Google has launched a campaign against Apple’s insistence on keeping iMessages sent from iPhones incompatible with texts sent from Android.
“It’s time for Apple to fix texting” reads the headline:
“It’s not about the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no texting over Wi-Fi, and more. These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.”
“There’s a really clear solution”, the ad continues.
“Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone.”
This walled garden approach has led to teen bullying, according to multiple studies. As the iPhone makes the user experience of receiving texts from Android users worse,
iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background,” Google explains. “Without read receipts and typing indicators, you can’t know if your Android friends got your text or if they’re responding.”
https://twitter.com/Android/status/1479875457667448837
“Apple’s iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy,” Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP at Google, tweeted In January, after the Wall Street Journal ran a feature unmasking the strategy.
“Using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. The standards exist today to fix this.”
