The green bubble — How Apple is profiting from bad UI
How the color of a UI element became a social divide and sales tool
PlayStation vs Xbox. Intel vs AMD. Nvidia vs Radeon.
For as long as there have been 2 competing tech options, there have been passionate fans on either side. This is true of the so-called “Phone wars” — the battle of Apple vs Android.
As a web developer, I don’t really have much of a strong opinion about which device is “better”. I tend to buy Android because they are cheaper and more practical for my use, but I will admit there is an attractive luxury feeling to iPhones. However, when I saw that the latest battle in the phone wars involved UI, I was intrigued and wanted to dig deeper.
The green bubble
Recently, the phone wars have been focusing on a small yet infuriating problem — the green bubble. What is a “green bubble” anyway? To answer that we need to take a small step back and think about how iPhone users communicate.
iMessage
iMessage is an Apple-exclusive instant messaging service. You may think that iMessage is the same as sending texts (SMS), but it has a lot more functionality than just that, eg;
- Videos
- Pictures
- Location data
