When you send a text message from an iPhone to another iPhone, that text is usually blue. If you send a text message from an iPhone to an Android phone, that text will be green.
It may not seem like a big deal at first, but behind these colorful messages lies a years-long battle between Apple and a group of app developers working on ways to break the blue/green divide.
The first text message was sent on December 3, 1992. Software developer Neil Papworth sent it to Richard Jarvis of Vodaphone, a British telecom company. Jarvis was at the holiday party at his office at the time, so the message simply read "Merry Christmas."
That holiday greeting was a text message, also known as the short message service. Text messaging was a common technology that phone companies and software developers all agreed on: This is how texting was done.
"SMS is the protocol that has basically been used to send text messages for over a decade," said Chance Miller, editor-in-chief of 9to5Mac.
About a decade later, the Multimedia Messaging Service, known as MMS, debuted. Now texts can be longer and users can send images and videos via text.
Then the texting paradigm changed again in 2011 when Apple introduced its own texting app iMessage.
"Apple has billed iMessage as a modern take on text messaging," Miller says.
iMessage offered more than just simple messaging. 'Read receipts' showed whether the recipient of a message had opened a text message. Typing indicators indicated that someone is texting the user back. iMessage users could send and receive higher quality photos and videos. Later, iMessage would add the ability to 'reply' to texts, adding a new dimension to text communication.
iMessage texts also received a new coat of paint: outgoing texts were now displayed blue. Texting an Android phone from your iPhone defaults back to the older SMS technology, which means no read receipts, no typing indicators, and no high-quality image and video messages. Instead of blue text messages, outgoing text messages to Android users were green.
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"There is a stigma attached to green bubbles," says Miller.
In addition to the social implications of green or blue bubbles, there is also a privacy concern. Blue texts - iMessages - are encrypted. This is not the case with text messages.
"The SMS standard does not have any built-in encryption," Miller says. 'Your messages are vulnerable to the fact that your provider can see what you say [or] someone comes in and gives a command to Apple or your carrier and they have to hand over that information.
In recent years, a cottage industry of developers has emerged, 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, claimed to bring iMessage to Android. But Miller says the company used its own Mac computers as an intermediary between its users and the Apple devices they used to text, raising security risks.
"What you're doing is essentially handing over your Apple ID and your password to this company, which then logged in on your behalf to a Mac in a server farm somewhere," Miller says. "So you have no idea what they're doing with your Apple ID and your password, and it's just not a secure way to do it in any way."
Nothing voluntarily pulled the app from Google's app store shortly after launch due to these privacy concerns. In a statement on its website, Nothing apologized and said it was working to "fix several bugs."
Earlier this month, another developer called Beeper launched an app called Beeper Mini.
"Android users can download this app and change their messages from a green bubble to a blue bubble," said Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of Beeper.
Unlike Nothing Chats, Beeper Mini does not use a server park with Apple computers. Instead, Migicovsky says they reverse-engineered iMessage.
"We looked at how iPhones connect to iMessage, and we reproduced the same technique on Android," Migicovsky tells ABC Audio.
"They found a way to spoof it and make it look like you're a real Apple device, even though you're an Android and you're logging in through Beeper," Miller says.
Migicovsky says 100,000 people downloaded Beeper Mini in the days after its December 5 launch. Those who did had access to the world of iMessage, complete 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 families," says Migicovsky, adding: "We heard from people who had more success in dating because they had a blue bubble instead of a green bell."
But that blue bubble communication was short-lived.
On December 8, Beeper Mini users began reporting that their messages were not going through, limiting communications to the older SMS standard. Amid the confusion, Apple weighed in, saying it has "taken steps to protect our users."
"Three days after launch, Apple tried to block Beeper Mini," Migicovsky said.
Apple's statement did not mention Beeper by name, but went on to say that it was "blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to access iMessage," and that these techniques pose "significant risks to user security and privacy." - including what makes users vulnerable to 'junk messages, spam and phishing attacks'.
Migicovsky says this is not true.
"Beeper Mini has definitively and demonstrably made communication between iPhone users and Android users more secure. They changed it from a green bubble to a blue bubble," he says. "The actions Apple took had the opposite effect. They made communication between iPhones and Androids unencrypted - less secure."
Miller says that if Beeper Mini exploits a flaw in iMessage, Apple is right to be concerned about privacy.
"Apple's statement holds water in some respects," Miller said. "Even if Beeper does it for good, someone else could come in and find that reverse-engineered protocol and take advantage of it for things like spam, phishing attacks, junk mail and all that."
For his part, Migicovsky says Beeper Mini is safe.
"We have proven time and time again that we are good stewards of your trust, and have built nothing but a secure and useful application," he says.
Beeper Mini is now active again, with some changes. Android users can still send iPhones messages with blue texts, but they will need an Apple ID to do so. Previous iterations required only a phone number to access iMessage.
"We are still working on a full solution - fingers crossed," says Migicovsky.
As pressure mounts on Apple to make iMessage more accessible, text messaging has been replaced by a new standard: the Rich Communication Service, or RCS.
"In many ways, RCS does what iMessage does with read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality photos and videos, but it's a standardized platform," says Miller.
Most major Android developers have adopted the RCS standard, which means Android-to-Android texting now comes with many iMessage-like features, like read receipts and encryption. Last month, Apple announced that it would support RCS starting in 2024, meaning iPhone-to-Android text calling could get these features in the new year. But Miller says that while RCS is ready to resolve some technical issues with texting, one thing will remain the same.
"Apple has said that RCS messages will still be green bubbles," says Miller.
Hear more about Perspective, from ABC Audio:
iMessage on Android? Inside the battle on green and blue lyrics originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
