The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
I loved how blasé he mentioned it and moved right along. It is a pretty big announcement and I’m glad they are finally doing it. It will benefit many even if only indirectly.
It’s a terrible move, especially to make it default.
It’s just as bad a protocol as SMS in its own way:
It’s still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can’t just login to the service via a browser or an app.
It has lots of failures, worst of all, SILENT FAILURES, where you don’t even know your messages aren’t being sent - just look at the communities around here discussing it.
There’s no common protocol here really, lots of parts work only by decree of each host (e.g. iOS won’t have E2EE with anyone not on iOS, because that requires every cell provider to agree to the config they’re going to use.
This is the 21st century, and this is the best they can do - a protocol that fails with no notice? Without standardized encryption? That’s tied to hardware?
I had a better experience in 2009 running Pidgin on my phone and my laptop using XMPP. That didn’t require a phone number - I could login and see my messages in both places simultaneously… 15 years ago.
No, RCS is a way to make the plebes think they’ve got a new and better system while still delivering garbage.
Love you downvoters that don’t know enough to argue, just drive by and downvote.
ONE person had the guts to say why he disagreed with me.
Nevermind that BorgDrone explained what’s wrong with RCS better than I care to. You drive-by downvoters can’t even be bothered to learn about RCS.
RCS is garbage. Plain and simple. I will never allow it on my devices, just like with Whatsapp, Facecrap, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Who even uses sms/mms these days? The only cases I see myself using sms is the poorly implemented 2fa over sms, which is bad since sim hijack is a real threat.
Other than that whatsapp is the norm around here, whether we like it or not. Some also use facebook messanger, but no1 uses mms, it never picked up with the astronomical prices that carriers kept around for no good reason. I wish more people used telegram or signal, but 99% of my contacts don’t, so whatsapp it is.
I use it to communicate with my family
It’s more convenient than chat apps.
What is more conveniant about sms compared to other apps? You still have to open the app, choose the contact from the list and start typing. It’s the exact same options. If I do it on the sms app, signal app, telegram or messanger app it’s still the same 2 taps then start typing. The only difference is what’s on the other side. If they only use sms then it’s obvious you have no other choice of communicating with them, but you can’t say it’s more conveniant.
It’s convenient because I don’t have to tell my family to use a different app. It’s hard enough to get them to install whatsapp, let alone actually use it. And I don’t even like using whatsapp.