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.
Damn, if only phones had phone numbers and SIM cards… That must really suck for future iPhone users. Apple really dropped the ball.
I’m downvoting you because you whined about downvotes. Letting you know instead of driving by.
But SMS still needs an upgrade, because it’s not going to be killed of if there isn’t a slot-in replacement, and so something has to take its role of being a messaging system where your carrier directly verifies your control of your phone number.
That’s why RCS exists.
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.
Who even uses sms/mms these days? The only cases I see myself using sms is the poorly implemented 2fa over sms, which is bad since sim hijack is a real threat.
Other than that whatsapp is the norm around here, whether we like it or not. Some also use facebook messanger, but no1 uses mms, it never picked up with the astronomical prices that carriers kept around for no good reason. I wish more people used telegram or signal, but 99% of my contacts don’t, so whatsapp it is.
Like 90% of Americans who have android phones use SMS. WhatsApp is more common in places outside the US. Not inside.
It’s still common in the USA for some reason. I think because SMS has been free for a long time and people don’t like change. Other apps gained popularity elsewhere in the world because SMSes were expensive.
I SMS my boss when I’m off sick.
I use it to communicate with my family
It’s more convenient than chat apps.
What is more conveniant about sms compared to other apps? You still have to open the app, choose the contact from the list and start typing. It’s the exact same options. If I do it on the sms app, signal app, telegram or messanger app it’s still the same 2 taps then start typing. The only difference is what’s on the other side. If they only use sms then it’s obvious you have no other choice of communicating with them, but you can’t say it’s more conveniant.
It’s convenient because I don’t have to tell my family to use a different app. It’s hard enough to get them to install whatsapp, let alone actually use it. And I don’t even like using whatsapp.
I try not to.
I’ll happily use one or more of any of dozens of proper modern, network-based messaging systems. A few off the top of my head, none of which must be tied to hardware/sim/phone number (Signal is working on moving away from phone numbers, and it’s still not tied to a phone number the same way RCS is):
Matrix
Signal
Conversations
Simplex
Wire
Or pick an XMPP server and client, there’s plenty out there. I was using XMPP on my phone in 2009, chatting, sending uncompressed videos to people on desktops/laptops.
Hell, even Telegram is a thousand times better than this RCS garbage.
Don’t get me started on the privacy nightmare of WhatsApp… Holy shit, may as well not even care about privacy or encryption.
(I have most of these messaging apps on my phones and my laptop, because they work).
Unfortunately, no matter how good the alternatives are, you are stuck with whatever is on the other end. I can’t force anyone to change their main app for comms. Even if I do manage to get them to install anything else, they will realise they only use it with me and probably drop it next time they change their phone.
While I do agree whatsapp is a privacy nightmare , I also see why it won’t go away anytime soon. You only need someone’s phone number to contact them, you get easy media transfers although compressed to shit, it’s still serviceable and it’s carier independant, and most importantly free even internationaly. People even started using it for audio calls due to higher quality audio over the plain voice calls. All these reasons create the perfect mix for the average privacy-ignorant person to overlook any competitors.
Deltachat too, FOSS, E2EE, it relies on users’ already existing email accounts to vehicle the messages (https://delta.chat)