And it doesn’t apply to anywhere outside the US (Writing this comment on my iPhone SE, which is still on the original battery because it’s much costlier to swap the battery in India).
To me that’s an insane win for everyone, including Apple. Because it completely changes the value proposition of iPhones.
Hand me down iPhones for teenagers became a no brainer since all it costs is 49$ to get a 3-4 years old phone back to brand new. And they get the blue bubbles in iMessage (which, if you ask parents, is THE social differentiator in schools these days). Having a well architected stack and great engineering pays off in surprising ways!
> And they get the blue bubbles in iMessage (which, if you ask parents, is THE social differentiator in schools these days).
I would also add that "if you ask students, it is THE social differentiator" as well.
BUT, how the f_ck is it a good thing to encourage teenagers to get locked in to a company's products so they can stay socially relevant? iMessage's manipulative strategy (because teenagers value social belonging) by Apple is morally corrupt. I'm not saying it's effective (because their strategy absolutely is); I'm saying it's wrong. We shouldn't be encouraging children to get locked into the richest company in the world's walled garden for the rest of their life—what they use as teenagers is what they're going to, chances are, keep using for the rest of their lives.
Teenagers literally do not use Android devices. The iOS market share in American high schools is easily over 90%. If you go to a high school classroom, you would be surprised to find more than one or two Android users in one classroom.
Do you want your future to be one where Apple's locked down operating system has a market share of over 90%? Where Android is irrelevant and neglected, and you do not own your device—because unlike on iOS, some Android phones actually do let you unlock your bootloader and boot different operating systems?
Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage. It lets one company cement their iron grip on the upcoming generations and will result in a net loss of computer freedom.
> iMessage's manipulative strategy (because teenagers value social belonging) by Apple is morally corrupt
Apple decided to build better messaging on their platform. They saw that carriers simply didn’t care or understood messaging and decided to innovate and take care of the experience. Texting on iPhone just works. We should celebrate that. Google could have created a competing product as feature rich but instead decided to spawn and kill 10 different chat apps.
> Where Android is irrelevant and neglected
Honestly, the android handset makers are already neglecting their own OS, looking at the barely three years of support they offer.
> Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage
I already do. Honestly, I support the platform that just works. To me a phone is simply a tool to get things done.
Downloading Telegram, Signal, Discord, WhatsApp, or the number of third-party messaging applications that is widely used by a number of people, within and outside the blue bubble of the US "just works" as well. And unlike iMessage, these platforms let you chat with other people. What's so wrong with that? Is it too much friction to click to install a (superior with objectively tons more features than iMessage that work on all its platforms) third-party messaging client? Telegram even has games, which are quite popular amongst the teenagers, just like iMessage.
