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> iMessage is still only available on Apple hardware.

Yes, but I think the pressure is external. RCS brings many iMessage capabilities cross platform. As adoption increases I think the power and influence of iMessage will wane.

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RCS is Google's iMessage with the same vendor locking — not actually cross-platform.

RCS is an open standard that Apple now uses as well.

I think there's a legitimate concern about having essentially two phone platforms, and how anything can really be "open" in that environment. But it's definitely a step forward.

And Google has built proprietary things on top of the standard, which is indeed concerning.

It requires you to have a whitelisted private key to make devices that use RCS

"Open" is an overstatement when it comes to RCS. You can't go out and write a new RCS client for Android, and you can't provide RCS on a new platform (or even unGoogled Android). It's open to the extent that both Google and Apple can use it; other major hardware vendors and carriers could, but don't (Samsung used to, and dropped it earlier this year).

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