Apple announced RCS with a whimper when it should have been a bang

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.

This makes me so mad. I swapped over to an iPhone because my parents are old, don't want to deal with technology anymore, and just want to be able to video call me when I work on the other side of the world.

Great for them, but now I can't really easily video chat or text with any of my other friends because Apple makes anything other than Facetime/iMessage on iOS a dogshit experience. Signal/Telegram/Whatapp notifications randomly mute for me for no reason.

And you know what double sucks? If it wasn't so locked in, I would actually love my iPhone. Apple Pay with it's unique credit card number per transaction means I haven't had my credentials stolen in like 5 years. Bluetooth pairing and swapping is seamless and easy (yes even with non-Apple devices). Apple Music is actually better quality than Spotify and lets me upload my own library with no issues. And ofc phone itself is a really nice piece of hardware with a long support cycle. I'm still running my iPhone X (2017) without having to worry about security or software updates.

But fuck them for their "Apple only" bullshit, and every costing more than their Android counterpart. I'm so sick of their "walled garden".

Because everyone is too distracted by “Apple bad” to realise how truly awful RCS is.

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.

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.

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

Standards. Like RCS which is a proprietary standard that google controls all the keys to?

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.

Android already has support*

*assuming you want to use Google messages, and don't root

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.

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/

Thanks for clarifying it for those of us in the same boat as you.

Should they have spent 30 minutes of WWDC telling about how great RCS is?

They compare platforms from time to time, mostly indirectly. Android gets a mention concerning OS version fragmentation.

Some people think their phone is a status symbol. I just love tech for what it does. Personal phone is on Android, work phone is an iPhone. They're both good.

Honestly surprised at the amount of arguing over iPhones and Androids here, its 2024. It's not that deep.

Seriously, of all things tech news related nowadays, green and blue bubbles are a non-issue. If someone has an issue with it, it's probably worth not making it your issue as well and just walking/swiping away to find someone else to talk to.

I consistently talk to iPhone users using SMS. Besides from the occasional picture compressed into oblivion, nobody cares enough to even make jokes about the phones we are using. At the end of the day, it's just a phone.

I think this sorta misses the point, at least from my perspective. Nobody cares what phone another person has until they try to send that person a picture or a video that looks like it was sent from 2004.

I know that this is only really a problem in the United States, but that doesn't make it any less annoying for those who have to deal with it. I have no interest trying to convince my 74 year old mother and a dozen other friends/family members to install a different messaging app on their iPhone so we can send each other videos that aren't compressed to shit.

Most people with an iPhone just want to use the default messenger cause, frankly, iMessage works and it works really well. You know when that default Messages app doesn't work well? When you're forced to use an antiquated technology like SMS/MMS. Apple knows this and banks on it to sell more products. It's one of many anti-competitive practices they employ.

RCS isn't a perfect solution, but this is a huge step forward in closing a gap that should've been closed a decade ago. Nobody cares what phone another person is using. They do care about having a premium experience with a device they paid $1,000+ dollars for. They're also ignorant enough to blame a green bubble or the believed cause of that green bubble, which is any device other than an iPhone.

Long way of saying "I don't associate with any normies"