But why does it matter if the majority of cellular plans provide unlimited texting?

Its about the extra features iMessage has because of Apple's superset of the underlying SMS/MMS functionality. Its also about having a blue bubble (not-poor) versus a green bubble (poor).

It defies belief how much some demographics care about this stuff, I didn't believe it when I first heard either. Some of it is improving with RCS but its got a ways to go.

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dcchambers 8 months ago | parent | next [-]

Exactly this. Even if RCS does everything iMessage does, you still have a dreaded "green bubble" in iOS messaging which is a huge (anti) social signal to teens.

Does it justify their reason for hating on Android/green bubbles? Of course not, but that's 100% the reality of the situation.

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frollogaston 8 months ago | parent [-]

Teens care about silly things like that, but a real thing I care about as an adult is group chats working properly. Like, I was looking for a realtor last year when buying a house. One of them had Android, and I really thought about it, do I want to take a nonzero chance of that somehow screwing the plans up on closing?

That's not the main reason I went with another one, but I still paid attention to how many group iMessages we were in with lenders, seller's realtor, or just me + wife + realtor. Things really did come down to the hour during negotiating and closing, so it might've mattered.

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zifpanachr23 8 months ago | parent [-]

Worrying about whether or not somebody has an Android is going to be very bad for your mental health given that something like 42% of the US cell phone market is Android. Is it possible that you are living in a bubble of people that are significantly more committed to Apple products than the median person?

I don't live in such a bubble, and whether or not somebody has Apple or Android is not something I have ever heard an adult bring up as a serious thing. The most I've ever seen is as an observation about why some sort of thing in a group chat didn't work, but then everyone moves on with their day and the chat continues with the types of text and media that do work.

	▲	frollogaston 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		It was only important for the home-buying process, and somehow every single person involved happened to have an iPhone. Presumably if they were all on Android, they'd prefer WhatsApp, and that'd be ok too. Outside of that exceptional case, I don't think much about what phone other people have, but I personally want the phone that won't break group chats I get added to. Only about 75% of my friends use iPhones, but there's still a decent chance a group happens to be 100%.

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baggachipz 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple's implementation of RCS is such hot garbage that I disabled it and revert to regular SMS to text with Android people. I'm sure the shoddy RCS support is just a terrible mistake and not by design...

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pirates 8 months ago | parent [-]

Would you mind listing a couple issues you’ve seen with it? You’ve got me curious if they affect me and I just don’t notice it what. I don’t have all that many contacts though, so it may be just be a numbers game.

	▲	baggachipz 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		Finally getting around to this... The problem was always that the messages just would not send. "Message failed to send. Try again?" I'd say that happened 3/4 of the times I tried. It simply wasn't worth it to fight with it.

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frollogaston 8 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't matter so much for 1:1, but SMS group chat is a mess (or MMS? RCS? idk).

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tristor 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Because people like sharing photos and videos and MMS is hot garbage? My phone can record 4K60 video and take 48 megapixel photos, but MMS can only handle 0.72 megapixel photos under 300KB and 240p video capped at 30 seconds. Why would /anyone/ in 2025 want to use SMS/MMS when they could use iMessage or RCS, or even WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Discord, et al?