FWIW, RCS is terrible, half-baked, and the E2EE solution they offer is weak and flawed.
Not to mention, they'd have to continue to support iMessage. It's a requirement, since it's the underpinning of some of their other successful ecosystem products.
The correct solution, imo, is to get your friends on something like Signal. Cross platform, easy, E2EE messaging - it's not perfect, but it's better than vendor lockin or RCS
It's an international standard, supported by carriers and everyone not-Apple. Google pushed it forward, but did so in coordination with standards bodies. I'm not sure how you arrive at the above conclusion when the history is not in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#Hi...
Slow your roll there and define your terms: who actually is everyone not-Apple?
Do you just mean carriers and Google? That leaves out in your apparent definition of “Apple” a bunch of things I thought were “not-Apple”: LINE, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Kik, WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Skype, Telegram, Signal, Discord, Slack, Teams and basically every single app with some form of DMing.
RCS might have made sense in a different world, but in this one it’s just another protocol among many and without any compelling reason to support it other than it’s “not SMS”. There’s a lot of “not SMS” out there and iMessage and RCS are just two among many; you’re going to need something a lot more compelling than that.
The same people who standardized SMS. We're talking telephony, it's widely standardized, and it has nothing to so with WeChat or Discord et al. These are telecom standards issued by the same telecom standards bodies that run everything else in your phone. I've provided sources linking to this.
I'm surprised how controversial this seems to be with Apple users.
You're being very imprecise with your words and causing confusion. I understand what they are trying to say - "everyone not apple" is an ill defined phrase and functionally doesn't actually mean anything.
I was talking about telephony in a discussion about telephony standards but Apple users seemingly confuse notions like "SMS" with apps like WhatsApp. When I say everybody not-Apple, I mean literally that. All modern entrants in the mobile phone space with one single exception have some basic support for RCS.
My language was precise, it just doesn't agree with the notions of Apple users.
Nobody is “confusing” anything. My argument was that the distinction was irrelevant on a modern smartphone and the “telephonic” standard was simply irrelevant. You can choose not to engage that part of my argument, but don’t misrepresent it. Telephone networks do everything over IP as of LTE, and RCS isn’t especially relevant for the reasons it’s proponents claim that it is now when it’s just a protocol among many accessible via an app among many, so you would need to make a stronger case for it elsewhere.
Are you sure you’ve got the cause and effect there?
So let’s say hypothetically Apple did implement RCS support in iMessage thus introducing a fourth messaging protocol into the mix (SMS, MMS, iMessage) and we just ignore that it’s more “standard” than standard and is probably only properly implemented by exactly Google anyway, and we disregard the dozens of cross platform alternatives to RCS, SMS and iMessage: why wouldn’t Apple just make the bubbles for RCS yellow or orange or red or something? The actual visual style is a holdover from iChat which you could visually theme (and those were options) and bringing blue bubbles in was intended to visually distinguish which protocol you were sending a message down the virtual wire on so you knew not to try and use iMessage features with someone that could only receive SMS and MMS messages.
Is the concern the color of the bubbles, or is the concern the lack of RCS?
> Is the concern the color of the bubbles, or is the concern the lack of RCS?
The lack of compliance and interop with internationally accepted standards by Apple, which should be of surprise to exactly nobody. It's kinda their thing.
“Internationally accepted” in context means other corporations and a telecoms body governed by or influenced if you prefer mostly those corporations. It’s a spin that only makes sense if you ignore what messaging looks like on a modern smartphone in most of the world: apps, most of which are not iMessage and used a lot more than iMessage, RCS or SMS. The blue bubble/green bubble campaign by Google is largely a U.S.-centric PR campaign trying to influence specifically American iPhone customers. You need a better selling point.
Hey you finally arrived at the answer: Apple's solution is Apples' solution, not a standard. Google's solution is the industry, internationally accepted standard and no quotes are needed around that statement. The same standards bodies that formalized SMS did the same with RCS. Everyone except Apple is on board.
You can try all you want to spin this as Apple being in the right, but it's Apple vs everybody on this one.
Google’s flavour of RCS is a custom extension, goes through their own servers and is closed, except for partners. It’s not really that different than iMessage in that regard.
Vanilla RCS in general is a bit of a crapshoot, especially when you start considering multiple countries and varied carrier support.
It's more like if Apple was the richest person at the party, and they turned out their pockets when someone asked them if they brought any food for the rest of us.
We're not kicking them out of the party, but everyone in-the-know will roll their eyes when they see Apple drinking from the punch bowl.
Do you want to tell Apple?
edit: lol, guess everyone really loves their status symbols here. Congrats on having your chats be the "right" color!