Apple CEO Tim Cook: Android’s horrid green bubbles will remain, so get a real iPhone

Apple CEO Tim Cook said on Wednesday that Android green bubbles will remain as Apple doesn’t spend a lot of effort improving the texting experience between iPhones and Android devices because its users haven’t been asking for it. Instead, he said, “I would love to convert you to iPhone.”

Apple’s iMessage is winning because of the dreaded green text bubble

Kif Leswing for CNBC:

“I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy on that, on this point,” Cook said in response to an audience question at Vox Media’s Code Conference in Beverly Hills, California. “I would love to convert you to iPhone.”

Currently, texts between iPhones use iMessage, which has a much smoother experience than when an Android device texts an iPhone, in which SMS messages show up as green bubbles. Google wants Apple to adopt RCS, a kind of messaging that is meant as a next-generation SMS replacement with encryption and other modern features.

The questioner pressed Cook, saying that he can’t send videos to his mom because of the limitations of SMS messaging.

“Buy your mom an iPhone,” Cook said.

MacDailyNews Take: Supremely sound, almost Jobsian advice. More, please.

Those who saddle themselves with knockoff iPhones deserve to wallow in the green-bubbled swamp of inferiority forever.

Why should Apple do anything whatsoever to improve the messaging experience for those who settle for a stolen product, knockoff iPhones?

Apple should support RCS in Messages right after they make Windows the default operating system for Macintosh.MacDailyNews, August 11, 2022

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9 Comments

  1. Similar to a deathbed confession for its forthrightness, Tim finally gives an incisive, poke-in-the-eye response like SJ would to a whining narcissist as he is about to exit Apple.

  2. In Europe most people use Whatsapp (I don’t because I don’t want Meta to read my texts), Signal and Threema (very good regarding privacy). But in the US Cooks strategy seems to work.

  3. As someone else pointed out, Google recommending a messaging protocol to anyone is the height of hubris and stupidity. They have had like 6 different messaging strategies flame out over the last decade because of short-sightedness, incompetence, and sheer neglect.

  4. Apple should care because of me, the user, as Tim said.

    I have to interact with people of all types.

    Users aren’t begging you to make other phone users’ texts blue because they probably think it’s a technological hurdle.

    Which it’s not.

    Making an entire conversation green negatively affects the user experience for everyone. Rather than adopting Google’s stuff, which you don’t have to do to make blue bubbles, make the conversation tolerable for the rest of us users.

    1. Why does Tim assume the questioner has an iPhone? It could be the mom who has the iPhone and now the next phone the questioner will buy for mom will be an Android using other messaging apps. I hear Line is rather popular. 😛

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