Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps… like Apple’s own iMessage.

  • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    281
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    AFAIK there is no open source messaging app that support RCS yet. It’s not even included in android AOSP (or is it? I can’t find any reference). It would help with adoption if google actually open-sourced the RCS client app.

    • ArtificialLink@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      186
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      They won’t let any third party apps use it so they are basically as bad as imessage.

      • Tetsuo@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        57
        arrow-down
        26
        ·
        1 year ago

        The simple fact that iMessage has 0 interoperability makes it much worse than everything else.

        So I doubt RCS could be as bad except if they remove the ability to operate with other RCS clients. And even for Google and Samsung that would be extremely stupid.

          • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I’ve just been googling a bit because I haven’t read about RCS in a while, but I remember thinking then that the show stopping thing is that it’s not E2E, and Apple would be dumb to move to since iMessage is. It seems now that E2E is supported but requires clients to support it, which tbh seems the worst of all worlds. At least today I know blue = encrypted, green = not encrypted. If it’s optional and we end up in a “is this encrypted? we’ll see ¯\(ツ)/¯” type of world that is honestly terrible. I also don’t know how great it would be if you have to rely on the client vendor to accurately report encryption status because there are some I trust, and especially when it comes to “just download whatever RCS client you want” I absolutely would not trust that.

            • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              14
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              iMessage is only E2E encrypted if both users have iCloud disabled or have gone into their iCloud settings and enabled “Advanced Data Protection”

        • Virkkunen@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          14
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          RCS is only interoperable with apps and carriers that adopt the Jibe protocol, so not much has changed.

      • spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        29
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Forgive me if I’m mistaken but did Signal adopt RCS? I they abandoned SMS for RC- if I recall - couldn’t SMS my friends on it anymore and abandoned ship lol

        Edit: wait, I don’t think signal is open source

        • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          53
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t know what you’re talking about. Signal does not use RCS and it is open source.

        • NebLem@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          24
          ·
          1 year ago

          ASFAIK Signal doesn’t support RCS, only Signal protocol, after they dropped SMS.

          • orclev@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            14
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Fundamentally the problem is that SMS is rather dated and doesn’t support a lot of features expected of a modern messaging app. Apple decided to do what Apple does and made their own proprietary protocol that runs parallel to SMS. When you send a “text message” on iMessage it checks if the person you’re talking to is also using iMessage and if so sends the message via Apples private service. If they aren’t using iMessage it dumbs things down and send it via SMS as a fallback.

            Google came along and more or less did the same thing but made their protocol (RCS) licensable which makes them slighty better than Apple, but it’s still not as good as an actual open standard.

            Signal is yet another solution, but they were primarily focused on security and encryption rather than new features, but fundamentally they did the same thing as iMessage initially. About a year or two ago Signal dropped the option to fallback to SMS so now you can only send Signal messages between Signal users. Unlike Apple or Google, signals protocol is open, but Signal itself is closed source and I don’t believe they allow interop with their service so I’m not sure their protocol being open actually does much good.

            Basically everyone sucks in their own way, but if you want SMS interop then the least bad option is RCS currently.

              • orclev@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Well that’s interesting. I didn’t think they had made their server source available, but I just checked their github and it does actually have a repo for their server.

        • jackalope@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Signal is open source. The only part that isn’t is the server side spam filtering.

  • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    133
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Okay, Samsung is the party with some credibility here. It’s a lot harder to hear Google whine about messaging standards when their churn in messaging has been hilarious and embarrassing.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      131
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’ve lost track of all the messaging apps they had:

      • Hangouts
      • Chat
      • Gmail Chat
      • Google+
      • Voice

      I’m sure I’m forgetting a few.

    • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Samsung has 0 credibility here because they just use Google messages and Google’s Jibe implementation of RCS.

      If Google drops Jibe for something else, it means Samsung is as well.

      RCS isn’t really a standard anymore either. Once Google put out their own proprietary Jibe implementation, everyone just adopted that instead of putting in the work to implement it themselves. All the carriers in the US use Jibe as their RCS backend, and Samsung moved to using Google Messages as their default messenger. And all RCS messages go through Google servers.

      If Google decides to do something else and drop Jibe, like they have with every other messaging service they have had, that’s it for RCS.

    • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Samsung’s record on RCS isn’t great. Their Samsung Messages app didn’t work across networks for most of last year. Like RCS only worked on t-mobile, but only for t-mobile branded phones, and for some time they couldn’t send to AT&T. Not sure if Google Messages was much better during that time period.

  • Encode1307@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    120
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Unless the EU makes them, they’re not adopting rcs. I could see them putting out an imessage app for Android though. Probably ad supported to make the experience extra shitty for us. They’d quickly own the messaging market, at least in the US.

      • EddieTee77@lemdro.id
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        40
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        The audacity of parents trying to buy something less expensive in these crazy inflated times

      • someguy3@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ok I’ll ask, how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting (other than this RCS stuff)? You can still text. Or is it that weird color thing or checkmark that kids are social pressured into?

        • eletes@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          47
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up

          • JargonWagon@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            67
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Liked “The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up”

            • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              24
              ·
              1 year ago

              Gave thumbs up to “Liked “The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up””

              • ngdev@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                This was the experience Android users had initially, then Android started parsing them and adding the reaction to the message. This is also when iMessage started getting that type of message instead of the reaction, as a sort of dig at iMessage

            • knexcar@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              21
              ·
              1 year ago

              Images are a lot lower resolution (and no “live” photos which are cute if your mom takes a pic of their pet bunny), you can’t add people to group chats or rename them, you can’t see if someone’s read or typed your message, you can’t “like” texts without them appearing like the above post, I think there are even sound bites, little games but I haven’t played with them.

        • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          23
          ·
          1 year ago

          Iphone users keep sending me long horribly compressed videos i can’t see at all because it’s not a problem between iPhones. And something about group chats?

          That’s all I know of based on my experience.

        • MooseBoys@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          iMessage is basically proprietary RCS. SMS doesn’t support images, for example. When you send an image via “sms” you’re really probably using “mms” behind the scenes, which has severe limits to quality. If you send an image with imessage, RCS, or any of a variety of custom messaging protocols, you can get the full-quality image.

          They also support gimmicks like “reacting” to messages which get overlaid in-line with a heart icon. On SMS it is sent as “MooseBoys loved ‘be right there’”.

        • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting

          Not entirely sure what you’re asking but

          • iOS does not allow you to use any other messaging app for SMS. This is surely intentional to lock you into iMessage.

          • If you’re messaging iOS --> iOS your “text” messages (SMS) are automatically upgraded to the iMessage protocol, and there are a wide variety of features that are enabled without the user downloading any other apps or switching the protocol. It just happens.

      • MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        arrow-down
        30
        ·
        1 year ago

        You can’t make this stuff up

        Except that You literally made it up though? You embellished the part about poor families and cheap phones, here’s the actual quote:

        I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.

    • GenEcon@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Since not even iPhone users in Europe use iMessage I highly doubt anyone would use it outside the US.

    • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I tried using the Apple app on Android for tracking the tracking thingies. Horrible, horrible app. I will not be trusting anything put out by Apple for Android unless they do a Microsoft and go all in. Otherwise, they will always have a reason to make the Android experience worse than the iPhone experience.

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Under new EU laws, Apple will be forced to allow interoperability with iMessage in the future. That doesn’t necessarily mean them adopting RCS or bringing iMessage to non-Apple platforms, but it does mean they’ll need to at the very least publish an API allowing external software or services to use iMessage.

    • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      RCS isn’t a good solution. As long as all RCS implementations are proprietary and Google doesn’t even include an RCS client in AOSP and doesn’t let you use a third-party client it’s just as shitty as iMessage. Just use Signal, it’s FOSS, cross-plattform and stores as little data about you as possible. It’s also not run by some garbage big tech corporation.

          • Encode1307@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I lost half the people I’d gotten on signal when they removed sms. People liked it well enough when they could do all their messaging from one app on Android.

            • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Why is it so hard for Americans to use multiple chat apps? Here in Europe, most people (especially those with friends/family in a different European country, because we use different apps in every country) have an entire folder full of chat apps on their phone. Sure, that’s not great, but pretty much everyone accepts it when I “force” them to use Signal.

    • nicoweio@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Is there any precedent to ads in Apple products (apart from their store)? Although they’ll surely find other ways to annoy non-Apple users, I don’t think ads are “in style” for them.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    104
    arrow-down
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    Gotta love how Google has spent the last, what, 10 years?, fighting iMessage and losing due to their own short-sightedness/lack of focus and incompetence. The company that dethroned MSN Messenger couldn’t win a fight against an opponent that, on a global scale, represents ~25% of the mobile market. Meanwhile, Whatsapp dominates the instant messaging world.

  • Porgey@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    94
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    While Apple should adopt RCS, I cannot help but feel that Google is being extremely hypocritical. They complain about iMessage being proprietary, but their implementation of RCS isn’t open source, and I believe they even mentioned they have no plans to open it up for 3rd party devs to implement it into their own sms apps. This just feels like an iMessage equivalent for Android. It has rich features that are exclusive to Android as a platform (more specifically exclusive to Google Messages or whatever the app is called now)… just like iMessage within iOS/MacOS/iPadOS…

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    65
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    MKBHD closed this topic for me forever. Apple is never going to open up. It provides them tremendous value. They don’t give a shit if Samsung taunts them lol. They want your teenage kids taunting their friends over their green bubbles. And it’s working.

  • NebLem@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why should anyone care about RCS? The trend has been to get everything into data instead of carrier owned services for two decades now, we don’t need another SMS (it will likely always be a fallback). What we should move onto is a carrier and device type angnostic universal standard protocol over TCP / QUIC like XMPP or Matrix, with SMS as the backup.

    When you get a phone you can get an phone system account and a telephone number already. Modern apps in the Google ecosystem should already recognize you are already signed in with Google and sync your contacts. Since almost everyone is already in the Google ecosystem, if Google supported it they could have extended their XMPP implementation in Hangouts to allow messaging directly via XMPP to those contacts and SMS for anyone not yet in the system (similar to how Signal did, Apple does, and Google does now with RCS). Unlike Apple, since its just XMPP, users can still add friends and be added by friends on other XMPP servers (ex. their ISPs, their own, or a third party). They could have supported or jumpstarted a new very simple open source alternative app for that portion for AOSP if the EU complained. Eventually Carriers could have supported passthroughs for those still on feature phones and other users of SMS to use the number@carrier accounts to hit XMPP users with generated SMS numbers for non-SMS users (pushed either by business necessity or part of a government / teleco org like GSMA staged removal of SMS and telephone numbers). It’s all data at the end of the day.

    Instead, they developed a whole new protocol to fluff the telecos and keep the now badly managed telephone number system even more necessary allowing spammers and allow the problems of legacy SMS to continue.

    Apple, Google, and Samsung should all be shamed for not supporting fully open protocols and necessitating dependency on user harming stacks.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      41
      ·
      1 year ago

      This sounds nice at a superficial level, but there’s a lot of reliability and backwards compatibility issues being ignored. During natural disasters and emergency situations, internet and cellular data are the first to fail. It’s not casual. For the phone and SMS (GSMA) protocols are sturdy enough that they can operate with very simple, low energy consuming and highly reliable machines. Internet data services on the other hand consume way more electricity (more expensive to have them operate with backup generators, for example) and are more delicate and prone to failure. They also need to be replaced more often. 100% of national emergencies systems run on phone and SMS tech, that could reliably operate for several decades with little maintenance that would cost billions to replace them with internet based system that were as reliable and durable. And then on top of it all, wired phones can even operate without electricity and connect with cellular terminals to contact other phones and cellphones. Only the tower needs to have power. There’s just a lot banked of that reliability that most modern conveniences don’t have.

      • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        In case of emergency it runs or it doesn’t run. No matter if cellular or data.

        Best were something like Briar’s local wifi mesh standardized for emergency anyway.

      • NebLem@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I totally agree we can’t simply drop SMS immediately, but what am I missing in supporting backwards compatibility (for example via my pseudo number solution, like how VOIP works) preventing us from moving forward during a stagged shutdown in the span of decades? MMS and RCS both would also fail under cellular data loss, and SMS itself hasn’t always been available during major disasters. I’m not sure I buy the argument you can’t have similarly low energy towers (even with net neutrality states, you can still cap all bandwidth per user), and a simpler tower that only does data should be far more reliable than a tower that provides multiple carrier services given the simplicity (and it’s very rare to have towers that only do voice + SMS anymore).

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          and SMS itself hasn’t always been available during major disasters.

          Neither has running water or electricity. And SMS isn’t actually the last fall-back (over here), that’s FM radio which has better reach and crank-powered receivers start at like 10 bucks. Also there’s a ton of generator-powered receivers around (called cars). Oh, dang, no, that’s not actually the last fall-back that’d be megaphone trucks and cars practically all emergency service vehicles have some kind of PA system.

          Solar storm killed the electrics of the new vehicles? There’s a 60-year old Unimog still standing around getting moved once a year to keep it operational and I bet you’ll find an analog megaphone in storage somewhere. It’s astonishing how little stuff gets thrown away, we once stumbled across a stash of field telephones, half of them with swastikas ground off, the others still intact. Those require a crank and a copper cable to operate, nothing more. We used them to organise parking for a summer camp before the days of mobile flatrates.

          The actual upside of plain ole GSM is that practically everyone carries around a receiver all the time, and there’s reception literally everywhere. Better reach and better signal bandwidth than sirens, though of course nothing beats the oh fuck oh fuck hear it in your marrow aspect of sirens.

          Catastrophe relief isn’t an area where you ever want to have a single strategy because absolutely nothing is 100% fail-safe. In principle something like TETRA would be better than GSM but civilian phones don’t speak it. (TETRA uses mesh networking, you can do direct handset to handset calls, drive around base stations in trucks to extend reach, etc)

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t know for certain. But one point to consider is that you have to qualify your “simply” statements with the fact that we are talking about millions of towers and hundreds of millions of repeaters over millions of square miles. While RCS works on top of the backbone that’s already there and fallsback to SMS by design. So it might actually be simpler. The big up is that the server is on the carrier, not centralized, which makes it entirely different than what you are talking about and giving it more resilience.

        • Xenocrat@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          There is so much nonsense being said about RCS, it will not fail under “cellular data loss”.

  • jcs@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    50
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Imagine a world where we can adopt a scalable, secure, open communication protocol where users can use whatever app they want. Imagine humanity moving past the diaspora of special-snowflake chat apps and on to better things.

  • notannpc@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    67
    arrow-down
    23
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Breaking news: Apple and majority of its users still don’t care.

    I’d love to have RCS, but it’s not a make or break feature for me, and I’m tech savvy enough to know what it is and what it does. Good luck trying to convince the average consumer to give a fuck about invisible tech that doesn’t meaningfully change their experience.

  • krakenx@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    47
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Apple is not going to change this unless legally forced to because it is quite possibly the biggest driver of iPhone sales.

    A whopping 87% of American teens use an iPhone, and the green text from Android SMS is the biggest reason. At that age people will do almost anything to fit in and get a date, and the green text was chosen specifically to elicit an “eww” response. Most of those teens will likely will continue to use iPhones as adults because it’s what they know.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      1 year ago

      Meanwhile outside of the United States basically no one uses iMessage. Precisely because it’s so terrible it interfacing with non-apple devices. Everyone just uses WhatsApp which will work with anything.

      Of course WhatsApp’s quite a crap program as well missing basic functionality but at least it’s not device specific.

    • IGMKI@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      As someone from the EU, I’m so confused about why this would matter to people. At that age, people will just find any excuse to bully regardless of what it is, it’s why uniforms don’t work either for those purposes. Hell, if someone were to try and shame me for the fucking color of my messages I’d be thankful, they’ve shown me another cunt to avoid associating with. In that sense it might actually be useful. (also, who even uses sms anymore?)

    • Surdon@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      The green text peer pressure means nothing to me, but you are 100% spot on about the ecosystem driving sales. My whole family uses apple and I get left out of so many group chats and face times that I’ve actually considered switching to Apple even though I’m a die hard Note fan. Apples hardware may be nothing special, but they have a killer feature in their seamless, closed ecosystem, and they know it. At the end of the day, a phones job is to communicate, and Apple does that seemlessly- with other Apple devices

      • Robaque@feddit.it
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s a slippery slope though. Unless you own a mac or pay subscribe to icloud storage tranferring photos and other files off your phone is gonna be a pain. Also, unless you get a mac with enough storage space it’s also gonna be a pain because iphotos doesn’t support direct transfer to external drives, so you gotta use image capture which is ridiculously barebones.

        • Surdon@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Wait you can’t transfer images directly to external harddrives?? Honestly I genuinely wonder why people put up with this shit

          • Robaque@feddit.it
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            On macs, only with image capture, which is very subpar

            No wonder they make people pay so much for extra storage loool

      • floppade [he/him]@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s what lured me in and also why I left. I wanted devices that worked together for accessibility reasons, not because I wanted to be on some over engineered chat network that only works with itself.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Very true and very ridiculous. A great deal of people will commonly do almost anything to be apart of a desirable group.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’d be ok with everybody adopting Signal protocol but I can safetly say no government anywhere would “allow” that

  • el_bhm@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    ·
    1 year ago
    1. EU passes the chat interop legislation.
    2. Apple is forced to do RCS.
    3. ???
    4. Corpos that shout now declare victory.

    First privacy, then USB, now RCS.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Only thing I know about RCS is that it has caused a few of my texts to never be sent, because the “send as normal text if RCS doesn’t work” also didn’t work. Other than that it has done nothing for me.

      • zepheriths@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        There are mandated back doors in most message apps. Messages between different message systems are normally harder to read

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps… like Apple’s own iMessage.

    The video, titled “Green bubbles and blue bubbles want to be together,” shows a Romeo and Juliet-style conversation between two users who want to be together, but who are kept apart by one of their “parents.”

    The “bubbles,” of course, are a reference to Apple’s iMessage interface which shows feature-rich blue bubbles for messages sent between Apple users, and discordant green SMS bubbles with reduced functionality when Android users participate in the chat.

    This two-class system is especially frustrating in countries like the US where about half the population is using an iPhone and the other half is running Android on a Samsung device.

    Apple, of course, has every incentive keep the status quo as a form of ecosystem lock-in, but it might be forced to open up its messaging service as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

    Regulators are currently investigating whether iMessage meets the bar to be considered a “core platform service” under the rules, which would compel Apple to offer interoperability with other messaging services.


    The original article contains 232 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 6%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • jerjajjijerj@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Apple will never listen, but maybe the EU could decide it’s important enough issue for them to force it. It’s starting to feel like we should just go to them, first. I’d like to imagine we have another candidate problem for regulation enforced fixing, with Mac laptops’ long-standing displayport multistream problem. Macs will only mirror and never extend to an nth monitor over displayport splitting … but the availability of thunderbolt adapters as a workaround takes some of the “oomph” out of that argument. That one’s been around like ten or more years.

    The other issue alluded to by another commenter, though, is that rcs is not low-level in Android os quite like SMS is. Like the API to get the information into other competing apps is not there, so it seems a little bit hypocritical.

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 year ago

      The EU could have had an effect on it via the DMA, but it seems that not many people use iMessage in the EU. People use Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger way more here, so those are forced into opening up.

      iMessage message bubble colors seem to be an US problem.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Maybe don’t buy Apple hardware? Why is it the government’s job to fix every minor annoyance you have with Apple?

      • stankmut@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Most people complaining about imessage are people who bought Android devices. In places where imessage use is prevalent, people with iphones tend to leave their android owning friends out of group chats and complain about their text bubble color being green if they text an android phone.

          • stankmut@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I haven’t said anything about the EU. There’s no way the EU would address this, it’s almost exclusively a US problem.

            • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I mean… I did and you were replying to me so… Guess you just ignored my point and posted with a “fun fact” for no reason then.

              • stankmut@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Oh, I see the problem. You seem to have forgotten that you wrote:

                Maybe don’t buy Apple hardware?

                I was responding to your point. You appeared to be arguing that this was a problem that could just be solved by just buying a different phone. I was saying that the people complaining are already the ones buying different phones.

        • Duranie@lemmy.film
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Someone leaves me out of a group chat due to the color of my text bubble, I doubt there was any benefit to being included in the conversation anyway.

          • stankmut@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            Well they aren’t leaving you out because of the color of the text bubble. It’s because having a phone that isn’t an iPhone in the group causes it to fallback to using MMS instead of imessage. They lose a lot of the features that iPhone users love about imessage and the quality of shared images and video is much worse. The moment someone tries to share a video and everyone just gets a blurry smudge of pixels is the moment all the iPhone users get their own group together.