Ah yes, RCS, the project by big carriers to wrestle back control of the text messaging from the separate / secure / innovative over-the-top apps. No, thank you.
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Google Urges Apple Not to 'Drop the Ball' on Fixing Messaging in New Billboard Pushing RCS
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I don't know about transitioning between WiFi and cellular networks, but I have noticed that iMessage is more finicky about sending a message when there's initially poor reception.
My coverage in parts of my garden, both my own WiFi and cellular coverage, is quite poor. Quite often I'll try to send a message only to realise that it's not going out, so I'll move to where I have better reception.
On Signal and WhatsApp that usually, but not always, does the trick and the message sends almost immediately. iMessage, on the other hand, quite regularly refuses to acknowledge that the situation has changed and the blue bar at the top will take forever to move across the screen, only for the message to still fail to send. Sometimes it will send on the second try, sometimes I have to completely close the Messages app and start over.
I have SMS fallback disabled because I don't want to use it (cost for international messages, poor media quality).
It's not a dealbreaker, but I've definitely seen it happen a lot.
Sure it can be a challenge in some cases, but honestly I find this regular suggestion here that people need to be rocket scientists to operate anything other than the built in messaging app -- I'm slightly exaggerating of course -- quite bizarre.
My own family is from continental Europe and my in-laws and whole extended family from Latin America and they all, from the youngest to the oldest, use WhatsApp without a single issue.
All of MacRumors seems to have Schrödinger's elderly relative, who is simultaneously so techy that they would immediately download lots of malware from 3rd party app stores should Apple ever be forced to allow them, while being so tech illiterate that a 3rd party messaging solution would dumbfound them beyond any hope.
There lies one of the problems, Google shouldn't be running with the ball. Instead, the GSMA really should be implementing a lot of these feature into the standard (including securing the protocol).
If vendors, networks and the GSMA got around the table, then i don't see why a decent RCS-like standardised protocol couldn't be hashed out. Users will still favour other messaging apps but a "rich" cross-platform default messaging protocol that improves upon the current SMS experience for all, isn't a bad thing.
The person with the substandard product is the Lagdroid user.
Why should I want to hear from them?
I'm more concerned about why a massive advertising agency, whose entire business model is mining data off of their sheep... wants Apple to use their sponsored messaging platform...
Sounds like a ginormous predator scheme.
Google wants to make the messaging experience between Android devices and iOS devices "better" (i.e., better or more appealing for Android users). However, Apple supporting RCS doesn't mean iMessage has to go away or be replaced by Google Messages.
iMessage and RCS: An unlikely pair we all want to see
iMessage is pretty great, there’s no denying that, but adding RCS support to the app would make a better user...
9to5mac.com
This behaviour you see is common across all E2EE services, because both ends need to negotiate keys before sending. So if network connection is spotty, negotiation fails and it will have to try again.
Edit: This is why for websites that does 2-way SSL, it takes longer, because both ends need to negotiate keys before secure communication can start.
Google wants to make the messaging experience between Android devices and iOS devices "better" (i.e., better or more appealing for Android users). However, Apple supporting RCS doesn't mean iMessage has to go away or be replaced by Google Messages.
iMessage and RCS: An unlikely pair we all want to see
iMessage is pretty great, there’s no denying that, but adding RCS support to the app would make a better user...
Yes, there would still be iPhone-only features. The question for Apple is how many people actually use them.
My guess is that a lot of users have a pretty basic use case when it comes to messengers. Messages, group chats, pictures, videos and audio messages -- all of it a tiny bit spruced up with replies and reactions and the like.
Sure they'll send the occasional Memoji or whatever, but overall these added features probably are nowhere near as widely used as to bind anyone to iMessage (or any other messenger, for that matter). There's exceptions, of course, for example Telegram's massive groups that some people use as social media, but I think that's slightly different.
What this means is that for messengers the only thing that really locks people in is reach. For a provider that's great as long as people are reasonably happy, but it's also precarious because the barriers to move to a different solution are actually quite low. It takes the better part of 30 seconds to get set up and if a group decides to jump, the move is quite seamless.
Which is also why Apple is so terrified, I think, to even open up a tiny because by now they've built this system that holds some (primarily US-based) users in the ecosystem. It's also why Google keeps pushing, because removing a barrier to move to Android obviously helps them.
It's not just Apple, though. I'm pretty sure Meta is just as cautious about how the EU attempts to open up messaging will affect them, because a lot of what I said equally applies to WhatsApp in other markets.
If you regularly use a lot of messengers I think you'll agree that there's some things that any one messenger does better than the others, either objectively or subjectively, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter.
Be that as it may, Signal and WhatsApp are equally E2EE and seem to do better.
I don't think it's a massive issue, to be honest, just that out of these three iMessage seems to have the most issues here and is the slowest to find a solution, negotiate keys or whatever else is going on under the hood.
I think it’s more that Google has realized that they’ve sat back and let other messaging services take over the world. They know it could have been them. Anyone with a network of contacts already set up on WhatsApp (or LINE, or WeChat, in and out of country) aren’t going to switch to a Google RCS service which may cause SOME of their contacts to be charged to receive the message (or not be able to receive the message at all as it doesn’t fallback to SMS). The ONLY country where non-carrier based methods aren’t the defacto standard is the US. Thus, this is ALL about a last ditch effort to try to obtain some relevancy before Android users in the US drop Google Messages and also use one of the world’s leading communication services.
It’s absolutely not going to work, but they’ll keep on trying for awhile as the ad budget only covers the US and, at that, only the state of NY and, of that, only the city of NY and, of that, only one street in New York once every other month or so. They can sustain that for awhile, but they’ll eventually lay off the folks working on it as they try to shore up the profits in their ad business. Apple’s not terrified, they just literally don’t care to help Google in their effort to obtain some messaging relevancy. Every US Android user that switches to Signal or Telegram or WhatsApp, though, scares Google tremendously. And, I’m sure that Google has internal metrics that show how many folks Google Messaging activities are dropping off.
Google isn’t interested in messaging, as evidenced by the number of ‘killed’ messaging efforts, some of which were pretty good. Google is a data broker/ad server. What they want is an ad pipeline to iOS users, and Apple very rightly will not give them that, because Apple’s customers don’t want to see ads in messages from Android users.
‘…. the company also urged “every mobile operating system” (in a subtle jab at Apple) to support RCS, which is also aimed at helping businesses reach users in a more interactive way.’ - TechCrunch
And has been pointed out before in this thread, if you can inject an ad, you can inject other stuff too that isn’t good.
‘…. the company also urged “every mobile operating system” (in a subtle jab at Apple) to support RCS, which is also aimed at helping businesses reach users in a more interactive way.’ - TechCrunch
And has been pointed out before in this thread, if you can inject an ad, you can inject other stuff too that isn’t good.
iMessage has been working fine for me minus the occasional crash. 90 percent of the people I message on the daily also use iMessage. Not sure what RCS really is but I doubt it would improve the experience.
RCS seems like a bad standard with bolted on security by Google.
arstechnica.com
New Google site begs Apple for mercy in messaging war
Google is tired of losing so badly to iMessage, so it wants Apple to adopt RCS.
arstechnica.com
At the end of the day, Apple forces a worse experience on their loyal users in order to try and convert more android users. As Apple users our messaging experience is worse that it should be because Apple won't support RCS or port iMessage to Android. We've already chosen Apple, there isn't much else we can do. Most of us have limited influence on what phones our friends, family and co-workers buy.
Apple is using network effects around iMessage to try and turn Android users into iPhone users. In other words, Apple is trying to sell *us* to Android users. We are paying a premium for our Apple products, while Apple is also selling access to us to our friends, family and colleagues.
Apple is using network effects around iMessage to try and turn Android users into iPhone users. In other words, Apple is trying to sell *us* to Android users. We are paying a premium for our Apple products, while Apple is also selling access to us to our friends, family and colleagues.
Then Apple should release iMessage on Android.RCS is security issue waiting to happen.
How RCS exposes mobile users to hackers
Discover how the implementation of Rich Communication Services (RCS) could expose mobile users to hackers, and the security risks associated with RCS deployments.www.autobahn-security.com
And this is why Apple never implemented, and never will. iMessage is still super encrypted and is the gold standard for encrypted messaging.
We pay a premium for Apple products and Apple exposes us to insecure messaging with Android users. Why? Because they hope to use us to convert Android users to iPhone users. We pay a premium, but we are also part of the product.
That’s a misnomer if there ever was one, lol! Well secure from everyone but Google and whoever pays them.
Not gonna happen. That’s also another huge security risk Apple doesn’t want to happen.
In my opinion, regular text message to Android user is much better than massive security risk waiting to happen on RCS.
Absolutely no disagreement that Google massively dropped the ball on messaging and is desperately trying to get a foothold. Also absolutely no discussion that advertising money is a massive consideration for why Google wants a piece of that particular pie.
Where I slightly disagree is which of the two is more terrified of US users adopting a 3rd party messaging service at scale. For Google it would be the final nail in the coffin for their messaging aspirations, but by and large that's a market they've already lost. I'm not sure how much ad potential there is in Google Messages at the moment, frankly, but I assume it's not as great as could be. Anyway, the most likely outcome is not a big loss for Google in terms of where they are today.
However, if Android users in the US coalesced around a new solution the way consumers in Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world have already done, that would probably push a significant amount of iPhone users to download that app as well unless your entire network is on iPhones. That would potentially weaken how locked in consumers would be into Apple's ecosystem in the same way as in other markets. That would be a win for Google.
We can discuss and disagree about how likely this is, but fundamentally I think Apple has just as much if not more to lose than Google by 3rd party solutions, which might even help Google but would certainly hurt Apple.
The RCS protocol is encrypted in transit. Do you know what that means? It‘s a secure transaction between a client and a server, something SMS/MMS does not have.
Encrypted in transit is not the same as end to end encryption and it doesn‘t have to be, they are different levels of protection. End to end encryption is the icing on the cake but I‘d rather take transit encryption over no encryption at all.
Quite possibly, I didn’t ask and couldn’t really see since it was still set up for Covid protection. It could have been a service like the one you mentioned, I have seen that some businesses use those and some that just have a cell phone or cellular tablet that they use. I have had similar instances with standard cell carriers though too
Correct, the “default” RCS protocol is client to server encryption. Problem is that’s hardly any more secure than SMS. The carrier/service whose RCS protocol you are using has the keys since it is client to server. Basically no different than it is now the only different is your neighbor can’t just intercept your texts. So just how it is now a simple request of phone records will still give info just as SMS.
Ultimately you are correct with it being more secure than SMS, but by a thin margin because I don’t see any news articles of someone intercepting SMS. Listen I do not have a problem with RCS at all, but if you can’t even match the security at least of the competition then it isn’t even a fight. Google just rolled out E2EE and waiting on group now and this is only using their protocol most messaging platforms has this now.
Google is basically doing the same thing as Apple, Google is pitching just RCS correct? But the features and abilities it pitches but leaves out is using only their protocol. So if iMessage can only be used between Apple devices, and similar abilities can only be used via Google’s protocol how are things any different?
Edit: I’m on mobile and don’t feel like editing out that top section I forgot to unquote. I also wanted to add to truly have a secure RCS standard protocol you would need client to server encryption and server encryption on top of it to secure that same data, problem is with server side encryption a hack can still get those keys and then we are back to where we were with client to server
Got a reference? ’In transit’ seems to mean encrypted between the client and the destination. By who?
I’m fascinated.
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Go Green-free in 2023! 👍
Go Green-free in 2023! 👍