Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple
Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple
Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps... like Apple’s own iMessage.
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Unless the EU makes them, they're not adopting rcs. I could see them putting out an imessage app for Android though. Probably ad supported to make the experience extra shitty for us. They'd quickly own the messaging market, at least in the US.
Internal memos explicitly stated execs were worried that if they brought iMessage to android, poor families might buy their kids cheap android phones instead of iPhones.
You can't make this stuff up
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition
The audacity of parents trying to buy something less expensive in these crazy inflated times
That was from 2013.
Ok I'll ask, how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting (other than this RCS stuff)? You can still text. Or is it that weird color thing or checkmark that kids are social pressured into?
The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up
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This was the experience Android users had initially, then Android started parsing them and adding the reaction to the message. This is also when iMessage started getting that type of message instead of the reaction, as a sort of dig at iMessage
Doesn’t look like it does.
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Sure am, iOS 17.0.3. Didn’t work on the 17 beta either nor in 16 or the 16 beta. Also doesn’t matter whether it’s coming from a Pixel or Samsung Galaxy.
Can you tell me what functions? Emojis?
Images are a lot lower resolution (and no “live” photos which are cute if your mom takes a pic of their pet bunny), you can’t add people to group chats or rename them, you can’t see if someone’s read or typed your message, you can’t “like” texts without them appearing like the above post, I think there are even sound bites, little games but I haven’t played with them.
Are "custom stickers" (or whatever they're called) a thing on Android? My dad's been having a blast taking a bunch of goofy pictures of himself and making stickers out of them. We get a good laugh out of them whenever he sends us a pic of himself leaning into the screen giving us the finger.
Yeah, they are built into Gboard and work even animated over MMS.
Iphone users keep sending me long horribly compressed videos i can't see at all because it's not a problem between iPhones. And something about group chats?
That's all I know of based on my experience.
And Android users send me postage-stamp sized videos I can't see at all. Not gunning, just saying it's a problem in both directions (and apple's fault). Also, Android doesn't have the same easter eggs, like automatic confetti filling my screen when someone writes the word "congratulations!" in iMessage. Oh, right - iMessage gives me in-line replies and the ability to give a thumbs up/down/heart etc. response to a single message. Don't know if android has this feature, but android users just get a blank text if I "thumbs up" a comment, for example.
Yes, we literally have all of that including normal quality images if Apple would just play fucking ball outside of their own ecosystem.
Reactions are a thing in most messengers. It's just apple using proprietary code.
Some android messaging apps have the ability to interpret emoji reactions and display them correctly. The issue with photo and video quality is infuriating, though.
Google Messages (RCS app) does that. It even works from iMessage to Android but that is just because Google parses the SMS text that says they reacted that iMessage passive-aggressively sends and makes it appear correctly. It's not following RCS protocol, it's basic text parsing is all.
Incidentally, Google also started sending the same pass-aggressive reacted SMS messages to iPhone users for those using those RCS features, so now Apple gets the messages Android users had to deal with for years (and still do, if they aren't using Messages). I don't know is Apple is doing the same parsing or not as Google, if they aren't then somewhat ironically to Apple's intention Android now has the better react experience.
It's a lot of things, and Apple kinda backed into the lock-in aspect I think by mistake. At the time it debuted, you mainly used SMS when mobile texting, and SMS is garbage. It's not encrypted, was limited to a small number of characters, etc. Picture/video messaging also isn't part of the standard, so MMS was tacked on with massive limits, because the thing about SMS is that it wasn't really designed with it's own bandwidth in mind and instead piggybacked on the carrier signal in idle time (I'm real fuzzy on the details because it's been so long, if someone knows exactly that would be helpful context.) Most importantly, in the US at least, SMS was a fee carriers absolutely scalped you for. When iMessage came out, carriers were still charging absolutely stupid prices for a package of like 200 texts and per text after, and receiving also counted towards that.
Apple says "hey we have the internet on this thing, let's make it a feature that when you send to other iPhone users it doesn't count against your text package" and then built a "modern" text platform. E2E, rich image/video support, the stuff you mention, etc. They made it so that you didn't have to worry about whether your friend was on iPhone, you could send a message to their number and Apple would figure it out. The green bubble thing initially was just "btw you're paying for this one." The reason I say they kinda backed into the lock-in thing is because obviously the idea here was "buy an iPhone and stop paying stupid carrier fees" which is obviously a lock-in strategy, but that aspect of the carrier plans basically collapsed as Facebook released Messenger that same year, so it quickly became "unlimited for $20" and then just "it's all in your plan (which we're just being less obvious bout gouging you on.)"
The green bubble thing sticks around though in the US largely because the US is one of the few places where iMessage becomes a major player in the messaging space, probably because the US market sees a larger share of iPhone sales due to economics and Apple not really having a low-end strategy except "buy an older iPhone." Other places go to WhatsApp or WeChat or whatever, but Apple continues to grow (I think around 55% in the US?) and now it's an annoyance for everyone. I don't think I've ever really seen anyone care about the green bubble other than "shit now I have to figure out how to send them this video of the whatever." At least for younger generations, this just means that the primary text method becomes Snap (me and my wife are about the only people my kids open the Messages app instead of Snap for) while the olds all use Facebook Messenger, and those who refuse just spend more of their day annoyed.
Anyway, it was a nice convenience when it launched. Personally, I think Apple has little reason to develop and process messaging for free for Android and businesses don't do things to be nice, but they're all about service revenue, so I think they should release an Android app, and make it easy to buy stickers and shit like that, send money via Apple Pay, etc. iMessage has already subtly shifted that direction on iPhone and I know at least in my friend/family group we pass money around like that all the time, and this becomes another thing that's sort of annoying when we hang out with someone who isn't on iOS. also, probably obviously, but it's not even like "oh we're hanging out with the poor friend on Android" or anything, he is also holding a $900-$1200 phone, so the lack of interop on these types of things that should probably just be a protocol is annoying af.
Wikipedia sais WhatsApp was released 2009, two years before iMessage. So the idea wasn't new and they most likely didn't lock out Android users by accident.
Of course the idea wasn't new. That's very nearly Apple's business model - they're rarely first to market with a technology. I'm sure if I go look, AIM was probably in there pretty close the App Store launch. But Apple's implementation was quite new. Everyone in the US at least was texting with the phone number as the identifier. Apple made it so that no one had to change any habits, use the same method for texting you have been literally in the same app you always have, and if you text another iPhone it just works better. They didn't make it worse on Android.
I'm not sure how this is "lockout." I already made the argument it's a lock-in tactic, but like when Tesla came out with the supercharger network, should I be mad that it doesn't gas up my Honda? Why would we expect that Apple is going to develop and maintain an app for Android for free and the massive amount of infrastructure that goes with it any more than I would expect Tesla to have added a gas pump to the supercharger network? And similar, it's not like superchargers existing means all of the gas stations are gone.
It's also worth noting that RCS functionally didn't exist during development of iMessage (I think they were forming a committee to decide which committee will implement committee structure votes or something) and that even now RCS implementation is questionable at best between not having E2E as a requirement and the fragmentation that exists even across Android and most especially carriers (lots of examples of RCS being iffy in this thread alone) so it wasn't like Apple looked at a fully-formed SMS/MMS replacement and chose to do their own thing.
Then you tack on 10 years of Google absolutely fumbling the bag with their messaging strategy (everyone reading is thinking of a different one - you're all correct) and now we end up in the situation we're in where not only did iMessage lock-in work for Apple, it worked better than they hoped and it's not just keeping people on iPhone, it's actively attracting people.
My optimistic take on this is that I hope they decide the lock-in isn't worth it in favor of the type of model where they monetize through Apple Pay and stuff and build an Android app because I sincerely doubt there is any other way toward unified messaging, in much the same as Tesla now licensing superchargers to other EV makers. As it stands, Apple could give a shit about Samsung's ads, and aside from the lock-in, a core of their brand is privacy/security so RCS as-is will be a non-starter. Well covered in this thread, but the EU isn't coming to save us and the US has congress that can't even regulate it's own bowel movements, so
The Tesla comparison would work better this way: while you're driving to another Tesla owner's place, you're having a smooth ride, no bumps, car works as expected. Then you put your other friends address into into the navigation and the radio switches to noisy FM and one of the headlights starts to flicker. It's lock-out because no non-iphone user can join that club. It's not lock-in, because every iphone user could easily switch to one of the "cross-platform" messangers. Not that I like Google. They're both sh*t. But just opening up your infrastructure for others doesn't mean you have to develop and maintain apps for other OSes.
SMS works the same as it ever has. Apple hasn't broken anything, they're not polluting SMS, it's always been shit. The Tesla (probably touching a little more on real life) shipped with shitty QA that gave you a crap light and bad stereo. If you take Apple completely out of the equation and just process standard SMS between two Android phones, it's still going to be garbage. If you add an iPhone, nothing changes. When you add iMessage into the mix, it's still not breaking anything, only adding a shim on top of SMS, which admittedly sucks, but I think users would rather see "float liked your message" rather than no acknowledgement. This is also what's happening on Android (and also iOS) a lot of the time.
But just opening up your infrastructure
"Just" is doing a frick-ton of work in that sentence. At a minimum, they would have had to build and maintain data centers, or at the very least add a lot of capacity to existing centers to support potentially quite likely a few hundred million to a billion Android users. Now you have to design and document APIs for other people's use. This alone is why I said just build the app themselves, believe it or not it's probably easier/less headache in the long term. And then there is supporting the API, the users on non-Apple platforms...
And why do they want to do that? We're talking about many millions in expenditure per year for Apple for which they get nothing except less competitive advantage.
I can only tell you about Europe, because nobody here seems to use imessage. SMS are basically dead since the first generation of smartphones came out. They are used for OTP codes from banks sometimes but that's it. The only reason why people use SMS in the US seems to be Apple. They didn't make SMS worse than they were (which would be hard to achieve), but they basically force people to keep using them. Well, or abandon their apple friends. For the API, I think Apple could afford that, honestly. They don't have to handle the data between Android phones if they support some form of federation. Only between Apple and Apple, and Apple and Android. Your operator also handles SMS when they go to or come from other operators. I think Apple just likes the peer pressure they seem to create with that app in the US. From a business perspective that might be smart, sure. Still, very malicious behavior. I'm glad there's more and more regulation coming up (at least in the EU). If imessage wasn't a niche here, they'd have to comply.
Yes, having to figure out how to send a video is super annoying. The easiest default is FB messenger because everyone has it, but fuck I don't like giving my private messages to meta.
My go-to is just to send an iCloud link. I technically have a Facebook account, but for various social reasons I don't tell anyone and basically only use it for occasionally browsing marketplace. Even that is more data than I like to give Facebook.
It goes both ways. Both videos and photos from Galaxy phones end up at like 128x80 on my iphone.
It would be fixed both ways if Apple adopted rcs
iMessage is basically proprietary RCS. SMS doesn’t support images, for example. When you send an image via “sms” you’re really probably using “mms” behind the scenes, which has severe limits to quality. If you send an image with imessage, RCS, or any of a variety of custom messaging protocols, you can get the full-quality image.
They also support gimmicks like “reacting” to messages which get overlaid in-line with a heart icon. On SMS it is sent as “MooseBoys loved ‘be right there’”.
They also support gimmicks like “reacting” to messages which get overlaid in-line with a heart icon. On SMS it is sent as “MooseBoys loved ‘be right there’”.
Technically, yes SMS doesn't support reactions. But you can do what Google does and just parse that text and "turn" it into a reaction for viewing purposes.
If an iPhone user sends me a reaction it looks fine to me, but funnily enough now when I send one back it looks the exact way Apple sends it to non Apple devices.
RCS is basically proprietary RCS.
It is not open, it is controlled by the telcos, and google has been pushing their own proprietary version of RCS to the telcos.
It’s no better than iMessage. This isn’t a problem in the rest of the world, they just all use WhatsApp.
This is a legacy of the US being out in front of adoption of SMS, and it still being ingrained. It’s largely only a US problem. And it’s not even really a problem.
I love iMessage, but I have WhatsApp and signal and like 19 other apps that offer messaging for people who prefer it.
but I have WhatsApp and signal and like 19 other apps that offer messaging
That’s the problem. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but Americans seem to be quite averse to downloading a new app or signing up for a new service just to communicate with someone if I have their phone number. As a result, it needs to be supported by default on all phones as shipped. Today, the only thing that fits that is SMS.
I guess. I’m American and interact with plenty of friends via discord, instagram and others. My friend group has a private discord and I use DMs instead of iMessage all the time.
how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting
Not entirely sure what you're asking but
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iOS does not allow you to use any other messaging app for SMS. This is surely intentional to lock you into iMessage.
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If you're messaging iOS --> iOS your "text" messages (SMS) are automatically upgraded to the iMessage protocol, and there are a wide variety of features that are enabled without the user downloading any other apps or switching the protocol. It just happens.
You can turn off iMessage and you’ll be sending texts as regular SMS.
...why would you do that?
No clue, just saying you’re “allowed” to use SMS if it’s important to you. But I might have misinterpreted you!
Above commenter was saying that you're not allowed to use any other app besides the default messages app to send SMS on an iPhone, so a third party can't just come in with an SMS app that also implements RCS so everyone can be happy
The other replies answered it.
You can send SMS on iPhone with the Google voice app. Yes it would be from a different phone number than your SIM, but it works.
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Do you think the problem lies with Apple, or the idiot kids that somehow created a hierarchy around a text bubble color?
And let’s face it- if you owned/ran a company that was making fuck-tons of money because idiot kids rallied around exclusive text bubble colors, you’d want to keep that going as well. Don’t even try lying about it.
It’s not just the bubble color. The bubble color means it will be more difficult to exchange photos/videos (they get sent in MMS and compressed to hell) or use stickers/reactions properly.
So? Why is that Apple’s problem to fix? Whining about this is the same as whining to your neighbors because their kids have nicer sneakers than your kids do- and then expecting them to fix the problem.
If you want to have the features of an iPhone- GET AN IPHONE.
Or just don't use iMessage for texting. Every other messaging app has these features and is free and usable on every smartphone
SMS isold and shitty, but its supported on every phone model. Apple stacked iMessage on top of it for rich media when both endpoints support iMessage. android and others stacked RCS on top of SMS for the same rich media purposes. When incompatible devices communicate (iOS<->non-iOS), they fall back to crappy SMS. You're saying you like the separate-system status quo and if you want to communicate with one group or the other (iOS or non-iOS), switch devices. We're saying why can't we all just have one rich-media format that works for everybody?" I don't care if Apple switches to RCS or opens up full-featured iMessage to everybody. I just want to be able to talk to all my friends without us having to buy the same hardware. Are you just being intentionally obtuse?
I have an iPhone, and the primary reason why is because 90% of my friends and family will not adopt another app for messaging. Why should they when literally everyone else they communicate with can take iMessages?
And that is really Apples “fault”. Not really, though, because it’s not an accident that they have an amazing messaging platform that is the system default and just so happens to be proprietary. And as such they have no incentive to fix it, because it will only lead to people like me leaving iPhone.
Yeah. I’m done arguing with these clowns. They think they’re entitled to something without having to pay for it. Apple’s messaging platform is superior.
End of story.
And why should they take a proprietary product and make it accessible to other platforms because a bunch of kids decided to create some bullshit ‘*Lord of the Flies-*like idolatry about it. I swear- they think Android is so superior to apple, and then cry about how Apple won’t they them have iMessage? ROFL!
Kids are idiots and Apple is exploiting it.
No, they’re not. They didn’t make the kids rally around bubble colors. They didn’t create the hierarchy. Nor did they create any enticements or reward those that used it. It just happened. Not doing anything to stop it isn’t exploiting it.
And expecting any company to cater to the stupidity of its or it’s competitor’s user base is fucking ignorant.
As I said- you k ow damn well you’d do the exact same thing about it- which is nothing. And collect tons of cash.
Apple literally created the hierarchy...
But they didn’t.
As I said- you k ow damn well you’d do the exact same thing about it- which is nothing. And collect tons of cash.
No I would make it available to everyone in a fuckin' heartbeat because I'm not a scumbag but maybe that's why I'm not a CEO.
You can't make this stuff up
Except that You literally made it up though? You embellished the part about poor families and cheap phones, here's the actual quote:
I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.
How else would you read that lol come on, now
Kids might want an Android phone for another reason than "we're poor". For a while, there were plenty of apps you could get on an Android that you couldn't get on an iPhone. Customization was a big deal back when I was in highschool. All the cool kids had these shitty custom launchers that made their phone borderline unusable if you didn't know how they were setup, but that was the cool thing to do back then.
I've got the money to buy an iPhone, but prefer Android for customization and app reasons still. Apple is far too restrictive of a phone that you own. I like the ability to side load apps, and I play a lot of emulated GBA/DS games, and apple doesn't allow emulator apps on their store.
I can afford an iPhone 15 but I run a used OnePlus 6T I got on eBay for $100 because postmarketOS runs well on it. I ran a $200 PinePhone for a while before that. Bring on the phones that put the user's control ahead of the profits.
I'd read it the way it was written. Apple has less expensive phones for people who want them, and honestly most poor families just get their phones through their carrier at a monthly rate, so your assertion isn't really a necessary tactic.
Uh... Apple has the iPhone. That's all they have. They make the iPhone. One phone. What other phone do that have?
They currently offer 4 different families of iPhone for sale. The cheapest one is the SE for $429.
What else could it imply? Surely if money is not an obstacle they'd just buy the iPhone they wanted for their kids.
Since not even iPhone users in Europe use iMessage I highly doubt anyone would use it outside the US.
I feel Europe is a lot more diverse than you think. In Norway, which have a fairly high percentage of iPhone users, iMessage is the most used - or at least I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use it by default.
A few friends chat are on Messenger or Snapchat. Signal / Telegram / WhatsApp etc are extremely rare.
And also as a Norwegian I don't know a single person that uses iMessage.
Everyone I know are using Facebook messenger, Snapchat or WhatsApp.
Well but I’ll guess most of those you know use Android while most of who I know use iPhone?
Mostly iPhones actually, they do use a lot of facetime to be fair, but almost all chatting is Facebook messenger
I tried using the Apple app on Android for tracking the tracking thingies. Horrible, horrible app. I will not be trusting anything put out by Apple for Android unless they do a Microsoft and go all in. Otherwise, they will always have a reason to make the Android experience worse than the iPhone experience.
There is a FOSS app for that https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard
It's built into my phone now. But thanks
Under new EU laws, Apple will be forced to allow interoperability with iMessage in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean them adopting RCS or bringing iMessage to non-Apple platforms, but it does mean they'll need to at the very least publish an API allowing external software or services to use iMessage.
I just expect them to make the interoperability as shitty as possible
I think they found imessage not to be a leading platform so AFAIK this isn't the case for now. Maybe if more people start using it they'll revisit the question.
RCS isn't a good solution. As long as all RCS implementations are proprietary and Google doesn't even include an RCS client in AOSP and doesn't let you use a third-party client it's just as shitty as iMessage. Just use Signal, it's FOSS, cross-plattform and stores as little data about you as possible. It's also not run by some garbage big tech corporation.
I do, but most people don't
You gotta convince people to switch to Signal. That's what I've been doing for a long time, and it works!
I lost half the people I'd gotten on signal when they removed sms. People liked it well enough when they could do all their messaging from one app on Android.
Why is it so hard for Americans to use multiple chat apps? Here in Europe, most people (especially those with friends/family in a different European country, because we use different apps in every country) have an entire folder full of chat apps on their phone. Sure, that's not great, but pretty much everyone accepts it when I "force" them to use Signal.
Is there any precedent to ads in Apple products (apart from their store)? Although they'll surely find other ways to annoy non-Apple users, I don't think ads are "in style" for them.
Unless carriers deprecate SMS/MMS.
Phone carriers should be deprecated.
This is what I believe Google is actually trying to get carriers to do, and I suspect carriers (in some shape or form) will actually do this, just not in the way you think.
RCS will eventually become the dominant messaging standard, however, I think they're actually working on a backwards compatibility for SMS and MMS in some capacity. In this way, phones (like the iPhone or older Android phones) will still be capable of sending and receiving SMS and MMS in typical elitist walled-garden fashion, but the carrier will receive it as an RCS message and relay it to an RCS-compatible device as an RCS message.
In this way, group chats with four Android users and two iPhone users will still allow those Android users to benefit from RCS from each other (typing indicators, reactions, potentially some level of E2E, support for large media, etc), while the iPhones in the group chat will actually be the ones having a negative experience (no typing indicators, reactions appearing as text messages, no E2E, obnoxious green bubbles) since Apple refuses to integrate RCS into their Messaging application. Of course Apple will continue to gaslight their customers through high contrast green bubble dark patterns, and continued refusal of adopting RCS or creating iMessage for Android. As they've made clear, they don't care about giving their customers the best possible experience, and prefer to maintain market control for as long as possible.
The #GetTheMessage ads are likely gearing up for the eventuality of this change, and the Pixel x iPhone ads are all "buddy buddy, kill them with kindness" so they can out Apple as the hostile ones when they refuse to acknowledge the existence of other smartphones either through its aggressive marketing, or through refusal to adopt open standards.
If this were all to happen, depending on how well the RCS backwards compatibility worked and its ability to out Apple as the shut ins that they are, I could (crazy talk) foresee Apple creating a standalone iMessage app to, at the very minimum, keep Android users talking within their iMessage ecosystem.
Not going to happen. They charge such an insanely high premium vs real cost for a very primitive messaging system, they're not letting that go!