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The Mess in Messaging
I have a phone. I know it's a phone and I can call people on it, but I don’t like doing that. I’m a messaging and email kinda guy but there’s one problem with that, there are so many ways to do it and it's driving me nuts. On my iPhone home screen I have 10 separate apps that I use to communicate with people because there is no set standard.
I’ve got iMessage, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, Allo and Yik Yak. It’s totally mental. Some apps I use are just for a single person because that’s their app of choice, others for a select few and some just for you guys but it gets hard to keep on top of. I’m sure that as time goes on more and more apps will appear designed to drive me insane.
The other day I was contemplating whether I wanted to leave the iPhone but then I thought, I’m trapped and that cage is called iMessage. Me, my significant other and my offspring all have a multitude iOS devices and iMessage is our main form of communication and since the upgrade in iOS 10 it's gone through the roof. Plus the fact that I can receive and reply to messages on all of my Apple products makes it even harder to give up.
Other apps such as Allo even though from Google work both on Android and iOS. Then there’s WhatsApp and Telegram which span the former plus Windows Phone (yes I know some Windows Phone users) which contributes to the abundance of messaging apps that I have to install.
So why don’t we have a standard? Recent reviews of the Google Pixel state that it comes pre-installed with 3 messaging apps out the door. Now we have an advantage, we’re geeks (or why would you be reading this) but spare a thought for the normal people how on earth would they cope?
This is probably a pointless rant. But back in the day when we had AOL, MSN, ICQ and a host of other messaging services I used a program called Trillian which merged all of my accounts into one app. I see that there a similar apps nowadays for smartphones but after trying them they don’t really hit the mark, so I’m stuck with this multitudes of icons on my home screen.
So are you in and endless cycle of messaging like me or are you happy with just a single service? Would love to hear about it.
Author
Paul Wright