Apple announced RCS with a whimper when it should have been a bang
Did you catch Apple’s RCS mention during WWDC?
Of course it's a whimper, Timmy wants you to buy your mom an iPhone to chat.
That's it, for Apple the mere mention is already too much. Why would anyone want compatibility if they also just could buy an Apple product?
Also the reason why ipads and Vision don't support multiple users: not only should you buy an Apple product, but so do your partner, parents, kids, etc.
iPads actually do support multiple users. They just hide the ability to turn it on behind complex IT management tools that your average user would never be able to figure out.
IIRC, it's controlled by the carrier and not encrypted. If that's the case, it's bad. We've been moving away from carriers and internet providers, and got some privacy back by various means. Why would be roll that back?
Because everyone is too distracted by “Apple bad” to realise how truly awful RCS is.
Apple being shit has been proven time and again. This is just the latest edition
RCS was designed to be implemented by the carriers, but all the carriers tried it, failed to gain any traction, and dropped support again, so now the only server is the Google one which is used automatically by the Google messaging app (which, to their credit, does support encryption, through a proprietary extension which they are now allowing Apple to use as well)
You’d have to ask Apple that question.
What android application supports RCS except Google Messages? So, for me it is not about "allowing iOS users communicate with Android users", but about allowing communications between iMessage users and Google Messages users.
Bingo. RCS is yet another proprietary protocol, one controlled by Google (GSMA who originally designed it have practically forgotten about it for a decade) and without an open specification. RCS also doesn’t have a standardised approach to encryption as it’s designed for lawful interception.
So unless Apple have licensed Google’s implementation and extended version of RCS, this will be a shitty, insecure way to communicate between the Apple Messages and Google Messages apps and nothing more.
Google did an impressive job applying pressure and suggesting RCS was a perfect solution when in fact it’s just putting more control in Google’s hands. RCS is not an open “industry” standard. You nor I as individuals can implement it without paying license fees to see the specification and fees to have our implementations tested and accredited.
And Google have extended GSMA’s RCS with their own features (such as encryption) which is not part of the official standard and they haven’t made open either.
If Apple had been pressuring Google to implement the iMessage protocol or whatever, we’d have been up in arms (and rightfully so).
But instead of us all collectively hounding Apple and Google to ditch proprietary protocols and move to open ones such as Matrix, Signal, XMPP, etc (ones where we could all implement, use open source software clients, etc) we’ve got this shit:
Proprietary, insecure, non-private communication protocols baked into the heart of hundreds of millions of devices that everyone is now going to use by default instead of switching to something safer, private, public, open, auditable, etc etc.
If Apple had been pressuring Google to implement the iMessage protocol
Lololol
Yes and if christians had been pressuring congregations to worship Satan that woulda been super upsetting too.
Edit: funny so many people are mad when you point out how absurd an argument is when it posits that a company might do the polar opposite of everything they stand for
Samsung messages was using RCS since 2012... Years before Google messages adopted it.
There are others out there that use it but call it by different names like "advanced messaging", "SMS+" etc
Google was the first to add e2e encryption and push it hard though, but if you send a RCS message from Google messages to Samsungs messages app, it won't have e2e, and most likely will be the same with messaging Apple.
But given how much Apple have fought to make it hard (or at least inconvenient) to message between them, and shut down any apps that made messaging between Apple and Android better, this is a big step for Apple
I find it funny how transparent everyone's pro apple bias is in threads like this. I'm proud to say fuck apple every chance I get because they say fuck users every chance they get. And yes I know because I have them probably $8000 over the course of 10 years or so. I was all in until the iPhone came out and they returned to the "proprietary is the business model" Apple roots.
They don't even try to embrace standards except in cases where it makes them money. Their entire mo is to erase the existence of standards if a buck can be made off of it. Apple being such anti consumer monopolistic pieces of shit being uncommonly recognized is pathetic and sad, and the perfect example of corporations being a negative influence on society.
There probably are people who died because they couldn't charge their phone and couldn't call an ambulance. And no I don't care about Apple's security theater or other talking points. All of it is bullshit
Why celebrate a feature that was added for non-customers? Why celebrate a feature they were forced to add rather than chose to? Don’t get me wrong, I think this should have been done long ago, but what’s in it for Apple to waste some of their precious announcement time? The fallback mode of iMessages doesn’t fall back as far? Yay?
What do you mean added for non customers? The entire purpose of not adding RCS or supporting iMessage for Android devices is to create a worse experience for their customers if they interact with non-customers. Sure it likely drew more people to buy iPhones, but it's also arguably pretty awful for any society that plays apple's game rather than just downloading a cross platform app.
Why does it bother you, the presentation is made for investors. Investors want to know if Apple will still be able to compete in the European market and that's all they really had to show.
The WWDC keynote isn't an investors meeting, it's for Apple to talk about their exciting new features that are coming and to prepare developers for what their sessions are going to be about. The announcement was made with little fanfare because it was like a "FYI, your communication with Android devices will be slightly better for them now"
Now we need to wait for Android to get support too 🙃.
Android already has support*
*assuming you want to use Google messages, and don't root
Yeah. I used Textra for years, and was confused why it was taking so long to get RCS. Finally decided to look it up and learning that it wasn't an open protocol yet. It's frustrating.
I have switched to Google messages, and it's been nice to text people who don't know enough about messaging to use a different app. It's only nice because Google's Messaging app is so commonly the default though.
It needs to be open and available in all apps that support SMS.
lol this author. Android users are they ones who need to celebrate.
Why?
So long as the green bubble still exist there's no reason for Android users to celebrate either. I had to change to iPhone because it was costing me job opportunities. And I won't be able to switch back until the green bundle is gone. Apple knows this so without legal action they're never going to end that.
I highly doubt that. I've never had to text during the interview process, everything was over calls, email, or wherever hiring platform they used. Texting in an interview process is kinda weird...
JFC, I’m old, and this new use of the word throws me for a loop because everyone writes like I’m supposed to already know what it means .
This will always be my RCS: https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/
Reaction control system to me, lol
Had to verify what JFC was several times before it stuck for me. Acronyms will always happen. I remember when someone recently was upset when I typed rmr. Apparently they didn't like that I skipped the rest of the letters but that's how I always typed it on America On Line Instant Messager back in the day. AOL Instant Messager, or AIM for short.
Sometimes we just have to update with the times or not care, I go back and forth
Edit before someone points out rmr is not an acronym; k
RCS is radio scheduling software to me ha https://www.rcsworks.com/gselector/
The arrogance, pettiness, and childishness of how Apple treated this announcement is shocking.
Should they have spent 30 minutes of WWDC telling about how great RCS is?
That's the Apple way. Apple hasn't compared the iPhone to another phone since the first phone announcement. They pretend other phones don't exist (this is the fastest iPhone yet!). So it makes sense that a feature to communicate with other phones isn't given much importance.
I'm glad they're adding support, but I also feel like this is a hard one to sell to the general public. If it creates a better experience, word will get around about it, but going on stage and talking at length about how there's a new messaging protocol would have been a challenge for non-technical viewers
Apple pretending RCS doesn't exist would be like Google acting like RCS isn't a 15 year old protocol without e2e encryption
Oh wait...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple will finally adopt RCS in iOS 18, effectively ending a yearslong fight for feature parity between iMessage and Android.
Apple didn’t go over how RCS adoption will finally let iPhone and Android users send each other high-resolution pictures and videos.
Apple was largely forced to support RCS in response to the mounting pressure from global regulators and competing companies.
Apple was the only holdout, and regulators, combined with some bad press (remember when Tim Cook told a guy to buy his mom an iPhone?
It’s just too bad that the long-awaited unification of the iPhone and Android’s messaging systems was drowned out by unsettling AI-generated emoji and jiggling iMessage bubbles.
Even without Apple’s acknowledgment, I’m just stoked that I’ll finally be able to exchange photos and videos from the 21st century with my iPhone-wielding friends and family members for once.
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