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Finance & economics
财经版块
iPhone vs Android
苹果vs安卓
College blues
大学生的蓝色忧郁
Putting a price on Apple's text message bubbles.
给苹果的短信气泡标价。
What is the price of cool?
变酷的价格是多少？
About $31 a month, according to new research by Leonardo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago and co-authors.
根据芝加哥大学莱昂纳多·伯斯兹坦及其合著者的最新研究，价格约为每月31美元。
That is how much college students had to be paid to have their iPhone messages appear to others in a (lame) green rather than a (fashionable) blue bubble for four weeks.
要让大学生们在四个星期内，让自己的iPhone短信在别人的手机上显示为（老土的）绿色气泡而非（时尚的）蓝色气泡，就需要付给他们这么多钱。
Introduced to indicate that a message has been sent by services other than Apple’s iMessage, the green bubble has become a marker for those either insufficiently wealthy to afford an iPhone or insufficiently aware of the stigma stemming from their preference for Android, another operating system.
绿色气泡的引入原本是为了显示该短信并非通过苹果的iMessage发送，如今却成了两种人的标识：要么是买不起苹果手机，要么是意识不到自己偏好安卓（另一种操作系统）会招来羞耻。
Better avoided, unless there is a reward.
最好避开安卓，除非有奖励。
The researchers offered American students a choice of participating in experiments with different conditions.
研究人员让美国学生选择在不同条件下参与实验。
In the control, students simply had to upload screenshots and receive a text message, which set a baseline for how much they valued their privacy and avoiding hassle.
在控制组中，学生只需上传截图并接收一条短信，这是他们重视隐私和避免麻烦的基准程度。
Participants in the three other groups were paid to deactivate certain features on their phone: the blue bubbles; iMessage, which provides a few services in addition to the colour; and the camera.
其他三组参与者被有偿要求停用手机的某些功能：蓝色气泡、iMessage（除颜色外还提供几项服务）、相机。
On average, students required $18 to participate in the control group, and $49, $69 and $86, respectively, in the three other groups.
平均而言，学生参与控制组需要获得18美元报酬，而参与其他三个组分别需要49美元、69美元、86美元。
For the researchers, such results demonstrate Apple’s market dominance.
对研究人员来说，这样的结果表明了苹果的市场主导地位。
Ideally, firms would compete to make their products as good and cheap as possible.
理想情况下，企业会竞相将产品做得尽可能优质且便宜。
The tech giant’s position allows it to take another approach: making rivals suffer.
苹果的地位使其能够采取另一种策略：让竞争对手吃苦头。
Since the introduction of common network standards last year, the original justification for Android messages appearing as green has gone.
自去年引入通用网络标准以来，将安卓短信显示为绿色的原有理由已不复存在。（注：此处指苹果系统也支持RCS信息，可与安卓互发信息，因此无需再将安卓短信显示为绿色。）
Still, the company has kept the markers.
尽管如此，苹果仍保留了这些标记。
Documents released in an antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple by Epic Games, a gaming firm, reveal that the tech giant’s bosses saw iMessage as a way of keeping users locked in.
游戏公司“史诗游戏”对苹果提起反垄断诉讼的文件披露，苹果的管理层将苹果短信视为锁住用户的手段。
One possibility is that the green bubbles represent a co-ordination problem for students.
一种可能是，绿色气泡对学生来说代表了协调问题。
After all, most respondents—among both Apple and Android users—told the researchers that they wanted uniformly coloured bubbles.
毕竟，大多数受访者——包括苹果和安卓用户——都告诉研究人员，他们想要颜色统一的气泡。
In principle, competition provides that option; there are no colour distinctions on services such as Signal or WhatsApp.
原则上，竞争提供了这种选择，在Signal或WhatsApp等应用程序上没有颜色区分。
The issue could be that persuading all your friends, or indeed a whole campus, to switch, and eliminate stigma, is a difficult endeavour.
问题可能在于，说服你所有的朋友，甚至是整个校园的人改用其他应用程序并消除羞耻，这是一项艰巨的任务。
There is another possibility, however.
然而，还有另一种可能。
Maybe iPhone users enjoy the status boost too much to forgo the sought-after blue bubbles, whatever they say in surveys.
或许苹果手机用户太过享受这种身份提升，以至于不愿放弃令人艳羡的蓝色气泡，无论他们在调查中如何表态。
