Apple has been accused of intentionally making text messages from Android devices difficult to read.
According to UX Collective, Apple has been accused of using color contrast to make its iMessages more appealing to customers than Android text messaging iMessage’s popular blue and white color scheme reportedly give off higher color contrast than the green and white color scheme that Androids have. The light and dark combination results in more readable text which enables smartphone users to have a better experience with iPhones than with Android devices. This is why, UX claims, one would think iMessages is superior.
“Color contrast is important because it impacts legibility, and in a messaging app, legibility is everything,” the recent report indicates. “Thanks to the darker blue, iMessage users end up with a better experience when texting other iMessage users and a poor experience when texting Android users.”
The green and white color combo reportedly score “very poor” on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at 2.18, UX added. This score heavily affects Android users–especially those who suffer from visual impairments–and, naturally, supports the belief that Apple purposely made Android messages harder to read.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to have had enough of it, as he recently criticized Apple for the contrast between its iMessages and Android messages. He went as far as claiming that Facebook-owned Whatsapp is “far more private and secure.”
“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats,” he griped via Instagram on Oct. 17. “With WhatsApp, you can also set all new chats to disappear with the tap of a button. And last year, we introduced end-to-end encrypted backups too. All of which iMessage still doesn’t have.”
However, Whatsapp, though popular globally, isn’t that well-known in the U.S.
