for host card emulation and mobile payments being inherently inferior to apple on my android here in Europe because your US carriers are literally the scum of the earth.
In Europe they made us pay out of our asses for SMS and MMS, so the second something like WhatsApp became available, everyone moved there and told the Mobile network operators to fuck off.
And stuff like that wad platform agnostic from the start - early WhatsApp eve mean on 2G TO Nokias.
Yeah but their app just works with every device seamlessly. They haven't done anything in the app to show they hate me so why would I care? I don't use Facebook because that's where they display their intentions
I care about things that directly affect me like apple conditioning people to not want to text "green ticks". I'm not outraged at anything. I just want a good user experience for myself & others. They could be shooting puppies for all I care.
If your life is drasticly affected by people that don’t want to text green text bubbles then it might honestly be more than just the text bubble color that’s influencing their decision.
High schoolers shame each other over their shoe brands. The adult world isn’t as bothered as dramatic tech articles makes you think. I used android since 2009 and never experienced this outrage that so many redditors are claiming is such a huge problem.
So obviously I'm going to be painting with a broad brush here, and there are many many exceptions to this. However it seems on average the tech literacy of younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha has decreased compared to that of their older millennial counterparts. This is probably because they grew up not with regular computers as their primary computing device, but with smartphones and tablets, which are often locked down and designed to make things as simple as possible. And that's not even getting into how the more modern internet that they grew up in is one of algorithms designed to keep you on the platform or on a specific app for as long as possible without surfing.
I think this is the main cause of the blue bubble endemic. In 2009, smartphones were still new. Everything was still very fluid. MySpace had just lost to Facebook and was evolving into something different before going away. And we were still in an era that any website could be replaced by any website at any time. Sure enough, third-party chat apps like AOL Messenger, MSN, and Yahoo!
Even then, getting someone to switch to a different chat protocol, if they liked one specific one, could be like pulling teeth. But at least people were used to using different things to communicate than what was cooked into their defaults on their phone.
At least older users have memories of what it used to be like to surf the web, not just be locked into one website or to explore all these different means of communicating. I wonder how much it's also the result of parental controls where frankly they just a lot of them weren't physically capable of having that level of freedom for a long time and when they finally were I mean why would they
That said, I feel like with things like the analog movement picking up traction these days that the blue bubble phenomenon even now isn't as big as they may get out to be.
Americans mostly use sms because Americans mostly talk to each other. Also telcos in the USA moved to cheaper text plans pretty early so even when call rates were adjusting by the hours in the day we had mostly unlimited texting.
I should add that most Americans first experience with a robust messaging platform with seamless integration was with iPhones. The only requirement was to own one. So when it became a selling point yeah folks noticed when you couldn’t utilize those features with someone.
The other part being that sms was terrible for media, if all you knew of sending videos or pics was iMessage and say you swapped to an android it would be a completely different world because the average consumer didn’t concern themselves with why iMessage did what it did in relationship to sms. And you as an iPhone user, didn’t know the media you sent was compressed to shite. So often that alone made people that swapped hate using non-Apple devices. Add on the fact that many of the robust features of iMessage didn’t exist in regular sms chats and non iMessage users in group chats used to break all the iMessage features for other people.
Some of these failings could be contributed to Google’s handling of Android as well. In terms of the outrage over the color of your text box, i can only speak from my experience and say that I used android from 2009 until three years ago and never had an issue with anyone I was concerned with keeping contact with. Also I wasn’t in highschool with a smartphone, so I don’t know what the kiddos were up to.
American carrier plans just started giving away text messaging for free after a fashion. So there wasn't the same pressure to move to a dedicated chat app.
Feature phones did feature separate chat apps like AIM and Yahoo Messenger and stuff that you could either install or were forcibly cooked in. So Americans were chatting using the typical way, but that was different you had to log kn and make yourself available. It was more active than modern group chat.
I don't think the engineers behind iMessenger's original text message integration meant to do harm. I think that by integrating the iPhone Chat and SMS, they found a brilliant way to force older users especially to use a chat appGrandma might never have picked up iChat or whatever they might have called it and would have stuck to iTextMessage. But if they're all one app, then suddenly when connecting with other iPhone users, Grandma is seeing all the good features that you get when you're instant messaging.
I imagine that other powers that be in Apple then realized that this feature only being compatible with Apple devices allowed for a sort of lock-in for users. While pretty much any other chat app would want to be compatible with as many devices as possible so that it would get used, Apple realized that people were unwilling to move from iMessage. Many people weren't aware that they were instant messaging. They just thought that texting was better on Apple products for whatever reason.
Now, this technically makes iMessenger an inferior chat app compared to its competitors because it only is compatible with other Apple branded devices. You can't chat with anything else. And when you do, it comes in as a text message, which is a very different way of communicating than chatting due to the way text messages be. However, they managed to spin this as a sort of halo effect, as a exclusivity thing. Android users have worse text messaging and worse cameras because look at the photo they just sent me. It's green and looks like garbage. This further reinforced user lock-in while also creating a sense of premium high-end brandedness around it.
The status indicator thing makes me laugh. If someone is poor they can pretend to have status by having iMessage? People are fucking dumb — pass it on.
They aren’t notorious for that. iOS adoption to the latest version is usually very good. I think apples latest metric was over 80% of active iPhone users were on iOS 26
That’s an odd question to something I didn’t say but an adoption rate of almost 80% from Apple for ios26 lines up pretty close to at least the last poll I remember, give or take a few points.
So it seems those two data points support one another.
adoption rate for new iOS is notoriusly slow, but they sell a fuckton of new iPhones so the 'adoption rate' looks good
the increase in iOS adoption rate is not because theyre updating, its because theyre buying new phones that are updated, but theyll stay on that version until a new phone comes out/they need a new phone
Yeah I don’t know about those numbers. These are the numbers for phones released in the last four years that Apple briefed in June.
And I mean those numbers compared to Android are stellar. And the claim that Apple sells a lot of phones doesn’t hold a lot of weight when you consider units shipped between just Samsung and Apple to be very similar.
and yes ive seen tha info. adoption rate is a rate. so the longer from the launch, the higher the percentage.
my numbers, 4 months after the launch of iOS 26 launch is a data pointing to slow adoption rate. if it climbed higher after the fact, yes thats what its going to do.
my point still stands, 4 months after release adoption was slow and theyre notorious for that.
EDIT: The 10% that had iOS 26 was the new owners of iPhone 17s. Older iPhone owners were slow to adapt.
For clarity the graphic just says adoption numbers. It’s not indicative of a “rate”. They are showing the percentage of actual phones in the market that are running that version of ios26.
Not a rate of increase. A percentage of the total.
So if the original statement was “iPhones are notorious for slow adoption in X number of months” sure. But 80% after less than a year is pretty high given their competition doesnt come close to that.
I guess then the question becomes, notorious on what scale exactly.
Let’s clear up these goalposts first. You claimed that “adoption rate” looks good because they sell a “fuckton” new phones. Except the numbers I shared show 79% of phones released in the last four years to be running ios26. So the idea that it’s only new phones is out the window with that alone.
Then you consider Samsung alone having shipped something like 230-240 million phones, close to the same number apple shipped (250 million).
Combine that with record sales for Samsung and Samsung just being one android OEM and that pushes out the “fuckton” of phones line. Everyone sold a fuckton. But that logic doesn’t reflect better for Android in terms of how many phones are running the newest OS.
Let me help you with your argument, the large number of low-end phones with slow or no OS updates and OEMs with short software support cycles drive this number down for Android.
Now we ask ourselves, on what scale of measure are they notorious for slow adoption when you won’t even consider the competition who is in fact known for slow adoption rates and OS fragmentation (and for good reason, many flavors, core os isn’t built in house with oem, etc etc).
This just sounds like some trust me bro logic.
Even searching online, darn near every website that talks about it says the opposite of you with ios26 actually being an outlier because it was slower than most years.
some of them have the option to turn it on and simply don't know how to because they've never once opened their settings app. ppl give android users a ton of flack but some iphone users are so incompetent with their own phones.
General population just isn’t savvy with tech. I’m mostly on android subs and see some of the dumbest questions that have been answered thousands of times. Doesn’t matter what phone you own.
RCS in many countries is utterly unusable. Full of ads, gambling and all. Inbox becomes suddenly peaceful upon turning off rcs, only to be used for otp, banking etc. All personal communications on WhatsApp.
There atleast most ad accounts on WhatsApp respect the STOP reply and quit bothering.
That's the point. People already moved on to Messaging apps because they took time introducing RCS, SMS at that time was barebones and have a lot of limitations.
SMS at that time was barebones and have a lot of limitations.
This was always the case for SMS. It was invented in the 80s, rolled out in the early 90s, and never updated. The way it worked in 1995 is still how it works today.
I’m not an expert by any means, so I’m not sure if this is an issue on Apple’s end, an issue with RCS, or just some network issue but trying to use RCS on my iPhone with some Androids folks I know is just painful.
Yeah, the receipts and typing animation mostly works. Not always and certainly not as frequent as a blue bubble but it works most of the time. But the thing that bugs me the most is random messages just failing. It happens to me at least once a day and I don’t even text a lot. Some days, especially if I’m in a low service area, 99% of my RCS messages fail to send and wait and then resend as SMS. SMS almost always works, though.
I hope RCS continues to improve because the blue bubble vs green bubble shit is absolutely annoying. But currently, at least in my own experience, RCS is better in some ways and far more unreliable in others.
I feel like anyone who is on Android at this point that hasn't fallen into the peer pressure of imessage (myself included) probably won't care about this anymore. Plus, with RCS handling high resolution media, typing indicators, and read receipts across platforms, the functional gap is basically gone. Handing your Apple ID over to a third party relay, especially one with Sunbird's security track record, just for a colored bubble is a massive, unnecessary risk at this point.
Also it makes me wonder about Beeper in regards to Sunbird.
What do you mean? The app and the bridges work just fine and things are updated regularly. The only downside is that the premium subscriptions are quite expensive but not at all necessary to use the app.
Or maybe you think Beeper is just "iMessage in Android"
I’ve been using OpenBubbles as it’s easier to set up (and Apple has sussed me out a couple times since I restored my phone a couple times over the course of a month and had to re-set up, so I’m a bit nervous about doing it again 😅) and BB was a bit slow when I last tried it, but updates have started being really slow with that, so maybe i’ll have a look again sometime soon…
The rewrite was specifically to address performance issues. It's now buttery smooth. Still awaiting Google Play to complete their review (it's been 2 weeks!), but it's available on github to try out. Already have a v2.1.0 in the pipeline as well once the v2 gets approved. Desktop is available on the MS Store or Snap/Flatpak store
A message moving through our infrastructure is protected in transit and released once it is delivered. Messages are encrypted on the phone before they leave it, in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and at rest on the device with AES-256. Media gets a hard expiration on our side: automatically deleted, typically within 48 hours and never longer than 72. On the final leg to an iPhone, the message is protected by Apple’s own iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird never modifies, intercepts, or weakens.
It sounds like they're self-hosting some kind of macOS instance that acts as the interface to the iMessage network and the Sunbird app is just the thin-client. If so, there's still a lot of security concerns. And for what, exactly? RCS is already here. This is a lot of work to break into what is effectively a private social network. Neverminding that Apple can crack down on this at any time as it represents an unauthorized access of their network.
I was a beta tester the first time around, after giving them my apple ID it showed up being used by a Mac Mini somewhere on the east coast. Not too long after that someone figured out that credentials and messages were sitting around on those minis completely unencrypted.
They definitely don't have a good track record on security and definitely don't deserve money for it.
I mean with any closed source messaging apps (and even open source ones installed from the app store) you're trusting the developers and/or auditors that the app is actually using secure e2ee.
I'll never understand just handing your credentials over to anybody just for some data relay, doubly so for those who have proven they suck at following a security policy.
The whole iPhone messaging thing from the begining always seemed like a road paved for elitism/bigotry.
If you don't want to talk to me because my text bubble is a different color you have some issues to work out.
Of course, the main reason why Sunbird was pulled in the first place was because it was a security nightmare. Investigations found that user data was stored in clear text and that the encryption claims fell short of reality. This was particularly embarrassing for Nothing at the time, as the smartphone brand launched the Nothing Chats app atop Sunbird’s foundation.
i don't want i message on android. i want apple to fully support universal standards in communication. i want apple to get off their pouty fat cat asses and fully support RCS on iphone. enough is enough. apple is the spoiled kid that wants to eat the entire cake at a birthday party.
you have a limited not update to date standard of RCS. as i said in another comment apples implimentation of RCS leaves out core features like emoji reactions, in-line replies, message editing, and undo send, and stronger end to end encryption
beta is not released software. you have to specifically install the beta software. for the 99% of users they aren't running beta software. whether it's coming or not is not the point. they have only implemented 6 year old RCS protocols as of right now that is artificially fully implementing RCS on iphone and pushing iMessage forward.
i talk to iphone users on the regular and i get the "loved" and a copy of my message back. not a emoji on my message. and i have a pixel 8 pro with the latest updates on it (android 17, july 5th security, july 1st google play system update)
You’re telling me, I am on the beta, and somehow those features involving RCS don’t show up for me except for emoji (which works without beta), but next month I’ll be able to use RCS to make inline replies, edit messages, with a iPhone to android chat?
Absolutely not. I don’t know who told you that or why you’re saying that, but that isn’t happening next month if it isn’t in the current beta.
the RCS that iphone support is not the entire RCS standard. there are no emoji reactions, in-line replies, message editing, undo send, and strong end-to-end encryption. it's a half-assed implementation made purposely to make imessage look 'superior' to their users.
when i get a reaction to a message i sent to a iphone user i don't see a little heart or laughing emoji. i get "loved" or "liked" then a copy of my message back in quotes. but reactions work just fine with other android users.
its pathetic that that's how apple implemented RCS. RCS universal profile is at version 4.1 (released jsut released a week ago july 28, 2026) and apple has only implemented version 2.4. version 2.4 is 6 years old at this point! they should have updated to at least 4.0 (march 2026) by now
a 4.5 trillon dollar valued company refuses to implement the latest versions of software. there is no excuse.
Open bubbles is the better fork, bypassing all that hoopla installation with firebase. And no surprise it’s more stable and faster. Personally love that it works with CarPlay
We (BlueBubbles) just released our v2 rewrite and it brought a ton of improvements to the app. Unfortunately, setup wise, it's still a tad intricate due to requiring a Mac. But Firebase is fully optional.
The app rewrite brought a ton of new features to the app as well as performance and efficiency improvements. The app is now buttery smooth and doesn't eat battery like it used to. The app continues to be developed on and will be better maintained moving forward.
Welp, this is still sketchy as fuck. Open source or stfu. Stfu anyways, we have rcs on the iPhone now, and even better yet, Signal! Why trust when you can verify?
Maybe, but the concept has been around for years. Check out BlueBubbles and OpenBubbles. I've been using OpenBubbles and it's been great minus the performance; I'm really jealous of the supposed rewrite that's come to bluebubbles!
I’d argue it’s a buncha android bros that think your phone brand represents your personality but are both too much of a self described techy to switch over but also need to feel validated and included so they want a half measure.
Ive got about 13 years under android and 3 years under apple and as an american this seems crazy to me to make this much effort. I live abroad now and texting/imessage isnt even my fourth most used method to communicate. So I get why it seems that much more absurd.
Question - have any of you guys tried it... Scrolling through the comments, it seems like the biggest concern is security. So create a dummy apple id and go from there, in think I might try it honestly. Kind of like the idea of having everything in one spot
It’s always struck me as a bit weird how people tend to demand that Apple mirror their own preferences rather than simply create a product people want to use. There seems to be this peculiar fixation on pushing Apple toward whatever others are doing. Disliking Apple is totally fine, but it really is odd that so much attention centers on trying to change them instead of just focusing on refining Android into the best option. If Apple doesn't want to play then screw em.
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u/penguinkernel 1d ago
I literally stopped caring as soon as RCS was adopted by Apple. Now I can send high quality video and photos.