It says something about the incremental nature of mobile operating-system updates these days that my immediate payoff for installing Apple’s iPadOS 18 on my iPad mini 6–a 37-minute process Saturday afternoon, during which I couldn’t use the tablet for five minutes–was the addition of a calculator app.

Yes, the basic math application that shipped with the original Mac as a “Desk Accessory” applet, and which has remained absent from Apple’s iPad software since I watched Steve Jobs introduce the first one in 2010. Fourteen years later, it’s nice to know that iPad buyers won’t have to make installing PCalc one of their first tablet-setup tasks.

There’s more to iPadOS 18 than that, even setting aside the not-yet-shipped AI features that lead off Apple’s pitch for this release: a new standalone Passwords app (not relevant to me because I use 1Password), a new Privacy & Security category in the Settings app, the ability to require Touch ID authentication to open an app (and then hide that app’s presence behind Touch ID). But none of this stuff struck me as a reason to reach for my tablet when Apple shipped this release a month ago so I could install it right then.

I’m not writing that to knock Apple, because I have about the same reaction to Google’s Android 15 after installing it on a Pixel 8a right after I put iPadOS 18 on the iPad.

The standout features in this update are privacy and security tools that you hope you won’t need–a set of Theft Protection defenses designed to make your phone useless to a thief even if you weren’t able to lock it in time (but which you need to enable from their default state of off), plus a Private Space feature to hide apps behind biometric security that resembles the one I mentioned in iOS 18.

There’s more there–see my PCMag writeup for a breakdown–but this, too, is not an OS update that I’d be able to recognize on your device if I glanced at it from across a table. Which is okay! Technology could stand to have a little less drama.

That said, there is one mobile OS update that I do want to see get fast and widespread uptake: Apple’s iOS 18, which finally brings support for RCS messaging to the iPhone. That feature has yielded an immediate upgrade to my text chats with friends on iPhones running iOS 18, in the obvious form of typing indicators and higher-resolution multimedia and in the less-obvious form of our conversations being encrypted in transit instead of being sent in the clear. Those friends seem to find their end of the banter improved as well.

So if you have an iPhone that can run iOS 18, please ignore everything I wrote before the previous paragraph and rush to install this update. Thank you.

10/20/2024: Updated with a reminder to activate the anti-theft features in Android 15.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/10/19/the-thrill-may-be-gone-from-mobile-system-updates-and-thats-not-a-bad-thing/

#Android15 #AndroidPrivateSpace #greenBubbles #iOS18 #iPad #iPadCalculator #iPadOS18 #iphone #Pixel8a #RCS

I truly don't care what color my chat bubble is on your phone. The big worry here is I'm going to be added to less group chats?? O noes. Don't threaten me with a good time

https://www.androidpolice.com/do-android-users-even-want-imessage/

#Apple #Android #bluebubbles #greenbubbles #ios

After Apple killing off the Lightning connector on the iPhone (if only they would remember to do likewise with their input devices), the story I’ve most looked forward to writing about that company would involve it raising the lowest common denominator for Android-to-iPhone text messaging from its current miserable and unencrypted state.

So of course that news broke, in the form of an Apple statement to 9to5Mac announcing plans to add RCS support to its Messages app, at 6 p.m. Lisbon time on the last day of Web Summit–when I was racing to finish up a couple of stories so I could then get going to dinner. I didn’t even see this happen until hours later, after one of PCMag’s staffers had already done the honors.

I can still applaud this impending development, though. Apple’s refusal to support even the industry-standard version of RCS (short for Rich Communications Service), without Google’s extensions to it, left every text and multimedia message from an Android phone to an iPhone or vice versa sent in the clear, devoid of encryption to stop eavesdropping attempts.

That should be an abhorrent state for the company that keeps calling privacy “a fundamental human right,” but Apple CEO Tim Cook instead treated questions about this glaring privacy gap as an opportunity to sell new iPhones.

On background, Apple PR’s most common objection was that the non-Google version of RCS only supports encryption in transit instead of the end-to-end encryption provided by Apple’s iMessage and Google’s version of RCS. Which would stand up much better if Apple didn’t ship mail clients for all of its devices that themselves only support encryption in transit.

Apple also regularly pointed to the availability of phone-number-based messaging options that delivered end-to-end encryption. Which would be more appealing if the leading such alternative, by an immense margin, were not the Meta-owned WhatsApp. Tell me again how privacy is a fundamental human right?

Apple’s decision to support the “Universal Profile” version of RCS sanctioned by the telecom trade group GSMA means that Android-iPhone texting won’t get “e2e” encryption but will finally gain encryption in transit. And those chats between people on different mobile platforms will also get such upgrades as typing indicators, read receipts and higher-resolution images and videos.

Texts from Android users to iPhone users will show up in green, not the blue bubbles of other iPhone users routed through Apple’s iMessage servers. That falls well into the “like I care” level of tech-interoperability problems for me.

This welcome if overdue development leaves a new villain in the RCS-support space: Google, which after years of begging Apple to “get the message” about RCS has somehow failed to convince Google to support RCS in its own Google Voice service. I look forward to seeing this company stop defending the indefensible–and I just hope that news doesn’t break on the last night of a conference that has me five or six time zones to the right of my home.

https://robpegoraro.com/2023/11/18/the-apple-story-i-wish-id-had-time-to-write-this-week-the-company-caves-on-rcs/

#Getthemessage #chatFeatures #encryptionInTransit #endToEndEncryption #greenBubbles #GSMA #iMessage #MMS #RCS #SMS #texting #texts

Didn't know #Apple purposely reduced the contrast ratio of the #greenbubbles in their message app, which is against their own human interface guidelines.

Check the photo below to see what it would look like if they followed their own guidelines.

https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343

#Apple will support #RCS in 2024. #GreenBubbles are here to stay but at least you will have the modern protocol for sending messages over cellular.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/16/apple-to-finally-bring-rcs-to-iphones/

How To: Turn on green bubble text messaging on your Mac

iMessage on Mac is one of the best things about using the Apple ecosystem, but how do you turn on green bubble texting? Here's how.

#iMessage #Mac #GreenBubbles #technews #howto

https://techaeris.com/2023/08/03/how-to-turn-on-green-bubble-text-messaging-on-your-mac/