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Blue Bubbles vs Green Bubbles: Explained!

Marques Brownlee · 6.5M views · 2022-01-24 · 20:46

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Overview

Marques Brownlee explains why iMessage's blue and green bubbles matter, covering the technical, commercial and social side of Apple's messaging lock-in. It also discusses RCS and what could be done about it.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend it as an eloquent, well-rounded summary of the blue-versus-green bubble issue.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2022–2023

Topics

Consumer devices & gadgetsTech industry & business models
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imessagercsappleandroidmessaging

What people said

martinflack · 2022-04 · Recommendation

For a long-form answer, Marques Brownlee has a video[0] that discusses the technical, commercial, and social aspects. [0] [VIDEO]

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aurizon · 2022-01 · Recommendation

A clever and nefarious tactic - makes me wonder how this can be mis-used for assorted malevolence. What about beards? Red hair? This 'tube does a good summary of it, he is very eloquent. [VIDEO]

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max_ · 2023-10 · Reference

Because the angle of the iPhone was not to be pragmatic or cheap. The value proposition of something is not in what it already has in comparison to other items, but in what it offers that other items don't. Let's talk about programming languages for example. In APL [1] there are no loops, no keywords, but that is not the value proposition of APL. It's value comes from the fact that you can think about complex programs very effectively and write complex programs in very short statements in a quick amount of time. Let's also talk about luxury brands like Louis Vuitton bags/shirts. It's not that the buyers get those bags/shirts at 10x - 100x the price of a normal bag because they are stupid. They do that because LV bags/shirts are for signaling wealth i.e proof of riches not proof I am not naked. Now lets go back to the iPhone what was it's value proposition. I would suggest they are the following. 1. The iPhone was aesthetically superior to other smartphones in terms of both the hardware & software. I believe this came from Steve Jobs's formal background in fine art and it's intersection with his interest in technology. 2. Over the years the iPhone has built a trust worthy reputation for the masses as "a device that doesn't suck". If you buy an iPhone it is very unlikely you will experience buyers remorse. I reminds me of the phrase corporate people used to say "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". So, it is a brand you can trust, you can't say the same for Android, what bran

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Sources

Video by Marques Brownlee, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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