Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices

The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.

Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.

Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.

BurningnnTree ,

Apple could easily do the bare minimum to keep regulators at bay while still keeping the experience as shitty as possible so that Android will continue to look bad. For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators, or they could even deliberately compress videos. I'm expecting the worst until we see otherwise.

atocci , (edited )

This is exactly what I'm expecting. The company of "buy your mom an iPhone" isn't going to be aiming for maximum interoperability.

4am ,

Yeah but the company of “wants to remain in the EU market” might

laurelraven ,

No, they'll aim for minimum interoperability that the EU will let them get away with, and they'll push that line every chance they get

TheGrandNagus ,

The EU is fine with iMessage shenanigans, because they're not a significant enough part of the market to matter. Nobody uses SMS either.

It's WhatsApp all the way here.

mark3748 ,

For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators

Reactions already work in MMS groups, use them every day.

or they could even deliberately compress videos

Except they’re already advertising improved quality of photos and video in non-iMessage chats. Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.

laurelraven ,

Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.

Not like companies have never done that...

JasonDJ ,

Disliked a message.

painfulasterisk1 ,

Apple will probably use white bubbles with yellow font.

BearOfaTime ,

Not to criticise apple too badly here, but that's what will happen, as the version of RCS they use won't have E2EE.

And... It'll still be tied to your phone number. Why would I want another shitty messaging system that's tied to my phone number?

RGB3x3 ,

It's the replacement for SMS... Are you upset that WiFi phone calls are tied to your phone number?

noisefree ,

Here me out, iMessage on any OS, wait, no, not just that, how about no hardware vendor is allowed to produce software that only runs on their hardware and for any given core function the hardware must prompt the end user with a competitive selection of capable apps to accomplish said function (to be downloaded and installed upon selection) instead of coming with a default option enabled. Let's get crazy and say that any hardware vendor must allow software they produce for their own hardware to be uninstalled and replaced by software of the end user's choosing.

I'm talking some "treating United States v. Microsoft" as legally binding precedent" shit.

Meanwhile, regulators be like...
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6f73199e-3bb7-4161-bccc-412304031906.gif.

(Side note: what's up with the bullshit where Apple makes an Android-native AppleTV app that will install on a phone fine but is blocked from running once it detects it's not an AndroidTV device? Apple acts like it would be an undue burden to make iMessage for Android (and pretends they didn't make the decision to not release an Android client with their hardware business in mind) but their Apple Music app somehow runs better on Android than it does on iOS...)

mriguy ,

“Why does this microwave oven cost $1500?”

“Two reasons. The first is that it has to have a full network stack to allow it to download software from competing appliance vendors. The second is the cost that the manufacturer had to bear to develop software for every single other microwave sold. There are some pretty weird architectures out there, and they had to hire a whole bunch of programmers.”

refurbishedrefurbisher ,

Maybe don't make a network-enabled microwave, then.

mriguy ,

OP said “no hardware vendor”, not “ no networked hardware vendor”.

laurelraven ,

The exact quote was

how about no hardware vendor is allowed to produce software that only runs on their hardware

Why would this theoretical microwave vendor be making software for it in the first place to need to make it interoperate with other microwaves that inexplicably have software of their own?

noisefree ,

ding ding ding The microwave analogy they were going after makes no sense. I mean, there are semantics at play and I could have explicitly mentioned I wasn't talking about firmware in order to exclude things that are essentially calculators and clocks but I didn't anticipate someone going the direction of absurdist bespoke microwave OSes given that firmware alone is enough. Even at that level, you have examples like Seiko Epson inventing precision timed ticket printers for the 1964 Olympics - they're still dominant in the arena of commercial printers to this day, yet they have allowed other manufacturers to adopt their ESC/POS language as a standard that's still widely used across brands today, allowing for feature parity on the software functionality side from competing brands while Epson competes on the hardware reliability side. (This isn't an endorsement of Epson, their consumer printers are trash because they're not Brother laser printers lol.) Spoiler alert, the price tag of a commercial printer doesn't have much to do with it being compatible with network standards (???! - standards being the key word here) and has more to do with reliability and general feature sets (in that order once competition exists for a device, see Epson vs feature identical Beiyang (insert other generic clone brand here)) and the same would hold true even if we decided to network our microwaves in some scenario where we're also automating food going in and out of the microwave.

All of that said, if I were to modify what I was saying while keeping the sentiment the same, I would just simplify it by saying "no hardware vendor is allowed to lock their hardware to running specific software" (doesn't mean they have to provide technical support for errors in another vendor's software) since that gets at the root of the issue. But, going back to the original sentiment, open standards that have nothing to do with specific hardware are clearly better. Look at Apple vs x86 vs ARM, specifically Apple during the period between PowerPC (at least there were partners here, so the chips had lives outside of Apple hardware) and their M-Series - they wouldn't have had an excuse not to offer something like BootCamp during the x86 era given that their OS clearly was able to run on off the shelf PC components and the inverse with Windows and Linux being able to run on their hardware was also clearly true. Is it a good thing that Apple hardware is once again locked in to running only their software?

JeeBaiChow ,

Can't do that without industry standards or open protocols. The reason your mouse works with any Mac/ PC/ Linux/ etc is entirely because standards. Meanwhile we are arguing about encryption and the color of chat bubbles, yet losing the point of market fragmentation. It's dumb.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Has hell frozen over?

Jilanico ,
@Jilanico@lemmy.world avatar

What if they kept the green color just to troll...

extremeboredom ,

They probably will. They're aware of and actively foster the "in-group" psychology that plays out in youth social circles. Anyone with a non-Apple phone is excluded as lower class, weird, or less-than. You don't get included in the group chats that are often the center of your peers' social lives because no one wants the annoyance of dealing with the limitations of conversing with a green bubble. You must conform, purchase the correct products, and sign over your life to the correct social media platforms if you want to participate in society.

LodeMike ,

They are we got confirmation months ago

cm0002 ,

Yea, but the real question is will the youth see through the BS or not? Before it wasn't just a color, green bubbles actively broke things in blue bubble group chats

But once that's gone with (hopefully) the rollout of RCS (which should fix most, if not all, the things that broke gcs) it really would be "just a color"

Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn't put it past them to artificially "break" things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage

extremeboredom ,

Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn't put it past them to artificially "break" things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage

That's where my money is

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn’t put it past them to artificially “break” things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage

I’m guessing RCS support will be as barebones as possible while still technically functioning. All of the fancy bells and whistles will remain exclusive to iMessage.

Some iMessage features might not be possible to implement with RCS I suppose. Maybe RCS messages will get a different colour. All Apple said in the WWDC keynote was RCS would be supported, they didn’t elaborate any further.

AbackDeckWARLORD ,

Apple is bringing RCS because China is requiring it, not because of what google has done. So I don’t expect it to be bare bones in that case since a huge market of theirs will be phasing out sms in the foreseeable future.

Mongostein ,

What kind of fancy bells and whistles does RCS have?

JasonDJ , (edited )

One of two things can happen...

Either Apple does the bare minimum to implement RCS, continuing to make interoperability a pain in the ass. Meanwhile, keep making improvements to iMessage.

Or Apple does it right, fully implements RCS, contributes back to the standard, and abandons iMessage as maintaining two separate platforms for the same function is a waste of resources.

I'll take a guess as to which it'll be.

Alternatively Americans just accept using 3rd party messengers. But that field is huge with big and small names competing, and ultimately anything that displaces FB messenger or WhatsApp will just get bought by Meta (or some other FAANG) and we're back at square-one.

Everybody just remember that Apple is the stubborn ones here, reluctantly adopting the standard that every other OEM has been using for a decade, and the reason they've been doing this was as a means to keep people in Apple's walled garden by "othering" people who don't have iMessage.

They knew exactly what they were doing. I got rid of my iPhone to go back to Android literally a week after the original announcement. Exchanging multimedia with my wife was literally the only thing holding me to iOS. The alternative, using third party messengers, is just plain cumbersome for one user (and likely means selling your soul to Meta nowadays, anyway).

I doubt I'm alone.

And RCS is a neutral standard, belonging to GSMA. Even though Google is a key player, they aren't the only ones. Any phone OS or OEM could always have implemented RCS. Apple has historically chosen not to, while also not reciprocating the openness with iMessage.

I guess there is one other possibility...Apple embraces RCS and, being keenly aware of its limitations and with Apple and Android cooperating, they collaborate to develop a new open standard that fully replaces both. That's probably the best outcome but also least likely to happen.

Stupidmanager ,

Next up, ios20 will let you change the color of your fried chat bubble in groups. And it’ll be the most innovative inclusion “evarrrhh”.

Repelle ,

It’s super useful to know instantly if the messages are encrypted or not.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Exactly. Encryption is coming later.

Also, there are iMessage specific features that are not part of RCS, so knowing what platform someone is on is still useful for cross platform communication.

errer ,

There’s a few things that are iOS device specific (like FaceTime) so I can see legit reasons to keep the different colors, if that’s what everyone is used to. Not that video calling should be a random proprietary tech, but that’s another battle…

kbotc ,

Apple wanted to open source FaceTime and destroy Skype. They got sued and were not allowed to open source their protocols. It’s real dumb that Apple didn’t get to drive the standards there.

JackbyDev ,

That doesn't make sense.

kbotc ,

Steve Jobs loudly announced FaceTime would be made open source. Then they lost a patent lawsuit against https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114

Apple paid up and could keep using the patent, but could not just let anyone else use the tech they developed as it now needed a non-open license.

MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown ,

It’s not just to troll. There are actual differences between the RCS and iMessage protocols and their capabilities.

atocci ,

Sure, but we all know what the real reason is...

ForgotAboutDre ,

It would be inappropriate to not make it clear what messaging protocol is being used.

Most RCS chats will be going through googles servers. A user might want to know that.

atocci ,

I absolutely agree on that. It should be clear to the user what protocol is being used, but that isn't Apple's goal. If that was the case, the bubble for RCS messages would be something other than green since green currently indicates SMS. The way they're doing it, making RCS bubbles green too won't do anything to tell you what protocol you're using, but it will specifically reveal you aren't using iMessage, and continuing that in-group mentality is the goal.

Rai ,

ABSOLUTELY. I have way more trust in iMessage’s privacy than RCS. I am ELATED for this change, but I want the colors different. I wouldn’t be upset if it changed from green to something else like peach or something, though, to reflect at least there might be SOME encryption or something going on.

ozymandias117 ,

If you’re relying on iMessage for privacy, ensure you and everyone you’re messaging have gone to iCloud settings and enabled “Advanced Data Protection”

Rai , (edited )

Absolutely, and excellent advice. Most of my folks I talk about

pirated

Uhh

movies

…we’ll just say THC cuz it’s legal here

with, whether it enabled or not, we go through Signal iPhone or Android

edit: I read this again and it’s a terribly worded post but I think ya get it

thequantumcog ,
@thequantumcog@lemmy.world avatar

No, apple is not using Google's proprietary RCS they are using Open Source GSM RCS which doesn't go through Google's servers and it doesn't include end-to-end encryption.

ForgotAboutDre ,

What if you speak to someone on android, then it’ll most likely go through googles servers. Most carriers are using googles servers to service rcs. When you texting iPhone users you’ll be using iMessage so most of the time your going through googles servers.

Ashyr ,

They almost certainly will. That blue is a prestige feature for a lot of people.

I don’t really care, so long as I can easily send texts and pictures back and forth, I’ll be happy.

monoboy ,

On the iOS 18 preview page, they show RCS with green bubbles

https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-18-preview/

KLISHDFSDF ,
@KLISHDFSDF@lemmy.ml avatar

Image for the lazy (and yes, of course, Apple's breaking their own accessibility guideline of having text at least 3:1 contrast ratio for text to be readable and instead making it 2:1 by picking the lightest shade of green possible).

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/95985ddd-dc17-48ba-ab89-2312583f3ab4.jpeg

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

The bubbles will remain green. At the very least, it’s handy a hand way to tell if chat is unencrypted.

GeneralVincent ,

But rcs can be e2ee right?

c0smokram3r ,
@c0smokram3r@midwest.social avatar

That’s what I’m curious abt, as well. Will RCS to iMessage be e2ee?? 🧐

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Encryption was never part of the RCS standard, and Google has been gatekeeping the encryption solution that they’ve been using… which is why there aren’t a lot of E2EE RCS clients floating around.

Google finally conceded several months ago, and now encryption will be part of RCS and managed by an independent working group that Google, Apple, and others can contribute to.

Phase 1 of RCS is about implementing the unencrypted foundation of the protocol. Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.

BorgDrone ,

Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.

I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The whole RCS thing is a Bad Idea™ . It’s a standard by the GSM Association, which consists of over 1150 members (750 operators and 400 other companies). Getting all these companies to align will take forever.

To illustrate: the RCS initiative was started in 2007 and the steering committee was formed in early 2008. The first version of the Universal Profile, that would enable interoperability between different operators and networks was released in 2016. It took 8 f-ing years to come up with an interoperable messaging standard to replace SMS. It was intended to be implemented by operators, but since hardly any operator did Google had to run their own service, bypassing the network operators, just to get it off the ground. Operators are now slowly beginning to support it.

If Apple decides to add a feature to iMessage, they implement the feature, roll out an update to their servers and release it to a billion users in the next iOS update. If they want to add a feature to RCS, they first have to discuss it in the committee until they agree on a solution, this alone takes forever. Then every player needs to update their software to add support. This means potentially 750 operators who need to update their shit, and that is after their software suppliers add support for it. In the mean time, the new feature will work for some users when they communicate with some other users, depending on which phone and operator each party has. Rinse and repeat for every new feature you want to add.

This means RCS will at best only ever be a very basic messaging service. It’ll be an improvement over SMS and MMS, but that’s not saying much. It will be in no way a threat to Apple’s dominance in messaging.

BearOfaTime ,

Thank you for detailing what's wrong with RCS.

It's too little, too late, with major issues.

I was running XMPP on my phone in 2009...

BearOfaTime ,

Not across vendors it can't. Or at least isn't.

GeneralVincent ,

Well that sucks

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Honestly that will be the least of your concerns. I will be very surprised if it's anything more than basic interoperability. Photos and videos and such. Probably not even group text. Apple will comply maliciously just like they are with app stores. You'll have to drag them kicking and screaming.

JeeBaiChow ,

Sounds like it just replaces sms as the default method to communicate with androids. So it's very likely the bubbles will remain differently colored.

circuitfarmer ,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

100% they will do this.

But I wonder if the effect will be different to now. I know Apple wants to retain the idea that their users are in an exclusive blue bubble group. But currently, green bubbles are associated with shitty looking images, video, etc, due to MMS. Especially for people that don't know why files come through that way, green bubbles are always presented as inferior by virtue of actually being inferior.

But now, if they do keep the green bubs, they'll just be green. Green at feature parity is different from green with clear differences.

extremeboredom ,

They won't be including encryption so it's not quite feature parity but yeah

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I'm guessing orange.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • technology@lemmy.world
  • random
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •