Before the Internet became popular, the most similar thing to online chat applications was text messaging. Nowadays, when talking about online chat applications, everyone will mention WeChat in unison. But in fact, WeChat, as a national-level application, has always had problems of one kind or another, which is really not in line with its current status in the country.
Recently, Xiaohei tried iMessage, the text messaging application that comes with Apple , and found that it has similar functions to WeChat, as well as some unique advantages. Xiaohei even once replaced WeChat in some aspects and became my main chat tool.
Apple users have heard about iMessage for a long time, but perhaps they have only stayed at the hearing stage. Before using iMessage, Xiaohei once thought it was just the "English name" of Apple's text messages. But in fact, it is fundamentally different from SMS. Like WeChat, it transmits data through WiFi or traffic, so it is more appropriate to call it "instant messaging software".
At the same time, activating and using iMessage is not as difficult as imagined. Just open the "iMessage" message in Settings-SMS and select the corresponding "Send and Receive" address. Of course, the most important thing is to use it with an internet connection. Interestingly, if you send an iMessage without access to the Internet, the dialog box will change from blue bubbles to green bubbles.
The green bubbles represent Apple’s built-in text messages, and the blue bubbles represent iMessage. Therefore, you can identify whether you are currently using iMessage by the color of the conversation.
Compared with WeChat, what are the advantages of iMessage?
Whether it is life or work, WeChat is now inseparable. Therefore, before experiencing it, Xiaohei did not discuss whether iMessage can replace WeChat, but looked at the advantages of iMessage in certain aspects. Is WeChat worth learning from?
In the chat process, emoticons are essential, and sometimes even involve "picture fighting" situations. In this regard, iMessage is no worse than WeChat. Unlike WeChat, iMessage emoticons are generally embedded in some applications, such as Picsart, GIPHY, etc. At the same time, you can also download emoticon-related applications from the Apple Store.
In terms of quantity, the emoticons in WeChat are comparable to iMessage, but in terms of quality, Xiaohei believes that iMessage is better. The image quality of iMessage's emoticons is higher, and most of them use the cutout effect, combined with the white chat background to make the emoticons blend into the background.
In addition to emoticons, there are also some special effects and interesting features that can make chatting more interesting. In WeChat, after typing "Happy Birthday", many birthday cake logos will be sprinkled in the chat background, while iMessage leaves the choice to the user.
Whether it is Emoji, picture emoticon package, or text or symbol, it can be sent with various effects. Currently, there are two options: bubble and screen, each of which corresponds to many special effects. For example, on Valentine's Day, you can choose to spread roses all over the screen and send them to your girlfriend.
WeChat has always been criticized for the difficulty in using voice chat. The biggest problem is that you cannot pause or drag the progress bar when listening to other people’s voices. This creates a problem: if someone sends a voice message that lasts for 60 seconds, you want to If you want to listen to the whole thing, you have to hold your phone up. If you encounter any key information that is missing, you have to listen to it again.
Recently, WeChat finally added the function of pausing when listening to voice. But after experiencing iMessage, I found that WeChat is still not comprehensive enough. In iMessage, the received voice can drag the progress bar and pause at will, which is as convenient as listening to the recording.Xiaohei believes that WeChat can definitely learn from this feature to improve the voice chat experience.
Transmitting pictures, videos, and files through WeChat has always been a long-standing problem, because often the pictures sent are inconsistent with the source files. Even when WeChat supports sending files up to 1GB, many people are not willing to transfer them through WeChat.
It is much more convenient to transmit through iMessage. You can directly select the built-in pictures or videos in the system and click to send. During the sending process, the image quality will not be compressed. It is worth mentioning that iMessage also supports "live picture" sending, which WeChat does not currently support. We hope WeChat will follow suit soon. After all, the number of iPhone users is still very large.
Sometimes, when we share some pictures, we will directly call the camera in WeChat and make adjustments based on this. But in fact, the camera in WeChat does not call the camera that comes with iOS, but WeChat’s own camera application, so the quality of the pictures produced varies. In iMessage, the built-in camera is called.
In addition to typing and voice, video calls are also one of the ways to establish connections. In terms of video calls, iMessage calls FaceTime, and FaceTime has many powerful functions. For example, in "screen sharing", the other party can directly view your current mobile phone interface.
When using WeChat video, Xiaohei discovered a pain point, that is, after cutting out WeChat, the other party can no longer see you and can only hear the sound. In iMessage, no matter which interface you switch to, you can make normal video calls.
Details determine success or failure. These aspects of iMessage are worth learning from.
In terms of certain functions, WeChat has similar functions to iMessage, but the actual experience is very different.
I wonder if you are like Xiao Hei. When chatting with friends, you will always stare at the words "The other party is typing" at the top of the WeChat dialog box. On the one hand, it can show whether the other party has seen the message you sent, on the other hand, it can also arouse the desire to chat, giving each other a strong sense of interaction.
iMessage has similar functions, but the presentation is very different. Unlike WeChat, which uses text to replace the input state, iMessage uses the "ellipsis" animation effect to replace the input state, which looks more vivid. The methods adopted by WeChat and iMessage are very direct, but Xiaohei personally believes that iMessage’s method is more natural, because after the ellipses and animation, it becomes text input immediately.
During the chat process, iMessage has several functions that WeChat does not have, but they are quite practical functions. It can improve the chat experience, that is, when you send a message, "Delivered" is displayed at the bottom, which means the message was sent successfully, but the other party did not see it. If the other party sees the message, it will prompt "Read".
Of course, if an admirer uses iMessage to pursue you and you want to selectively ignore them, you can also turn off this function in the settings.
WeChat has a "quote" function, which is used to accurately reply to the other party's message. The functions related to iMessage may be more comprehensive.
Press and hold the message box to choose a reply. A new conversation page will pop up. After replying separately, the two messages will be connected in series through a curve.
It is worth mentioning that iMessage also has a quick reply function. After long pressing the message, 6 symbols representing different attitudes will appear at the top, namely love, like, dislike, haha, exclamation and question, making replying simple And efficient.
After comparing the chat pages of iMessage and WeChat, it is not difficult to find that iMessage is more concise.In fact, in comparison, iMessage only lacks two elements compared to WeChat, avatar and sending time.
Avatar display may be optional, but message sending time is a necessity. So why did iMessage choose to delete it? In fact,
is not, iMessage just hides it. Swipe left on the chat interface to see the hidden timeline. I have to say that this detail is indeed worth learning from WeChat. It implements the phrase "simple but not simple" with practical actions.
The above is Xiaohei’s iMessage experience, and after comparing WeChat horizontally, he found some things worth learning from WeChat.
Of course, iMessage also has shortcomings. For example, compared with WeChat, it lacks the key functions of voice to text and withdrawal.
But overall, as a national-level chat application, WeChat should do more than this. I hope that WeChat can achieve "small but beautiful" in the true sense in the near future.
Source: WeChat, Google, iMessage
