'It's Time for Apple to Fix Texting' Says New Android Website Pushing RCS Messaging Technology

[BuffaloTF]

I'll happily admit you're talking over my head with the first part. I'm still not sure what the point would be for Google to release Messages as RCS only, though. Too many iPhone users (at least in the United States) rely solely on iMessage. So you still get a lot of angry (android) customers who would have no way of messaging their friends/family on iPhones. It would be the same situation as trying to get people onto WhatsApp, which from my own personal experience, has not gone well.

That's fine. Allow me to temporarily remove Apple here to try and make it clearer. Samsung recently joined up with Google for RCS. Prior, Samsung always used "Samsung XYZ" apps on their devices for everything, Samsung Messages in this specific case. That's what they shipped Galaxy devices with. Samsung Messages also had its own RCS platform, but it could not send an RCS to Google Messages, nor AT&T Advanced Messages, or Verizon Advanced Messages, etc. Google worked hard to get Samsung on board, and they scored them -- with the S21 in some markets Samsung Messages was no more, it shipped with Google Messages. The S22, the US got it and basically all other markets. Why didn't they just hook up Samsung Messages? Seems like an easy solution, Samsung already had a lot invested in their own app development. But it's because there's no avenue in - the API that they don't have available. Google has it closed off.

Now, for Apple to join on board-- They'd want it within their own Messages app alongside iMessages and have it be the step-down, and sit above SMS. Same problem here, there's no way in to Google RCS from anyone not named Google. Google wants iOS though, but it wants the SMS fallback. On the other side of the coin Apple won't give anyone, not just specifically Google, access to the core OS to get to its SMS functions. That's why there's no alternate texting app on an iPhone. The OS itself is closed source, unlike Android where the core OS, the AOSP part, is open source - and then Google throws a bunch of closed source apps on top and "Android" - what we buy as consumers - is what we get.

 

[zach-coleman]

2) Anything that relies on carriers is probably doomed to fail.

The entire reason RCS is a good thing is that it relies on carriers. Sure, I wouldn't want to use it for everything, but I don't want texting androids by phone number in default apps (a very common way to do things) to be terrible. If this was some random app I wouldn't care at all, it would be totally useless if it wasn't connected to carriers imo.

 

[coolfactor]

RCS is definitely a messy "standard".

Vendors can develop their own "extensions" to RCS, which only work with their own devices, so we end up with a mishmash of different RCS features across a spectrum of devices. This is how Google added end-to-end encryption to 1-on-1 conversations.

This reminds me of USB... a standard that's supposed to be "universal", but is anything but that. Different connectors, different capabilities.

RCS needs to raise the bar before Apple will touch it. Let's hope they do support it eventually, but until they do, the pressure is on to improve RCS.

 

[i-John]

This sounds like whining. Why doesn't Google just adopt iMessage instead?

How about Apple accept the standard instead of Google accepting a proprietary system... which Apple doesn't want to give them access to. This has been WELL documented in the past. Eddie Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android, but Tim Cook and board overruled him... so yeah, there's that.

Time for Apple to accept what is standard in the industry.

 

[BuffaloTF]

The entire reason RCS is a good thing is that it relies on carriers. Sure, I wouldn't want to use it for everything, but I don't want texting androids by phone number in default apps (a very common way to do things) to be terrible. If this was some random app I wouldn't care at all, it would be totally useless if it wasn't connected to carriers imo.

RCS does not rely on carriers at all. Google very deliberately tossed up the middle finger and went alone to create its own network to make it available to everyone, not just users of a specific carrier that could only message other people on that same carrier.

 

[BuffaloTF]

How about Apple accept the standard instead of Google accepting a proprietary system... which Apple doesn't want to give them access to. This has been WELL documented in the past. Eddie Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android, but Tim Cook and board overruled him... so yeah, there's that.

Time for Apple to accept what is standard in the industry.

There is no standard. There's a standard set of features and instructions on how to set it up. Google RCS is closed and proprietary, it can talk to a grand total of zero other RCS apps; like every RCS app that came before it.

 

[lcs101]

How about Apple accept the standard instead of Google accepting a proprietary system... which Apple doesn't want to give them access to. This has been WELL documented in the past. Eddie Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android, but Tim Cook and board overruled him... so yeah, there's that.

Time for Apple to accept what is standard in the industry.

That is something I would not hesitate to spend money on.

 

[zach-coleman]

RCS does not rely on carriers at all. Google very deliberately tossed up the middle finger and went alone to create its own network to make it available to everyone, not just users of a specific carrier that could only message other people on that same carrier.

And yet it still requires an active phone number and cell phone plan. It is still reliant on carriers.

 

[bLackjackj]

All my co-workers and my relatives use Android so texting has been a nightmare with them because of that.

C'mon Apple. Give us RCS in Messages.

Well tell 'em to get an iPhone or swapout YOUR iPhone for an Android! Simple way to end YOUR nightmare!

 

[Mrjoedot]

obviously about the color of the bubbles then.

 

[Abazigal]

All my co-workers and my relatives use Android so texting has been a nightmare with them because of that.

C'mon Apple. Give us RCS in Messages.

Up till now, I still don't understand the US's obsession with iMessage when cross-platform alternatives like WhatsApp or telegram already exist.

 

[bmustaf]

You must be kidding him.

Walled garden? News flash: The current deployment of RCS is a walled garden approach, controlled exclusively by Google. This follows an environment of many walled gardens that couldn't interoperate, something like 81 out of 850 carriers worldwide with their own walled gardens, or some ridiculous poor adoption rate -- it was barely 8% adoption, let's just stick with that number instead.

Oh, I'm not here to defend or support RCS, hardly, but my point is simple: if people are making specious claims like "it is about end to end encryption" they're frankly full of it, because SMS doesn't have that either and constitutes apologies for walled gardens. Google makes plenty for their own, too.

Two people/orgs/camps can be equally full of it, and they are. Google has theirs, Apple has theirs, but we're beginning to see Google at least have openness to letting Apple adopt RCS (likely on ridiculous/unfavorable terms of control, at least), but that's a lot further than iMessage on Android got if you want to talk about adoption...8% is way more interop than 0%...which is what iMessage has.

Look, I'm an iMessage user and Apple guy and prefer their stuff to the GOOG stack in general, but there's a ton of really specious arguments on this topic that make no sense, RCS also being a walled garden doesn't obviate that at all.

 

[BuffaloTF]

And yet it still requires an active phone number and cell phone plan. It is still reliant on carriers.

Yeah, except the next release creates IDs other than phone numbers to enable cross-platform and multi-device support. It'll treat a phone number the same way iMessage does - to capture and prevent SMS.

 

[BuffaloTF]

Oh, I'm not here to defend or support RCS, hardly, but my point is simple: if people are making specious claims like "it is about end to end encryption" they're frankly full of it, because SMS doesn't have that either and constitutes apologies for walled gardens. Google makes plenty for their own, too.

Two people/orgs/camps can be equally full of it, and they are. Google has theirs, Apple has theirs, but we're beginning to see Google at least have openness to letting Apple adopt RCS (likely on ridiculous/unfavorable terms of control, at least), but that's a lot further than iMessage on Android got if you want to talk about adoption...8% is way more interop than 0%...which is what iMessage has.

Look, I'm an iMessage user and Apple guy and prefer their stuff to the GOOG stack in general, but there's a ton of really specious arguments on this topic that make no sense, RCS also being a walled garden doesn't obviate that at all.

Sorry, while I don't want to take away from your overall point as it's perfectly fine outside of this, I do want to be clear on what I meant in my post. The 8% adoption was how many carriers deployed RCS in their own self-contained walled off services. No interoperability across carriers with them. That's it, no counter argument from me as I agree with the general sentiment here.

 

[Pistol Peto]

All my co-workers and my relatives use Android so texting has been a nightmare with them because of that.

C'mon Apple. Give us RCS in Messages.

So your co-workers and relatives are OK with their texts in a group chat not being encrypted? No thanks.

Not sure why Google would be trusted with any of this by the way. Their entire business model is to find out as much as they can about you and sell it the information to others.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

How about Apple accept the standard instead of Google accepting a proprietary system... which Apple doesn't want to give them access to. This has been WELL documented in the past. Eddie Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android, but Tim Cook and board overruled him... so yeah, there's that.

Time for Apple to accept what is standard in the industry.

Apple and its board were against creating a (likely free) iMessage app for Android. They'd probably be more receptive if Google offered to license iMessage. Google could just use some of the additional profit they generate from selling inferior handsets to pay the iMessage licensing fees, and then we'd be rid of the ugly green text bubbles.

RCS is absolutely not an industry standard in the US, as about 60% of handsets do not support it.

 

[ian87w]

What a load of BS. Why is it Apple's duty when the carriers are the ones holding the cards? Heck, do Google even try convincing their Android OEMs to support RCS?

The facts:
- None of the major Chinese OEMs, Xiaomi and the BBK group, who are the majority of Android player around the world aside from Samsung, support RCS on their stock SMS apps
- Practically only a handful of carriers around the world support RCS, with many actually dropping support of it since the reason above, hardly any handsets support it out if the box.

Google cannot even figure out their own video call solution naming. Clean up your acts first before pointing fingers in others for your own incompetence.

 

[Minato1990]

They can go touch grass
Apple don’t need to do squat. iMessage is king you android peasants

 

[CarlJ]

Well, we are seeing them dictate the type of port. It’s not a stretch to see other dictates follow.

I halfway expect the EU will start dictating what colors phones can come in, next.

 

[dk001]

So why does Apple support SMS/MMS? It has zero security.

Apple has zero obligation to let anything message a iPhone that isn't from another Apple product. Interesting concept,
I wonder how long they would last?

The fact that you keep saying Android just proves the lack of understanding.

Do you use your phone for any type of messaging other than to fellow iPhone users?

Book a doctors appointment which sends a SMS reminder. That message is in four messages that may or may not be out of order because of SMS limitations instead of just one message. RCS is a standard. It benefits to anything that uses SMS today. Hate to tell you but that's more than Android. Yes its a hard concept.

Had not thought of that.
My banks (all of them), delivery services including DHL, UPS, and FedEx, Doctors, basically any alert that comes via text is sent SMS/MMS.
I get a lot of those.

 

[dk001]

Except that it’s not. If Apple were to implement standard RCS in iMessages, there still wouldn’t be end to end encryption, for instance, as that’s only available as part of the special sauce Google puts on top of RCS when you use Google Messages, it’s not baked into the RCS protocol. Most of iMessage’s functionality (or of Facebook Messenger’s equivalent functionality) wouldn’t be available, either. Google has completely oversold what RCS is, it’s basically an extension to MMS with longer messages and better support for group chat. And Apple already attempts to abstract away those aspects of SMS/MMS, you can send long messages but they’re split into multiple SMS packets on the backend and displayed as one message on the frontend, and you can kinda do group SMS, it just sometimes is fragile. Well, it also allows for read receipts and typing indicators, as well.

Standardized RCS doesn’t actually support most of the modern chat effects iMessage, Facebook, etc. have had for years. In-line replies, text backgrounds, reactions, RCS has no ability to do any of that. So RCS basically is green chat bubbles with read receipts and typing indicator. And that’s because it’s a standard that dates back to 2008.

Google Messenger is not RCS. Google Messenger is a layer on top of RCS that adds modern chat features. But that only works if both RCS gateways support those features, and those features are proprietary to Google Messenger. You have to go through Google’s RCS gateway to get them, and Google isn’t going to let Apple go through their gateway (and nor would Apple want to). Google doesn’t publish intercompatibility documents for other RCS providers, to the best of my knowledge. So while Apple may be doing messaging lock-in with iMessage, Google is doing lock-in on top of what’s supposedly an open standard (good old embrace, extend, extinguish) but claiming that their proprietary implementation is still the open standard.

You miss the basics. If implemented properly, RCS in Apple Messages can have E2E encryption. It is doable This isn't about chat effects though I would suspect standardized effects would likely creep into the end product.

btw, we will supposedly see group encryption for RCS by years end - https://9to5google.com/2022/05/11/google-messages-rcs-group-encryption/

I suspect as time goes forward companies are going to see a harder and harder push like the EU is considering for messaging.

 

[dk001]

Has anybody wondered what carriers get out of this? I have been in GSMA meetings laying this out and I’m socked how naive some people are about RCS. Apple is ignoring it for good reasons.

Carrier support is not fully needed and that is becoming less and less.

 

[dk001]

From a UK perspective this all seems rather bizarre because literally every single person, whether Apple or Android, switched to WhatsApp years ago. Nobody uses iMessage, and the only time I ever even get an SMS is for automated messages from businesses or one-time security codes.

I wonder why WhatsApp never gained traction in the US?

It is but it is happening with the younger gen.

 

[dk001]

Google and cell service providers want access to more data.
every one is using either iMessages, google messaging or What's App Cell service providers are loosing the data collection option.

You do realize anything that goes via SMS/MMS the carriers already get?
RCS would actually decrease what the Carriers can gather.

 

[ian87w]

Carrier support is not fully needed and that is becoming less and less.

It's still needed, kinda. Sure, Google are circumventing it by using their own server, which carriers have the option to do as well so they don't have to have their own infrastructure. But that opens another can of worms on who is storing your data.

Apple chose to stay away from it for good reasons.