(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
My entire life I’ve been reading news that only iPhones are cool, yet my social circles don’t care and have never said anything like this. I feel like this is a ‘Hello fellow kids’ type of investigative journalism, that is a secret apple ad.
“This unbiased and purely informative piece of journalism sponsored by Apple.”
No one gives a shit which phone you have.
Also, no one uses the term “droid”.
This article reads like “fellow kids” nonsense.
I think that is mostly a US thing, as I see way more Androids in Europe than iPhones. But I could be wrong
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I think the most frustrating part is Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids and people aren’t like “Oh, fuck them for doing that”, they’re like “Oh, Android sucks.” Like it’s just a wildly successful and incredibly scummy tactic to convince people that Apple devices are superior and people didn’t just fall for it, they’re willfully diving in headfirst.
It’s a shame, really, because I do think they make some pretty good hardware. Might not be my thing, but they make a good phone. That said, I’ll never patronize them because of the bullshit I’ve had to endure trying to communicate with my iPhone-owning family.
They will have to open up in 2024. Thanks to the EU.
i’ve only ever heard about this “green bubble” thing from USA media.
do Americans still use SMS?
why? phone numbers are obsolete. my SMS inbox going back years is just 2FA security codes, and they’re very rare these days, since authenticator apps.
Yeah sms ought to be the standard default. Since companies like apple refused to help improve it, people like you turn to other solutions. If you use WhatsApp, you should know Facebook owns it and uses it to spy on you for profit. I’d prefer “obsolete” sms to that…
RCS should be the default. SMS is the protocol designed for old non smart cellphones.
The exact problem is that Apple DOES default to SMS outside of imessage
You’re right… but isn’t RCS designed to be a superset of sms, with sms being a fallback for old clients on the other end? Really I meant “there should be a standard text protocol for all devices” which is what sms was originally, it just lacked all but the most basic of features.
I don’t like RCS entirely in its current form but I believe that (I could be very wrong but) SMS is planned to be phased out in the long term, how they plan to replace its reliability is beyond my understanding.
There are still no FOSS RCS implementations on either platform.
WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted.
Right but it’s also owned by Facebook so it’s doubtful they aren’t using all possible means to spy on you regardless of that fact
RCS is also encrypted fwiw
Also fwiw Google can still see what you write if you use their keyboard (or OS, but I can’t bet on that, and their software being able to see it doesn’t mean they record it, just that they can)
Just as Apple can too BTW.
Definitely. Not sure putting one’s trust in Google is much better though.
I mean, Google didn’t actively decide that facilitating genocide was worth the dollars it earned them 🤷
They tried to but employees stopped it (they staged a walkout or something IIRC)
Fair enough, Google is definitely the lesser of evil comparing them. But encrypted Meta versus non encrypted Google is not a no-brainer decision.
Still popular in Australia, at least in my demographic
Same here, it’s all 2fa and appointment reminders for things. Even my elderly relatives uses WA now.
Yes! I’ve been saying this for many years, but my Apple cult-member friends don’t want to believe me. It’s gotten better over the years, but Apple used to be so incompatible with everything else, almost like it was done on purpose to force more market share…🤔
Apple is willfully hampering the ability to intercommunicate between iPhones and Androids
In what way exactly? All the messaging apps I use work fine. I even have the same Signal account logged in through both my Android phone and my iPad.
Nobody I know actually uses iMessage either. It’s a complete non-issue as SMS is quite an outdated technology.
USA still uses SMS for a variety of reasons.
Come back to me after convincing a group of non tech-savvy iPhone-using friends or family to use literally anything but whatever the default messaging app is available on their phone or whatever they’re already used to.
My grandma uses WhatsApp. The only reason I’ve ever used SMS is to receive a verification code
Teenagers are well known for their experience and insight
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Holy fuck, kids are cringe. I hate this blue bubble elitism so much. Glad it’s not a really a thing in Europe.
According to my 16 yo daughter it most certainly is a thing in the EU. She would never buy an android.
According to my 12 yo son iPhone’s are for dumb people. I’m not sure if that’s really his opinion or he just says it to annoy his big sister.
In either case, your son restores my faith in humanity.
I’m in Europe and see the opposite of the article. Xiaomi (incl. Poco and Redmi), Samsung (the Z flip is popular here), Pixel (is pretty popular too) and others are everywhere. People rely on third party apps in Europe so the phone doesn’t really matter anymore.
It’s OK, American kids have a lot to deal with: school shootings, adults that don’t give a fuck about the youth and actively shut doors to a better life with their dying breath, climate change, more diseases, and more. I can understand them being a little bitchy.
For whatever reason the US never moved on from SMS… and Apple took advantage of that.
To be fair I am not a “kid”, but I have friends from highschool I still meet from time to time. And everybody used to have an android phone, now I am the only one left. A lot of them are company phones, but tbf I barely know anybody who doesn’t use an iPhone. And ykw, I get it. I get my phones second hand for the price of 10 kebabs, and fix them when needed, run linageOS, fuck around with magisk when needed and so on. But actually if you don’t want to do that, android phones are a fucking awful deal. They are no cheaper than an iphone, they are no more expandable, no easier to repair, come with no more accessories, and these days with safetynet and hardware based trusted boot no more open and moddable. on the other hand get way worse software support, get way shorter support, the servicing is usually way less streamlined, even the best are built worse, and they have little support for apple accessories, which are best in class especially the airpods pro being the biggest dealbreaker of the lot. Honestly a new android phone, would be a hard fucking sell for me as well.
That’s more or less true, counterpoint: there’s the Fairphone.
Regardless of that, for the purposes of the average person, any phone, iOS or Android from even 10 years ago is more than serviceable, while for those who game on their phone, maybe 2/3 years old phones are still holding up. The innovations in the space have been really flattening out for some time, so I’d say it doesn’t make much of a difference, because the average person doesn’t care about the newest OS versions for its up to date security, maybe for the features, but there hasn’t been something very groundbreaking recently IMO.(Still, we should be mad at Google for allowing Android to be the ever out of date platform, but this was more a perspective of what the normal users need)
Well yeah the fairphone exists, but it is CATASTROPHICALLY expensive, (not that well made), and has a relatively old midrange chipset. And no headphone jack. I think 1 of these three would make it a very appealing product, 2 would make it worth considering, all three simply means, it isn’t good enough, even in a vacume. Sorry. And I really like the idea.
579€ for a phone that should potentially last you a decade or more doesn’t seem that expensive to me, chipset and jack are a pity though, I have to agree
I mean, let’s be real here. That decade is very theoretical. These midrange chipsets are kinda slow from the start. High end phones with absoulutely top of the line chipsets, with high powerlimits last a decade.
Edit: Also the parts are pretty expensive to be honest, and the price of the case is a fucking ripoff. 30 Euros for a case that isn’t even nice is just taking the piss.
Also 579 is for the entry version with only 6 gigabytes of ram, which is the amount that my note 8 had in 2018. You need to pay 649 for the 8 gig one, and if you want to keep the phone, you really want the 8gig one.
Edit2: Also you need to buy the more expensive 8/256 one, for the specled green back cover, which again is just taking the fucking piss. Not the mention the self admittedly chinese bought unrepairable TWS they were peddaling with it. IK IK you got it for free for a short while. Now however you have to pay for it.
This news just in: teenagers can be arseholes to each other.
Back in my day, it was over the brand of sneakers or jeans that you wore.
My little brother refused to wear his new air walks to school any more because the kids told him they weren’t real because the style he had used a lowercase a logo. Same energy.
Back in the mid 90’s, Nike had the Air Modify Force / Air Adjust Force (can’t remember which they were at the time) and the shoes came with a changeable strap with the Nike logo and came in a bunch of colors. You could buy just the strap and change one of the accent colors of your shoes, basically.
Poor dude in middle school got busted for putting that strap over off-brand shoes and they dragged him the rest of the year over that shit.
At least sneakers doesn’t have a bunch of sensors, Internet connection and propietary software loaded, so by going with trend you won’t compromise anything other than money.
…yet
I’m 14 and I hate iphones I prefer Android phones rooted with a custom rom
By the time you’re 20 you’ll be using Arch Linux and self-hosting everything!
I kinda already do I use arch and selfhost many things not everything but still
We’ll be watching your career with great interest
This is the way to go, kid
This one here is promising!
I’m 2 and I use a smartphone that only executes Fortran through punch cards.
I’m fifteen months old and my phone only runs a morse-code JIT compiler. The virtual keyboard has exactly one key
I’m just gotten to used to Motorolas twist to activate camera and now that I live in the city and durability isn’t as much of a concern I’m thinking of getting a foldable
I’m amazed it’s 2023 and we’ve still not universally adopted a protocol better than SMS. Thanks Apple
We have all universally adopted Rich Communication Services, which is an open standard.
Well, except for Apple. They haven’t adopted it.
Apple’s refusal to cooperate is both obviously profit motivated and infuriating. They’ve engineered this social gulf between iPhone and non-iPhone users. I often wonder about the collective social harm.
The low res photos and video are natural byproducts of squeezing modern media into an SMS message, but the ‘green’ bubbles take it to another level. The worst part is that the average iPhone user at best is apathetic. Meanwhile Cook suggested last year that we should just buy more iPhones as a solution.
yup. buy apple products, it’s the classism of our age to look down on poors who can’t afford the apple logo.
such actual garbage.
Mofo thinks we’re made out of money.
In 2024 Apple and Google will have to figure it out because the EU are twisting their arms.
It’s 2023. Why use SMS in the first place? The world except the US has moved on years ago.
SMS > Facebook
And there are many more options better than both
Yeah but typically when people come into these threads going “huhuhu stupid Americans with their SMS” it turns out they’re on WhatsApp, like much of the rest of the world. Which is just hilariously stupid.
Don’t be ignorant. There are a lot more options, safer, open and with more features than sms/iMessage.
Because open standards that don’t require specialized software have many advantages… Why would you prefer proprietary software in the first place?
Because it provides a better experience, weather it’s WhatsApp telegram, Signal threema or even discord or teams, they all provide a significant feature advantage over SMS. This starts with properly handling multimedia, not giving your number up to everyone else, proper groups, your messages living in the cloud for proper multi device functionality, your messages living unencrypted only on your device… There is plenty of real advantages with their associated side effects.
SMS as a standard is simply too old for modern expectations, this doesn’t make modern expectations stupid just because the standard is not being kept up to date. I have not written a single SMS since 2013 or so, and my life is better for it. Also there is definitely open third party chat apps that provide an open standard that can just be installed as one of a few apps, the problem here is that potentially no one is using them.
The main advantage of a computer in your pocket against earlier phones is that you can fundamentally install any software you want, not just what the device manufacturer deems acceptable, so why would anyone not take advantage of this for messaging is beyond me.
You just listed mostly things that already exist with sms or should exist as a standard and some of them, Google has tried with RCS but companies like apple actively refuses adoption. Yeah, you can install apps but ideally you’d not be required to, it would be a choice. Sending a text message ought to be a standard process. This is a lot of hate for the idea of standards dude.
The thing is it’s a specific standard that just hasn’t kept up, you shouldn’t be married to any software, and you should be able to decide yourself what you use, I can’t change what big tech does with their software, but I can call people stupid for not using the ability of their computers to run custom software.
I despise the trend of people not realizing what they legitimately can do with their hardware, because they were just too scared to install software. I so often stumble upon people who can’t accomplish simple tasks because they are terrified of installing software, and this messaging thing is definitely one of these issues.
Essentially if you are given a library of software, and you have a problem that is solved by installing software, why would you not install software, it’s mostly free, and requires only the briefest thought about what you want and where you can find it.
You’re entirely missing the point. Communication systems ought to be standardized and mostly has been. You’re acting like you can magically install apps on your relatives and friends phones if you want to.
I have zero fear of installing incredibly custom software and honestly do so most days…
Not sure how someone this intelligent can so easily get lost on the idea that communication happens on a network, not on one device, and therefore standards help interoperability… It’s sort of bizarre
Yes I can’t do shit about communication systems not being standardized to the degree I’d like and with the features I’d want.
So what I try to do is try to bully people until they use an app that everyone can be relatively happy with, SMS is essentially the only one I don’t accept because it’s 20 years old and doesn’t behave sensibly for the modern area.
I can understand that standards help interoperability but realize that for SMS, obviously that has failed because apple has rejected RCS for now and developed a default experience that is better. I don’t control any of that shit. I can just tell people to install chat apps if they want to talk to me. And I can bully them if they don’t.
The network is a network of communicating software so the standard can be installed by default or after the fact, it doesn’t make a difference if everyone would just install software. Being angry at apple or WhatsApp or whatever for not writing a messenger you like is sorta stupid, they are companies they’ll never do what you want, being a angry at users that refuse to use options freely available to them can at least improve the situation for me because they can install what I, or they want to use.
I’m in the US and my thought is that it’s easier to use sms because not everyone uses Signal, not everyone uses Telegram, and those types. If they did… One person would prefer Snapchat, the other would prefer Signal… Too many choices. With SMS, it’s just your phone number, and everyone has a phone number.
Otherwise you gotta get usernames for different people for different apps… It’s too complicated.
It’s not username based, it’s based on your phone number. I really don’t get what’s holding people in the US back to move on. Because these arguments don’t apply at all.
I think Snapchat is more a social media app than a messenger by the way.
I only text like 5 people. I’m not downloading an app to talk to 5 people.
This has to be a US thing, in Switzerland there is not a single person I communicate with using iMessage. It’s WhatsApp or Signal.
It is a US thing. It sucks.
Indeed a US thing, Brazilian here
And a little telegram.
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That’s because your mobile plans are usually different and you get charged for each SMS, while SMS is typically included for free in mobile plans in the US. Since you have to pay per SMS, people instead use WhatsApp and Signal which don’t have a per message charge.
That’s a thing of the past. Nowadays, in Switzerland you get everything unlimited for 20 a month.
In the past, messages cost 10 cents on a prepaid plan, so people started using WhatsApp for free messages at some point, and it just kind of… Stayed
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You still think people get charged for sms?
America really is behind
I always see that given as a reason but we had unlimited texts in the UK long before smartphones took off and everyone here uses platform agnostic apps.
That’s completely untrue. Unlimited SMS is part of basically any plan. 5 buck prepaid plan has free SMS included.
I haven’t seen a limited minute or SMS plan for years in the UK, are you sure you have any idea what you’re on about?
Don’t forget, iMessage is not using SMS. It’s like WhatsApp or all other messengers, but Apple only. It uses the same app, but that’s it. And yes, no one pays for texts, because all plans have texts included. Some prepaid plans maybe.
In France, there’s a telecom that offers unlimited sms for 2e per month.
They’ll also say they’re too smart to be affected by advertising.
Honestly, I have found teens using iOS to be more tech illiterate. Like they dont know about Piracy, Ad-blockers and stuff. Crazily believe that apple IS privacy friendly and shit like that.
These kids have been ready-made by apple to be corporate friendly. A whole generation that can’t do anything if it isn’t installed by the app store. Think how useful that is for corporations.
Even worse, my iOS-using teenagers know nothing about online privacy at all! Despite me paying for a family account with Bitwarden, they still use the same bloody password on all their accounts.
Waiting for the next credential stuffing attack to breach their Shit Tok account. Maybe then they’ll listen to me…
Big problem with modern software is where you aggrogate diffrent ‘views’ of data without making it clear what your looking at, mom gets confused where her documents run off to when they disappear from ‘recently used’. Dont know how it works and it controls you.
Yup. They dont bat an eye when posting so much info about them on Social Media and scream privacy.
I’m a lifetime android user, but if I was more concerned about privacy I would probably switch to apple. I don’t think google is the one to trust here. Knowing everything about me and using that to make money is Google’s job.
If concerned about privacy you wouldn’t switch to Apple - you’d actually install a custom OS on your Android phone, since you’re allowed to do that on most phones.
Exactly. Why would trust another corporate with your data! Apple blocked 3P trackers at the same time boosted its own Ad networks. They want to control everything about the device, the browser and more.
Yep - this is the answer. Google may be just as/more untrustworthy than Apple, but at least Android is an open system, where you have the option of going for a privacy friendly OS. Apple is a completely closed system - Hotel California.
