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.
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.
Subjective, but lets see what you bring to the table.
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?
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.
“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/
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.
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.
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?
RCS vastly improves over SMS with the following features:
But keep spreading FUD and hating on something that actually moves the needle forward.
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.
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.
Nothing to comment on here.
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.
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.