Hopefully the RCS support also fixes the "oops, I bought an Android without turning off the magic parasite SMS replacement and now I'm banned from texting iPhones" problem.
Until RCS has native and mandatory encryption (for both 1-1 and group chats), it's just one more really poor attempt at data mining by all involved. Google claiming they want everyone to be all-in on RCS while simultaneously only supporting encryption through their non-standard extension is a bit of a joke.
Say what you will about Apple, at least they're pretending to care and insisting on it.
https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-...
>Apple says it won't be supporting any proprietary extensions that seek to add encryption on top of RCS and hopes, instead, to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard.
*Personally I think Apple should just create Messages for Android and charge $5/month or make it a part of their paid icloud offering and just embrace services. I get they want to sell iphones but it feels like they're in a bit of a RIM situation at the moment. You can keep fighting the inevitable but only for so long.
Ironically enough, if RIM had opened up BBM and email a decade earlier they might still be around today.
I'd move to Android in a heartbeat if they did this. I think that is the reason why it will never happen.
iPhone = for rich people Android = for poor people
Thus if you’re a teen and you have a green bubble, you are poor.
No, teens are mostly using other services like Snapchat, IG, WhatsApp, even TikTok for messaging their friends. iMessage is for communicating with old family members.
As you talk more you use more of the native features that are also integrated into imessage, I.e Facetime. No need to download and create an account on Zoom and Skype, It’s a tap away.
You’re together and you need a way to share info , pictures, videos whatever. Not only can you do this via imessage but you can also do it via airdrop. Nice , instant, and easy.
it isn’t just imessage. it’s implicit understand of what it all brings that makes it an option of the American teenager.
Very recently I’ve also discovered that if I ignore the “log in to iTunes/iCloud” messages for long enough then I won’t be able to send “SMS”-eses anymore, which, when you think of it, technically makes sense but which I found puzzling nonetheless and it took a few hours of head-scratching to figure out (it’s not very intuitive to think that you need to log in to a different platform in order to send messages through the same interface that I had used for more than 20 years before without ever having to do that).
1) the travails of those who buy android aren’t my concern as an iPhone owner
2) there are a million popular messaging alternatives
3) this is market revenge for “android has the market share and apple has the market share profits”
4) the kids will move past blue and green bubbles before any lawsuits are settled
5) the technically superior solution will prevail
6) are we still talking about this?
7) F Google
8) if I had to pick “n” regulatory interventions in technopolies today this one definitely wouldn’t rank, given just about any potential value of “n”
9) climate change gov & ngo interventions deserve this much iterative, insistent, passionate discussion far more
Edit: Adding one more..
10) Apple’s E2E RCS implementation will spank and embarrass Google’s version of same
note that this was the dark pattern at launch, the "don't agree" button disguised as a negative link is now disguised as greyed out text on their premium pixel UI.
For a proper comparison, you should display that next to the opt-in UI displayed to users when their SMS messages are converted to iMessages.
"Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users."
This doesn't include encryption, that's a Google extension and is not part of the GSMA standard. Indeed, I suspect we'll see only the bare minimum implemented by Apple.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/apple-announces-rcs-...
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I'd argue they are, if you think you're texting someone and they aren't actually receiving those texts.
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
None of my family members understand that iMessage isn't just SMS.
I'm between the UK and Australia, and haven't received an iMessage in years, literally. I get SMS on a daily/weekly basis for 2FA things.
It probably has something to do with the fact that outside the US, iPhone market penetration is low, so it's assumed that sending someone an SMS will be an actual SMS, not always upgraded to iMessage.
I'm not in the US but I use WhatsApp and android and thought it was some kind of iPhone SMS thing.
Is SMS in the US different from other countries?
The fragmentation isn't ideal, but it's better than the vendor locking.
Thanks for clarifying.
There's stuff like Beeper that allows for consolidation of multiple services, if you don't like having to use multiple apps for different people.
The difference is that in most other countries people don't use SMS to talk to other people; receiving SMS messages from automated systems is AFAIK still very common everywhere.
RCS is another one of these shit shows. As I said elsewhere on this thread, I used an Android recently for a couple of months (just so I have a right to bitch about it) and when I switched back it broke SMS for me. I was only using SMS to activate WhatsApp.
I have zero issues communicating with people in Asia over Line or Europeans using WhatsApp. But I can't reliably text the people living in my same town, lol. Welcome to the USA.
Just as bad if not worse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software)
I presume if they named it Facebook Messenger, more users might shun it.
Wait, I thought the problem was that it did not look like SMS and that someone somewhere was unhappy about green bubbles? Could you people make up your mind?
- "Apple's target demographic". People like my parents, who just know "Open Messages to text people" and don't understand that Apple basically slid themselves in between every iPhone-to-iPhone text conversation
- "BMW drivers". Extremely vain people looking for ways to not talk to the poors, who are angry that any sort of fix to this problem would decrease their ability to be classist assholes. Classholes.
- "Android users stuck in iPhone families". People angry that their iPhone using friends keep texting them "Liked an image" and then asking why the images they texted them look like ass. Me.
- "Whatsapp's data suppository". Western Europeans who would much rather the Americans just shut up and go away[0]. Green bubbles cost them so much money (because European carriers are horrible scum of the earth) that they all migrated to Whatsapp way before iMessage got any traction in Europe.
Of course they're all going to have different opinions. We will not 'make up our mind' and it is downright insulting that you demand we make up one opinion with four minds.
[0] Which seems to be the argument for a lot of other things America likes, like human rights, immigration, freedom of speech, and more generally, liberal democracy.