Apple finally adds support for RCS in latest iOS 18 beta | TechCrunch

https://lemmy.ca/post/23946538

Apple finally adds support for RCS in latest iOS 18 beta | TechCrunch - Lemmy.ca

They will still keep them green. You know how teens react to those bubbles.

That’s how I react to those bubbles. It means any image I send is going to be compressed to shit and be utterly unrecognizable. Messages will sent out of order or not at all. Group chats are completely fucked.

I’m sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn’t have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform

Hope rcs pans out and soon

Apple doesn’t “share a lot of the blame.” The blame belongs solely to Apple and their insistence on a closed ecosystem. They intentionally hamstring any cross functionality with competing devices, even features as simple as text messaging. It’s important for Apple to foster a cult-like mentality among their consumers.

Apple has no obligation for users outside of their ecosystem. Apple saw the landscape of carrier messaging being terrible, and they made iMessage to help their customers communicate with one another better, while continue to maintain support for basic carrier communication. They have now updated to offer RCS, the current modern carrier messaging standard, which as demonstrated is still fragmented and outright garbage.

There is a Google proprietary protocol that’s based off of RCS, but as demonstrated by the Android market, even Android devices doesn’t do that — so Apple isn’t likely to (and frankly shouldn’t) do it to give more information to Google (even on the alleged promise of E2EE, it allows Google to know who is communicating with who at what time, and potentially roughly where via cell tower origination).

Apple is not a charity and has no need to open up their proprietary protocol designed to better their clients’ communications to non-clients. Want to make a phone call? Pay your carrier. Want to have electricity? Pay your power provider. Want to use iMessage? “Buy your mom an iPhone”.

For one, Google never wanted to implement or run RCS, the carriers were supposed to do that specifically to prevent the fragmentation issue. But they couldn’t get off their ass, even after Google spent years pushing them to do so.

For two, even after Google said fuck the carriers I’ll do it myself, Apple was invited to participate in its implementation and Apple refused. They could have worked with Google to implement RCS across all devices. They didn’t because they want to keep people locked into their ecosystem. They had a great opportunity to ensure all the privacy and encryption features were implemented how they liked.

Again, Android problem, not Apple problem.

Apple stated clearly they’re keen on working with GSM Consortium (who owns RCS and has more sway on carriers than Google does) on bringing E2EE to the masses.

If Google’s reputation of finding new and exciting ways to sell targeted ads doesn’t precede them, then they might have a better chance of getting a first party solution like Apple does with iMessage. But alas, Apple is not responsible for Google’s business plan or public image, and that problem is Google’s to solve.

who owns RCS and has more sway on carriers

If that were true, RCS would have been implemented by carriers LONG ago like they were supposed to (the original spec was launched in 2008), well before imessage came out in 2011 and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

But you know who actually does have a TON of sway with Carriers? Apple. You know who probably could have actually gotten them to implement RCS? Apple. Apple could have solved the RCS dilemma even before Google decided to do things themselves.

Apple didn’t even need to do much, just drop the mere hint that if carriers didn’t start implementing RCS they might stop selling the iPhone through them and they would have bent over backwards to get it done.

They didn’t because iMessage is just another tool to keep people locked into their ecosystem, and they’ve admitted as much. And any excuse of “Oh we wanted to work with the GSM consortium blah blah blah” is just that, an excuse for Apple fanboys like you to latch onto and parrot.

They didn’t because it’s not their problem. Other platforms’ users have that problem; Apple users have iMessage.

You buy a Windows phone, you buy a blackberry, you buy a flip phone, you’re using carrier messaging, or whatever app you can run on those platforms.

You buy an Android and suddenly you feel entitled to demand Apple to go to bat for you on carrier messaging? That’s a very entitled hot take.

Apple users have iMessage… amongst other third party chat apps that works fine across different platforms. Apple doesn’t have any obligations to go to bat for other platforms on carrier messaging that they already support.

Apple couldn’t get the carriers to do shit. They blocked eSIMs for years on iPhones, meanwhile the iPad eSIM implementation was happily allowed.

Even up to the iPhone launch nobody wanted to collaborate with Apple(especially for the voicemail) except Cingular.