anecdata: I heard about it a lot. ESPECIALLY when i was in high school and college.
Definitely heard girls (with iphones) gossip and discussing prospective men and say "but his texts are green". Its not code for "he isn't rich" - I went to a private school and hung out with sorority girls so everyone was well off, but something more ambiguous. Something makes blue bubbles feel better.
Maybe its just that iMessage is a more rich form of communication vs SMS, and people hate needing another app to check for that one android user in their life.
> Maybe its just that iMessage is a more rich form of communication vs SMS, and people hate needing another app to check for that one android user in their life.
The user experience of conventional SMS is often terrible; it's not encrypted (I'm not even talking about E2E but simply in-transit encryption as mobile carriers are nasty and may want to snoop), vulnerable to number spoofing, delivery reports aren't supported on iOS (and even then it really depends on carriers) and is slower than iMessage.
Yeah, I use Signal for a few of my friends and I try to get others in so we can all be in the same chat group on PC and phone, the responses I get would make you think I asked them to feed their children to piranha.
Or perhaps we shouldn't trust apple with our communication data and move everyone to something lime signal
But yea, I wouldn't want to date someone who thinks like that anyhow. Their values are obviously too different from my own if they value iMessage over security, privacy, and the ability to modify my own devices
> But yea, I wouldn't want to date someone who thinks like that anyhow... if they value iMessage over security, privacy, and the ability to modify my own devices
Yeah. I think the sorority girls would agree that it may be a bad match.
> if they value iMessage over security, privacy, and ...
Its not source available, but iMsg has long been e2ee and with a focus on privacy - but i can imagine that their word isn't enough for you to trust them.
> Its not source available, but iMsg has long been e2ee and with a focus on privacy - but i can imagine that their word isn't enough for you to trust them.
This is a marketing lie fed to you by Apple. In reality, thanks to pressure from the FBI, if either you or your contact has iCloud backups enabled, iMessage is effectively plaintext. (Same with WhatsApp on iOS, but the situation is much better on Android.) https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...
Its not a lie, it can still be e2ee as a protocol - thats stored client side in plaintext. If that client uploads it unencrypted... that's their fault. (conceptually).
I think its only a lie in that apple has it upload by default (opt-out) which means as you pick it up from a store, its not e2ee, even though minor setting changes (one boolean button?) can make it real e2ee.
Everything is "effectively plaintext" if anyone can actually read it. You could screenshot your texts, and that ruins encryption. And obviously in a multi-person setting any weak link ruins it for all.
Personally, i'm disappointed its opt-out not opt-in, but i think plaintext backup and easy backups are a net-good for the users, even at expense of e2ee. Most customers don't need e2ee, but many will need backups. That said, i think most data, especially texts, could benefit with auto-deletion of old content. Some things don't need to live forever online.
These are all really weak excuses for the fact that the FBI applied pressure on Apple specifically to not add encryption to iMessage backups on iCloud, and there's documented evidence showing that it takes advantage of that.
Apple is acting in the FBI's interest, not in yours.
Besides its E2E, Signal has all the downsides of iMessage; it still relies on phone numbers as identity, is a centralized walled garden hostile to third-party clients and the desktop client is an Electron pile of shit.
Your list of complaints is valid, but iMessage has another major downside: it only runs on Apple hardware. Using Signal means almost everyone can participate in a group chat if they so choose.
Definitely heard girls (with iphones) gossip and discussing prospective men and say "but his texts are green". Its not code for "he isn't rich" - I went to a private school and hung out with sorority girls so everyone was well off, but something more ambiguous. Something makes blue bubbles feel better.
Maybe its just that iMessage is a more rich form of communication vs SMS, and people hate needing another app to check for that one android user in their life.