by If you send a text message from one iPhone to another iPhone, most of the time that text is blue. If you send a text message from an iPhone to an Android phone, that text is green.
At first glance, it may not seem like a big deal, but behind those colorful messages is a years-long battle between Apple and a group of app developers working on ways to break down the blue/green divide.
The first text message was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by software developer Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis of Vodaphone, a British telecommunications company. Jarvis was at his office Christmas party at the time, so the message simply read “Merry Christmas.”
That Christmas greeting was an SMS, also known as short messaging service. SMS was a common technology that phone companies and software developers agreed on: it was how text messages were sent.
“SMS is the protocol by which text messages have basically been sent for over a decade,” says Chance Miller, editor-in-chief of 9to5Mac.
About ten years later, the multimedia messaging service, known as MMS, debuted. Now, text messages could be longer and users could send images and videos via text.
Then in 2011, the texting paradigm shifted again when Apple introduced its proprietary texting app, iMessage.
“Apple introduced iMessage as basically a modern version of SMS,” Miller says.
iMessage offered more than just messages. “Read receipts” showed whether a message recipient opened a text message. The typing indicators meant that someone was replying to the user’s text message. iMessage users can send and receive higher quality images and videos. Later, iMessage would add the ability to “react” to texts, adding another dimension to text communication.
iMessage texts also received a new coat of paint: outgoing texts now appeared in blue. Sending text messages to an Android phone from your iPhone reverts to older SMS technology, which means no read receipts, no writing prompts, and no high-quality image and video messages. Instead of blue texts, outgoing text messages for Android users were green.
“There is a stigma associated with green bubbles,” Miller says.
Beyond the social implications of green or blue bubbles, there is also a privacy concern. Blue texts (iMessages) are encrypted. That is not the case with SMS messages.
“The SMS standard does not have any encryption built in,” Miller says. “Your messages are vulnerable to your operator seeing what you are saying [or] Someone comes in and gives a court order to Apple or its operator and they have to hand over that information.”
A cottage industry of developers has emerged in recent years, all working on ways to bring the “blue bubble” to Android communications. Earlier this year, Nothing Chats, an app created by Android smartphone maker Nothing, aimed to bring iMessage to Android. But Miller says the company used its own Mac computers to act as an intermediary between its users and the Apple devices they texted on, raising security concerns.
“What you’re doing is basically handing over your Apple ID and your password to this company, who then logs you in on your behalf basically on a Mac in a server farm somewhere,” Miller says. “So you have no idea what they’re doing with your Apple ID and password and it’s just not in any way a secure way to do it.”
Nothing voluntarily removed the app from the Google App Store shortly after launch over those privacy concerns. In a statement on his website, Nothing apologized and says he is working to “correct several errors.”
Earlier this month, another developer called Beeper released an app called Beeper Mini.
“Android users can download this app and it converts their messages from a green bubble to a blue bubble,” says Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky.
Unlike Nothing Chats, Beeper Mini does not use a server farm of Apple computers. Instead, Migicovsky says they reverse engineered iMessage.
“We looked at how iPhones connect to iMessage and replicated the same technique on Android,” Migicovsky tells ABC Audio.
“They’ve found a way to spoof it and make it look like you’re a real Apple device, even though you’re an Android logging in through Beeper,” Miller says.
Migicovsky says 100,000 people downloaded Beeper Mini in the days after its December 5 release. Those who did so had access to the world of iMessage, with most of its features, including encryption.
“We received messages from all over the world about people who were finally able to join the group chat with their family,” says Migicovsky, adding, “we heard from people who were more successful in dating because they had a blue bubble instead of a green bubble.” .
But those blue bubble communications were short-lived.
On December 8, Beeper Mini users began reporting that their messages were not arriving, leaving communication limited to the old SMS standard. Amid the confusion, Apple intervened and said it “took steps to protect our users.”
“Three days after our launch, Apple tried to block Beeper Mini,” says Migicovsky.
Apple’s statement did not mention Beeper by name, but went on to say that it was “blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to gain access to iMessage,” and that those techniques posed “significant risks to user security and privacy,” including leaving users exposed to “unwanted messages, spam and phishing attacks.”
Migicovsky says that’s not true.
“Beeper Mini definitely made communications between iPhone users and Android users more secure. They went from being a green bubble to a blue bubble,” he says. “The actions that Apple took had the opposite effect. “They made communication between iPhones and Android unencrypted, that is, less secure.”
Miller says that if Beeper Mini is exploiting a flaw in iMessage, then Apple is right to be concerned about privacy.
“Apple’s statement holds up in some respects,” Miller says. “Even if Beeper was doing it forever, someone else could come in and find that reverse-engineered protocol and leverage it for things like spam, phishing attacks, spam messages and all that.”
Migicovsky, for his part, claims that the Beeper Mini is safe.
“We have proven time and time again that we are good stewards of your trust and have only created a safe and useful application,” he says.
Beeper Mini is now back in operation, with some changes. Android users can still send messages to iPhones with blue texts, but they need an Apple ID to do so. Previous versions only required a phone number to access iMessage.
“We’re still working on a full solution; fingers crossed,” Migicovsky says.
As pressure mounts on Apple to make iMessage more accessible, SMS text messaging has been replaced by a new standard: Rich Communication Service, or RCS.
“RCS does, in many ways, what iMessage does with read receipts, write indicators, high-quality images and videos, but it’s a standardized platform,” Miller says.
Most major Android developers have adopted the RCS standard, which means Android-to-Android text messages now come with many iMessage-style features, such as read receipts and encryption. Last month, Apple announced it would support RCS starting in 2024, meaning iPhone-to-Android text conversations could get those features in the new year. But Miller says that while RCS may be prepared to solve some of the technical problems with text messaging, one thing will remain the same.
“Apple has said that RCS messages will remain green bubbles,” Miller says.
Hear more about Perspective from ABC Audio:
iMessage on Android? Inside the battle over green and blue text originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
