Since 2011, Apple has offered users of its products the opportunity to use iMessage, a messaging application known for its blue bubbles. However, in 2024, the Messages app icon is green.
On March 27, a tweet from developer Benjamin Mayo piqued our curiosity: how is it that the logo of the Messages application in the Apple environment is green, when the brand has been defending the superiority of iMessage for years, known for its blue color? In the United States, the war between blue bubbles and green bubbles has become a major societal issue, as teenagers are mocked when they send a (green) SMS from an Android smartphone.
For Apple, iMessage is the best messaging app on the market. The brand does not plan to launch the application on Android and even recommends in a humorous tone, through its boss Tim Cook, to buy an iPhone to take advantage of the blue bubbles. The arrival of RCS on iPhone in 2024, the successor to SMS, should not change anything: Apple has warned that RCS messages will retain green bubbles.
17 years after the launch of the first iPhone, which only supported SMS (not even MMS), how can we explain the continued green color in the Messages application?
From SMS to Messages, until the arrival of iMessage
In 2007, when Apple launched the first iPhone, there were only 16 pre-installed apps, with no option to install more. Only two of them were green: “Phone” and “SMS” (Phone And Text in English). As early as iPhone OS 1.0, Apple opted for messages in the form of green and white bubbles, instead of separate menus for messages received and messages sent. At the time, it was pioneering.
At startup, the iPhone’s messaging capabilities were extremely limited. SMS was aptly named, since it only supported text messages. MMS came later, with iPhone OS 3.0 (2009), which led Apple to rename its application Messageswith a new logo with an empty speech bubble.
In 2011, Steve Jobs announced iMessage. Considered by many as a competitor to BBM (BlackBerry messaging), this solution goes over the Internet, is free abroad, supports receipt notifications and allows you to send attachments in high definition. iMessage bubbles are blue, to avoid confusing them with SMS messages. Apple’s promise is this: as soon as possible, the iPhone will use iMessage rather than SMS. Users do not have to install an app separately.
iMessage quickly found success. Texting is getting old and iPhone owners are happy to go faster with this home solution. Apple could have taken advantage of an iPhone update to replace the Messages logo with a blue logo, but never does so. The iOS 7 update, launched in 2011, changes all the iPhone icons… but keeps green, now more fluorescent, for Messages.
On Mac, Apple tried blue, then adopted green
Has Apple ever considered replacing the green in Messages with blue? You only need to look at macOS (ex-OS X, ex-Mac OS X) to imagine that yes.
Before the creation of iMessage, Apple offered its own messaging application on Mac, called iChat (with a blue logo). Fans of the brand have long awaited its launch on iPhone, but it never happened. The brand preferred to kill iChat and start from scratch with iMessage.
In 2012, a year after the iPhone, Apple launched Messages on Mac. Surprise : the application has a blue logo, in homage to the blue iMessage bubbles. It must be said that at the time, the application Messages on Mac only supported iMessage. It was impossible to read text messages from his iPhone on his computer.
For eight years, the iPhone and the Mac did not have the same icon. That of the smartphone remained green, that of the computer was blue.
In 2020, with macOS Big Sur, Apple merged the interfaces of iOS and macOS. All the iPhone icons landed on Mac, which put an end to the existence of the blue logo. The color of Messages is officially green.
A usual question?
When you receive a message on iPhone, whether it is an SMS or an iMessage, the notification displays a green logo. A shame for a brand which strongly defends its proprietary technology, which the authorities even suspect of being a means of creating a monopoly. In a way, Apple is promoting SMS with the iMessage icon, an obsolete technology, insecure and less good than its own messaging.
How to explain this decision? Numerama knows Apple well enough to know that the brand is not the type to explain this type of choice. We can imagine that green has become a habit for its users, which encourages the brand not to change it. Another hypothesis: competing messaging applications, excluding WhatsApp, use blue. Apple may think it is better to keep this design, which is 17 years old, even if it corresponds to the ancestor of iMessage, so as not to break the uniformity with the Phone app.
On Android, applications Phone And Messages of Google are blue. Another good reason to keep green on iOS.
Will blue one day become the official color of Messages at Apple? It’s hard to imagine it, when the Mac and the Vision Pro also use green.
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