 This is going to be one of those ramp videos where I go on about a subject that most of my viewers probably already know, but this is a video I've wanted to do for a while just so you can share it with other people because this is something people should know. When you use a piece of technology every day, you should understand the basic concepts of it. I'm not saying you have to know all the technical details on how it works, but if you drive a car, you should know that oil is used to lubricate and gas is used to power the car, not the other way around. So I'm going to talk today about text messages, which I understand that is a very vague term. It's just saying that it's a message that is text. I mean, an email could be considered a text message. Me writing you a letter and mailing it to you through the snail mail could be considered text message. But normally when we say text message, we're referring to one of two technologies, SMS or MMS, which are technologies that have been around since the 90s. I don't remember the exact date, but I think SMS early 90s and then late 90s we got MMS. So these are text messages that you used to use on your old flip phone where you send messages. So SMS is simple mail service, simple mail something. And that's just plain text. All you can say is text. I want to say it's limited to 160 characters or somewhere about that. And if you want to send more, it had to be split up. And that's why if you try to send long messages back in the day, and still probably today on some devices, they might come in in different orders because it's actually how to split them up into different messages. Later in the 90s, we got MMS, multimedia, again, I should have looked up these terms before I started. But basically it's the next version that allows you to send photos and videos and other binary files to other people's phones. And these are old technologies that have been around since the 90s. They do have some benefits, but they are old and limited. The benefits of them is they're not constrained to one company. If you were to use Facebook Messenger, for example, you're using Facebook and everything you send is going through Facebook's server, being stored on their server, their data mining that. And the other person you're talking to has to have a Facebook account. Even if they don't like Facebook, they have to have a Facebook account. They have to use Facebook software. Text messages, like emails, they're not like that. They are, you can send from one company to another. So if I'm on AT&T and someone else is on Verizon, I can send a message to them. They're not locked in. It's still going through AT&T servers and Verizon servers. But that person doesn't have to be on AT&T or T-Mobile. If I'm on T-Mobile and they're on Google Fi, I can still talk with them. That is the big benefits of text messages over chat applications, okay? So why am I talking about this? Because, and I understand, a lot of people, they don't realize they're using one program on their phone that does two different things. For example, iMessenger, iMessenger, if someone else is on iPhone, it sees that they're on an iPhone and it's going to use chat protocols and send everything through iMessenger, iCloud or whatever. So Apple is watching everything you do. They're storing everything you do and the data mining it. And the other person has to be on that to use that functionality. Android has the same sort of thing if you want because unlike iPhones and iOS, you have a choice. You don't have to use Google's Messenger. You can install whatever text application you want and use that. But if you use Google's Messenger application, it's going to try to default. If the other person is using Google Messenger, it's going to use a chat protocol that goes through their servers. There are benefits to that in that you can send larger files. So one of the things that this comes down to is especially when it comes to videos. You should never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever send a video through a text message and by that I mean send the actual video file as a text message. Because what's going to happen is it's going to get pressed down small and this has nothing, nothing to do with Android versus iOS. I hear that all the time. I was sending someone on an Android device sent me a video and it looked horrible. Why do people use that? It has nothing to do with that. It's because you're sending it as a text message, not a chat message. And it also has nothing to do with the devices. It has to do with your carrier. Because different carriers have different file size limits. And I used to be thinking it was just like one file size for all files. But I actually looked it up the other day and AT&T will have different file size limits than Verizon. And I used to think it would be one megabyte, two megabytes, three megabytes, whatever. But actually from what I read it looks like they might give one megabyte for photos and three megabytes for videos on AT&T. Where Verizon, and I don't remember the exact numbers. I'm just saying here, two megabytes for photos and then they give you four or five megabytes for videos. The thing is, if your phone tries to send it too large, it's going to get rejected. And a lot of chat applications will automatically resize it. Or like on my phone, my chat application, I go in and has a don't resize, which means it's probably not going to get sent because it's going to get rejected by the carrier. Again, nothing to do with the phone itself. Or I can say automatic resize or keep it under one megabyte, 600 kilobytes, whatever. I can choose what it resizes the files to. And that's why you should never send videos. Because even at the best options, it's going to be like three megabytes. It's going to be pixelated. It's going to be, the sound's going to be all messed up. So now you're thinking, oh, well then I have to use chat applications. No, because that's probably going to compress it as well, but not as badly. What you really, in my opinion, should do is use text messages. But put that video somewhere. And I really don't care where, as long as I can access it easily. You can use. And I'm not backing any of these, but I'm just saying, I much rather you uploaded to YouTube, Google Photos, iCloud, Vimeo, Archive.org, Odyssey. Some of these allow private videos. Some of them allow unlisted videos. Some of them allow, you know, where it has to be public. So whatever works for you best, but don't text me a video file. Upload it somewhere and send me a link. There's so many benefits that it's easier to download. It's not, when you're sending it a text message or it's going to my phone and it's taking up space, maybe I don't want to download it. Maybe I just want to watch it. And then maybe later on I want to download it on my computer. It's just never send that. And the same with photos. So if you're sending me a photo that's something I'm going to look at in my text message, that's okay. But if you're sending me something I want to keep and maybe later on print, don't send it that way. Upload it to a service. And yeah, a lot of these services may scale it down, same with the videos. But they're going to be a lot better quality than in a text message. You can also use services that you can upload to at the full resolution for both the videos and pictures and no compression besides what it's already compressed at. And I can get those original files, even with chat applications, it's going to recompress it. If you want the original, you can put it somewhere where they can pull it down. And again, everyone should have a server at home. That's not a hard thing to do. But I understand a lot of people don't. Dropbox. I don't like Dropbox, but that would be an option, Google Drive, iCloud. I don't know much about iCloud. But think that you'd be able to put a full-size video up there for them to pull down without it being recompressed. So those are options there. And so again, the other day I had this conversation, and this is another topic, when people just, I've explained this to them and they just look at me like I'm crazy. So many, many times I hear people, especially iPhone users, because they just are so stupid and I'm sorry if I offended you there. But yeah, if you're spending that much money on a phone that you can't change the keyboard or the messenger application, you're just stupid. That's what you are. They'll go to me, a literal conversation the other day. Someone's saying, every time I try to send a message to this guy, to his Android device, it won't go through. Why? You know, because he has an Android device. And I try to explain, well, no, you're sending it as a text message. There's a file size limit. You're probably sending it too big, either from your end to Hibs and it's not being resized so it's getting rejected. And like he didn't get that, he goes, I think it has something to do with data versus Wi-Fi. No, no. That's another thing people don't understand what data versus Wi-Fi means anyway. And yes, nowadays the text messages and the MMS messages will use your data or Wi-Fi. But it has nothing to do with that unless your Wi-Fi or data connection is so slow that it's just not getting through. But then it wouldn't matter. Again, it has nothing to do with the phone on the other end. What it probably is, is that you're sending something too big as a text message and your application, your iMessenger is not resizing it. Something like that. I can't say for sure. It goes, I think it has something to do. When I'm texting with different people, it's different colors, it's a green and then sometimes it's blue. And I go, yes, that has to do with whether you're actually texting them or you're using Apple's cloud services to chat with them. And I go, you're either going through their servers where you're using a chat client or you're sending it as a text message. And he looks at me, shakes his head, turns to someone else in the room, goes, hey, do you know why these colors are different? And she basically said the same thing. She said, well, it depends on whether they're on Android or iOS. But again, it's not because they're on Android or iOS. I mean, it kind of does because iMessenger can only run on iOS where other chat applications can, you know, Android, you have the freedom to choose what you want. But it's because it's sending as a text message because they're not on iOS. And again, it has nothing to do, because I can do the same thing on Android if I use Google Messenger. Just understand your technologies. Text messages, again, have a lot of benefits over chat clients. Chat clients have some benefits, but I feel like the drawbacks in this case are less. And it's just, we don't even need MMS messages. I should be able to just upload something to the server and send you a link. And then whether it displays it, you know, a preview or not, that again has nothing to do with whether it's a text message or a chat message. It tends to do with the application. Again, not iOS versus Android, but whatever application you're using to view those messages, they might pull down a preview, they may not. Like Google Messenger, if I send, if someone sends me a YouTube video, it gives me a thumbnail in the text message application I use. I don't think it does do that. It's just not a feature. It could be something that could be added in. Anyway, my camera's about to the 12 minute limit here. So that's it. It was a rant. Feel free to comment below. I know I called iPhone users stupid and I was trying to avoid saying that even though it's the truth, but a lot of Android users are stupid too because they equate Android and Google, and Android does not equal Google, which is a whole video I need to do explaining that. But yeah. Go ahead. If you hate what I said, comment below. I'd love to not listen to your comments, but feel free to do it. Thanks for watching, and as always, I hope that you have a great day.