Actually, here in the USA there are a lot of Facebook Messenger users. And increasingly WhatsApp, too.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Google Again Criticizes Apple for Not Adopting RCS for Messages App: 'Their Texting is Stuck in the 1990s'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Does anyone even still use imessage/sms/rcs?
The inoperability between them has seemingly forced most people over to messaging apps already anyway. Even if Apple were to adopt RCS, it would take a lot of convincing to get people to move over from what many people feel has already catered to their messaging needs.
The inoperability between them has seemingly forced most people over to messaging apps already anyway. Even if Apple were to adopt RCS, it would take a lot of convincing to get people to move over from what many people feel has already catered to their messaging needs.
The only "inoperability" I experience is with photos and videos. Other than that, I have no issue texting my brother who uses Android via iMessage. Or my parents. Or literally anyone else. Starting to sound like to me that cellular services outside of the US/NA are junk, honestly.
No they’re equivalent. However, outside the US SMS are charged per message, whereas whatsapp, messenger, telegram, etc are often included at no cost in mobile data plans. That’s why people prefer not to use SMS. And also because of the limitations for sending photos and video via SMS/MMS, which as you said do exist in the US too.
don't hate the player, hate the game.
I say screw the android community. I want apple to reign supreme in every way. if it means android users miss out on features they want, not our issue. join over the the apple side. or stay with the losers.
I hateeee androids. I legit want android users to not get a single benefit from apple software/anything.
I have to use SMS as I'm often finding myself in places where I can get voice (and thus SMS), but not data service. Options like iMessage or these other third-party messaging apps are fine when you have data service, but useless without.
In the U.S., almost everybody uses imessage/sms/mms/rcs. We may use one of the other apps like facebook or whatsapp, but texting is done with the former.
And it wouldn't take anything from the user side, iMessage would just fall back to rcs when sending to a non iPhone. The user really doesn't do anything different.
People in the USA do. They use imessage all the time because most of them have iphones. And when they have to message someone who uses Android, they use SMS and don’t care if the recipient will get poor quality photos or videos (or perhaps some of them don’t even know that happens).
Don't start a war you can't possibly win. Android phones outnumber iPhones worldwide by almost double.
Not to mention Android is functionally pretty similar to iOS, except it does things like hotspots and VPN's a LOT better. Apple's TCP stack sucks in comparison.
I have no problem using either my iPhone, or my android phone. (yes, I have both)
Actually screw both Apple and Google. We need other options. It can’t be good in anyway that only these two big tech companies practically control the entire worldwide cellphone market. They’re gaining too much power. Personally, If I have to choose only between those two I prefer not to have a phone at all until there is another option.
Last edited:
Apple was originally encouraged to help evolve SMS/MMS (come up with a base standard) and declined. The succesor was deemed to be RCS. Google's current version is the adopted standard.
Another case where Apple decided not to participate.
Which means you probably don't live in North America and use a 3rd party messaging app and thus don't have a dog in this fight, so why would you care either way?
I live in Canada - no one uses any of those apps, everyone just uses the native messaging app on their phone.
Maybe it is regional?
I have some friends and a lot of peers in Canada (mostly Guelph and Montreal) and they use WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, and Messenger mostly.
unfortunately the political people only seem to target apple. jealousy. I say apple should hunker down and lock down even further, everything anyway they can.
Still, that only two companies control the world’s entire cellphone market (because practically every phone that’s not an iphone uses Android) is the worst possible scenario that could have happened. We’re screwed.
as a apple fanboy and stock holder. I dont mind it.
pick your team and stay with them. apple isn't going anywhere.
No thanks, I’d rather be completely out of that game than pick one of those two. Just waiting till my current phone dies so I won’t buy another phone.
you do you. im waiting for apple to own America and make apple develop the world of the matrix. world would be better off under apple.
Confusion would be one thing that's worse.
You have green bubbles for standard non-RCS SMS.
You have blue bubbles for iMessage.
Then you have red bubbles for RCS which has many flavors of capabilities. Some RCS implementations have audio calling support. Some RCS implementations have end to end encryption, typing indicators, video calling etc...
Then you have to explain to your mom what red bubbles mean, assuming she understood the difference between green and blue bubbles already.
Then assuming you get an iPhone user video calling an RCS person, you'd have to explain that other Facetime features aren't supported (32 way calling, shareplay features) for that RCS person, but you can do it with other Facetime users.
This is already much more complicated than getting everyone to install Telegram.
Nothing you said there dispels my assertion that service outside the US is junk. Carriers knowingly place software on your devices to monitor what you're saying but you're ok with that? If the service is free, then you're the product.
And 10 years on and no one is seriously implementing it as a standard protocol. Sounds like Apple called it correctly by not wasting time and money participating in a fruitless venture.
If Google's shell on RCS is the adopted standard, then it's certainly going to fail as they don't have the necessary bandwidth to service the whole world. Because they will want to control it.
Now if you just meant vanilla RCS is the adopted standard, that's another ball of wax and not completely true. AT&T just adopted it this past February and only on certain devices. It's not all devices across the whole service.
What incentive do the carriers have to implement RCS *and* the features only Google has right now (encryption) into their own infrastructure?
The rest of the world uses SMS, something like WhatsApp, or (much smaller) iMessage.
Unless they’re all going to pipe everything through google’s RCS servers, what incentive do they have to put the money into hosting their own servers for this minute use case? For all intents and purposes this only applies to the American market.
That was more or less my point. Carriers have already paid off implementation of SMS/MMS and are making profit off it. I don't know how but I imagine it'd be the same with RCS, but it's not stable or wide spread enough yet for anyone to bother being the first to implement it across the whole service.