I purchased my first iPhone in 2019 after nearly a decade of exclusively using Android devices. I wasn’t writing about Android professionally yet, but I’d long been a staunch defender of Google’s mobile efforts, even if I found the then-recent Pixel 4 series testing my patience. Frustrated by a lack of direction from the company’s mobile division, though, I moved my SIM out of a Pixel 2 XL and into the iPhone 11 Pro Max, mostly to see how the other side lived.
That night, I had plans to seeParasite, which had just arrived in theaters after months of festival hype. I sat down, popcorn in hand, trailers playing on the big screen, when my phone buzzed. It was my mom, asking me… something. It doesn’t matter — the conversation immediately went off-track. My bubble was blue now, and my mom had noticed. A number turning blue is a thingeveryiPhone owner notices.
Last week, Beeper — a small start-up led by ex-Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky — tried tobring that experience to Android users everywhere, no iPhone required. For three days, Beeper Mini just worked. You didn’t even need to sign in with an Apple ID — your phone number was all you needed to register your account. It felt like magic. It felt too good to be true. And, ifthis weekend’s technical difficultieshave anything to say about it, I guess it was.
We’re on the verge of anew ongoing war between Apple and a scrappy start-up, and people have already begun taking sides. Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted her support behind Beeper Mini, a company trying to make messaging a little less closed.Chris Smith at BGRaccused Beeper Mini users ofstealingiMessage from Apple, stating no one is entitled to Apple’s platform “unless you pay for it.” Look at Twitter (or the Twitter replacement of your choice), and you’llfind similar thoughtsfromboth sides.
Apple’s war against Beeperhasto happen, if only for the sake of its own messaging. It simply can’t have a third-party piggybacking off its platform — it completely undercuts iMessage as a place that is as secure and private as you can find on the web. But in solely focusing on the battle to deliver some form of iMessage support to Android users — whether it’s through Beeper Mini or failed platforms likeSunbird and Nothing Chats— we’re missing the forest for the trees. Android users don’t want iMessage. All we want, all anyone wants, is our messaging headaches to finally,finallygo away.
It was never actually about bubbles
With all the attention the current state of messaging has received, I’ve seen some Android users — in our comments and across social media — complain about the constant focus on the importance of blue bubbles, even from a US perspective. If iPhone owners are frustrated that other devices don’t support their closed ecosystem, that’stheirproblem, not ours, so the thought goes. It’s a sentiment I can understand, though I’m not sure I agree with it. Likewise, the focus on blue bubbles means we — technology fans — are constantly looking at messaging from Apple’s perspective, rather than approaching the problem from a neutral standpoint.
I think it’s easy to get carried away here, so let’s redefine what “blue bubbles” and “green bubbles” really mean when we’re talking about messaging. This isn’t so much an iOS vs. Android issue as it is a battle between enriched messaging and legacy SMS. For iPhone users, particularly in the US and other regions where Apple reigns supreme, it’s all too easy for regular people — your parents, your friends, anyone who isn’t dialed into the world of technology on a day-to-day basis — to equate enriched messages with iMessage. A blue bubble brings typing indicators, read receipts, location sharing, high-res media, and so much more that a green bubble just can’t offer.
These terms effectively serve as shorthand for modern and legacy messaging platforms. It doesn’t matter that practically every other messaging service — be it WhatsApp, Telegram, or RCS — brings near-identical capabilities. In a small but meaningful group of regions around the world, including the US, iMessage is what people think of when they think about texting. Apple, through its domination in market share andspecificallythrough its influence over Gen Z and younger Millennials, has set the language here. To some extent, you have to play within its rules.
Failure to launch
That’s not to say the 2010s didn’t see a fight over messaging, though. Google rolled out no less than three major chat platforms to try to win over Android users and, more broadly, all users alike. ButHangouts,Allo, andChathave all failed in their own ways, and that’s why the company turned to RCS in 2019. Other apps, including Facebook Messenger, Signal, and the aforementioned WhatsApp and Telegram, also made a go at finding a loyal group of users in the US, all to mixed success. Despite building traction throughout Europe and other regions, for a whole host of reasons, SMS, RCS, and iMessage remain the main way people communicate in North America.
That isn’t to say there wasn’t an effort to change things. In his blog post detailing Beeper Mini’s return to semi-functionality,John Gruber at Daring Fireballasked why Android users weren’t trying to get iPhone users to try other apps:
If Android SMS users were interested in installing a third-party app to enable better cross-platform messaging, wouldn’t they be suggesting to their iPhone-using friends and family that they be the ones who install WhatsApp or Signal or something?
Gruber’s wrong here. Android users, especially die-hard fans of the platform,didtry to make a shift away from iMessage happen, especially in the early 2010s — in fact, in 2022, Iargued for people to keep trying exactly this, back when it seemed like RCS was truly going nowhere with Apple. But while the energy to convince friends and family to just tryone more app, bro, pleasehad dried up by the time Allo limped onto the scene in 2016, I knew plenty of people who found a space in Hangouts. I still have a handful of group chats active in both Messenger and Telegram. WhatsApp… well, it’s useful if you have European friends who insist on it, I suppose.
In all of those personal circumstances, it was the Android user(s) of the group who pushed out of iMessage and into something else, and anecdotally speaking, it was often iPhone users — especially as the 2010s slipped by — that refused to download additional apps from the App Store. I’m not sure about the logic behind this attitude — these are likely the same people who, I’m sure, send posts via DM on Instagram, and have signed up for every attempted Twitter replacement — but regardless, these efforts failed, and failed hard.
And honestly, in some ways, I get it. It’s one thing if a couple of friends talked you into using WhatsApp in 2011. But true Android believers were probably on the Hangouts hype train, and we all know how that ended. Talking anyone into trying a Google messaging platform became impossible, and with good reason: the company has aterribletrack record at supporting any of its services. Trusting your conversations to Google was a recipe for disaster; you were just asking to lose your data within a couple of years. Throw in a lack of trust for Facebook, the company seemingly behind half of the iMessage alternatives, and it all starts to make sense.
But that doesn’t make up for the headache we find ourselves dealing with today.
We just want to talk to our friends
I’m not sure if it was ever right for this pressure to lie on the shoulders of Android users trying to convince their friends not to use Apple’s platform. The iPhone doesn’t force you into using Messages, but it sure as hell makes it as easy and convenient as possible, particularly in North America,where phone numbers still reign supreme. But this is a problem made primarily by Apple and Google; Apple, solely focused on driving up its adoption numbers that the experience itsown usersget is miserable if the person on the other end of a conversation doesn’t have an iPhone, and Google, the company that wasted an entire decade unable to get out of its own way in building a half-decent rival to iMessage.
Let me repeat that, because I think it’s central to the problem we find ourselves in. Apple’s messaging platform punishes not just anyone with an Android device, but anyone willing to text non-iOS devices from their iPhone, and pushes that user to apply social pressure to increase phone sales. And as a side effect, it makes iMessage a less secure platform than if it worked across operating systems. That level of security Apple is so quick to vouch for is sacrificed for the sake of ecosystem lock-in.
It’s no wonder attempts at building iMessage clients on Android have spun out of control over the last few years, but I truly think this isn’t about iMessage at all. Does anyone with aPixel 8 Procare about Memoji? Does anyone considering theGalaxy S24 Ultracare about the terrible experience provided by iMessage games through GamePigeon? Hell, I’m on record thinking iMessage effects are a fun addition to the platform, and even then, I don’t think about them at all when I’m DMing someone on Telegram.
The truth is, all the messaging noise from the last month — Nothing Chats, Beeper Mini, andApple’s promises over RCS— has nothing to do with Android users craving an official iMessage client on iOS. All the vast majority of iPhone and Android owners alike want is an easy way for everyone to communicate with enriched features. Let me make that even simpler, actually: none of us want to think about messaging anymore. We just want it to work.
Apple’s messaging platform punishes not just anyone with an Android device, but anyone willing to text non-iOS devices from their iPhone.
Yes, you can find people with elitist attitudes on both sides of the Great Bubble Divide, and they’re as annoying as ever. But I’d be willing to bet if you asked random people on the street what they think about blue bubbles and green bubbles, all of this comes down to wanting high-res image sharing, or typing indicators, or any number of modern features not included in a dated messaging standard that just celebrated its 31st birthday. SMS should’ve disappeared a long time ago, and public perception of this is finally catching up.
The future is almost here
We’re months away from RCS coming to iPhone, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see this attitude start to shift once it’s there. The vast majority of features people actually want when messaging between iOS and Android are coming with that addition, even if the bubbles are staying that same shade of radioactive green. Or, who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the launch of RCS in a theoretical iOS 18 will prove it was about blue vs. green all along.
But when I got those texts from my mom while I was waiting for the movie to start, it wasn’t the color of the bubble she cared about, or the fact that I had moved my SIM card (remember those, Apple?) to an iPhone. She cared about the improved experience that came along with all that.
In the meantime, if Apple truly thinks its messaging platform stands above the rest, itshouldfeel public pressure to place its client on Android. Compete with the likes of WhatsApp and Telegram for attention, and make your promises to privacy and security mean something. Charge a subscription fee so those pesky Pixel owners aren’t “stealing” iMessage resources. Truly step up and put your infinite money where your mouth is. Otherwise, attempts at apps like Beeper aren’t likely to go away until well after RCS launches on iOS in 2024.
