I imagine China will make it there first, the beneficiary of government controlled carriers that will do whatever the government dictates. It remains to be seen if they create a translation layer that will use SMS when communicating outside the country. Would be interesting to see if other carriers around the world rise to the occasion and set up some form of RCS compatibility if China bans SMS/MMS!
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Google Reveals When to Expect RCS Support on iPhone for Improved Texting With Android Users
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I’m curious if this is just an educated guess that Google has the 🥜 to put online, it’s not like they have anything to cite beyond what Apple has publicly said, and I doubt anyone at Apple replied to an email from Alphabet saying “sure, go ahead and reveal more specifically when RCS is coming to iOS, we’re fine with you announcing stuff for us.”
either way, glad this is finally happening, and still curious why it’s not at all being factored into the DOJ case re: gatekeeping iMessage…
either way, glad this is finally happening, and still curious why it’s not at all being factored into the DOJ case re: gatekeeping iMessage…
Probably as much as I needed to know that, right?
RCS should just straight up replace iMessage. It’s the same damn thing but universal. Just find a way to continue to save these now just “Messages” into iCloud.
So now we’ll have still 2 separate types of conversations in our messages app.
I guess it’s better than nothing; and Apple doesn’t want to remove the stickers, games, emojis on messages and etc. should have just allowed iMessage to be cross platform. That was the better solution, likely could have been a solution for the world, as the need for other messaging apps may have not been needed there between android and iPhone.
So now we’ll have still 2 separate types of conversations in our messages app.
I guess it’s better than nothing; and Apple doesn’t want to remove the stickers, games, emojis on messages and etc. should have just allowed iMessage to be cross platform. That was the better solution, likely could have been a solution for the world, as the need for other messaging apps may have not been needed there between android and iPhone.
I said hundreds of millions of people in Europe still use SMS, which is true. It's also true that people in Europe use third party messaging apps more than some others, but it's a mixture of different messaging apps, with I believe WhatsApp and Messenger being the most common. Furthermore SMS fall back is a thing for some third party messaging apps, and this will hopefully change to RCS fall back.
iMessage and RCS are very similar in some regards, but are not the same.
However, you are free to turn off iMessages and use only SMS, so I suspect that similarly in the future you will be able to turn off iMessages and use only RCS.
RCS is also a standard with carriers… not just a straight up Google product, although Google designed. It is replacing SMS/MMS in the same way edge replaced by 3g and etc.
I’m sure SMS/MMS will be a fallback; as were the wireless data standards as they are replaced.
Apple wants to be able to add features to iMessage that may not be necessary in a cross-platform system like RCS. Games makes sense to be platform-specific. But the good news is the base functionality that all iMessage users use daily will be available cross-platform thanks to RCS soon enough.
I expect Apple to support the GSMA reference standard for RCS at minimum. Google should allow its own encryption standard for RCS to become part of the GSMA reference standard.
I think another point to be aware of here, is that the majority of messages outside the US via SMS these days are B2B or B2C (2 factor authentication, “Your order has been shipped”, etc). When you remove that “infrastructure level” traffic, usage outside the US by consumers is even FAR less than what’s shown.
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It's a cultural thing really. In the US, SMS has pretty much always been cheap or free so people just used it and never got out of the habit. In other countries SMS and MMS were very expensive and so people used alternatives that weren't as expensive.
The GSMA stopped working on the standard a long time ago because carrier members of the GSMA aren’t going to adopt it anyway since it would cost those carriers money. Perhaps if China were to begin blocking SMS messages, then the carriers might come back after years of inaction and update the standard… like one more time?
Being on both Android and iOS doesn't make something universally cross platform, and either way that only makes it as cross platform as half of the programs you originally referenced including WhatsApp. Being a third party app has nothing to do with being cross platform.
I know people with WhatsApp or WeChat, but I literally don't know even a single person with Telegram or Signal even installed. But I don't have either WhatsApp and WeChat installed because I don't want to have to load 5 different messaging applications. Therein lies the problem.
? Not sure what you're saying.
Basically my point is that once iOS goes RCS, it means that Android users and iPhone users alike (or at least those running the recent OS versions on relatively recent hardware) will have RCS available by default. No need to install a third party app.
I question that “recent report”. If Apple’s adopting RCS because of a requirement out of China, I can see how they’d work with THOSE service providers to ensure that the Universal Profile works reliably, but I don’t see them putting in additional effort to help any providers that aren’t supporting the Universal Profile and, instead, something from Google. I’ll see if I can find any report that mentions this.
UPDATE:
I saw a mention on wikipedia’s RCS page.
Apple stated it will not support Google's end-to-end encryption extension over RCS, but would work with GSMA to create an RCS encryption standard.[40]
That link to the attribution of Apple stating that they would work with GSMA to create an RCS encryption standard? The attributed article mentions nothing of the sort. One couldn’t even rightfully INFER that from any of the text on the page.
So, it just appears that there’s people out there that WANT it to be true that Apple will work with the GSMA for encryption.
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You don’t necessarily need certificates or a central authority, but the distribution of the public keys would have to be built into the protocol somehow.
You poor soul. Here, let me give you a hug.
This is great news for everyone still using default messaging apps. Also softens the feeling of lock-in from iMessage, since you wouldn't give up many features, for those of us that are curious about what else the phone market has to offer.
I know everything about Google's past messaging apps, in ways I wish I didn't. RCS should have been created before Apple create iMessage. And to this day, it's still not fully baked.
I agree. Sadly until Google pushed their RCS, it was a mish-mash at best. Would like to see a standard E2EE set.
Google didn’t design RCS. The GSMA designed RCS, but few carriers wanted to use it. SO, it’s a standard, but a standard few carriers around the world use. Google designed “Google RCS” which takes the RCS standard and adds a lot of straight up Google product on top of it.
That's incorrect. Apple is already working to establish this standard as an actual standard, not developing Apple proprietary extensions into it as Google has done as a bandaid. That's not the minimum, it's more than Google has done.
Where have you seen that? I have come across nothing but opinion on the level of RCS functionality in iOS Message.
Yes, in their proprietary extension that requires Google's Jive servers to operate.Doesn't Google use MLS?
Messaging Layer Security - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
RFC 9420: The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) Protocol
Messaging applications are increasingly making use of end-to-end security mechanisms to ensure that messages are only accessible to the communicating endpoints, and not to any servers involved in delivering messages. Establishing keys to provide such protections is challenging for group chat...www.rfc-editor.org
EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure they've moved to MLS yet...either way, it's not part of the standard.
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