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I am an Android user. My Samsung S8 breaks up the mass of blue and white group chats with its brazen green bubbles. Girls grimace when they realize I don’t have iMessage and some of my friends may secretly hate me because of it – but I’m cool with it. I’m happy with the phone I have, it’s functional, has solid processing speed, and gives me better battery life than most of my iPhone-wielding friends. I know that nothing Android does can match the type of fanboy fanfare that goes into Apple’s big tech announcements, including their recent WWDC spectacle. Every year they announce a bunch of minor “upgrades” and features meant to keep users in the walled-off Garden of Apple even as the likes of Google, Samsung, and even Huawei continue to gain momentum. I’m not an Apple hater, I respect the incredible business they’ve built, but I do have my fair share of critiques of how they’ve conducted themselves recently. Here’s my green bubble take on this year’s batch of much-hyped Apple WWDC announcements.
For comparison, here’s my @Apple Memoji next to my @Samsung AR Emoji and my @Snap @Bitmoji. #wwdc #wwdc18 pic.twitter.com/A7QcEmKRvO
— Shara Tibken (@sharatibken) June 5, 2018
Memoji:
• Description: Taking a page from Samsung’s AR emoji feature, Apple’s new iOS 12 includes cute and cuddly customizable emoji faces, dubbed “memojis,” that let you recreate your face in a thousand colorful pixels – with perhaps even more detail. It’s like virtual dress-up for your face that you can then annoy your friends with.
• Green Bubble Take: I spent a lot of time toiling on my Snapchat bitmoji but barely use it anymore because A. Snapchat sucks now post-update, and B. Everyone I came in contact with said it looked like shit. I’ll happily avoid having to recreate my oddly contorted face in another medium so I can just spam it in my group chat to tepid responses. Spin-zone: Creating custom memojis would be a time-consuming way to distract your 5-year-old cousin, but doesn’t offer much more.
Animojis Can Stick Their Tongue Out Now:
• Description: Animojis, which you probably saw in Apple’s recent annoying TV ad, can now stick their tongue out as you contort your face. Apple brands it as “tongue-detection,” which I guess has some appeal if you’re looking to up your selfie game.
• Green Bubble Take: Meh, I can’t be bothered. I get jealous sometimes about apps that roll out to iOS first but quirky stuff like this does nothing for me.
32-Person FaceTime Group Chats:
• Description: FaceTime is undoubtedly one of the most popular features Apple has rolled out for the iPhone. Apple has decided to double (or quadruple?) down on this by giving iPhone users the ability to connect to up to 31 other users via FaceTime and toggle between group chat and video. Users can also now use filters and animojis (!) in FaceTime as well.
• Green Bubble Take: If you thought the person sitting next to you on public transit FaceTiming their bestie at full volume wasn’t bad enough, having them intermittently yell to catch the attention of the 5 other face boxes taking up the limited real-estate on their phone sounds like a real treat. I get the idea that FaceTime makes a one-on-one conversation more personal when connecting with parents, significant others, and friends, but adding in 30+ other people just sounds like a conference call from hell – with added puppy dog ear filters. If this ever breaches into the business world, I’m moving to a deserted island.
Another Small Siri Update:
• Description: Siri will now give you suggestions based on your browser and app usage and also has new shortcut tools to help you efficiently spend your time when managing and executing on minor tasks like ordering UberEats hungover.
• Green Bubble Take: At this point, I think it’s universally accepted that most people don’t like the AI-driven virtual assistants on their phone. I hated Bixby so much I disabled it from my Samsung. Unfortunately, Siri is a bigger part of the iPhone than Bixby is of Samsung, so completely disabling it might not be worth it. You might just have to deal with the random voice prompts and secret voice recordings.
New features are great and all, but most people just want a reliable device that won’t burn out after 8 hours and lets you leisurely scroll through Twitter in peace. Or maybe that’s just me. Cheers!.
[via The Verge]
Respond
@TaylorLaabs
@taylor1laabs
Siri suggestions based on browser usage? *slowly disables siri*. That’s really…uhhh…awesome.
Use private/incognito mode like the rest of us.
I’ve never understood the reason or appeal for Siri (or autonomous cars for that matter.) It never works how you want it to. It’s amazing how little society willingly does these days — people don’t even want to drive their own fucking cars anymore.
Siri is great for quick things, I ask her what the weather is going to be almost every morning, and I tell her to text my wife I’m leaving as I walk out of work, that type of quick thing. She’s worthless at going out to the internet to find stuff though.
We got two Echo Dots for Christmas so that’s our morning weather forecast and news briefing now. She responds a lot better than Siri, but she’s also always listening. Always.
I mean, self-driving cars have the potential to ease traffic (no more rubber-necking, and all it takes is one jackass to start pumping their brakes to cause a jam) and drastically lower auto fatalities.
We’re years if not decades away from realizing that potential, but I don’t think it’s a matter of “look how lazy we are” so much as “wow, we can do really cool future stuff.”
I’m all for the future of self driving cars. It would be so awesome to be able to just sit back and fuck around on my phone or read or whatever during commutes.
Only purpose Siri serves is to ask for directions to an address you have saved to contacts, and settle drunk bar arguements. Everything else is much easier to do manually.
Every time I say “Hey Siri”…nothing. Every time I say “Hey silly” to my son…”What can I help you with?” Nothing Siri, I wasn’t talking to you for fucks sake.
I had a dude who worked for me named Cyryl, every time I yelled over to him, Siri butted in.
I thought that was a made up name. The only time I have heard that name was in Archer.
Brutal
Just wait for Project Titan, Magic Leap, Universal Apps, and then layer in AI. Pretty soon we won’t need actual people anymore. It’s gonna be great lol
Cute updates, Apple.
Meanwhile, Google just announced that it can have a robot voice book your appointments over the phone.
Regardless of whether you’re Apple or Android, that’s just weird.
I agree with Will that it’s creepy, but if companies are going to robo-call me to confirm reservations I’m absolutely going to robo-call them back.
Also, Android people: Having an Android device is taken into consideration when applying for a loan. Typically, since Android devices are cheaper and more prevalent in other parts of the word, the data shows that Android users have a higher default rate on loans. You are a victim to shitty data aggregation, yes but you are still impacted from it here in America because your data is being used against you everywhere you tap, click, and go….take that to the bank and then light it on fire lol
The thing I’m most excited about is grouped rich notifications. Since switching back to Apple from Android a few months back, it’s been the one thing I miss. Apple users who have never used Android don’t know what they’re missing or how amazing they are. Seriously contemplating installing the iOS 12 beta just for that.
They used to have grouped notifications back in like iOS 9 with the option to have notifications come through chronologically instead and I’ve missed the grouped so much
It wasn’t the same though. You’d still see all of the notifications, just sorted by app. Now, going off the WWDC screenshots, you’ll just have one notification under an app and it’ll tell you how many notifications you have (so if you have 4 unread texts, it’ll say “4 messages” under iMessages). Sounds small, but it makes a big difference for work flow.
very true. definitely most excited for this and the (promised) performance enhancements
I’m just glad we’re finally getting a redhead emoji
Why do Android people always feel the need to shit on anyone who uses an iPhone? lol. I’ve reliably scrolled through Twitter without bother (whatever that means) on a device that lasts 12 hours+ since I got my first iPhone 6 years ago. I don’t understand. Maybe get off your phone for once and the battery will last longer? Android people can be just as bad as MLM and diet folks.
Also Android people: “But my phone can do xyz and your iPhone can’t”
Maybe I don’t need my phone to do xyz. As long as it texts and makes calls and is easy to use and seamlessly interacts with my other devices/friends, I’m A-ok.
Signed,
A grumpy millennial.
I’m a blue bubble boi, but I think the shitting is heavily in the iPhone’s favor. Green bubble shaming is real.
I never even really knew it was a thing. I don’t know why anyone cares what kind of phones each other chooses to purchase. It’s never crossed my mind to engage in a shit talk to an Android owner because of their phone choice. It always seems like them starting it.
The trash talking is mainly because of the perception that Android phones suck because of the lack of data-driven messaging between the two platforms (there’s no iMessage equivalent for Android so unless you use a third party app like WhatsApp, which the rest of the world uses, you’re limited to SMS and MMS) and the prevalence of cheap and shitty Android phones. The data-driven messaging issue will go away with the implementation of RCS over the next few years and the marketing of the high-end Android phones revving up (Samsung, Pixel, etc.).
I switched back to Apple because even though the camera on my Pixel 2 was godly, and honestly it was the best phone I’ve ever used, the majority of my social network uses iMessage and not WhatsApp so I got tired of sending/receiving overly compressed videos/pictures (because fuck MMS) that looked like they were shot on a Nokia phone from 2005.
Yeah, no qualms with green bubble bois outside the video compression issue, and the fact that “liking” a message comes through as a separate text in a group chat with a green bubble present