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In the real world, people have a mix of iPhones and Android phones. Apple is intentionally degrading the user experience for it's own users when they need to interact with others with Android phones because they feel they can make more money keeping their system incompatible with other systems and hopefully strong arming Android users into changing.

Their marketing has worked on US teenagers in high school. People in the real world just switch to WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. Nobody has time to deal with Apple and the nonsense they're trying to pull.
 
But that’s not a bad thing?
That is; SMS is the basic fallback available if a more complex system is not available or unsuitable.
There is the option to send as SMS if iMessage fails. But if you don’t want to send a non-iMessage version; you don’t have to.

RCS shouldn’t replace SMS if there’s any trade off in compatibility, simplicity, robustness… By all means; add the “third tier” of brown bubbles that compromise, but I’m not sure theres compelling benefits.
That's a lot of words for what could have been boiled down to "I haven't looked into the benefits of RCS over SMS but I'm going to argue against it anyway"
 
Let me explain it to you. RCS would NOT replace your "precious" imessage. It would just replace the fallback from SMS to RCS when you text your android friends. This would give you end to end encrypted messaging (as opposed to the wide open texts running throught the carriers servers righr now), full size file transfer (think full size videos and photos as opposed to the totally wrecked and small photos you can only send right now), and lastly, typing indicators and delivered and read indicators (similar to how imessage works). It would greatly enhance your experience texting with Android friends.
And let me explain to you. RCS is not encrypted. If you’re using an iPhone and you fallback to RCS it’s unencrypted just as SMS/MMS is.
 
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Four of my friends using Android doesn't prevent me from sending them texts, GIFs and photos, or linking them to movie trailers on YouTube (99% of my communications). I don't have to worry about which of the seemingly endless parade of Google messaging apps they're using this week. Ultimately though, I don't trust a communication protocol dreamed up by carriers and Google without Apple's involvement, nor do I like that Google has sort of circumvented the carriers for their implementation.
 
Eh everyone besides the US uses WhatsApp anyway
Yeah, every region has their instant messaging platform of choice. I'm happy that we don't have that snobbish attitude where I'm from. Everyone uses more neutral or cross-platform alternatives like Telegram or Whatsapp.

I've never used iMessage a single time and I've always used iPhones since the iPhone 4 came out.
 
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And let me explain to you. RCS is not encrypted. If you’re using an iPhone and you fallback to RCS it’s unencrypted just as SMS/MMS is.
You don't know what you are talking about. I use RCS everyday and its encrypted. RCS has been encrypted by default since June of last year with group chat encryption rolling out soon.

 
RCS would be greatly appreciated by me, as I have a mix of Android and iPhone colleagues. There are stuff that my Android friends can't get because they don't have iMessage so I have to send through E-mail or send them condense snippets of large videos while I could just drop an iCloud link for my iPhone friends.
 
In the real world, people have a mix of iPhones and Android phones. Apple is intentionally degrading the user experience for it's own users when they need to interact with others with Android phones because they feel they can make more money keeping their system incompatible with other systems and hopefully strong arming Android users into changing.

I view it as Apple is simply making their user experience better for their users, similar to AirDrop, AirPlay, CarPlay, FaceTime, etc. They could adopt RCS as some lowest common denominator fall back but that won't mean they stop adding iMessage features that are not compatible. Otherwise, they have no advantage over Android.

And yes, it's to sell phones, but not in the way you infer.

Their marketing has worked on US teenagers in high school. People in the real world just switch to WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. Nobody has time to deal with Apple and the nonsense they're trying to pull.

Most people never even notice the difference. iMessage works with other systems, doesn't require installing an new program and creating yet another account, etc. As long as they can send texts and pictures, they don't care about colors picture limitations.
 
Maybe it's just my experience but apart from the US, no-one uses iMessage or SMS. Everyone I know in Europe uses Whatsapp or/and Telegram, everyone in Africa uses Whatsapp and everyone in China uses WeChat.
I also think that operator support for RCS outside the US is low (but I might be wrong) and that certain Android vendors do not implement it, or implement it without encryption features, so it's not a "standard" in the sense that SME is one. Plus RCS has already been abused in India to send spam

Most importantly, if Apple supported RCS, it would certainly keep RCS bubbles green!
 
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Maybe it's just my experience but apart from the US, no-one uses iMessage or SMS. Everyone I know in Europe uses Whatsapp or/and Telegram, everyone in Africa uses Whatsapp and everyone in China uses WeChat.
I also think that operator support for RCS outside the US is low (but I might be wrong) and that certain Android vendors do not implement it, or implement it without encryption features, so it's not a "standard" in the sense that SME is one. Plus RCS has already been abused in India to send spam

Most importantly, if Apple supported RCS, it would certainly keep RCS bubbles green!
This just shows us how the rest of the world is doing things wrong and once again proves why the USA is #1! 🤣
All joking aside, The rest of the world COULD switch to RCS since its data based and build by default into every android phone.

The other thing you have to remember is you are on a US based website talking about 2 US based products (Iphones and Androids).
 
Carrier-based text messaging, be it SMS, MMS or RCS, is a relic of the past.

"More secure", yeah sure.
Yes. SMS is a GSM standard and nobody should touch it. I can still text to 1996 phone. There are plenty of multiplatform communicators.
 
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I've never been blocked on iMessage so this explainer was actually helpful for me.
 
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