It's absolutely frustrating how Apple is refusing to even come to the table on this. RCS is an unmitigated piece of shit, but Apple won't even propose an alternative.
And yes, the burden is on Apple here. They have the lock-in.
And yes, the burden is on Apple here. They have the lock-in.
except: it's not irrational as you might expect. seriously!
green bubble means that your single android friend has just downgraded your fun, interactive group (or solo) chat (with tapbacks, effects, group features, rich content integration, and cross device syncing) into some weird, featureless set of messages
the only solution you have, as an android user, is to convince your friends to use a cross platform chat. I personally try to get people to use Signal.
the simple reality is that the default messaging story on android is a hot mess, and apple has done a vastly superior job at the feature set and integration. and, having an android user "drag us down" naturally leads to denegration
Why? It's completely rational to be annoyed that one person is dragging everyone's experience down - even it's not really that person's fault.
> You choose to use an exclusionary and proprietary messaging protocol
First of all, it's not really a choice. You text your friend with the built in messaging app and it immediately just "works". There is no setup. Is this anti-trusty? IANAL.
And, per my previous post: "the only solution you have, as an android user, is to convince your friends to use a cross platform chat. I personally try to get people to use Signal."
> ostracize people who prefer not to spend an absurd amount of money on a phone.
iPhones start at around $430, which is about what a mid tier Android phone costs. And, that base iPhone includes top tier hardware that can hold its own against some of the most expensive Android phones.
You can buy an iPhone and expect it to receive OS patches for 5 years - and 8 year old phones are still receiving security patches from Apple. Nothing running Android comes close, except for maybe Google's own phones.
That comes out to about $20 a month on their two year payment plan, which includes damage repair - considering how long iphones last and receive support compared to android devices, it's a good value.
If spending money on a device is a concern, Apple actually offers some extremely good value.
> Your gripes are absurd
As I said before, the gripes are reasonable, especially to people who text heavily. Is this Apple's fault? Sure, but it's understandable why some iPhone users get annoyed when an Android user downgrades the quality of service - even if it's not entirely fair.
By the way, you seem to think I'm pro-lock-in or pro-apple. Which really couldn't be further from the truth. By the way, I have run into a lot of android users take some sort of pride in not using the "trendy fruit company" devices - which is also foolish. So I really think people need to step back from trying to feel superior and instead focus on how to ensure everyone has secure and private E2EE messaging
From a cursory search the best reference I could find was google’s whitepaper[1]:
> In order to store and exchange user public keys like identity keys and prekeys, we need to have a central key server. Unlike the RCS messaging servers, the key server is currently only hosted by Google
[1]: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf [2]: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-messages-rcs-api-third...