SFjohn
macrumors 68020
Sounds like you recently turned 40! ?
Google Exec Pushing RCS Adoption Says He's 'Not Asking Apple to Make iMessage Available on Android'
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What? LOL. Global market shares shows that Samsung and BBK group have more marketshare than Apple. Only recent Samsung handsets have Google Messages pre-installed, but even then RCS is NOT enabled by default. And NO BBK phones (Oppo, Vivo, Realme, etc) support RCS on their default SMS app.
So why Apple is the "last" major RCS holdout, when everybody else is not even supporting RCS fully? My carrier blocked me when I enabled RCS. Maybe Google should try talking to the carriers first, and clean up their own OEM partners.
jasonsewell
macrumors member
I hope Apple never supports RCS. I like knowing if the person I’m communicating with is an iPhone user or an Android user. If RCS gets widely adopted, those green and blue bubbles may no longer tell the tale.
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boss.king
Suspended
Then your point is a bad one. I use an iPhone. I want Apple to adopt RCS support to make my messaging experience better when I message people using android devices.
I don’t care what search engine Apple sets by default, paid or not, and it’s completely irrelevant to the conversation.
They could still tell you if it is Messages or RCS. There will still be app integration that will never work over RCS.
Unregistered 4U
macrumors G4
Yeah, based on this and how much they already hate having to carry SMS, you’re not going to see much uptake for it. It’s a “good idea” with no useful way for anything to be done with it on a worldwide scale. It’s too little too late.
Unregistered 4U
macrumors G4
In some countries, WhatsApp had ingrained itself into the lives of the citizens as a trusted partner to the point where any real e-commerce required folks to use it, including official government purposes. FaceBook bought it, yes, but that’s after the fact. It wasn’t always a FaceBook owned system, and they probably wouldn’t have gone with it if it HAD been, but they’re stuck with it now.
boss.king
Suspended
This is the sort of spiteful, stubborn, short-sighted approach to tech that I struggle to understand. You’d rather have a worse experience messaging anyone who has an android phone simply to spite them? And all because you want to keep the green and blue bubble split, which wouldn’t even be affected by implementing RCS?
DakotaGuy
macrumors 601
I don’t know how the cost is broke down because I have unlimited texting from my carrier anyhow, but on my Android phone you can tell which messages are RCS because they are dark blue. SMS is light blue. Also when I message someone that also has RCS messaging my messages have a little encryption “lock” symbol on them. RCS works a LOT better then SMS/MMS if you want to send pictures or video. If RCS totally replaced SMS we’d all be better off. On an iPhone you’d still have blue iMessage bubbles with other iPhone users, but those green bubbles would be a lot better when sending any media, plus be more secure. Even if iMessage uses a better encryption standard at least you’d get encryption when messaging people on an Android phone. SMS offers nothing.
Other parts of the world use messaging apps that aren't messages, for various reasons. One surprising one is that many of them have multiple phones, and SMS is tied to a phone number...so is sort of useless.
RCS is presumably also tied to a phone, which will make it harder (though not impossible) for the message to appear on multiple devices. But Messages already does that, so what's the point? Also RCS doesn't work if you don't have a carrier.
RCS really is an attempt by carriers to stay relevant. The world is passing carriers by, and everything is OTT. Who has the best and cheapest pipe? That's all people really care about. That and a communication endpoint that's mostly reliable.
RCS is presumably also tied to a phone, which will make it harder (though not impossible) for the message to appear on multiple devices. But Messages already does that, so what's the point? Also RCS doesn't work if you don't have a carrier.
RCS really is an attempt by carriers to stay relevant. The world is passing carriers by, and everything is OTT. Who has the best and cheapest pipe? That's all people really care about. That and a communication endpoint that's mostly reliable.
SFjohn
macrumors 68020
But they don’t need to do anything… I get you really want that, which is fine, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up.
FlyingDutch
macrumors 68020
That’s because Americans, being the readers or the reporters, tends to think the world end at US borders…
FlyingDutch
macrumors 68020
My only question is: who is behind RCS ? Is it an open standard ? Is it managed by Google ?
Because if there is Google behind, then no thanks. This would be just another way to harvest our data.
If it is an open standard then Apple should consider it.
BvizioN
macrumors 603
That depends on who you ask.
1. Because when it came around, it was a compelling alternative to SMS, which was very limited in functionality and in many cases, ridiculously expensive. It also wasn’t owned by Facebook then.
2. People honestly don’t care that much about who owns what. WhatsApp first took off (here) among teenagers and they gladly give up their privacy anyway. A few people dropped WhatsApp for an alternative (mainly Telegram and Signal) after the Facebook takeover but the vast majority shrugged it off.
contacos
macrumors 603
Everything is done via WhatsApp here. From your Hotel booking, Covid Test Appointment to car repair requests or customer service demands
Reason077
macrumors 601
For me, in the UK, virtually everyone I communicate with (whether friends, family, or work colleagues) uses WhatsApp. Very rare that anyone will send me an iMessage now days. Going back 5 years or so, iMessage was everywhere, but WhatsApp really seems to have taken over now.
This is just another reason why we need a modern open messaging standard like RCS, however. Giving one company total control over everyone's messaging isn't healthy. Regardless of whether that company is Facebook or Apple.
flottenheimer
macrumors 68000
Word.
From an iPhone user perspective, sending and recieving messages from Android users is just not a good experience. Apple ought to do whatever they can to make that a better experience: Make iMessage available on all OSes or support and implement technologies such as RCS.
Apple could easily afford this with their incredible piles of cash and $3 trillion market cap.
RCS is a protocol. The GSMA then published a universal profile for it few years ago. Anybody who wants to use the protocol shall comply with the universal profile. The problem with early implementations of RCS is that the carriers are using it only for themselves (intra-carrier). Various carriers came up with various brandings for it, adding to consumer confusion. Inter-operability was rare, and add on the fact that hardly any devices had built-in support for it.
Enter Google, who had been failing at instant messaging. So they clamp on to RCS and pretended to be the good guy supporting the "standard." Little did they know that the carriers are not that easy to convince for a universal interoperability. Worse, many smaller carriers don't have the infrastructure to support RCS. Google decided to do it themselves via Jibe, and its own messages app. Basically if the carrier doesn't support RCS natively, you can still enable the "chat" features in Google Messages, and the app will activate it through Google's Jibe platform, bypassing the carrier. Some carriers are on board since it saved them the cost from having to have their own servers.
Agreed on making iMessage available on other platforms. Apple missed the boat on this one.
The golden opportunity was during the new Whatsapp ToS fiasco. During that time, many people were truly concerned with Whatsapp/Facebook, and were willing to switch away. Signal got some traction here. Some people were even willing to pay. Imagine if Apple introduced iMessage for Android during this time. Apple could even charge some money for the fancy effect features just to keep it premium, and I'm sure many people would be willing to pay for it. Add on the fact that one can replace the default SMS app on Android. It was a missed opportunity for Apple.
WhatsApp belongs to Facebook and WeChat probably is readable by the Chinese government. This means neither of them are really that secure.
Friends tell me that Signal is the upcoming one to use.