With how convoluted RCS was in the beginning. Where literally US carriers had their own versions, then some manufactures had their own RCS profiles. You and your Friend could have the same phone, but different carrier and it wouldn’t work. Or two carriers would agree to support each others RCS profile, but the same phone model on either carrier had different OS versions so it wouldn’t work.
It was a mess.
Everyone stopped running their own RCS servers and it all goes through Google now. Apple will probably run their own and by indications it will implement the standard strictly–but guess who doesn’t? Google. So it might end up being worse than just having SMS. When things don’t work right, Apple can just shrug and point at the standard and say ‘thats what we do. take it up with google.’
When things don’t work right, Apple can just shrug and point at the standard and say ‘thats what we do. take it up with google.’
And that’s exactly what they should do.
At lease with Apple stepping into RCS it will get better. Having them contribute research would add more features or at lease actual End to End encryption to the GSM Universal profile. Not just Google and Google Messages.
I think initially RCS features were determined by what Server was hosting it. Google of course wanted everyone to use their profile on their servers… With a great reputation on data retention and privacy Google was of course getting Apples approval.
Google finished adding full E2E encryption a few months ago. It’s actually more secure than iMessage now since your RCS messages aren’t stored on the cloud like iMessages. I’m guessing this is also one other reason Apple is adopting RCS.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824800/google-messages-rcs-end-to-end-encryption-default-group
I thought RCS only works with a server present to act as the host. Having things pass through a Google controlled server was the privacy concern. Since they can easily retain that data in its encrypted form. Which they could likely just as easily unencrypt.
While Apple relies on AWS and Azure for their cloud services. I’m sure they have some sort of agreement or control over the data that limits what Amazon and Microsoft could potentially access.
Apple however can’t guarantee the security or privacy of the Apple user when interacting with an Android phone via RCS. I wonder how they will twist a false sense of privacy
On Apple side I don’t see what they have to gain with that. It will cost time and money to implement to help Android users mostly not Apple users.
It’s counterintuitive for a company to invest to support others, but I guess now it’s the end of the polemic.to help Android users mostly not Apple users.
It helps any iPhone user that will message an Android user. The people on both ends benefit from the improved experience here
I’m happy. I have friends with androids who I can’t share pictures and videos with unless it’s third party DMs like Facebook
MMS messaging still works and always has.
Sure, but it compresses the shit out of pictures and videos. For text it’s fine, but media sharing is terrible without RCS, iMessage, or a 3rd party app.
Granted, but the argument was “can’t”, not “the quality is bad”. Also I believe RCS still depends on third party implementations on what the image quality will be, though it’ll definitely be better than MMS.
The majority of people outside the US use WhatsApp as their default messaging app.
Great, I’m an American. My friends and family don’t use WhatsApp and they’re aren’t going to get it just to send me pictures