As someone who used Android from day 1, and recently (about 1 year ago) switched to iOS, I think all of this comes down to the trend of unification and same-ness in smartphones over the years.
All of the reasons I liked Android from the start — replaceable battery, SD card, headphone jack, diversity of of hardware options, customizable software/launchers/default apps, rootable — have been slowly one by one removed in flagship phones over the last 5 years.
Sure you can still get a low or mid tier phone with some or all of these, but all the expensive Android models (read: good build quality, software support, acceptable perf and battery life) have slowly become more and more like an iPhone, yet without any of the small things that make iPhones good to use: excellent build quality, extended support, ecosystem…
So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now.
As an allegory: when I was a teen, PCs weren’t “cool” compared to Macs (remember those old ads?) But in 2023 PC gaming is more popular than ever, so PCs are cool with the youth.
Teens today will buy a PC so they can play CS or League with their friends, something they can’t really do well with a Macbook Air. Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?
> So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now.
You may be right about Android phones sucking more than they used to regarding replaceability, customizability, rootability, etc., but I don't think that's why Android isn't cool. I think it's because teenagers that have iPhones make fun of people who show up with green colored text bubbles in their texts, and make fun of Android as something for poor people.
Its not so much that they're making fun of the poors. It's that green bubbles break the group chat, so Android users are usually excluded from them. And this is 100% by design. Apple could support RCS (the SMS replacement introduced in 2007) or just release an iMessage app for Android. But they have chosen not to in order to alienate Android users from their iOS contacts and create pressure for Android users to switch for the most petty reasons.
I say fuck all that noise. The correct response to this behavior is to switch to Telegram or Whatsapp or whatever and just be free of vendor lock in for something as basic as messaging.
> The correct response to this behavior is to switch to Telegram or Whatsapp or whatever and just be free of vendor lock in for something as basic as messaging.
My hope is that EU regulations will return us to truly lockin-free state of messaging we had in the 00s with modern analogues of Pidgin and Adium and people can use whatever messaging app they like. To me that’s a far better outcome than switching to e.g. WhatsApp, which is just as bad about lock-in even if that’s hidden by its ubiquity and cross-platform nature.
Every time Apple vs Android comes up, someone pops up trying to stump for RCS...
I don't recall the precise details at the moment, but there are very good reasons for Apple not to prefer RCS—I believe one of them was that it is too heavily tied to the carriers.
In general, I am very much a proponent of not allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good; however, there are times when that breaks down in practice, and I believe this is one of them. In particular, if RCS is adopted as "the next messaging system" tomorrow, and then next year a much better open cross-platform messaging protocol is developed, it is vanishingly unlikely that it would be adopted. In fact, it's unlikely that any other system would be able to replace RCS for several more years, simply because everyone had just changed, and would be unwilling to change again for some time.
Do you believe Google would not work with Apple on a compatible protocol if Apple would work with Google? Or block Apple from shipping iMessage for Android? Apple's strategy of using iMessage for lock in is public record.[1]
Well google does not allow any access to Android's RCS API, and basically uses a non open source extension for encryption. So yes, if they wanted RCS to not be their own little fiefdom, they would've just done so. Theres absolutely no reason to not allow access to the API except for lock in. I think only Samsung has a deal with them to actually be able to use RCS in their messaging app.
I didn't ask if they thought Google were reliable champions of openness. I asked if they believed Google would not work with Apple to diminish Apple's lock in. Screwing 3rd party apps long after Apple did doesn't show Google would have not or would not work with Apple.
> Apple could support RCS (the SMS replacement introduced in 2007) or just release an iMessage app for Android. But they have chosen not to in order to alienate Android users from their iOS contacts and create pressure for Android users to switch for the most petty reasons.
I never understood why everyone thinks that it's on Apple to open up their ecosystem and allow inferior devices to use their services that are offered for free to their customers because they're better.
Nobody expects KFC to share their secret blend of herbs and spices with other fast food restaurants because people prefer KFC over them...
If you want to beat Apple, then you need to provide something better, not think you get their cake too.
The inferior product here is Apple's iMessage. Apple is using decades old technology (SMS, introduced in 1992) to poorly pass messages with Android devices over cell service. They could update iMessage to use RCS and alleviate a lot of the green bubble issues without "opening up their ecosystem" (whatever that means).
Instead, Apple has chosen not to update iMessage because the poor experience they are creating for their own users makes their users believe that messaging on iPhone is superior to Android. Which it obviously isn't, you just have to look at any other messaging app like Telegram that runs circles around iMessage.
If Apple actually cared about this "ecosystem", they should just stop supporting SMS messaging all together, and have it so iMessage users can only communicate with other iMessage users.
Yet ya'll want them to open up iMessage for Android users. Sure sure sure sure sure.
> Instead, Apple has chosen not to update iMessage because the poor experience they are creating for their own users makes their users believe that messaging on iPhone is superior to Android.
Again, if you knew anything of the reason people "look down on you for having green bubbles" it's not about SMS, but about not having the extra goodies that people enjoy with iMessage when communicating with you.
> you just have to look at any other messaging app like Telegram that runs circles around iMessage.
Then whats the problem? Don't want to use iMessage then start your chats with your friends on Telegram, it's available on all platforms including iOS.
Oh yeah nobody wants to use Telegram even though it apparently "runs circles around iMessage"
> If Apple actually cared about this "ecosystem", they should just stop supporting SMS messaging all together, and have it so iMessage users can only communicate with other iMessage users.
So nothing changes other than to send an SMS to non iMessage users they change to a different app? That is absurb and a terrible UX.
> Yet ya'll want them to open up iMessage for Android users. Sure sure sure sure sure.
Where did they say this?
> Again, if you knew anything of the reason people "look down on you for having green bubbles" it's not about SMS, but about not having the extra goodies that people enjoy with iMessage when communicating with you.
RCS supports the features iMessage users complain most commonly green bubbles lack. In other words most complaints about green bubbles are about SMS.
> Oh yeah nobody wants to use Telegram even though it apparently "runs circles around iMessage"
I don't think Telegram runs circles around iMessage. But probably some of Telegram's 700 million monthly active users like it.
> Then whats the problem? Don't want to use iMessage then start your chats with your friends on Telegram, it's available on all platforms including iOS.
> So nothing changes other than to send an SMS to non iMessage users they change to a different app? That is absurb and a terrible UX.
You answered your own question. iOS restricts SMS to the Messages app.
Because interoperable communication systems are supposed to be core to getting to use all that government-allocated public infrastructure (like phone networks, wireless spectrum, etc). That Apple intentionally degrades the experience for interacting with non-customers is "malicious compliance". Only implementing the oldest standard at the minimal level is worthy of ridicule.
If AT&T started introducing delays, message duplication, degrading image and video quality, etc whenever you messaged a non-AT&T customer, HN would be up in arms. But because the world's most valuable company does it they get a pass?
I don't care if Apple let's me use iMessage. I care that they won't implement RCS or let users change the messaging protocol handler on their phone purely for anticompetitive reasons.
> If AT&T started introducing delays, message duplication, degrading image and video quality, etc whenever you messaged a non-AT&T customer
Except Apple isn't doing any of that. I have zero issues texting with my non-iOS friends, only difference is I don't get the extra goodies that iMessages brings to the table with them.
> I care that they won't implement RCS or let users change the messaging protocol handler on their phone purely for anticompetitive reasons.
Uhhhhh they don't discourage any of that. I have Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, all those options. I just can't send them from a single app.
You are totally free to change your messaging handler by choosing the app of the messaging platform you prefer to use.
You're literally upset because you can't use Telegram inside iMessage? lmfao.
More specifically, Apple does not allow other apps to access the SMS capabilities of the device.
Technically, if you have a tap in for SMS sending say, via a server relay, you can absolutely use other apps to send SMS messages.
I think Apple has good reasons for not allowing 3rd party apps to directly use the SMS functionality, namely prevents issues with 3rd party apps maliciously using the functionality to send spam messages, for example
Technically a 3rd party app iOS app could control Messages running on a remote Mac. But it would be misleading to say 3rd party iOS apps are allowed to send iMessage messages.
Apple should ban SMS relay apps and 3rd party email apps by your logic.
Another thing to keep in mind: RCS does not support end to end encryption by default either, which is something iMessage gained early on.
Google as of Aug. 8 of 2023 will now E2EE all messages via their messages app, but 3rd party apps that accept RCS (notably, Samsung messages) do not do this (at least by default) last time I looked.
Sorry, not an iPhone user, so I genuinely don't know. I do my group chats with Google Chat, which seems to work fine. Are there things that I'm missing out on? (Perhaps because it's not an SMS-based service?)
A big part of the appeal of Android stuff back in the early days was definitely the gee-whiz factor with whacky features. The wide variety of manufacturers (and thus, designs) also played a big part, since it made phone choice more about which design and featureset suited you personally.
Fast forward to today, and phones have homogenized into roughly the same featureset, with “gee-whiz” being limited to models with prices exceeding that of iPhones (e.g. foldables) and the number of manufacturers has dwindled down to a handful of giants that are all aping each other. That bit of appeal is gone, with the appeal that remains being dampened by Android’s mediocrity.
That, and convenience. Android simply can't provide the same coherent, seamless ecosystem of experiences that Apple can. People can't be bothered to deal with the annoyances of separate systems from separate providers anymore, and I feel that, especially in HN circles, that's a very undervalued thing.
If that were true why is Apple laptop / desktop market share not 50% in the US like phones are?
For most iPhone users, the iPhone is their only Apple device. Maybe a few have an iPad (about one in 30 or so), but that's it. Most don't have a Mac, HomePod, etc, and so the "seamless ecosystem" is not a factor.
Talk to any teenager or young adult. It really is the green bubbles.
No, I think it's still true. As another commenter said, teens might be into PC gaming, so they have to buy a PC to guarantee they can play all the games their friends play.
But those same kids will have an iPhone, Watch and Airpods which also let you show off very visibly that you're in the Apple ecosystem when you're in public.
>If that were true why is Apple laptop / desktop market share not 50% in the US like phones are?
People care less about their computers/PCs. That market has peaked over 10 years ago and has been on the decline ever since, minus the temporary pandemic peak, while they are far more emotionally attached to their computer in their pocket (their phone) rather than the computer sitting on the desk at home.
Plus, computers being more open means you can do most of the stuff on a PC that you can do on a PC, it's very little you can gatekeep in that market software wise.
So Apple has "fixed" that "mistake" and not allow the iPhone to be nearly as open as Macs were, therefore more easily gatekeep features valuable for social interactions and keep customers tied.
he's saying that all the better stuff about Androids like replaceable batteries are gone on 1000$+ models, so you're left with a device that has iphone like capability... with worse apps and UI.
I think there's also now less of a gap in features between the two. My Galaxy S7, when new, had tons of features I could flex on iPhone users with (water resistance, always-on display, 1440p OLED screen, wireless charging, etc.) but now iPhone Pro models have basically caught up, with iPhone "Normal" models only losing out on things that the average consumer doesn't care about. With this happening at the same time as the "feature drain" that you've described, it means there's fewer and fewer reasons to buy an Android.
I'm pretty sure the biggest problem the phone vendors are trying to solve is you being able to recover from dropping your phone in the toilet. Most people cannot afford a $1200 loss like that, so getting rid of all water ingress points is the priority. That means the case is superglued together and there are as few I/O ports as possible. (I am surprised phones still have a speaker and microphone for making phone calls with; who does that?)
While unlikely to be true for readers of HN, for many people, their phone is the most expensive thing they own. So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern.
Another controversial aspect is that phones can't be repaired or sold for parts. This is another "loss protection" feature. Nobody steals mobile phones anymore because they are completely useless on the black market. The phone can't be used without the consent of the original owner, and the parts from that phone can't be put in other broken phones. The incentive to steal an easily-concealable $1200 brick of metal and semiconductors is nearly zero. I think that's amazing.
>So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern.
Sorry, but this reasoning that sealing a phone shut is first for water protection is just bs. No mate, it's 100% first and foremost for planned obsolescence justified by other fluff.
You know why? Go to your nearest store and pick up a 20-40 $ Casio watch that's 30m-200m water resistant, and check out the mighty innovations that make this happen while allowing you to operate its buttons under water and replace the battery and repair it: tiny rubber gaskets around the steel pushers and between the plastic body and the steel back plate screwed down with 4 screws. That's it.
Surely the likes of Apple, who has more money than God and a mastery on cutting edge silicon innovation, can copy this unfathomable innovation from the 20$ Casio F-91W, and engineer a similar gasket solution to mount the back panel on a phone with screws and allow for easily replacement of the battery while staying water resistant.
Heck, Samsung already makes a phone with a replaceable battery (like phones had in the old days) just by popping the cover with your fingers, that's also water resistant, also by using a gasket.
I don't think it is relevant to complain about lack of a headphone jack in a discussion of young people. Young people want wireless earbuds, those are very fashionable now, so the lack of a jack hardly matters. Generally people complaining about the headphone jack are comparative oldies.
It's a mystery to me that I keep reading online how it's such a big problem that phones don't offer SD cards or rootability, but literally never heard that in real life.
The "rootability" thing can be due to the own efforts from OEMs to lock their bootloaders and stuff, and electronic payments not being possible with a rooted phone - which is a major issue for places where people no longer use cash.
And maybe the SD cards thing is because people just don't care anymore about running out of storage (they'd delete their stuff or store it on a cloud service somehow). One of the reasons I wanted a Sony Xperia 1ii (and could get ahold of one of them) was it, but since I do not listen to music from my phone anymore I replaced the SD card with a second SIM card.
Whereas the "rootability" thing is actually great in my case, since Sony just gave two years of major Android releases to it - I can use Android 13 thanks to LineageOS and its battery life is even better than with the stock firmware. And with my previous phone, a Sony Xperia Z1, I could make it to go with me for +7 years.
But yep, I do wish Android OEMs offered more major releases to their phones.
The removal of SD cards always just felt petty, but at the end of the day, you can either plug in external media, use a wireless hard drive/SD reader, or just access your content remotely on self hosted servers (or use "the cloud" if you must).
Rootability is easy -- the real issue these days is how many things stop working with a rooted phone which makes it much less desirable than it used to be. Though, it's also a lot less important than it used to be, as many of the old functions that required root just don't any more, either because of changes to the system design, or because of workarounds.
I was watching clips of LinusTechTips' podcast, and he said that speaking to people who he trusts in the mobile phone space, that SD removal was primarily because SD flash is worse than the onboard stuff and they lose more customers who complain/think the phone is bad because of the SD card being worse, than customers who wouldn't buy the phone in the first place because it lacked it.
Personally, I think it's a little of both. It probably helps that less customers complain about the SD card not working, but being able charge an arm and leg for extra storage is icing on the cake.
Teenagers are thought that "bigger price= better quality". One told me that Apple is very secure (when Apple is closing holes only after they are made public and iMessages being a can of worms when it comes to security).
Well it's obvious, in the US at least. iMessage is like 99% of the reason. Everyone using iMessage to group chat, facetime, etc. Then there are some of the non obvious. Remember when Instagram and snapchat took a screenshot of the screen instead of using the camera? That was embarrassing. Then you've got Airpods and Apple watch, those speak for themselves. The only decent tablets, if you listed the top 5 would all be iPads.
Android has nothing to pull teenagers away from iPhones. But you can sideload and play emulators and customize the launcher! You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android. Or facetime and not use whatever Google decided to name their new messaging app 20 minutes ago. Blue vs Green is real and there's nothing Android can do about it other than lobby the government to open iMessage to android, and I don't see that happening in the US, maybe in the EU but there I think whatsapp took over and it's cross platform.
> You might say, but in the end they want to have a group chat with friends and not be limited to 20 because one friend has an android.
Isn't the group chat limit of 20 set by the carrier though, and not by the OS? Shouldn't people be complaining to their carriers? Also, RCS solves this limitation, not that it matters on iOS.
Sure, but are teenagers going to write to their carrier asking for more people in a group chat, if they even figure that information out?
There are basically no solutions to this problem. Android will never be cool to teenagers, the lock-in started early, and will trickle down for decades.
This is a multifacted problem but I think one of the biggest components is that Google is very bad at being hip or cool, much as Microsoft is (to a lesser degree, perhaps). I don’t know if the issue lies with its marketing department or if it’s something that permeates the company, but it just doesn’t “get it”. This is also an issue with many popular Android manufacturers (chiefly Samsung).
Apple doesn’t always hit the mark here, especially in recent years, but is much better in this regard.
"With an average age just shy of 16, the respondents to this poll were nearly all born in a post-iPhone world."
Okay, it's 2023 [1], the iPhone came out in 2007 [2], that is 16 years [3] ago. A person born in the post-iPhone world is thus 16 years or younger[4]. While the average usually refers to the arithmetic mean and not the median [5], it is good statistical practice to prune extreme outliers [6], and thus have the mean and median relatively close together.
Given all this, it seems to me quite likely about half of the poll respondents were "born in a post-iPhone world." Last time I checked, 'about half' and 'nearly all' are kinda different.
why are there such super-sloppy mistakes in "nearly all" (technical meaning) articles?
I bet it's not meant quite that literally, as most people aren't given a smartphone at birth. I believe the intent is that iPhones were available as their first phone. Your point still stands; I think I'd have preferred the phrasing "born into a post-iPhone world."
Customization and differentiation is over-rated and can even be a downside. Just grab an iPhone, buy a cover for your "unique" expression, and change the wallpaper. What else is there to customize?
Same for "replaceable batteries". An iPhone battery has solid performance for about 1,000 charges, or 3 years. That's when people buy a new one anyway, if not earlier.
The things you want to be true are not necessarily actually true.
As others have said, SMS is fully interoperable up to and including groups and MMS.
Your problem comes from that fact that Apple cleverly introduced way more capability in the very same Messages app, for other Apple users only.
None of the complaining like yours would be happening if Messages was left as SMS only and apple had shipped a separate iMessage app, which is exactly what Whatsapp is. But there's Apple's forte. They have Bluetooth, but buying Airpods automagically works better.
I also 1000000% guarantee you that the designers spent a LOT of time analyzing the green bubble colour to make very it a slightly (but not too much) aggravating green. There are many many more pleasant shades of green.
What you want is for Apple to be forced to extend its proprietary system to non-Apple systems, but when you say it like that it's obvious what an unfair nonstarter it is.
Nah, why? Apple has delivered a lot of innovative features through iMessage. SMS texting used to be trash, until Apple iMessage forced them to improve the underlying protocol. It's STILL not as good as iMessage (memojis, extensions and games like Giphy, voice messages, etc)
Paying for SMS messages, when it costs phone companies literally nothing, is what should be illegal.
SMS is still trash compared to WhatsApp or half a dozen other platforms. But SMS is also the only standard we have and, as a standard, usage should be standardized across devices. Apple's manipulation of the standard turns it into proprietary gatekeeping. Why in the world should I know or care if a text I am receiving is coming from an Apple device or an Android device? That's not part of the standard, that's Apple naked attempt to coopt the standard.
Like I said above, iMessage is just a partial WhatsApp clone, but behind a gate. The thing is, for users behind that gate, it coopts SMS too, removing it as the universal standard.
I suppose the same is true on Android if people use their stock messages app? But what drawbacks does it have when messaging an iPhone user? I've never heard of any problems (I don't use that app) but I hear about the differences iPhone users experience all the time.
> But what drawbacks does it have when messaging an iPhone user? I've never heard of any problems (I don't use that app) but I hear about the differences iPhone users experience all the time.
There are no differences with iPhones, other than the green bubbles. On the other hand, Google Messages tags SMS with "Sent as SMS".
The issue is purely based on aesthetics, if anything. Green versus blue bubbles. But there are really no interoperability issues with iMessage handling SMS.
"What if we let the kids customize their phone?" and "Convince people Apple is lame" aren't solutions to the problem, and the fact the article pretends they are makes it difficult to take the author seriously.
This belief that teenagers are choosing Apple because "marketing" and not because of legitimate differences between the platforms is a blind spot for a lot of pro-Android people.
The author correctly points out the problem. iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience.
>iPhones last a long time – making them easy for parents to hand down to kids. iPhones are reliable – meaning kids don't have bad experiences with them. iPhones work – meaning kids don't have to spend hours learning how to root their devices to create a better Android experience.
iOS is a nice unified experience. Contrast that with your run-of-the-mill mid-range Verizon-branded Samsung, which has 4 phone dialers, 3 app stores, and insists you log in with 3 different accounts to get the "full experience."
Unless you buy an off-the-shelf Android device with a fairly clean software environment, your experience with Android will be one full of non-removable outdated redundant bloatware. It's all on Google that they allowed OEMs and phone companies to push their crap software onto Android phones.
> making them easy for parents to hand down to kids
This plus the last thing I need is to add another device with another ecosystem to my home datacenter. I am not going to hand my kid an Android phone and be on the hook for tech support when something goes wrong.
That's perfect. I also don't like shallow hoes who judge people based on what phone brand they have. How is that automatic selection a minus? Sounds more like you dodged a bullet.
But yeah, I feel what you're saying. People today can be very shallow, comfortable and convenience oriented, so unless they see you as being a super valuable individual form the start, they definitely won't be interested in investing any extra effort in you, like something as trivial as not messaging you because a bubble color, especially in this society where everything is tuned and gamed for instant gratification, including human interactions.
It's quite dehumanizing actually, that we're being stripped away from what makes us good and unique people, and are reduced to soulless corporate designed 'bubbles' or avatars, conditioned to prioritize nonsense consumerist trivialities just to fit in and not be outcasted.
Edit after your update: Indeed, we are all quite shallow nowadays. Focus on improving yourself, and put out into the universe exactly who and what you are looking for. Just be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.
this is an cop out in the same vein as “it’s just a prank”. You know it’s connative use, you know how your audience would read the word and not go “oh they obviously meant to call little american girls a garden tool, not a derogatory term meant to shame their sexual activity”
Even adhering to the best faith policy makes this not ok.
Not just teenagers. I see this trend among people in their 20's and 30's too. And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS.
> And it is primarily just about the proprietary gatekeeping Apple imposed on SMS.
Or maybe, and this might be an absolute shocker to you, the color of text message to us signifies if we can have all the extra goodies that we learn to enjoy having.
We don't look down on you for having green text bubbles, we look down because we like sending all the extra stuff like reactions to your joke with a "haha" instead of literally sending the "haha" text messages, or hearting something you said. Having multiple conversations in the same messages but being able to respond to each individual message, or sending "I love you" to your spouse with a slam reaction or hearts that float up behind the text.
It's not about any gatekeeping or anything. It's about making our communication more fun instead of text 24/7.
This is the same reason Slack won over IRC. Nerds may want to send ASCII emojis and that back and forth and be fine with that, but other people like the added fun stuff you can do in Slack that you can't in IRC.
Instead of determining your social circle based on someone's ownership of a very specific piece of hardware, like a sociopath, you could use WhatsApp, which does everything SMS does on an iPhone plus significantly more.
That's the norm for most people with a lot of international connections anyway.
Literally nobody determines their social circle based on ownership of a piece of hardware. This is a psychotic argument that non-iPhone users made up to justify their reasoning for saying Apple is the bad guy for not allowing iMessage on Android.
People who want to use WhatsApp do, and people who don't, don't.
I personally don't want to use ANY messaging platform that is in the control of Meta.
If you do then install the app. None of you have really made any compelling reasons other thant to complain about Apple and iPhone users.
Ok, so then what's the argument here? Nobody on any device is restricted to just Google Messages on Android or iMessages on iOS.... If your social circle is all using WhatsApp, then use WhatsApp. If it's Messenger, use Messenger, Signal, etc.
Android is somewhat more popular with men than women overall. That could be different for teenagers as opposed to the population as a whole, but it suggests that your gendered explanation is unlikely.
That could be true and still not the whole story, because using an iPhone and having more money are correlated. If a kid is obviously rich and uses an Android, does the Android count as a mark against him?
When I was single, I vividly remember matching with a girl on Tinder and moving onto texting. She said quote 'I am so happy you are blue'. Was not the last time I got this feedback directly, nor saw it out in the wild.
> Personally, though, I think there's an even easier way to win back the hearts and minds of, at the very least, some teenagers, and — bonus — it's a tried-and-true method. Samsung and Google need to position Apple as the brand relied on by parents above all else. In the same way teenagers left behind social networks like Facebook, iOS needs to be seen as a platform populated by the exact crowd they're trying to rebel against.
Android: the choice of a new generation (tm).
Numbers for teenagers in the US having iPhones and smart watches are astonishing though. Where do they find the cash? And if it's only devices given by their parents, how is it that all parents have iPhones?
Presumably bundling with their parents plans, as birthday or Christmas gifts, or hand-me-downs. All three can take advantage of iMessage just the same.
And personally, as long as we're sticking with the Pepsi tagline, I much prefer
This may be weird, but the main thing keeping me on my Galaxy S10e (and the Android phones earlier and Palm/Handspring even earlier) is the Note Everything app. I find this a very convenient app to keep text, photo, and voice notes in. It also allows you to backup everything and then reload it in a new phone. I have notes in there from 2010 and before.
It keeps its info in a SQLite database, so, if I had to, I could move it to an iPhone, but it would probably take a lot of work which I am not willing to do now.
If there was an easy way of moving the notes, maybe.
Funny, my son used to have a cast off iPhone. He's now got a second hand Pixel phone and much prefers it. Then again, he doesn't seem to care about impressing his peers much.
Edit: he likes that his new phone has a headphone jack.
Really is crazy the weird place where seemingly otherwise normal adults think its their problem to popularize a for-profit platform built and controlled by an an ad-tech giant. Do y'all just not use your phones and that's the end if your relationship with the device? If Android isn't cool that's a problem for the giant billion dollar multinational corporations that build them to figure out.
Also it's amazing that "teenagers use iPhones because it's what their parents use" has go to be the most out-of-touch statement of the decade. A teenager that wants to do literally anything like their parents, in what universe?
I think Android as an ecosystem really suffers from the uncoolness of its insufferable community. I know exactly all the guys in my social circle that use android because they feel the need to tell you at every opportunity. I've yet to find any casual users of Android who aren't my parents age and call them "their Galaxy." Btw I use Arch.
Respect, sure. But emulate while they're at the stage of life where they're actively trying to forge their own identity that's separate from them, hell no.
'hell no' is pretty strong. Lots of people that grow up in a stable household, with mothers and fathers they respect, will naturally imitate and emulate them. Monkey see, monkey do.
Also, phone choice as 'rebellion'? That's just silly - how the hell does getting a Pixel when your parents use an iPhone help you establish an 'identity separate from them'? That's an all time reach - that's like me saying because I hate my dad, I'm going to start using Mac because he used Windows.
You've swung completely the other way when what I'm saying is the middle.
1. Teenagers aren't choosing their phone because it what their parents use.
2. Teenagers aren't choosing their phone because they want to rebel.
3. Teenagers are choosing their phone independently of their parent's choices because that's the phase of life they're in -- the one where they develop independence.
That seems shortsighted. People care because it is the ONLY viable alternative and Apple already has an extremely bad, profit above all behavior.
Apple ask a lot of money for the technology their devices feature and then goes on to milk their user for the usage of the device and most of the times, even longer because people get locked-in the system under the pretense of convenience, when the reality is that Apple makes it extremely difficult to switch.
For example, in the case of iMessage, it is the sole reason I even pay for the first level of iCloud storage: Apple will advertise the convenience and "quality" of their messaging solution, yet to effectively use it and sync it everywhere as it is supposed to, you will be REQUIRED to pay for the iCloud storage. Otherwise, it just won't work. To add insult to the injury, they provide ZERO management tools to manage/archive/backup/restore messages when the competition does that for free. You have 2 options, aggressively prune all your messages, losing valuable history or pay up.
Without that your messages are stuck on a single device, not backed up, not synced, stuck on a small display with almost no management capabilities (barely just search). If you don't pay, iMessage is basically a minimum viable improvement on SMS/MMS, it sucks. All the tools allowing you to do more rely on a Mac, are very often paid and/or require specific knowledge/skills; they make it an annoyance to extract the damn thing, on purpose. Anyone thinking otherwise is a fool. I'm fairly sure they stuck with low bandwidth USB on their phone to make it as painful as possible to sync your phone the "old" way so that they can upsell you to their could "solution", for a problem they completely created and meanwhile they advertise Thunderbolt for their computers even though since they dropped external GPU support the only thing that could meaningfully use the bandwidth is high-speed storage device, like you know, an iPhone...
The reason people even started using iMessage is because it was merged with SMS at a time when mobile data was still expensive and not everyone would have the possibility to get data on their phone. It was a convenience for Apple users, but then SMS lost relevance and they never opened up their proprietary solution while completely forbidding other developers to access the messaging capability of their phones. Their messaging solution didn't win on its own merit and now they refuse to compete fairly with others because they control the whole stack. It makes the case of Microsoft with Windows/Internet Explorer combo look like a minor mistake, because at least you could install an alternative that would be able to replicate all the functionality...
It is basically abusive monopolist behavior they complained about when they launched the iPhone, oh the irony.
If you don't understand the implications of overpaying for technology at the society level, that's really your problem. People making a lot of noise about this are doing you a favor, not the other way around. The reality is that while they make an obscene amount of profit, thanks in no small part to their uncompetitive behavior, they only make useful devices for about half the market. And this is only because we count a lot of older devices (the ones given to kids) who are largely obsolete and painful to use day to day. If you look objectively at the technology Apple isn't really competitive and many people end up getting an Apple device because they feel they have to, in no small part because of iMessage but also because of other implicit lock down. I can guarantee you that if Apple made it easier to switch to something else, many people would not keep using them long term; it is unreasonably expensive in the long run for what you get (especially consider how much of a pain their recent devices are to repair).
And people talk about Android because it is the only viable option left. Unless you want to be a Linux hacker there really isn't any other option for a smartphone OS; and the problem is that a smartphone is basically a requirement to function in society today. So, when you have a major pig eating everything in sight, you root for the cow, at least she only eats the grass.
Yes, people just want to use their phone, but they don't want to be left out of some social group because they didn't spend way too much money for a technology that is not superior in any way but will even have a higher usage cost for feature parity. If iPhones users would use WhatsApp or whatever other messaging application is suitable there would be no problem at all.
And for your information, teenagers use whatever their parents deem ok, good enough, cheap enough, secure enough, and so on... The reality is that a lot of parents give their older devices to their children because it is cheaper and easier that way and the only ones who are going to make a different choice are the technology geeks (the ones who are most likely to be interested in Android in the first place). Apple solutions for control are also a major reason I believe. Apple is a control freak; it is only normal that they enable control-freak behavior for their customers to completely police and put their kids on a leash. My father was a major control-freak asshole and last time I saw him and his new partner, they pointed out "screen time" and "find my" as a major reason to give an iPhone to her children. Apple is basically enabling dystopian like policing of children by their parents, and I think it's a massive societal issue but that's another argument altogether.
> surveying over 9,000 adolescents across America... According to this year's report, 87 percent of teenagers surveyed own an iPhone, while 88 percent expect to buy an iPhone as their next device.
It's very easy to plan on buying an iPhone as your next device when mom and dad are paying for it. We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it.
> We'll see how many of these kids plan on buying an iPhone when they are paying for it.
In their thirties?
I'm only half joking: between the Samsung Galaxy S-whatever my parents gave me as a graduation gift and a work provided iPhone, the first phone I paid for myself was in my thirties. Phones are only becoming more durable and expensive and wealth inequality isn't getting any better.
Sorry, it's just hilarious to me that there is an article worrying about the uncoolness of Android in a publication called "Android Police." Maybe people who want to be cops aren't the right group to ask about how to be cool? Do they go around handing out violations to people who don't love Android enough?
I know some people who use Android because of customizability, I know some who use it because of price, some because of niche features, some because they want a folding screen, and I know some use it because they have to (for some reason or other).
Does anyone here use Android because it is 'cool'?
I think it's probably futile to argue with someone casually using "fascist", but you might be surprised that Google isn't a non-profit charity spreading joy.
Quote from their Wikipedia article:
"Google has had criticism over issues such as aggressive tax avoidance,[320] search neutrality, copyright, censorship of search results and content,[321] and privacy.[322][323]
Other criticisms are alleged misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of other people's intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy, and the energy consumption of its servers, as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, anti-competitive practices, and patent infringement."
But yeah, they aren't 'fascist', so I guess you win.
Y'know, I hesitated to use that word. I meant "authoritarian (derogatory)". I suppose "fascist" relates to a particular political movement. Withdrawn and replaced. It doesn't affect my message or opinion.
I'm also not swayed by whataboutism here. I can do normal expected things on my handheld general purpose computer (like install a new browser or app from anywhere) that are simply not allowed on iOS. I'd love it if one of the many Linux phones were more usable now, but they're not.
To me comparing iPhones to android is like apples to oranges (or more like apples to a barrel of an assortment of fruits from different regions of the world) ... compare the Pixel line to the iPhone line
I would trust sales trend data much much more than I would trust a teenager's honest response in a survey. Is this Cum Grano Salis or ageism? I leave it up to you to decide.
Like everyone else I was impressed with the iPhone when it came out as a new device.
A little later I got an Android, I've never liked mac desktops, it was cheaper, and I liked that it was more open.
Then a little after that I was shocked seeing a friend's iphone that amount of features it lacked. No app folders, no widgets, no real customization at all, not to mention the walled garden not allowing a lot of apps and thus functionality I use, like torrents and ad-blocking.
Since then it's always been Android only, either a custom rom or clean install.
Then, it wasn't until last year I learned that in the US "blue text bubbles" is seen as a negative thing, a sign of being poor or some nonsense. It's a uniquely American thing, and utterly insane and idiotic.
But then I figured it works as kind of a filter. If someone wants to judge and dismiss me for having "blue text bubbles", they are probably not worth talking to in the first place.
I think it still works that way. Most of the teens are just following what's popular without doing any critical thinking about it at all. They'll either grow out of it, or grow into people not really worth dealing with.
iMessage and Facetime are a huge part of this. I don't want to have 5 different apps - Whatsapp, Telegraph, Google Allo, etc. to communicate with different groups of folks. The point of these devices is to make communication easier. Google really dropped the ball on not making an inclusive messaging and video chat solution.
Yep. This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying. Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially.
To be honest, Apple should be ashamed of themselves for literally inventing whole-cloth a new form of Discrimination. "Intersection of Humanities and Technology" sure does take on a whole new meaning in that light.
I think you have your timeline wrong. Android phones were seen as "not cool" in the US before Blue Bubble was a thing. iPhones have been aspirational and cool since shortly after their launch.
(Source, worked in mobile / mobile-related industries for >15 years in the US, worked at Google in Android division for part of that time.)
IMHO: Apple invented and invested in creating a great product (iMessage / Messages) - far better than what was out there - and continued to invest in improving it. No one who calls themself a "hacker" and wants to "build something people love" should shame them for doing so.
You can't truly interoperate with products that don't support all the features in the "originating" product.
For example, iMessages long had full-resolution media support, encryption for multi-party messaging, and with addressing not tied to a phone number, which many other messaging products did not.
As a user, I absolutely do not want a government forcing the vendor of the product that I have purchased to enshittify it by removing or breaking good features.
And, if that government does force some sort of limited "interoperability" that causes a downgraded experience (e.g., no encryption, reduced quality media), then the "originating" app should absolutely indicate those issues and concerns to its users. I'm sure that there are lots of governments that would love to break Messages' encryption without Apple being able to tell users about it. And there we are with the difference between Blue Bubbles and Green Bubbles.
If people want to use WhatsApp or SMS or WeChat or one of 15 different Google messaging products, they should do that. But don't f-up a product that works great for those who choose to use it.
Nothing prevented Apple to release an iMessage Android app with all the features. They chose not to as a lock in strategy.
No one suggested forcing Apple to remove features. Reducing media quality would solve no complaints. And your comment about encryption made no sense. Apple devices trust the keys sent by Apple. A government could order Apple to break iMessage encryption without telling users now. The Signal protocol is open and not vulnerable in this way.
Apple didn't invent a "new form of discrimination", they have a product that works, and is tied to their ecosystem, nothing else. It is not even an exclusive technology, there are a hundred other messaging apps out there, and at least a handful of them are more popular than iMessage.
> Having a phone that doesn't open iMessage is basically a guarantee in the US that you will be excluded and ridiculed if you're a teen, and tbh even as an adult, not having iMessage can result in being excluded in the workplace as well as socially.
I can't speak about teens, but I haven't met a single adult in the US, so arrogant and petty, that they would exclude you from their social circle just because you don't own an iPhone.
And if you actually have encountered this, perhaps it is time for you to look for new friends.
These people read some Onion like BuzzFeed article about a made up story along the lines of this and absolutely refuse to see how ridiculous it sounds and start spreading it, and others who have an axe to grind with Apple then feel validated by the idea of it and spread it themselves.
Literally nobody I know who has an iPhone truly cares what color the chat messages is... We do however notice the green message and jokingly go "oh an Android user eh?" and give a little shit for it, but nobody would ever actually ostracize someone from a group for being Android.
I'm confused at how you get left out of the loop. Do they just not include you in group chats?
I have a group chat right now with my sister who is also iPhone and my mom who is Android, we all have zero issues in group chat.
Only thing that changed is the group chat goes from being iMessage blue bubbles to just all green chats due to the one Android user.
Everything else is the same. Well when my sister like reacts to our messages because she doesn't quite realize that it's not a group iMessage but just a group SMS then iMessage sends `<sister> liked "<message she liked>"` texts to the rest of us but shows the like reaction to her.
The key difference is that anyone can install WhatsApp or Telegram. An Android user cannot use Apple messaging. It's the only scenario where the only solution is buying a $1000 device (versus downloading a free app to your existing device).
I don't see how this is relevant. My parent comment said "the only solution is spending $1000" (aka buying an iPhone 15 pro), and I wanted to point out that this is ridiculous.
But even if it were relevant, what massive costs do you incur when you switch from your Google phone to an iPhone? Two hours set-up, if you are really slow? Anything else?
Also, if that is too much for you, you can keep your Google phone, I honestly couldn't care less what phone you use. I just wanted to point out that "you have to buy an iPhone 15 pro to get blue bubbles" is bullshit.
As to your point about non-monetary costs, I'd gladly spent $130 to avoid installing any meta app on my phone.
I'm assuming a person would want their new phone to be the current model, likely financed by their cell provider, as is our custom. Not some referubed last-gen from an eBay seller.
Anecdotal evidence from France and UK doesn't agree with "isn't generally true outside of the US". When a diverse group of people is involved it's way more likely to use WhatsApp (or Signal to a lesser extent) outside the US, but iMessage is still used a lot IME.
I don't think it's a new form of discrimination either, brand awareness and social position via brands is incredibly prevalent in teenagers and has been for a while.
> This phenomena isn't generally true outside of the US and it is 100% because of the abuse that is iMessage aka Blue Bubble Bullying.
Can you explain the relation here?
As far as I know iMessage is available also outside US. If iMessage was 100% the cause it would be the same outside US as well.
So I think that 'Blue Bubble Bullying' in US is because iPhone is more popular there - not other way around.
It isn't true outside of the US because salaries outside the US make iphones luxury items.
An iphone costs 1 month of salary in Spain and Spain has the highest youth unemployment rate of the EU (and those who are employed most likely make peanuts). How are young people going to afford it? If an iphone cost 200€, how many people would even use android to begin with?
Of minimum salary, although there is the iPhone SE, which is ~500 euro.
Regardless, it always baffles me how people skimps on stuff that they use continuously through the day, every day.
When someone would tell me how expensive an iPhone is, which would last five, six years, just to go and purchase Chinese off brand phone from AliExpress for a couple hundred, that would last a couple years tops, I have to laugh. It's like calling someone out for buying a slightly expensive Toyota, while driving a Chevrolet.
All of the reasons I liked Android from the start — replaceable battery, SD card, headphone jack, diversity of of hardware options, customizable software/launchers/default apps, rootable — have been slowly one by one removed in flagship phones over the last 5 years.
Sure you can still get a low or mid tier phone with some or all of these, but all the expensive Android models (read: good build quality, software support, acceptable perf and battery life) have slowly become more and more like an iPhone, yet without any of the small things that make iPhones good to use: excellent build quality, extended support, ecosystem…
So android isn’t cool with teenagers, but it’s mostly because Android devices just suck now.
As an allegory: when I was a teen, PCs weren’t “cool” compared to Macs (remember those old ads?) But in 2023 PC gaming is more popular than ever, so PCs are cool with the youth.
Teens today will buy a PC so they can play CS or League with their friends, something they can’t really do well with a Macbook Air. Would you buy a $1000 android phone when it’s just a worse iPhone?