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If you use an iPhone, you might have noticed that SMS conversations (green-bubbles) are harder to read than iMessage conversations (blue bubbles). That's not by accident — in fact, green bubbles weren't always so difficult to read.
You've probably heard of the green and blue text message bubble colors inside the iOS Messages app. On an iPhone, normal SMS text messages are colored green, while iMessage (Apple's iPhone-exclusive chat platform) conversations are colored blue. Many iPhone users shun the "green bubble" due to the fewer features provided by SMS. If you own an iPhone, you may feel the same frustration when trying to read a green-bubble chat, as they often feel harder to read than blue-bubble chats. That's no accident.
To begin, we have to take a trip back to 2011. As you may know, iMessage, along with the signature blue bubble, didn't exist until the release of iOS 5. Before iMessage was introduced, every message in the Messages app was green, as the only messaging supported at the time was SMS. Once they added iMessage to the Messages application on iOS, the blue bubbles came along with it to help differentiate between iMessage and SMS. Given that the Messages app has stuck with the same green bubble/blue bubble differentiation, it may sound like the hatred towards SMS isn't related to the color at all. However, along the way from iOS 5 to now, a tiny design change opened a user-experience chasm between SMS conversations and iMessage ones. This isn't a story about about the green or blue colors themselves — rather, it's a story about contrast, and its astonishing impact on our perceptions.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 09 2022, @10:06AM (1 child)
' The people without an iPhone don't see the different colour bubbles. So how are they being "nudged" to switch? And the people with an iPhone, they already have an iPhone, so there's no need to "nudge" them to switch.
But all you Android users got "nudged" to read a bullshit article. "Nudge theory" is mostly bullshit - the latest politicians buzzword. "We're going to nudge people into getting vaxxed." Well, that didn't work. Fines work. Fear of death works. Nudging? People can sense they're being manipulated, and the reaction is usually to go "fuck you, asshole."
No android user is going to switch because their texts might be another colour on someone else's phone. This article ranks right up tgere with "blue light before bedtime interferes with sleep," which never caused anyone to go "gee, I can't take a siesta in the middle of the day. Dark mode is bullshit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 09 2022, @04:27PM
I suspect the article author's definition of "nudge" here is:
Teenage IPhone user see's harder to read texts from her Android using BFF's, and starts wailing on Twitch about how terrible it is to read all those "awful looking" texts from Android users.
Her Android using BFF's, wanting to avoid the shame of being labeled a lowly "Android user" who sends "ugly text messages" all run to their parents and ask: "please please please buy me an IPhone!!!!".