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.
More awful than sms?
No, but that doesn't make it good.
The whole world except a minority moved away from SMS a long time ago.
That's great that the rest of the world moved on. That doesn't mean that those of us in locations that haven't moved on have to use the most inferior version of messaging.
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.
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.
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
Just Google's proprietary app connecting to Google's proprietary servers that just happened to be preinstalled. There is nothing RCS being build to Android itself.
Hell, the only other messaging app that supports RCS is Samsung Messages. And it's not even the default anymore.
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?
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
The arrogance, pettiness, and childishness of how Apple treated this announcement is shocking.
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.
They compare platforms from time to time, mostly indirectly. Android gets a mention concerning OS version fragmentation.
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 a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
