There's 1.3 billion active iMessage users, it's the 2nd most used messaging app on the planet. Yet, you know zero people that use it. Shocking anecdotal evidence. Antiquated, yet still bears the most functionality of any messaging service too.
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Google Exec Pushing RCS Adoption Says He's 'Not Asking Apple to Make iMessage Available on Android'
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There's 1.3 billion active iMessage users, it's the 2nd most used messaging app on the planet. Yet, you know zero people that use it. Shocking anecdotal evidence. Antiquated, yet still bears the most functionality of any messaging service too.
Apple needs to tell this joker to pound sand. I'll keep my iMessage thank you
I don’t know how anyone else handles it. I just know that the green bubbles meant you were getting charged (or that it count against your “200 txt’s per month” quota). I’d GUESS that no one had to even deal with it as a problem before Apple because Apple was the only one that created an alternative messaging system that used data instead of SMS (and cingular/AT&T bought off on it). Every other smartphone company just used SMS/MMS (and carriers would charge more for MMS). And, it’s easy to see why, having a system like that that’s expected to be as “available” as SMS in parallel to SMS for all their users isn’t something a hardware company really wants to take on as a project.
And, the charging was handled different depending on the carrier. Some carriers charged you for receiving SMS as well as sending SMS, so the green bubble you got meant the sender just cost you 10 cents. In non-US countries, as high cost SMS/MMS is a thing, probably still good to know.
In some countries containing hundreds of thousands of people, even people using iPhones will communicate to each other using something like WhatsApp. Once I realized that, it’s easy to understand how someone can really know no one that uses iMessage.
Google, on its best day, is awful.
Desperate Google leveraging social media to pressure Apple to “let them in” is embarrassing.
I want nothing to do with whatever it is Google is selling.
Desperate Google leveraging social media to pressure Apple to “let them in” is embarrassing.
I want nothing to do with whatever it is Google is selling.
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Hey Google, why don't you tell the Oppo and Xiaomi of the world to support RCS first? They're the majority in the world of Android, and they don't even support RCS on their default SMS app. What's the point in making cheap shots at Apple when you don't even put any effort in cleaning up your own platform? And talk to carriers worldwide about supporting, and see if they would even bother with you. My carrier blocked me for a few days because I enabled RCS.
Not everyone is talking to people in foreign countries…
Everybody that uses an iPhone is considered "active" so it's a very bad stat.
What's important is a user's main messaging app.
For example, someone can contact Coach or KLM using WhatsApp, but not iMessage.
Not everyone have unlimited SMS either. In my country, nobody uses SMS anymore. From friends to business to governments to OTPs, all use Whatsapp.
I don't think carriers even bother with RCS, at least international carriers. This is why it's weird for Google to be barking at Apple, when their own partners (Oppo, Xiaomi, etc) and carriers are not even supporting RCS.
Google should be talking to the carriers first. Many carriers around the world don't bother with RCS, with some even has dropped support for it. So why should Apple do the heavy lifting for Google? This is Google being lazy. What Google should do is force RCS support by default in their Android certification. This forces the lazy OEMs like Oppo and Xiaomi, the majority around the world, to support RCS. Force all Android OEMs, even Samsung, to enable RCS out of the box. Then you have the userbase, and it will be easier to convince the carriers (and then Apple). Barking at Apple right now just shows laziness from Google's part.
Except that iMessage doesn’t exist on the majority of smartphones in the world.
US is just one country.
Nobody bothers with RCS in many parts of the world. Whatsapp has replaced SMS in most parts of SE Asia. China has Wechat. Japan has Line. S.Korea has Kakao. Etc, etc. Due to the carriers (and also Google) being sloooow (Google just decided to support RCS because they failed multiple times in their own messaging services) in actually pushing the standard, people have moved on. For Google to be barking at Apple now is extremely hypocritical and lazy. Google didn't even care to talk to the carriers around the world in supporting RCS. Basically now they want Apple to do the hard work.
My understanding was that Verizon was targeting a 2022 roll-out. Most of the support has been via Google hosting the RCS server. I suppose, quite strangely, Apple hasn't wanted the Android team to run their chat infrastructure.
Fill in the blank with RCS. Apple Corporate policy is not to talk about the features of products which are not released.
That said, any competitive advantage that Apple has in chat is mostly Google's making. I have literally lost count of the times Google has screwed over their base by rolling out and deprecating various chat offerings.
After building and burning a dozen bridges with users, Google's one chance of people giving a crap about Google's chat offerings at this point is by piggy-backing on RCS adoption. And the once chance at this point of RCS getting adopted is if it works between everyone and with zero setup.
The US carriers dropped their plan of shipping their own RCS app on Android likely due to the mutual desperation.
That said, Google already has extensions on RCS (such as the end-to-end encryption support, which only works with Android Messenger). Their encryption is inferior in many ways to the other encrypted chat apps such as Signal and iMessage - it only supports 1-to-1 chats, and my understanding is that users must manually verify that they have the same "verification code" out of band to know that the chat is actually encrypted.
It also was first published in June 2021 - meaning even if Apple wanted to support RCS in an iOS release and this e2e support pushed them toward adopting it, that it came way too late for iOS 15.
I can't understand why people use Facebook's WhatsApp. I would prefer no messaging client at all to a Facebook owned system.
Yep. I'm not calling you out....but......(looks around at audience)...
This green bubble thing is ridiculous and misunderstood. For my job I work with non-tech people and they don’t hate green bubbles because they’re green and thus it’s just a red flag that the other person doesn’t own an iPhone. They understand the drawbacks that limit their ability to do anything but basically send words, since content doesn’t do as well. Yes, Apple could adopt it and then make iMessage even more valuable through other features but let’s not pretend he has a heart of gold. He’s bullying Apple just the same as he’s claiming others are being bullied. Sure, Apple can take the bullying, that’s not my point. My point is that he’s not doing it to “save the children”. He just hates Apple’s success in text messaging.
I’m sure Facebook/Meta appreciates that quite a bit. Knowing all about your travel plans is great for creating advertising just for you!
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It’s sad, so sad. If Google hadn’t ripped off the iPhone to create Android, Microsoft could have had a chance with their phoneOS.
Private Relay getting flagged as "suspicious activity" is extremely frustrating - especially by ID.me that will not even reply with a means of verifying my account to get the suspension lifted or provide any modicum kf service. It cost me over $200 in missed ESPP pricing. Yes, Apple is to blame as well, but ID.me has a choice to be reasonable and they opt instead to ignore users who have zero other option than to use them.
And those also wouldn’t support iMessage, so I really don’t get what point you think you’re making.
I don't understand why people use smartphones
I don't understand why people use phones
I don't understand why people communicate
I don't understand people
I don't understand
My point is Google crying to Apple to help them is going to be pointless. Apple uses the most popular search engine, Google, ONLY because Google pays Apple obscene amounts of money every year to do just that. All you Android fans are subsidizing Apples’s success, so keep it up!