In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
Ironically, despite Apple’s whining to get to this point, between this, and the EU forcing them to adopt USB-C, and, hopefully 3rd party stores and browsers, I may consider an iPhone for my next phone.
It’s a pity you almost need to point a gun to their head for them to consider unshittifing their products.
Yeah. My iphone fanatic of a friend was complaining about something on hers the other day, and was like “Why doesn’t Apple just do {whatever}?”
My reply was basically that Apple didn’t become a trillion dollar company by giving customers what they want. They became a trillion dollar company by telling customers what they want and marketing the crap out of it.
That was Jobs’ (Jobs’s …? Jobses…?) whole thing. People don’t know what they want until we’ve told them.
And I’d say it’s worked out pretty well for the entire tech industry so far.
It’s popular idea for a lot of innovation focused groups tbh. “If I have the people what they asked for I would have given them faster horses.” -Henry Ford
And to a certain degree there is truth to it.
The People: “We could really do with less antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
Henry Ford: “Hold my beer.”
To be fair, Google has been doing the same stuff with RCS E2E encryption. It ain’t open. There is a reason why Android isn’t littered with dope messaging apps that support encrypted RCS.
… or by providing some that works really well for the majority of customers.
What was she complaining about?
Let’s be fair, things like RCS E2E encryption are firmly under control by Google. People like to claim RCS is open, but it’s not.
If RCS was a proper open standard, we would have a lot of awesome messaging apps to choose from. We don’t, and the reason is because Google has been gatekeeping.
I’m annoyed that Apple is late to the game, and I hate that they needed to be pressured to get here, BUT I’m glad to see that they’re going to support universal alternatives to the crap you still have to ask Pichai to please let you use.
Also RCS is build that way. It has more features than SMS, but underneath is even worse than it. Why in the 2023 people massively want to go back tying their chat app with mobile carrier? Like, giving what Internet standards we now have RCS should really be considered deprecated, hope we won’t be stuck with it for next 30 years.
Because who is going to operate the servers?
Originally with RCS it was the carrier, but basically every carrier switched to using Jibe (by Google) for the backend.
And it sounds like Apple is going to operate their own as well.
Yeah… Matrix seems so much better over all for me. It’s just not as controllable so there is less investment in pushing adoption from companies.
There is also XMPP which is much more developed than RCS and surpasses it on every front.
I never understood this argument. Apple lost its fight to make the environment worse for the customer, so you’re gonna reward them?
I think that’s the irony they’re pointing out
I saw a rumor mill style post that Apple was going to allow sideloading of apps. If so, that’ll probably get me to switch. These changes and choice in software eliminates my gripes with iOS vs. Android.
As a point of clarity, I think both suck. But if Apple removes it’s disadvantages (even if by force) and is the more privacy respecting option out of the box, it makes sense to me.
Read a post on here the other day someone had a few articles linking to studies that apple may not be as privacy respecting as you think. Guess custom roms are the way to go lol.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/android-ios-data-collection
I’ll go research that, thanks for the heads up!
So you look at their history of shitty behavior and want to give them money because they were forced to act right in some cases?
OK then…
They just need to stop using slaves and fighting attempts to fight against it and I might actually get to appreciate the cool things their engineers do actually make.
I don’t know how much of a gun it was. Apple has definitely been working on RCS support for a year; you don’t add that in a few months. Similarly I’m pretty sure Apple has been considering USB C in iPhone since at least when they started working on the USB C on iPad, which is what 5 years old?
Of course without pressure they would have probably be slower to move forward, and with Apple secrecy it’s always hard to tell how long things have been ready to ship. But let’s not pretend they just woke up this morning with a horse head in their bed and told their direction team to start working on this.
I hear you, but isn’t the proverbial horse’s head the fact that the EU is looming over them and forcing them to make a move?
RCS and USBC have been available for a while. It seems disingenuous not to acknowledge that Apple has purposely dragged their feet so they could make more profit selling proprietary software and hardware which is probably why you’re being downvoted
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Actually all three of those things have been possible for a couple of years now.
Maybe in the further future they can renove the grip with sideloading so you can install not-safari firefox.
You’re wrong. That’s been an option for a long time