Is having an Android really a deal-breaker for some people?
I asked if people chose iPhone for the blue bubbles elsewhere a couple days ago, and while there was some good discourse on that post, the blue bubbles definitely also came up as a reason.
In my experience, when people find out my texts are green, they oftentimes would rather switch to a different platform altogether like Instagram or just not text at all.
Is this actually a deal-breaker in friendships out there?
Yes, they did. I had an iphone from 2007-2011 and this was the only color my text messages were. iMessage didn't exist yet at that time.
You don't have to blindly trust me. Just look up old screenshots of iphone text messages. Make sure the aspect ratio of the screenshots matches the first 5 iphones, before the made the screen longer with the iphone 5.
This may be a woosh moment, but I feel your link perfectly represents Apple's willingness to create a poor user experience for their customers in order to incentivize them to apply pressure on their non-iOS friends
No, this is the point i am making. Apple intentionally changed the shade as opposed to the parent comment claiming it was badly designed from the start (before blue bubbles).
This is correct. The bubbles were indeed green in early versions, but they used black text, as opposed to the current white text. See screenshot here: https://www.imore.com/iphone-os-2-1-review