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.
What if they kept the green color just to troll…
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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”.
It’s super useful to know instantly if the messages are encrypted or not.
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.
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…
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.
The bubbles will remain green. At the very least, it’s handy a hand way to tell if chat is unencrypted.
But rcs can be e2ee right?
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.
Not across vendors it can’t. Or at least isn’t.
Well that sucks
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.
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.
I loved how blasé he mentioned it and moved right along. It is a pretty big announcement and I’m glad they are finally doing it. It will benefit many even if only indirectly.
It’s a terrible move, especially to make it default.
It’s just as bad a protocol as SMS in its own way:
It’s still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can’t just login to the service via a browser or an app.
It has lots of failures, worst of all, SILENT FAILURES, where you don’t even know your messages aren’t being sent - just look at the communities around here discussing it.
There’s no common protocol here really, lots of parts work only by decree of each host (e.g. iOS won’t have E2EE with anyone not on iOS, because that requires every cell provider to agree to the config they’re going to use.
This is the 21st century, and this is the best they can do - a protocol that fails with no notice? Without standardized encryption? That’s tied to hardware?
I had a better experience in 2009 running Pidgin on my phone and my laptop using XMPP. That didn’t require a phone number - I could login and see my messages in both places simultaneously… 15 years ago.
No, RCS is a way to make the plebes think they’ve got a new and better system while still delivering garbage.
Love you downvoters that don’t know enough to argue, just drive by and downvote.
ONE person had the guts to say why he disagreed with me.
Nevermind that BorgDrone explained what’s wrong with RCS better than I care to. You drive-by downvoters can’t even be bothered to learn about RCS.
RCS is garbage. Plain and simple. I will never allow it on my devices, just like with Whatsapp, Facecrap, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
It’s a terrible move, especially to make it default.
Subjective, but lets see what you bring to the table.
It’s just as bad a protocol as SMS in its own way: It’s still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can’t just login to the service via a browser or an app.
That’s how text (SMS/RCS) messaging works. Did you expect something different? Did you expect the SMS replacement to not require a phone number?
It has lots of failures, worst of all, SILENT FAILURES, where you don’t even know your messages aren’t being sent - just look at the communities around here discussing it.
I’ve been using it without issue for quite a while now, but that’s just one data point. If you have stats to back up your claim, I would love to see that.
There’s no common protocol here really, …
“The GSMA’s Universal Profile is a single, industry-agreed set of features and technical enablers developed to simplify the product development and global operator deployment of RCS” Source: https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/networks/rcs/universal-profile/
lots of parts work only by decree of each host (e.g. iOS won’t have E2EE with anyone not on iOS, because that requires every cell provider to agree to the config they’re going to use.
This is how distributed/federated systems work and this is one of their cons. They won’t always be 100% compatible as each component is independent but the goal is to eventually reach feature parity. See Matrix chat clients that didn’t all have encryption (or other features) on day 1 or XMPP which has lots of clients, none of which support all features.
This is the 21st century, and this is the best they can do - a protocol that fails with no notice? Without standardized encryption? That’s tied to hardware?
Please post evidence of this. Again, I’ve had zero issues and every Android user is using RCS by default now - have heard zero complaints.
I had a better experience in 2009 running Pidgin on my phone and my laptop using XMPP. That didn’t require a phone number - I could login and see my messages in both places simultaneously… 15 years ago.
Correct! XMPP is not an SMS replacement and thus it doesn’t need a phone number. In fact, you can’t “text” an XMPP user, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about here?
No, RCS is a way to make the plebes think they’ve got a new and better system while still delivering garbage.
RCS vastly improves over SMS with the following features:
- High Quality Multimedia Messaging: Unlike SMS/MMS, which is limited to text and potato sized image/videos, RCS allows sending and receiving photos, videos, and other files at significantly higher quality.
- Rich Content Sharing: RCS supports sharing richer content formats like GIFs, location sharing, and contact cards.
- Improved Group Chatting: RCS provides a more feature-rich group chat experience with features like group chat names, adding/removing participants, and seeing who has read messages (with read receipts).
- Typing Indicators: Similar to many messaging apps, RCS lets you see when someone is typing a message.
- Improved Message Reliability: RCS messages are sent over data networks, so unlike SMS, they shouldn’t get lost due to network congestion.
- End-to-End Encryption: RCS can offer end-to-end encryption for chats, providing an extra layer of security for your messages (availability varies by carrier).
But keep spreading FUD and hating on something that actually moves the needle forward.
Love you downvoters that don’t know enough to argue, just drive by and downvote.
I think they’re downvoting you because you’re wrong - plainly wrong - and in this day and age its much easier to bury (downvote) blatantly wrong information than to reply to it. So I’m replying for everyone else but I will not be downvoting you. FUD should be fought back with evidence, but MAAN is it tiring.
ONE person had the guts to say why he disagreed with me.
It’s not about guts, its about wasting time, effort, not giving a shit. I slightly give a shit and want people who are less educated on the subject to see the other side of it.
Nevermind that BorgDrone explained what’s wrong with RCS better than I care to. You drive-by downvoters can’t even be bothered to learn about RCS.
Nothing to comment on here.
RCS is garbage. Plain and simple. I will never allow it on my devices, …
At the end of the day RCS is objectively better than what exists today in the world of carrier messenger services (SMS/MMS). Is it better than iMessage? I don’t think anyone would agree, especially not if you only message other iPhone users. Is it a better out-of-the-box experience for interoperability? Absolutely! And you’re being disingenuous if you disagree, but I’m happy to hear you out.
just like with Whatsapp, Facecrap, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
We can agree to these being garbage ✊
All that said, am I actively going to ask people to use RCS? Never! The same way I wouldn’t ask someone to use iMessage if I had an iPhone. They’re both products developed ultimately to push users into their respective ecosystem to the benefit of Google/Apple/Carriers.
I’ll stick to Signal and Matrix until something better comes along.
I’m downvoting you because you whined about downvotes. Letting you know instead of driving by.
Why do we all need to respond when that one user who did respond put you in your place and made it clear that you’re just an angry moron yelling at the sky? Downvotes are exactly what’s called for here. Piss off idiot. You’re getting the exact amount of respect you deserve.
And yet Google still hasn’t rolled out RCS for Google Voice, and last I checked there was an issue with it and Google Fi as well. (It works but it precludes some advertised feature of Fi or something.)
Currently Google has bricked RCS for people with rooted phones in such a way that it fails silently for like the 4th time this year, and it’s looking like the modders may not be able to keep getting around it.
I’ve had no issues with Fi and RCS. Then again, maybe Fi on pixel is different.
Fi has two different, incompatible options for how to sync your messages to a computer or other device that isn’t your primary phone with your SIM (or e-SIM): the so-called “option 1” is RCS compatible, but treats your phone as the canonical device that has the primary copy of all messages, voicemails, etc. “Option 2” is device agnostic, where all messages and voicemails live on the cloud, and your phone (and all other devices) merely syncs with that primary copy in the cloud.
If your phone breaks or dies or is lost/stolen, Option 2 keeps chugging along with all your logged in devices, but the dead phone is the single point of failure for Option 1.
Ideally there would be a device agnostic way to access RCS through your account, but every implementation seems to require a specific SIM.
I think it was something to do with the Fi-specific syncing of messages to the web version.
Honestly, it’d be a good retort from Apple if they ran a commercial that said, “We’ll support RCS once all your products do” and then show a screenshot of Google Voice.
But they’re planning to support it
Yeah, if Voice doesn’t have RCS support by the time iOS 18 launches, I’ll be moving off it for messaging. Have a number of text groups with iPhones that will benefit from everyone on RCS, most important knowing that my group messages were actually received. MMS still randomly drops messages or they get massively delayed or received out of order.
I know people want this. I do to. But SMS going away will suck. Even in 2024, there’s still that moment you have every now and then that you can’t get a call out but a sms will make it out just fine. SMS rides along with the carriers ping signal. It’s not part of the data signal.
Google Messages app already falls back to SMS automatically if RCS fails. SMS is not going anywhere.
I don’t think sms will go away, that ping is fundamental to GSM & LTE so far as I can tell.
You may need an app that explicitly taps into the sms feature though
RCS is the wrong standard to use though, as there isn’t a single FOSS Android RCS client. They should support something like Matrix.
Yea, like that would ever in literally any possible incarnation of any possible existence where Apple is a thing happen. Totally.
That wasn’t what I was saying though. I was talking about what should happen, not what is likely to happen, and criticising the EU for pushing for the wrong thing.
If you do anything as merely speak the name of anything FOSS in Apple headquarters, they throw you in a deep dark well in the middle of the campus and remove your name from the world of the living.
Signal would be more reasonable.
RCS is crap, inconsistent, unreliable, lacking, buggy. It doesn’t even handle Dual SIM …
Android needed a native “iMessage” style solution at least 10 years ago.
I can buy a $99 flip phone, basic phone, up to a $1,500 premium device, SMS/MMS will function the same across all 3 devices. RCS however will not. So how is this the answer to advanced messaging on Android? It isn’t…
If Google bought BBM & made it their own when it was still relevant in the consumer space, made it native on all Android 10 devices & later with SMS/MMS fall back, this would be something! Damn I miss BlackBerry…
RCS is not seamless, not native, and it simply is not it. It’s the 1 thing I hate about Android, as creative and customizable as the software is, we need more…I hate what Apple represents in the consumer space and how people often think who use an iPhone which makes me never want one…
The moment Google saw the exclusivity Apple was doing, Android should have followed suite.
RCS sucks…
Crazy thing is Google Hangouts did this back in 2012! They had it! You could text and message digitally to someone’s hangouts acct. then they killed it because of some legacy code or something.
also they kept renaming it
And now I’m irritated by this all over again.
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…
.(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…)
“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.”
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.
I just want my gf to have the same SMS app as me so she can see the silly emoji animations I see 😢
Then why not use the same app?
iOS/Android
No iOS version of the app I use. Hopefully rcs is the floodgate. 🤞
She uses generic ass iMessage anyways. She’ll come around :)
Signal is better than any other common alternative, and its on both android and ios
Signal also does jack all unless both parties are using Signal. In this case, might be fine. Need to talk to anyone else in your life? It’s back to iMessage.
I love Signal and will probably never get rid of it but the use case for it has shrunk tremendously since they removed the ability to message non-signal users.
imessage is no better in that case - and outside America barely anybody still uses either SMS or RCS, apple is a smaller share of the market meaning the ubiquity of imessage isn’t there.
If you want anything beyond SMS which is a universal standard, you both have to be using the same service - I’m just saying that signal is available for anyone who wants to use it.
I was also upset at the removal of texting from signal, but in hindsight its for the best - if its a secure message service that youre not charged per message to use, the support of a dying platform which is difficult to distinguish when in use is an issue - now its extremely clear whether youre reaching someone through signal or text, cause signal only sends signal messages.
Everybody is using WhatsApp which is available for all platforms. I’m not the biggest fan of that but a user base of literally billions is hard to avoid.
The issue is WhatsApp from a few years ago versus WhatsApp today - meta/favebook is probably the worst possible company to have bought it, their record on security, privacy, and features is horrible.
The app today is full of enshitification (meta ai being shoved down my throat by the communication monopoly) and nobody can ever fully trust their security or privacy because its not open source.
Signal sadly doesn’t yet have the ubiquity of whatsapp - but for everyone that has it (now I’m finding even non tech-savvy family are switching over) use signal, and where you have to, use WhatsApp.
It’s not really a thing in the US, which is kind of weird since it’s such a big deal elsewhere. Then again, I’m happy it’s not a thing here because I’ve avoided Meta/Facebook entirely, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Yeah but the 😮 react isn’t hilarious.
Just get Telegram. Everyone except my boss moved to it. Now, Apple lost their leverage with iMessage.
Doesn’t Telegram have E2E encryption disabled by default?
I don’t know. It just made for a usable experience as iMessage made it so users literally hated communicating with Android users.
Man it’s a shame that Google RCS doesn’t run on android phones by default if you have a custom rom or rooted your device or have an unlocked bootloader. Guess this won’t really affect me then and it doesn’t really matter.
So when are they making FaceTime open source too? That’s what Steve Jobs said when he first announced it.
Also, FOSS clients for RCS messaging should exist. My only options so far are Google’s messaging app, Samsung’s weird thing, and if I don’t want either, an iPhone. Eh… I’d like more options. Let’s just have all messaging applications support open source protocols, including Signal because why not??
And Samsung’s only got approved because it’s Google’s under the skin. A bit like how every browser on iOS is actually Safari.
RCS is purported to be open, but in practice it really isn’t.
That’s just stupid. Kinda like how they never made FaceTime open-source when it was promised to us when it was first announced.
Wait, I already said this in my initial comment. Damn.
Finally, I’ll be added to the group chat for work. I’ll know where to report to just as early as everyone else.
RCS is a terrible standard. But China wants it, so Apple is forced to add it.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing… To use RCS you have to use a compatible OS + device and use the google messages app (maybe also the Samsung one now) and why does the brand implemented this is because google “offered” the servers to run this protocol. I think even today the best way is to get onto secure messaging apps (like Signal, Session, SimpleX…)
I’m gonna wait to see how this is implemented but it sounds bad on the face of it.
