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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

I know people like to pick on this. And I know that it is a factor.

But this seems so incredibly reductive.

“80% of teens have iPhones? Must be the blue bubbles. RESEARCH DONE.”

There isn’t a single other reason kids might like it? This is literally the ONLY reason? Did you even talk to a couple of kids?

I’m not denying iMessage is powerful. It sees incredible usage. I don’t know what the numbers are but it wouldn’t surprise me if they would put Facebook to shame (on a message/post/attention basis).

But couldn’t anyone do a deeper dive than the first thing that comes to mind?

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Delivery confirmation has got to be #1, right? There's no feedback from SMS. Messages get lost or sent multiple times as dups. All without having to install an app or use a Meta or Google property.

Edit: Creepy read receipts can be turned off too (I think they're even disabled by default?) Delivery confirmation is one thing but almost nobody likes forced read receipts—they makes text messaging icky like a phone call, because once you pick up you either respond immediately or the other party knows you "left them on read."

I assume everyone has read a message if it has been a few hours after it has been sent, or definitely within 24 hours, whether they deny having read it or not. Whether or not it was delivered is the key information.

The percent of people not constantly checking their phone has got to be so vanishingly small.

Teens may be in class, out somewhere, or (increasingly) have it locked down by parents during certain times. And they may only get short chances to sneak a look. Knowing your message got sent (or didn't) lets you mentally set it aside regardless of the other party's status. And if you do sneak a look it doesn't snitch to the other party, like FB Messenger.

> The percent of people not constantly checking their phone has got to be so vanishingly small.

Sample size of 1, but the amount of time I go without checking my phone has only grown over time.

sms has delivery confirmation built-in

on android it's an option in the settings

works on vodafone, EE and three in the UK (not O2)

That's got to be pretty recent and only in certain markets though. I've yet to see a read receipt from SMS (U.S.).

No, it existed before the iPhone. It was actually weird to not have it on the iPhone, and I remember they were jailbreak tweaks to bring back the feature on the iPhone 3G.

TIL, guess I never had a phone that supported them. Do you know which platforms did?

I don't know exactly, sorry. My Windows Phone had it. BlackBerry also had the feature, but people used BBM at the time anyway.

the first mobile phone I ever owned (nokia 3310) supported it!

from the manual:

> Delivery reports

> You can request the network to send delivery reports on your text messages (network service).

I remember explicitly disabling acknowledging read reciepts on a sony ericsson in the mid-2000s because a friend of mine had discovered how to ask for them on their similar dumbphone and made dumb assumptions about how long until someone should reply.

> That's got to be pretty recent

Yes: only 20 years or so ;-)

SMS (the protocol) doesn't have read receipts. Read receipts are a device specific implementation that sends a message back to the number ( and has existed since before smart phones )

>This is literally the ONLY reason?

For some reason it's incredibly controversial to even imply that the iPhone is just a better product. You will rile up fanboys who are quick to let you know about reparability, battery life, screen resolution and RAM. If more teens are buying iPhones, it's not because it's better, it's because they are being bullied into it.

The green bubble implies that iPhones are a symbol of wealth (of the middle class variety, not significant wealth) and therefore status. That's basically everything to most teens.

I don’t doubt this is what people think. But it does seem a little odd when older, still supported iPhones can be bought for almost nothing.

You could say the same thing about a Mercedes. Doesn't seem to matter.

You can buy scuffed up Jordans for next to nothing too but kids will laugh at you for wearing them. Same if some teen sees you whip out an iPhone 3. Might as well have an Android at that point.

Why do you think Apple being out new devices that are 99% identical so regularly and yet people still fawn over them? It's a new chance to show off your disposable wealth to other people who filled the hole where their personality should be with a wallet.

no one’s pulling out an iphone 3

but a 7 is £100 and still a solid phone that gets updates

I wasn't a teen that long ago and I don't remember anything like this. in fact, I remember quite the opposite: kids who brought nice things into school were made fun of for it. having your parents buy you a brand new car was the worst, but excessively nice phone, laptop, shoes were also bad. there were only two exceptions. if you had a job after school and bought the thing yourself, that was very cool. high-end sports equipment was also acceptable, but only if you were really good at that sport.

I should've put YMMV: general trends don't predict specific examples reliably. Of course over-flexing is often seen as being a tryhard, but owning an iPhone isn't that.

it's entirely possible I'm already out of touch. but I'd guess it's more of a "why can't you just be like the rest of us?" than "haha this kid's parents can't afford an iphone".

Could well be that too

not at all

when i was in high school kids had iphones because they liked them and kids had androids because they liked them

everyone thinks kids do shit for status or clout and not just because we want to and make a choice of our own

lots of kids bought airpods because they work well not because they look cool or whatever

the kids who bragged about having the latest iphone were laughed at and the same went for android kids

> everyone thinks kids do shit for status or clout and not just because we want to and make a choice of our own

Signaling and making “free choices” are not mutually exclusive.

iPhones are definitely about clout & wealth signaling. Moving from where I did in the south to affluent areas of Boston, it was iPhones and Canada goose jackets as far as the eye could see.

I find the 85% figure in the article rather shocking.

Is this because US people have a lot of disposable income?

Just iPhones are pricy even secondhand. Of course Android doesn't update for as long but plenty of people worldwide run unpatched devices.

> disposable income?

Yes. The median household income in the US is $68k. Even at the poverty line for a family of 4 at 26k[0], $1600 in phones for your two children that last 2 years+ is worth it given the immense value it provides, both in time savings (spending hours a day texting / via entertainment) and utility.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#:~:text=The%....

Almost every kid I know gets their parent’s old phones. Apple made a major effort to extend the supported usable life of their phones several years ago and it’s paid big dividends in terms of getting the kids started on iOS. A brand new $400 SE can easily be expected to give 5-7 years of service, which brings the starting price down to $60-80/a to say nothing of the used market. It’s hard to even argue that Android is the cheaper option unless you don’t mind running insecure OS versions for several years.

Only other thing that comes to mind is supposedly the camera on Snapchat is better (native) on ios whereas on android its their own.

Talking to my teen cousins we guessed that it's because most of the iPhones are hand me downs from Parents.

Research: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29817807

That research definitely doesn't seem to support the thesis that it's the green bubbles that are the reason.

It's network effect, visually manifested as green bubble plebs.

I'm not disagreeing that it's happening (it makes sense, and I have no data to say otherwise), but unless I'm seriously missing something, nothing in the article linked by mgh2 mentions network effect, iMessage, green/blue bubbles, or anything related.

That’s a shallow “article” quoting a single stat from a survey.

Nowhere does it say WHY teens are choosing iPhones. And the discussion just seems to assume it’s iMessage with only supporting anecdotes about its popularity and practically nothing about other possibilities.

> But this seems so incredibly reductive.

> “80% of teens have iPhones? Must be the blue bubbles. RESEARCH DONE.”

Who's being reductive?

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