A Google SVP has called out Apple for identifying Android users through its Messaging app with green bubbles, a color that’s apparently so ugly that it’s compelling owners of Pixel, Galaxy, and other popular Android devices to ditch them for iPhones.
“Apple’s iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy,” Hiroshi Lockheimer wrote in a recent tweet, alleging that Apple’s stylistic choices are synonymous to “peer pressure and bullying.”
“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 SVP explained. “The standards exist today to fix this.”
Lockheimer’s statement was prompted by an article that The Wall Street Journal published over the weekend regarding the rising popularity of Apple’s iMessage app among teens and how the typical zoomer supposedly reacts to messages that aren’t sent by iPhone owners, which are marked in the standard blue. Android users and their green bubbles are viewed as “gross,” according to some of the users approached by the publication.
“Jocelyn Maher, a 24-year-old master’s student in upstate New York, said her friends and younger sister have mocked her for exchanging texts with potential paramours using Android phones,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, his texts are green,’ and my sister literally went, ‘Ew that’s gross,'” Ms. Maher said.
Source: The Wall Street Journal (via Hiroshi Lockheimer)