Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple
Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple
Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps... like Apple’s own iMessage.
Okay, Samsung is the party with some credibility here. It's a lot harder to hear Google whine about messaging standards when their churn in messaging has been hilarious and embarrassing.
I've lost track of all the messaging apps they had:
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
Allo
Google Talk
There's also Duo, which turned into Meet. it's basically Google Facetime.
Google Talk was the name before it became Gmail Chat
Hangouts was so close to perfect before they blew it all up.
Now I'm using a mix of Chat and Voice and it's terrible for everyone. Voice doesn't even support RCS from what I can tell, and all my messages with iPhone users are full of reactions. It's so annoying. I've had the same Google Voice number for over a decade, why is this so frustrating?
Duo (videocalling app)
They also killed YouTube DMs
Samsung has 0 credibility here because they just use Google messages and Google’s Jibe implementation of RCS.
If Google drops Jibe for something else, it means Samsung is as well.
RCS isn’t really a standard anymore either. Once Google put out their own proprietary Jibe implementation, everyone just adopted that instead of putting in the work to implement it themselves. All the carriers in the US use Jibe as their RCS backend, and Samsung moved to using Google Messages as their default messenger. And all RCS messages go through Google servers.
If Google decides to do something else and drop Jibe, like they have with every other messaging service they have had, that’s it for RCS.
Samsung's record on RCS isn't great. Their Samsung Messages app didn't work across networks for most of last year. Like RCS only worked on t-mobile, but only for t-mobile branded phones, and for some time they couldn't send to AT&T. Not sure if Google Messages was much better during that time period.
they also removed messages from aosp i believe
Unless the EU makes them, they're not adopting rcs. I could see them putting out an imessage app for Android though. Probably ad supported to make the experience extra shitty for us. They'd quickly own the messaging market, at least in the US.
Internal memos explicitly stated execs were worried that if they brought iMessage to android, poor families might buy their kids cheap android phones instead of iPhones.
You can't make this stuff up
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition
The audacity of parents trying to buy something less expensive in these crazy inflated times
Ok I'll ask, how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting (other than this RCS stuff)? You can still text. Or is it that weird color thing or checkmark that kids are social pressured into?
Do you think the problem lies with Apple, or the idiot kids that somehow created a hierarchy around a text bubble color?
And let’s face it- if you owned/ran a company that was making fuck-tons of money because idiot kids rallied around exclusive text bubble colors, you’d want to keep that going as well. Don’t even try lying about it.
You can't make this stuff up
Except that You literally made it up though? You embellished the part about poor families and cheap phones, here's the actual quote:
I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.
Since not even iPhone users in Europe use iMessage I highly doubt anyone would use it outside the US.
I feel Europe is a lot more diverse than you think. In Norway, which have a fairly high percentage of iPhone users, iMessage is the most used - or at least I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use it by default.
A few friends chat are on Messenger or Snapchat. Signal / Telegram / WhatsApp etc are extremely rare.
I tried using the Apple app on Android for tracking the tracking thingies. Horrible, horrible app. I will not be trusting anything put out by Apple for Android unless they do a Microsoft and go all in. Otherwise, they will always have a reason to make the Android experience worse than the iPhone experience.
There is a FOSS app for that https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard
Under new EU laws, Apple will be forced to allow interoperability with iMessage in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean them adopting RCS or bringing iMessage to non-Apple platforms, but it does mean they'll need to at the very least publish an API allowing external software or services to use iMessage.
I just expect them to make the interoperability as shitty as possible
I think they found imessage not to be a leading platform so AFAIK this isn't the case for now. Maybe if more people start using it they'll revisit the question.
RCS isn't a good solution. As long as all RCS implementations are proprietary and Google doesn't even include an RCS client in AOSP and doesn't let you use a third-party client it's just as shitty as iMessage. Just use Signal, it's FOSS, cross-plattform and stores as little data about you as possible. It's also not run by some garbage big tech corporation.
Is there any precedent to ads in Apple products (apart from their store)? Although they'll surely find other ways to annoy non-Apple users, I don't think ads are "in style" for them.
Unless carriers deprecate SMS/MMS.
Phone carriers should be deprecated.
This is what I believe Google is actually trying to get carriers to do, and I suspect carriers (in some shape or form) will actually do this, just not in the way you think.
RCS will eventually become the dominant messaging standard, however, I think they're actually working on a backwards compatibility for SMS and MMS in some capacity. In this way, phones (like the iPhone or older Android phones) will still be capable of sending and receiving SMS and MMS in typical elitist walled-garden fashion, but the carrier will receive it as an RCS message and relay it to an RCS-compatible device as an RCS message.
In this way, group chats with four Android users and two iPhone users will still allow those Android users to benefit from RCS from each other (typing indicators, reactions, potentially some level of E2E, support for large media, etc), while the iPhones in the group chat will actually be the ones having a negative experience (no typing indicators, reactions appearing as text messages, no E2E, obnoxious green bubbles) since Apple refuses to integrate RCS into their Messaging application. Of course Apple will continue to gaslight their customers through high contrast green bubble dark patterns, and continued refusal of adopting RCS or creating iMessage for Android. As they've made clear, they don't care about giving their customers the best possible experience, and prefer to maintain market control for as long as possible.
The #GetTheMessage ads are likely gearing up for the eventuality of this change, and the Pixel x iPhone ads are all "buddy buddy, kill them with kindness" so they can out Apple as the hostile ones when they refuse to acknowledge the existence of other smartphones either through its aggressive marketing, or through refusal to adopt open standards.
If this were all to happen, depending on how well the RCS backwards compatibility worked and its ability to out Apple as the shut ins that they are, I could (crazy talk) foresee Apple creating a standalone iMessage app to, at the very minimum, keep Android users talking within their iMessage ecosystem.
Not going to happen. They charge such an insanely high premium vs real cost for a very primitive messaging system, they're not letting that go!
Friendly reminder that none of these asswipes are your friend :)
Exactly. The software is being kept closed source. You have no idea if Google is up to its shitty stunts to data track or anything along those lines. If it was open source then that argument is gone, till then.....
That's not what the word friendly means
Gotta love how Google has spent the last, what, 10 years?, fighting iMessage and losing due to their own short-sightedness/lack of focus and incompetence. The company that dethroned MSN Messenger couldn't win a fight against an opponent that, on a global scale, represents ~25% of the mobile market. Meanwhile, Whatsapp dominates the instant messaging world.
I really thought Facebook overspent when they bought Whatsapp for $1B but I was wrong. It took Google too long to finally get behind a single messaging strategy. That's just poor leadership.
Messaging with Google is a funny story thought. They had something that worked and destroyed it by defederating it
After that they had like what 10 more apps, and multiple one not link together from their own services
Google photo has its own, google Drive too, probably other as well, and then there's Google Meet...,
Wasn't it a crazier number—like $15 billion or something?
Edit: Siri says $19 billion [pinkie to corner of lips]
In order to grow a chat app you need a consistent and stable interface over a long period of time. It can't have too much bullshit in it either.
In order to grow your career at Google you need to build ridiculous shit and then leave once you get your promo. Entire departments get reorged so someone can hit their people manager quota.
Product groups, business units, "orgs", VPs, SVPs, it's all just a game and "everyone's playing except you." This is why Google kills shit. Because Google rewards behavior that results in killing shit.
Facebook bought Instagram for a billion. WhatsApp was 16 billion (and additional 3 billion in restricted stock units).
While Apple should adopt RCS, I cannot help but feel that Google is being extremely hypocritical. They complain about iMessage being proprietary, but their implementation of RCS isn’t open source, and I believe they even mentioned they have no plans to open it up for 3rd party devs to implement it into their own sms apps. This just feels like an iMessage equivalent for Android. It has rich features that are exclusive to Android as a platform (more specifically exclusive to Google Messages or whatever the app is called now)… just like iMessage within iOS/MacOS/iPadOS..
Okay but their implementation is what they are touting. The standard RCS protocol is only marginally better than sms. Google constantly uses encryption in their ad campaigns for RCS, which is exclusive to to googles implementation. There is no way anyone is going to get Apple to work on an implementation that interoperates with Google
Any open source Android RCS SMS apps then?
Yeah, the only issue is that RCS is actually better and the counter argument is that Apple is breaking the messaging platform by not implementing it in some way.
The other point to make here is that iMessage wouldn't have to just disappear. They could continue to support iMessage while just allowing text messages to be better for those who just don't want an iPhone. The whole thing is hypocritical on both sides. Apple has convinced it's users, very successfully might I add, that it is an Android problem and instead of having choice over your phone, you should just buy an iPhone.
As someone who works in IT this is really not the answer users should get. To me, this is equivalent to, "your computer quit working? Just buy a new one." But imagine you only had one choice and it's because that company refuses to just improve standard text messaging for all users across the board but iPhone users don't understand that Google has a method to fix this problem Apple just refuses to make it a better experience for everyone.
Additionally, I think RCS is an open platform. Google's fork of it carries encryption and group messaging integration. Point being Google genuinely has a viable iMessage solution to non iMessage texts. Apple wouldn't even have to stop using iMesaage.
While I agree, Apple is being obnoxiously stubborn and it truly only does benefit Apple users as well, it just feels disingenuous from Google. It more feels like they want to get their product onto Apple devices. If Apple could implement RCS the way they wanted to and interoperate with Google, then I think it would be a more valid argument (and I suppose they can, but Apple would be caught dead investing money into something like that). But Google clearly wants Apple to use their own version and is putting up this annoying ad campaign to mask it. (As far as I know, the standard RCS implementation doesn’t even include E2EE, rather it’s something unique to googles implementation, correct me if I’m wrong). Google uses encryption as a talking point in their ad campaigns and is honestly for me the biggest reason for it to be used in iOS. Otherwise the experience is only marginally better than sms, and I wouldn’t expect Apple to even bother with it. At least with encryption one can challenge Apple‘s stance on being a privacy focused company..
Im also a software engineer and it’s annoying as hell that Apple is stubborn, but from a business perspective, it’s a gold mine for Apple - ecosystem lock-in is just too valuable to them as a company.
Google Voice still doesn't support it!
Its just trillion dollar companies doing trillion dollar things.
Haha fair enough 😂
It doesn't seem like you understand what a protocol is
MKBHD closed this topic for me forever. Apple is never going to open up. It provides them tremendous value. They don’t give a shit if Samsung taunts them lol. They want your teenage kids taunting their friends over their green bubbles. And it’s working.
Only happens in Muricaland. In every other countries I visited, WhatsApp rules.
WhatsApp is also addressed in that video.
It’s great in countries where it is so dominant that it is everyone’s default. (That’s not everywhere except America, BTW)
Anywhere it’s not 80%+ dominant already, you are stuck trying to convince everyone and their grandma to switch their message app and that just doesn’t work.
Plus… more Facebook on my phone? No thanks. I’m not saying any other company is an angel but Facebook is known to be the devil.
WhatsApp rules
And this is unfortunate. People chose proprietary garbage like WhatsApp over FOSS apps with a proven track record like Signal.
Yep. I never use sms nor other messaging systems save for WhatsApp. Not that I'm a fan of it since it was bought by Facebook, but it is what everybody here uses, and it works quite well, reliably, and has an interesting set of features.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
closed this topic for me forever
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Why should anyone care about RCS? The trend has been to get everything into data instead of carrier owned services for two decades now, we don't need another SMS (it will likely always be a fallback). What we should move onto is a carrier and device type angnostic universal standard protocol over TCP / QUIC like XMPP or Matrix, with SMS as the backup.
When you get a phone you can get an phone system account and a telephone number already. Modern apps in the Google ecosystem should already recognize you are already signed in with Google and sync your contacts. Since almost everyone is already in the Google ecosystem, if Google supported it they could have extended their XMPP implementation in Hangouts to allow messaging directly via XMPP to those contacts and SMS for anyone not yet in the system (similar to how Signal did, Apple does, and Google does now with RCS). Unlike Apple, since its just XMPP, users can still add friends and be added by friends on other XMPP servers (ex. their ISPs, their own, or a third party). They could have supported or jumpstarted a new very simple open source alternative app for that portion for AOSP if the EU complained. Eventually Carriers could have supported passthroughs for those still on feature phones and other users of SMS to use the number@carrier accounts to hit XMPP users with generated SMS numbers for non-SMS users (pushed either by business necessity or part of a government / teleco org like GSMA staged removal of SMS and telephone numbers). It's all data at the end of the day.
Instead, they developed a whole new protocol to fluff the telecos and keep the now badly managed telephone number system even more necessary allowing spammers and allow the problems of legacy SMS to continue.
Apple, Google, and Samsung should all be shamed for not supporting fully open protocols and necessitating dependency on user harming stacks.
This sounds nice at a superficial level, but there's a lot of reliability and backwards compatibility issues being ignored. During natural disasters and emergency situations, internet and cellular data are the first to fail. It's not casual. For the phone and SMS (GSMA) protocols are sturdy enough that they can operate with very simple, low energy consuming and highly reliable machines. Internet data services on the other hand consume way more electricity (more expensive to have them operate with backup generators, for example) and are more delicate and prone to failure. They also need to be replaced more often. 100% of national emergencies systems run on phone and SMS tech, that could reliably operate for several decades with little maintenance that would cost billions to replace them with internet based system that were as reliable and durable. And then on top of it all, wired phones can even operate without electricity and connect with cellular terminals to contact other phones and cellphones. Only the tower needs to have power. There's just a lot banked of that reliability that most modern conveniences don't have.
In case of emergency it runs or it doesn't run. No matter if cellular or data.
Best were something like Briar's local wifi mesh standardized for emergency anyway.
I totally agree we can't simply drop SMS immediately, but what am I missing in supporting backwards compatibility (for example via my pseudo number solution, like how VOIP works) preventing us from moving forward during a stagged shutdown in the span of decades? MMS and RCS both would also fail under cellular data loss, and SMS itself hasn't always been available during major disasters. I'm not sure I buy the argument you can't have similarly low energy towers (even with net neutrality states, you can still cap all bandwidth per user), and a simpler tower that only does data should be far more reliable than a tower that provides multiple carrier services given the simplicity (and it's very rare to have towers that only do voice + SMS anymore).
Imagine a world where we can adopt a scalable, secure, open communication protocol where users can use whatever app they want. Imagine humanity moving past the diaspora of special-snowflake chat apps and on to better things.
Move on? Hell you could just move back to xmpp when people were using aim, gtalk, trillian clients, digsby, nimbuzz...
Some of us are old enough to remember the golden era.
But then we wouldn’t have the subtle culture warfare over blue and green messages.
But I wouldn't earn money, as we are currently forcing people to use our services/products.
Capitalism: “No.”
Future generations will never know our pain
We live in this world. We can adopt such a protocol. The hardest step is to convience your friends to install an app that supports it, because duopoly named Googloid and Apple iOS is not going to make it simple.
Breaking news: Apple and majority of its users still don’t care.
I’d love to have RCS, but it’s not a make or break feature for me, and I’m tech savvy enough to know what it is and what it does. Good luck trying to convince the average consumer to give a fuck about invisible tech that doesn’t meaningfully change their experience.
Well, it would change their experience. They would see improved photo quality to/from Android users via text messages. But Apple has managed to train people to think that Apple's refusal to put iMessage on other devices is somehow a shortcoming of Android.
yeah, people are use to having 10 different chat apps, and it seams to be normal, which is sad (somebody should make a standard! *insert that xkcd comic about making a better standard)
With RCS there seams to be less chance that they destroy it like they did with XMPP (google / Facebook and cie)
Yes, until now we've accepted to be governed by what Big Tech can convince "average users" to use and here we are.
Internet is controlled by a handful of company who decide what you read, what you watch, how you communicate with friends and family.
It sucks because there are so many great alternatives to most big tech solutions but it doesn’t matter until you can convince people of the benefits of using those alternatives.
Apple don't want it because it removes part of their marketing strategy. (Being, if your friends have Apple, you also need apple)
Apple Users don't know what it is.
You say you don't know what it is or does. Yet you say you'd love to have it. That's quite contradictory don't you think?
And it WOULD impact their experience.
It amazes me that people like you, who don't actually know or understand the topic, can be so vocal about your opinions and conclusions. About something you don't know.
It's the USB-C standard all over... "Apple and majority of their users don't care". And that's still not what it's about. It's about setting a standard so we don't need 9 different cables and 7 different apps, just to send a God damn picture or video.
Edit: I misread the comment. I take back what I said that's striked over. My bad. Sorry.
This isn't about making iPhone users care per se, I really think it's just a public perception thing.
I’d love to have RCS if only because iMessage is literally the only reason I have an iPhone.
I got roped into it because all my friends and family refuse to change to be able to exchange media messages with essentially just one person.
Granted, as far as phones go, it’s pretty damn good and aged incredibly well. My 12 pro max performs better than any flagship I’ve owned previously would’ve at the 3 year mark.
Apple is not going to change this unless legally forced to because it is quite possibly the biggest driver of iPhone sales.
A whopping 87% of American teens use an iPhone, and the green text from Android SMS is the biggest reason. At that age people will do almost anything to fit in and get a date, and the green text was chosen specifically to elicit an "eww" response. Most of those teens will likely will continue to use iPhones as adults because it's what they know.
Meanwhile outside of the United States basically no one uses iMessage. Precisely because it's so terrible it interfacing with non-apple devices. Everyone just uses WhatsApp which will work with anything.
Of course WhatsApp's quite a crap program as well missing basic functionality but at least it's not device specific.
I can still send text messages to anyone from my Samsung phone, it's all just dumb.
As someone from the EU, I'm so confused about why this would matter to people. At that age, people will just find any excuse to bully regardless of what it is, it's why uniforms don't work either for those purposes. Hell, if someone were to try and shame me for the fucking color of my messages I'd be thankful, they've shown me another cunt to avoid associating with. In that sense it might actually be useful. (also, who even uses sms anymore?)
The green text peer pressure means nothing to me, but you are 100% spot on about the ecosystem driving sales. My whole family uses apple and I get left out of so many group chats and face times that I've actually considered switching to Apple even though I'm a die hard Note fan. Apples hardware may be nothing special, but they have a killer feature in their seamless, closed ecosystem, and they know it. At the end of the day, a phones job is to communicate, and Apple does that seemlessly- with other Apple devices
Be the change. You're doing it.
It's a slippery slope though. Unless you own a mac or pay subscribe to icloud storage tranferring photos and other files off your phone is gonna be a pain. Also, unless you get a mac with enough storage space it's also gonna be a pain because iphotos doesn't support direct transfer to external drives, so you gotta use image capture which is ridiculously barebones.
That’s what lured me in and also why I left. I wanted devices that worked together for accessibility reasons, not because I wanted to be on some over engineered chat network that only works with itself.
Very true and very ridiculous. A great deal of people will commonly do almost anything to be apart of a desirable group.
I'd be ok with everybody adopting Signal protocol but I can safetly say no government anywhere would "allow" that
I am beyond bummed that Signal abandoned SMS support. It worked, it isn't a constantly evolving standard. Just leave it alone, Signal!!
I used it too. I miss it, but i get why they removed it: it just kinda breaks the Signal user experience and trust model. This app lives and dies by the users trust their conversations will be private. By having an option to message someone in a completely unencrypted, easy to intercept mode like SMS it risks this trust for little gain (some power users like us liked it). By removing it, the app concentrates on what is expected from it and removes a big possibility for user error while fleshing out its marketing image even more. It makes perfect sense but its a tad annoying.
You'll notice Signal backtracked on supporting SMS as soon as they got an ex-Googler as their new leadership.
I always thought having SMS support in Signal created a significant risk of confusion about what kind of message the user was sending. Of course sophisticated users always knew the difference, but it's for software that emphasizes security it's better not to have to tell people who don't understand the technical details "it's secure unless...".
it isn't a constantly evolving standard
lol you can say that again
No one should be using SMS in 2023, and I'm really sorry for you Americans who are still using this ancient garbage technology.
Signal protocol is mainly an encryption protocol, not messaging.
Even if Apple adopt it, you won't be able to talk with Apple users from Signal.
First privacy, then USB, now RCS.
Only thing I know about RCS is that it has caused a few of my texts to never be sent, because the "send as normal text if RCS doesn't work" also didn't work. Other than that it has done nothing for me.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps... like Apple’s own iMessage.
The video, titled “Green bubbles and blue bubbles want to be together,” shows a Romeo and Juliet-style conversation between two users who want to be together, but who are kept apart by one of their “parents.”
The “bubbles,” of course, are a reference to Apple’s iMessage interface which shows feature-rich blue bubbles for messages sent between Apple users, and discordant green SMS bubbles with reduced functionality when Android users participate in the chat.
This two-class system is especially frustrating in countries like the US where about half the population is using an iPhone and the other half is running Android on a Samsung device.
Apple, of course, has every incentive keep the status quo as a form of ecosystem lock-in, but it might be forced to open up its messaging service as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Regulators are currently investigating whether iMessage meets the bar to be considered a “core platform service” under the rules, which would compel Apple to offer interoperability with other messaging services.
The original article contains 232 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 6%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Apple will never listen, but maybe the EU could decide it's important enough issue for them to force it. It's starting to feel like we should just go to them, first. I'd like to imagine we have another candidate problem for regulation enforced fixing, with Mac laptops' long-standing displayport multistream problem. Macs will only mirror and never extend to an nth monitor over displayport splitting ... but the availability of thunderbolt adapters as a workaround takes some of the "oomph" out of that argument. That one's been around like ten or more years.
The other issue alluded to by another commenter, though, is that rcs is not low-level in Android os quite like SMS is. Like the API to get the information into other competing apps is not there, so it seems a little bit hypocritical.
The EU could have had an effect on it via the DMA, but it seems that not many people use iMessage in the EU. People use Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger way more here, so those are forced into opening up.
iMessage message bubble colors seem to be an US problem.
Maybe don't buy Apple hardware? Why is it the government's job to fix every minor annoyance you have with Apple?
Signal is the way to go. No need to expose metadata to your mobile carrier via RCS. Also, currently you need Google's proprietary garbage message app to make use of RCS. There's litterally no reason to do this.
I personally had a very bad experience with signal and I don't think I'll be using it again. Also now that they cut SMS support I think they only way I'd use it again is if an overwhelming amount of people start using it.
Why was your experience bad? Did you sign up for it when Elon Musk encouraged people to use it? Back then, so many people signed up that their servers were just overloaded. That's to be expected with a user growth rate of 400% in one week. I've been relying on Signal for all of my communications for a year and a half now and I haven't ever experienced any issues.
I wish we live in an ideal world where we could have a messaging application which is like email. Anyone can run their server and can have whatever messaging client they want. And everything is interoperable.
There's Matrix and XMPP
Tox is the way to go. Or Matrix. Jami works too.
Satan and the Devil call Lucifier.
This public shaming bullshit reminds me of Epic's Fortnite debacle and it's not a good look, especially from Samsung who usually mocks Apple on Monday and is copying them by Friday (see "no CD drives in laptops" or "no headphone jack" or "no removable batteries in the phone"). I know they're completely different issues but whining is whining.
There's truth in this, but in the meantime, these small moments are huge and the alternative is that they are gone entirely in our monopolistic, fixed slice of capitalism. Enjoy the small bit of competition we still actually see. Agree that Google/ Samsung are ultimately disappointing but on balance, better than the walled garden, hyper inflated pricing and big-buttoned toddler interfaces of iOS
I haven't sent an SMS since like 2013 or something like that. Couldn't care less about this blue green controversy, my use of SMS is receiving 2fa codes and spam.
Yeah, this is very much a weird USA issue.
I often only have internet access - no sms (receive only), no calls. Don't want to pay for it, don't need it.
iMessage is probably a USA issue, however everyone using WhatsApp is not a solution either.
It's a proprietary application controlled by Meta, we need an open standard so no Big Tech controls everyone's messages.
It's hard to get phone service without unlimited SMS in the USA. Using it is still worse than most alternatives so I do find it weird that people aren't adopting chat apps more eagerly.
Just download Signal. Cross platform, verifably E2E, and verifiably no data collected by Open Whisper (as per their submission in a lawsuit). Also, one of the authors/architects of Signal occasionally trolls the companies that provide mobile spyware.
I tried using signal but I had a lot of problems with it. I wouldn't get my messages. The people I messaged didn't get my messages. There was an emergency and someone couldn't get ahold of me when they really needed to. After that I deleted signal and moved on. That's just my experience. Yours could be different.
Signal servers do not allow federation. Use Matrix instead.
RCS needs to happen, I'm so sick of Whatsapp.
Why not switch to something not owned by Facebook like Signal (or something on an open protocol like Element)?
The only way something replaces WhatsApp is if WhatsApp stops existing.
Besides, RCS is not in any shape or form ready to the general public, considering all the blatant inconsistencies and instabilities, let alone replace one of the most used, tried and tested messaging platforms out there.
I switched my parents group chat to RCS from whatsapp after pestering them for ages.
Over the span of 2 months we had 4-5 inconsistencies where I would recieve a message from my mum or dad in the group that would be in another language or clearly not be written by them. It wouldn't show up on her phone but my brother and dad would see it.
Here's the proof of the last occassion it happened. They're never going to switch now...
I think this issue is mostly a USA one, considering that most communications there have caps (data, phone time, SMS etc.) Paradoxically, the market there doesn't work very well and prices are relatively high. Big corporations take advantage of it to lock people to their ecosystems. There is a high probability that this issue, will be regulated by the EU, since US policy makers are unable to solve much more important problems. For them this is not an issue. The market has solved it.
I'd argue the SMS/MMS reliance in the US is entirely because there have been no caps on it for years now. Nearly all plans you can get here have unlimited SMS/MMS included, even cheap prepaid ones.
Having a fixed allotment of texts or minutes hasn't been a thing for over a decade at this point, and the only thing that's expensive now is data.
That was my understanding. I was told one of the reason for growth in apps like Whatsapp outside the US was that data was cheaper than texting (probably just per message cost).
It's entirely a US issue. Everywhere else just uses platform agnostic apps like WhatsApp, telegram, signal, etc to get round the issue. Americans hitch their wagons to a corporate manufacturer like an identity and then moan about people who buy the other brand having different coloured text message bubbles.
RCS dates to 2008 and Appul didn't support it. Now we know that Appul is stuck in 2007 or earlier.
Samsung and Google are just now getting around to supporting it
Hey now, I've been rocking RCS for three years. The only reason it took so long to begin with is because Google was trying to get service providers to implement it themselves. Google finally said fuck it and started doing it themselves iMessage style and then providers started playing along.
Centralized or not, it's a massive improvement over basic SMS/MMS.
Edit: at least the concept is. Implementation aside, it's crazy that there isn't a cross-platform texting option that has more modern capabilities than what we've been using for the past couple decades.
Everyone (in America) wants them to be together
Rest of the world already moved on to better services.
"What did the EU ever do for us?" in the monthy python mood. After usb c, apple is getting its proprietary model challenged again. When will Apple understand that in the long run it hinders innovation? And that openness and standardisation is a catalyst for it. RCS might not be the interoperable solution the EU pushes though. Anyway that's the future of not using standards : https://lemmy.nz/post/2316522
The don’t care about innovation, they care about profits.
We will be locked in Solitary? Inseriously don't get the point you're trying to make. Please explain it further.
My understanding with RCS is that similar to SMS it uses the infrastructure of your phone carrier. First question: Do all carriers support this? Second question: Is there anything that prevents carriers from eventually monetizing this? At least with some sort of roaming trap when you are abroad...
Most carriers support it. When they don't, the protocol can use a bridge. Google hosts a bridge. I guess you could also use the bridge if the carrier is trying to charge for it.
Why doesn't a third party just come up with a standard
Because the technical part has been solved for a while and this has moved into being a social problem. My kids only use iMessage/SMS for people over thirty, and use Snap with all of their friends. In family groups, you standardize on on whatever. Most of my extended family decided on FB Messenger a while ago (I don't participate, but my wife does and can fill me in.) My immediate family just uses iMessage. Friend groups I've seen generally do the same. They pick Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever, and then the quilting club just uses that. This also seems a very US centric issue - basically everywhere else is either on whatsapp or Line or WeChat or whatever.
My big question is: Why does Apple need to adopt it in the first place?
Answer is: closed nature of system they created and closed (yes) nature of RCS ecosystem.
We should adopt user-friendly democratic operating systems and chat protocols instead.
Apple should support RCS as a cross-platform texting option. It is meant to be implemented by cellular providers, not device manufacturers, and meant to be a more capable replacement for existing texting. It is not under the control of any single software or cloud provider. Think of it as improving “the lowest common denominator”. I don’t see why I would choose to use it but I do want the option.
Matrix with bridges and bots all the way.
The sheep demand convenience
I use SMS mostly. From time to time Google asks if I want to activate RCS and presents a policy along with it, which I decline. Does it pass through their servers? If it does, that's gonna be a big no.
Whole situation reminds me of another one. When Google created their services to be unavailabe to install without root access, while Huawei locked their devices so device owner have no root access that Huawei has remotely.
Then people started blaming regulators for inability to have Play Store on Huawei branded phone, not questioning why blessing from device vendor to install an app is required in the first place.
It's far worse than WhatsApp.
Google and Samsung should bribe regulators to make it happen. Apple will never changed unless they are forced to and the only way that happens is shoving money in corrupt assholes pockets.
RCS is not a solution and corruption definitely isn't a solution either. Just use Signal.
But don't work without Google account. Yet another the same app to install.
I was an allo user and that was going to be Google's big answer and it failed spectacularly. I don't think chat would fare any better. I think Chat is apart of their enterprise suite now anyway.
My only issue with RCS is that it requires that either LTE or wifi be on. I personally keep those off unless I want to actively use the internet. Not a big deal, minor annoyance though.
They all do now. MMS, iMessage, any other messaging app, also require an active data connection to actually reach your phone.
The only thing that did not require an active data connection in place is real SMS, with all its limitations.
That's why we still rely on SMS in rural Canada, most of the time our phones are too far from the tower for LTE to establish a link. Most attempts to use modern SMS replacements have ended in unreliable messaging and me having to support all my neighbours in shutting off the messaging support in their apps so they can use reliable SMS.
I run Pulse SMS on my phone to ensure my SMS is always SMS and will be delivered. Unfortunately I see no path away from reliance on 3G/HSPA as the eye closes on LTE after about 25km, resulting in "bars" on the phone but no ability to transfer data.
Such a shame. =(
3G has been shut off and 2G will be going down in weeks. SMS won't work without LTE or 5G soon.
Then I look forward to not getting texts from anyone. =)
Just curious, is there a specific reason you keep data and wifi off unless you're using them?
Have you ever recorded WiFi traffic on any device? It's pretty crazy the amount of packets being transfered and received at any given moment
No reason to keep either on since they drain the battery even when not actively browsing the net. And if your LTE can't find a tower to connect, it keeps trying to connect, draining the battery significantly. This was pretty bad for me a couple years ago; not so much anymore since I live in a city now but I still keep both off, mostly habit but also because I like having my battery above 90% while it's sitting idle.
When I'm at home and want to use the net on my phone, I turn WiFi on, then off once done. When I'm outside the home and need the internet, I turn LTE on and then turn it back off once I'm done.
the eye closes on LTE after about 25km, resulting in “bars” on the phone but no ability to transfer data.
I've noticed this in the mountains as well, even though I don't think I'm that far from the tower I guess the normal cell signal bounces off the rock and stays readable but the data does not. Usually pretty close that they go out but as I go into a valley/ravine/hollow/canyon I do lose data first, while I still have 3/5 bars.
If you have Internet, you can also just use Signal. No need for RCS.
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
Does it matter if Apple starts supporting RCS? If they start supporting it, they'll still treat it like SMS - green bubbles and all.
It would allow the messages to be encrypted, which improves user security.
Apple users are absolute shitheels. And that's why I'll continue releasing bugs I find into the wild.
Come on that isn't appropriate
Macintosh phone and laptop are not appropriate. I understand people are free to piss their money away as they wish. But I truly believe iLegacyTech and that absolutely brain damaged touchbar are holding back what could be otherwise productive desktop OS users. Also, it take over five years for apple to fix an emergency dialer unlock bug. It might still be there but I don't care anymore.
Sorry I forgot to actually respond by mentioning the snotty attitude of apple users and their willingness to repeat off the wall technobabble advertisements.
Yawn.
Sorry, this just reads to me as the little kid being angry he can’t join the bigger kids. I really believe that were the shoe and the other foot and were it Google with iMessage, they wouldn’t be so keen to let Apple use it.
Well Google is arguably the big kid here 70% of all cell phones are android phones. Also, Google puts its apps/services on Apple devices. There's no way to rewind time, change a variable or two, and then play it back to see how things change.
That’s framed as if google is this generous corporation that’s all “Peace, love and Agnostic apps” rather than to farm data from a competitor’s users.
Google wants all the users data regardless of the platform they’re on.
Apple put their services on Android devices too. Just not iMessage.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they cite privacy as a reason.
Sucking that Jobs peen.
You can think what you want, but the fact is that Apple makes money from iMessage in the form of keeping people in its ecosystem and won’t share iMessage unless forced to. Google would do the same thing because they’re both businesses that exist to make money. Apple isn’t my friend, and Google isn’t yours. Google doesn’t want to you to message your friends in an easier manner, they want Apple to lose one of its incentives keeping users on the iPhone. Corporations are not your friend and Google has ulterior motives for saying what they said, and Apple has ulterior motives for rejecting it. I get it, though, Apple bad, Google good. With so much going on in the world, I’m glad you decided to fight for Google. That huge corporation could really use your support. They just need some money. And it does read like Google being mad they can’t play with Apple and keep people locked into iPhone like Apple does (aka little kid being mad he can’t join the big kids).
I think we should get rid of all SMS/phone services and just use data.
Based
The absolute state!
iMessage works.
Who has even heard of RCS outside of tech folk?
iMessage works
Among the 20% of all phones globally, it does. Outside the US it's hardly usable.
Not only does iMessage work, it works internationally for free.
iMessage doesn't 'work' unless you're on an Apple device. Then it's just falling back to using SMS, at which point Apple fanboys/girls start bitching because the text bubbles are 'the wrong color' which it's seriously the most ridiculous first-world problem I've ever heard of.
RCS is an attempt to provide similar functionality to EVERYONE without the walled-garden lock-in.
While I'd much rather a fully open (inl source), non-proprietary solution exist, until such time RCS is at least an attempt at a step in the right direction.
Insert meme: You (iMessage user) can't use RCS because Apple won't let you. I (Android User) can't use iMessage because Apple won't let me. We are not the same...
at which point Apple fanboys/girls start bitching because the text bubbles are 'the wrong color' which it's seriously the most ridiculous first-world problem I've ever heard of.
Wait….. isn’t this the whole point of the article? Samsung and Google are bitching because they don’t want to be green bubbles. Don’t make it out like this is all iPhone users. Google has had I can’t count how many substandard messaging apps, but now they’ve developed their own proprietary format and are crying for Apple to support it.
So let me get this straight, Google & Samsung want Apple to be forced to do something that will cost Apple sales and increase sales for their competitors. Good luck with that.
iMessage works.
So does 4G. Imagine if apple refused to support 5G? Yes the end consumer might not notice but apple refusing RCS is them refusing to update an old standard to it's next version. I guess they dragged their feet with USC C and kept with a old USB 2.0 lighting cable for so long...
They could adopt RCS. But still keep iMessage users using their iMessage service backend and have the green/blue bubble thing still.
More like Apple already has 5G and you want them to support a different standard that you made up.
Apple bitch detected
How rude of you.
How rude of you.
Insincere.
AFAIK there is no open source messaging app that support RCS yet. It's not even included in android AOSP (or is it? I can't find any reference). It would help with adoption if google actually open-sourced the RCS client app.
They won't let any third party apps use it so they are basically as bad as imessage.
The simple fact that iMessage has 0 interoperability makes it much worse than everything else.
So I doubt RCS could be as bad except if they remove the ability to operate with other RCS clients. And even for Google and Samsung that would be extremely stupid.
Forgive me if I'm mistaken but did Signal adopt RCS? I they abandoned SMS for RC- if I recall - couldn't SMS my friends on it anymore and abandoned ship lol
Edit: wait, I don't think signal is open source