The problem that I have with the way Apple does this has nothing whatsoever to do with me. It's their device, it is not possible for me to care any less about it.

No, the problem I have is that it becomes a severe bullying / exclusion tactic among kids. Now, kids will always find something to bully other kids about, but this one seems to hurt a lot because of the source of the ire and the inability to do anything about it (short of purchasing an Apple device).

My eldest was excluded from group chats with friends because they "ruined" the quality of pictures and videos by being in the group chat. These are friends mind you, not the sort of bullies the rest of us might've had. It's devastating to kids when their friends exclude them like this. What do you do? You can't complain about the technology not mattering, you can't reason with it, you can't say: "it gets better".

Kids these days have a very different relationship to technology. That relationship can seem weird or "wrong" to folks who remember a time before these ubiquitous devices. Crap patterns like this creating artificial walled gardens are not "novel" or "creative" ways to increase sales.

Unfortunately this is what makes iPhones "iPhones"

They bring out features that generally make the phone part of the smartphone better to use.

RCS is still a mess on androids. And calling on iPhones is about to feel very modern while android phones will still be calling people the same way people did 20 years ago.

Hang on ... I set a picture on MY phone and then anyone I call sees MY picture? Oh yeah, can't see how this'll go wrong. How long before dick picks are sent, or advertisements, or someone finds a way to use it to hack someones phone.

I can see this could be useful, especially folks with eye sight issues (but how would this affect blind folks?), but it's just another way to tell someone who is calling. I don't answer my phone unless they're in my contact book already.

This seems eh to me, but I'm not an Apple person anyway.

Oh no, Apple develops Apple-specific features to add value to their products! Someone alert the Department of Justice! My bubbles will NOT be discriminated against!

TBH I don't really want want to anything to do with people that see me as less because I don't have a fancy calling animation anyway.

The solution is to just use something like Signal.

Just use signal. In general.

I never understood the complaint. If iPhone users don't like the way Apple messaging works with Android contacts, they can just use an alternative like Whatsapp. Right?

All these text and emoji features that are being added into apple but are not compatible with Android: this seems like a problem....

Until you download signal.

It has great features for group messaging, video calling, emojis and is generally feature rich.

And it's end-to-end encrypted when messaging other signal users.

It's available on iOS and Android.

No way would i use an iphone. I outgrew its capabilities in 2010, spent 3 years not updating until i could get an untethered jailbreak and finally gave it up in 2013. I have helped people with iphones and ipads since then and nothing has convinced me to go back.

Is it just me that has literally never heard anyone bring up the colour of bubbles irl? Like I've seen people talk about it on the internet from time to time but never in the real world.

I can't see this actually being a big deal, like at all, lmao. This assumes everyone cares or even knows the implications of a contact poster, and you can even make them for contacts that haven't made one themselves. If you automatically think "ew Android!" when someone didn't make a contact poster (when they can literally be on iOS, but not make one), you have issues.

RCS could have been great if e2e were baked in from the start. Apple would not have had such a strong argument to stay with its own standard and we might not have found ourselves with this divide.

I think this could’ve great if it was an open standard but that’s not the apple way.

Nobody except nerds like us care about RCS.

So... here's a hot take I guess (disclaimer: i am an iphone user): People who are actively complaining about Apple having features that are unique to its platform don't know how products work. Apple created this technology and design themselves and other companies want to leech off the features. We should want competition like iMessage vs whatever Android uses. For anyone to basically say Google doesn't have the ability or resources to create an actual competitor is silly. They absolutely can make an alternative, but they choose not to. Google becomes complacent and progress slows or completely stops. I'd rather have a product that is FEATURE-FULL than feature-less. Additionally, this contact feature thing is neat, but I wouldn't call it a "game-changer" or revolutionary. It's similar to the super old ability that some cellular providers had/have where you could play a specific song instead of a ringtone.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 😒