Clothing (or other things, clothing was just an example) does get you excluded from a group. The only reason a bully would want to "include" the bullied person in their group is so they can bully them more.
I agree that they could open up iMessage to competitors with relative ease and that this would be a good move. Not because it would seriously stop bullying, but because it would make it a little bit easier to find a common messenger to use (we don't really have that problem in my home country, as most people use WhatsApp, which is multi platform).
What I'd hate is if Apple removed all indicators that what I'm sending or what I already sent is an SMS/RCS message instead of an iMessage. It shows me what features work for that particular conversation, and if I'm roaming in a region where sending SMS is not free, I want to know when I'm about to send one.
I doubt the bullying would be any different if it was a beautiful red (or whatever is considered a pretty chat bubble) instead.
And even if it was a blue bubble, the bullies would find another reason to bully someone.
I get the peer pressure part and sure Apple might be exploiting that in America, but in the past it was clothing brands or whatever it is now. Making the bubbles the same color (or even bringing iMessage over to Android completely) would get rid of a single symptom, not of the root cause.
Funny how many people wanted RCS on iOS in order to be compatible with Android, while large parts of Google's implementation of RCS in Android is proprietary as well.
I do, and I couldn't care less. I think a visual indicator that tells me "hey, this is an iMessage" or "hey, this is an SMS/RCS message" is a very good thing to have.
Google Maps was a great app and service, it had decent navigation and always a lot of information on a lot of places. Nowadays it's cluttered with features including a "news feed" with social network-like posts made by people on places in the area.
On iOS devices I can highly recommend Apple Maps nowadays. They completely overhauled their maps a few years ago and I got great results navigating with it. The app isn't bloated, it's fast, the map material looks great and their version of Street View is a lot more sophisticated.
For strictly navigating you can also check out TomTom AmiGO. It's a free variant of TomTom's navigational system. I wouldn't really use it outside of car navigation though.
I used to use Sygic a few years back, but they switched to a subscription model and keep nagging existing "lifetime" buyers to subscribe.
Most people will use whatever the default on their device is. Most phones that aren't iPhones come with Google apps and services set as default.
The only Google services I still use are YouTube and in rare cases Google Maps. But if YouTube continues to enshittify I'll stop using that. I've been using Google Maps mainly to get information about places to eat/sleep in cities, not really for navigation.
I may have done everything Apple wants me to do then. I remember getting a single Apple Music popup in the Music app years ago, but nowadays I'm subscribed to their music service anyway. Do they nag (more than once) nowadays when you're not subscribed? That'd suck hard.
Should I ever get nagged again and again by my iPhone, I'll switch phones. This constant nagging and not respecting my settings is the #1 reason I switched from Windows to Linux.
