I hope Apple never adopts RCS
blog.mogery.meThe SMS/RCS/iMessage/blue bubble-green bubble debate is almost entirely exclusive to the strange market of the US.
Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc.
EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't have one right now, and all three (SMS, RCS, iMessage) are poor stop-gaps. People need to send their texts, images, videos, and files to people without pain; that's all the average layperson cares about. What does fill this need are said 3rd-party apps, which claim to have E2EE messaging. Whether this is really true remains to be seen.
The fragmentation of these third party apps gets frustrating very fast though.
I'm in the UK and my work uses Slack and also wants me to use WhatsApp for OOH contact. My friends are mostly on Discord. My family is mostly only available via iMessage. A few of the more privacy conscious use Telegram or Signal. A few of the more OSS conscious use Matrix. Some chat is still on IRC (actually I like that...).
Users relying on third party apps over the top has strong network effects for keeping people using services from Facebook et al, and I'm not too fond of that.
I'm vaguely optimistic about the EU's idea of forcing these apps to be able to federate in at least a basic sense, but we'll see.
> forcing these apps to be able to federate
I predict it'll 'work' so that the companies aren't fined by the EU, but the service will be atrocious.
You'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work, and even then you'll probably have to wait 5 minutes for messages to be delivered, have to deal with bugs galore, and have most of the features not work.
"Warning: Sending an animated emoji will eject all non-iMessage users out of this group conversation".
> You'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work, and even then you'll probably have to wait 5 minutes for messages to be delivered, have to deal with bugs galore, and have most of the features not work.
Traditionally the EU is not amused by companies trying to cleverly work around its competition laws. I fully expect long trials with significant fines following the introduction of this law and hopefully things should settle for the better in a couple of years.
Traditionally, the EU is eroding their market and terrible at writing laws. You can’t legislate product decisions. That’s not what people actually want.
As Facebook and their suits illustrate, you can’t always run an international and feature-full service with their laws. The requirements for federation will probably devolve to an email or SMS fallback or just a lack of service offered. Big companies that don’t want to retreat at the risk of market share will totally provide lip service to the rules and implement the exact letter of the law and nothing more.
I expect that the EU taking this and other action will be a lot like the GDPR: solving a problem and providing a few solutions but basically none of the vision. The GDPR mandates data-exporting out of a service with the idea of portability. Except no one offers imports so there’s no real portability gained, just auditability (which is nice).
I do agree that I expect long trials and significant fines. The EU will look good politically for taking a stand to those big American companies. Those big American companies will maybe write a big check but certainly appeal for a decade.
Maybe it won't come down to legislation, but rather the threat of legislation. Maybe this is the sort of threat that will force companies to talk to one another and preemptively seek some sort of federation. Maybe they will be incentivized to do the right thing before it goes to court. At the very least, this is disruption of the status quo.
> A few of the more privacy conscious use Telegram or Signal.
Here in Germany, almost everyone I know is on Signal. That is not privacy conscious people or even tech-affine ones, almost everyone uses it in addition to WhatsApp. WA is mainly used when it works better (in bad connection situations, something that is embarrassingly relevant in Germany, Signal messages sometimes don’t work without an indication of it happening, WA messages just work) or a special feature is needed (live location sharing).
I'll ask this here...
I haven't touched any 3rd party messaging app, and I'd like to have my family start using one. But I'd like one that works on desktop as well... windows and linux. Does Signal, Telegram, or the others let you do that without jumping through hoops?
Telegram works pretty smoothly in that regard. The desktop apps are fully featured; the only thing you have to use a phone for is the initial signup.
You just have to give up E2EE if you use telegram and want chats sync'd across your devices.
> The fragmentation of these third party apps gets frustrating very fast though.
Agreed, although where I live, most people have consolidated on Telegram. WhatsApp was popular about 5 years ago, but its popularity has quickly waned because of how difficult inter-device use is.
> because of how difficult inter-device use is.
Huh? What is difficult there?
several.. truth is that whatsapp was made to be used in one device only and is not frindly to be used in multiple devices at the same time.
Until recently (like days ago) you still needed the main device to be online and connected to their server to use the both the web or desktop apps, although for some time there was a beta going for the feature they released a few days ago where that is "no longer required".
Even so, i was on the beta of the new feature where you could use the web or desktop app without the phone since it started and it has its quirks.. Often it fail to load either the history or even new messages, messages sent on the main device often do not show in the web\desktop app and performance is overall terrible.
Also there is still no official way to have the same whatsapp across multiple phone\tablets devices.
Never had issues with the beta (before it, I simply did not use WA), but then I also never used it heavily.
> Also there is still no official way to have the same whatsapp across multiple phone\tablets devices.
That seems dumb. Luckily not an issue for me.
Yeah, it is completely dumb, but it is what it is..
The problem is that whastapp is old and it was first designed those decisions made sense..
the only other option around was SMS but it was expensive in many countries.. So now you had the option to pay a few dollars to buy the whatsapp (yeah, had to pay for it back then) and you could send SMS-like messages for free..
That is why it is so widespread in many countries, because it was a cheap alternative to SMS..
It was designed as a replacement for SMS and many of the early technical decisions that are limiting then today were made with that in mind..
One phone number = one phone = one whatsapp account
that is no longer the case today but they have to deal with the technical debts of those early decisions..
AFAIK all the other alternatives available today came much later with a completely different mind set, so they do not have those same limitations..
WhatsApp was a pain to use on multiple devices. For a long time you needed the main phone to be connected nearby. I also lost my whole history when I went from Android to iOS for a silly technical reason. Really annoying.
Nitpick - iMessage is also Internet-based. The phone number is only checked once when you first install the phone (by Apple sending an SMS that the OS intercepts) and is then registered with Apple so that other Apple phones with iMessage enabled know that this number can receive iMessage. The carrier is no longer involved beyond the initial verification step.
You can also use iMessage with an Apple ID, including to contact those who only have a phone number (and the reverse also works). This works on non-cellular devices as well such as iPod/iPad/Mac.
The blue bubble/green bubble thing is Google's iPhone is just "round corner" argument. They're very good at pushing the "our competitor is evil" style messages rather than being honest about the genuine reasons why others aren't embracing their various platforms. Google have repeatedly failed at making legitimate competitors to popular chat services such as Whatsapp, so Google is trying to sneak around the competition in their attempt to force Apple to bundle their technology with every device.
The real hesitation by Apple is obvious, RCS is half baked: it's not a true E2EE solution and in some scenarios encryption is simply not available at all. It is demonstrably worse than other chat technologies, doesn't solve the problems it sets out to fix and the only benefit to its existence is that it gives Google a way to control a competitor's platform.
Apple have already made the right kinds of concessions for chat apps on their platforms. All apps are able to hook into the native video/voice call, Contacts and instant-notification reply interfaces. Not only does this make each 3rd party app have the same feeling and level footing as Messages. It has the run on benefit of extending support for these services into devices where there isn't even an app available. E.g. one can reply to chat messages from their car or apple watch, even if there is no app on those platforms - this really goes a long way to helping 3rd parties establish themselves without having to build an app for every single one of Apple's hardware endeavours. Google could go this route with an RCS app, but it's clear that there is no end-user benefit here, especially when Whatsapp and others did the hard work in carving out the critical mass needed to exist as a standalone chat app.
iMessage is non-interoperable by design. RCS is at least a standard, and better than the existing SMS standard. So it's progress, even if E2EE isn't there yet.
That's a facile argument because nobody uses RCS. RCS failed to gain acceptance, so Google took RCS and built their own app with centralized servers and that's what everybody actually uses on Android. It's basically the same as iMessage, except it requires a phone number.
> All apps are able to hook into the native video/voice call, Contacts and instant-notification reply interfaces.
From a privacy perspective, I hate this - Apple did this only to access more of our data. E.g. if anyone voice or video calls me on one of these apps, Apple has access to that metadata because it will now be listed in the recent call list that is under Apple's control. If I am using (for e.g.) WhatsApp or Signal, it's partly because I want to avoid iMessage and ensure Apple doesn't have access to more of my personal data.
There's a few problems with this thinking.
First you need to distinguish between what your phone knows and what Apple knows. Most of what you've described are things that only your phone knows. Through a judicial process of attaining access to your iCloud backup (should you opt into such a service) could law enforcement then have access to that data. This is a significantly different approach to Android, where Google actively collect and use that data in profile building - this is perhaps where the confusion might be coming from.
Secondly there is some naivety about using an Apple phone and believing that you're not sharing functonality-essential data with the manufacturer and author of the operating system. Your device basically will not function without Apple's service backend. There isn't any moral question here because you would be aware that by buying an Apple device and using Apple-fed services that you are in some way engaging in some kind of relationship with Apple. If you believe that these devices can function without such backends, you are grandly mistaken. Moral questions come about when you engage in a relationship with one tech company, only for that company to start on-selling your data through a variety of products based on your use of the device. I.E. What happens with Android.
Also I'm not going to even touch the absolute hilarity of using WhatsApp while having concerns about privacy/metadata collection.
> Most of what you've described are things that only your phone knows.
Not when your call list is automatically synced to the cloud (default settings), and all the BigTech reset your settings to default whenever you update to get more of your personal data.
> Secondly there is some naivety about using an Apple phone and believing that you're not sharing functonality-essential data with the manufacturer and author of the operating system.
That's exactly what I am complaining about - people like you think that is ok and normal, many of us don't and so we vocally complain out loud. My phone runs Sailfish OS, and I don't have to worry about these kind of bullshit with it.
> you would be aware that by buying an Apple device and using Apple-fed services that you are in some way engaging in some kind of relationship with Apple.
Making a voice or video call through a third-party app has nothing to do with Apple. Buying an Apple device doesn't imply that we have to accept servitude or an abusive one sided relationship with Apple, as most of you are proposing that we accept blindly.
> Moral questions come about when you engage in a relationship with one tech company, only for that company to start on-selling your data through a variety of products based on your use of the device.
And you are naive to believe Apple has not started doing that. As more and more regulation appear around the world that force Apple to open up their device, you will find Apple becoming more and more abusive with their user's data.
You being ignorant to how devices work isn't the same thing as your device secretly spying on you.
Your phone literally can't make a phone call without having initially shared data with Apple and your telco. This isn't some privacy-invading norm, it's the literal spec for cellular devices.
That's why when you go to Apple, give them your details and activate your phone - you are knowingly engaging in a relationship with them. This isn't some point of controversy - it is literally you making a choice about which phone you wanted to buy. You choosing to ignore Apple's and your telco's privacy policy which outline the types of data needed to operate the device really isn't something you can blame them for.
The point I'm making, which I think is lost here is that people like yourself are painfully unaware how dependent your device is on the manufacturer to function. It's a point of tedium because your type will rant on about privacy without having any understanding about what is privacy, what is essential data for the operation of the device - and then jump to literally absurd conclusions with the little information you have garnered.
Secondly you acknowledge that there are ways to limit the functionality of your device by providing less data to the manufacturer. So clearly something is working upstairs, but the compromise in that is you have limited functionality - in which case I question why you purchased that device to begin with.
Finally you are naively unaware about the differences in how your personal data is handled between Apple and Google. They are not in any way equivalent, and you've made many incorrect assumptions that Apple are doing things that Google do with Android, despite their public statements, privacy policy and 3rd party investigation that confirms otherwise.
In short you sound like a tinfoil idiot. You're not interested in facts, you're interested in mudslinging, and it's patently clear that you're happy to lie in order to do that.
I really hope that interoperability between (some of) these platforms, mandated by EU, will actually come true. Thing is, SMS is ancient technology, but it does work everywhere, on any kind of device, even on the dumbest one. All the other 3-rd party apps are (a) requiring an Internet connection to work, which most people have, but some don't, having limited data plans or prepaid accounts where data is way too expensive to use, and (b) they can only communicate with their own users, exactly like iMessage.
> but some don't
The proportion of people with phone-only plans is very small and getting smaller by the year.
Let's just have an interoperability standard that is data based, encrypted and independent of carriers.
> SMS is ancient technology, but it does work everywhere
Nowhere near true. As soon as you cross a geo boundary (ie travel) SMS is Russian roulette. It often doesn't go through at all. In the US, I've also seen carriers remove non-ascii characters.
Now, the question is: is that a good thing? SMS is like e-mail - you can have many clients for the same protocol. Don't like your built-in SMS app? Install another one. You can't do that with 3rd-party proprietary siloed communication platforms.
> You can't do that with 3rd-party proprietary siloed communication platforms
I agree, and this is unfortunate. However, they're not going away at all, and the free alternatives (IRC?) are relegated to niche developer groups. For work communications, we have Slack, Discord, Teams, Zoom; for normal messaging, the apps I mentioned above (and more; Instagram/TikTok/etc have their own DM platforms).
It will take real concerted effort to fix this, and somehow I don't see it happening.
I get the feeling that it is highly subjective how widely adopted people seem to believe these are. It would be interesting to see some actual research on this. While many may have a whole bunch of those apps installed it says nothing about their actual usage.
My own personal view (Denmark based, age: mid thirties): In my group of extended friends and family almost everyone uses SMS/iMessage. SMS has been (basically) free to use here for many many years (or so many included in your basic plan you would never reach the limit). I believe this has slowed the adoption of the various chat apps here significantly - at least for people my age. Most of my friends share the same habit of calling each other if you want to know something that is time sensitive. If you don't need an answer right away you can text.
New acquaintances are first added on Facebook/Messenger since you can find people by their name and then if you actually communicate with them on a regular basis you eventually get their phone number to make it easier if you for example need to call them. Almost nobody I know use Messenger's voice calls. My family (and some friends) has resorted to sending SnapChat images instead. Sharing something without it ending up in a "permanent" chat history seems to be getting more common as it is somewhat informal. I never watch people's "stories/reels" in whatever format they might take as they are not sent directly to me and they seem to expire after a short while. I hate that pressure to constantly check in not to miss anything so now I ignore it completely and I'm happier for it. If anything I have a lot more to talk about with people when I finally meet them than if I already knew everything they had been doing.
I have a few WhatsApp groups going with my international friends and various local volunteer-based organizations.
I’ve often hoped that Apple would adapt the iMessages app to accept ‘plugins’ that would implement the various protocols (WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal, & cetera) so that all messaging were located in a single location à la Blackberry circa 2008.
I use Messenger and Discord to talk to all of my friends.
The only people I use SMS to talk to are my parents, who are too non-technical to install any apps that didn't come with their phones.
Part of reason in for many places outside US. There are no unlimited messages plan.
edit: people seems to miss that I said that this is only part of the reason not the reason. I also said many places outside the US (not all). So do people down vote because they think that there are only US and EU in the world? I am missing that point.
FWIW, most monthly contract plans in the UK have unlimited calls & SMS. The main differentiator is the size of the data cap. There are charges for MMS etc though.
Even the cheapest of plans from the main networks (3, vodafone, EE, o2) - as low as £4/mo have unlimited calls & SMS now.
edit: this has been the case for quite a few years now, too.
RCS is the successor/replacement of MMS. Carriers will charge for it and that will be the end of the protocol.
It is explicitly designed to give carriers back control of messaging.
Why am I even saying this? We all remember how much fun carriers control over SMS was. It killed sms. There were never any new features. Cost made lots of stuff, such as multi party chats effectively impossible for teenagers ... It was always very unclear how much everything cost. There were "traps" with premium services, often not advertised as such. Now there's fraud with international SMSes. And things have gotten worse' several states made clear they use phones to find abortions ... And RCS is designed to bring this back. No.
Just. NO.
That's not true, unlimited SMS have been a thing for at least 15 years in Europe, well before WhatsApp became popular. In my experience, people switched to WhatsApp because of group chats and images (MMS were expensive).
Depends on the country. In Czechia, unlimited SMS plans used to be expensive.
That changed, but e.g. with my pre-paid plan I still pay 12 cents per SMS.
Historically there was also a problem that unlimited SMS plans worked only within a country. Now it's a bit better being EU-wide, but still not worry free.
So you don't think that there no other places outside except Europe?
Atleast in germany (almost?) every plan has unlimited messages nowadays. Even the cheapest prepaid plan. People still use WhatsApp, Signal, etc., because of media sharing and easy group conversations
> Even the cheapest prepaid plan.
My 3.99€/month plan includes 100 SMS. Not that I ever use all of those, all of my 100 minutes, or all of my 1 GB of data.
Not in austria
This may have caused WhatsApp to get big in much of the EU, but by now many European countries also have unlimited text, so it's not the case any longer.
I thought high costs for international SMS and MMS is what caused WhatsApp to explode. I remember it being the first app with great UX for sending and receiving pics/video/contacts, and then they added group messaging which worked great as well.
No spam because you needed SMS text verification, no ads, no login to remember, just all around amazing app at the right place at the right time.
Yep, all this.
The only thing I'll add is that, ca 2012 which is when whatsapp started really taking off where I live, intercarrier SMS was slow and unreliable. WhatsApp was fast and reliable.
I'm not sure why this is being framed as an XOR situation? Why would RCS support imply removal of iMessage?
Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
I don't think I've ever intentionally/deliberately chosen to use RCS, but (on my (Android) phone at least) it does seem to transparently turn itself on the very rare occasion when I send SMS messages (usually in reply to a received SMS), if supported by both phones.
> I'm not sure why this is being framed as an XOR situation? Why would RCS support imply removal of iMessage?
I'm not aware of anyone making that argument, it would replace and/or compliment SMS (since even if Apple adopts RCS, SMS is going to around for a long time).
> Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
Is it better than SMS? Yes but that's a low bar to clear and as a chat protocol it has many failings, not least of which are it's weak E2E when it supports it at all. Also RCS is practically owned by Google, operated by carriers, I literally cannot think of a worse combo of 2 companies/industries that I do not trust.
Bottom line is SMS is going to be around for the foreseeable future (so much is built on it, similar to email for better or worse) and we will have to support a SMS fallback even with RCS support in iOS. Because of that and the lack of compelling reasons to move to RCS, I feel like it's best just to leave SMS as-is and work on pushing people to your preferred third-party chat app.
I don't think it's being framed as an XOR situation. I think the article is trying to say that RCS is a shit standard (it is) and that Apple shouldn't adopt it because that would essentially solidify it as the replacement for SMS. Apple and Google should come together and make something better.
And SMS is slowly but surely dying.
So why throw it a lifeline with RCS when there can be a better standard.
> To use iMessage, all you need is an Apple ID, which you can create for free. To use RCS, you need to have a phone number, which means that you need to have an account with a carrier. You also need to have a phone to use RCS: you can't use it on a tablet alone without LTE.
I’m under the impression you need Apple hardware to use iMessage, and that even third-party solutions rely upon proxying via real Apple hardware which has to be turned on (I get the impression some basically offer the hardware as a paid service, and others require you to own the hardware?). This tips the balance completely the other direction, as a lot more people have phone numbers than can use iMessage without further expenditure.
Technically if you want to get in there without Mac hardware, you can just spam create valid serial identifiers for your hardware until you find one without a registration date, which you can claim and will let you on the iMessage network [0]. I'm surprised nobody has packaged this into an app before.
[0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/i...
Yes, you do need Apple hardware to use iMessage. But as your quote states, there are no other monthly fees associated with it. You don't need a cellular plan, or indeed even a device with cellular connectivity at all. And you can still send/receive iMessages the same as anyone else.
I don’t own any Apple hardware and no desire to own any, let alone keep it turned on. I do already have a mobile phone number that works. I believe I am among the majority of adults in Australia in this combination (though it’s quite slim and based on estimation).
If you’re already in the Apple ecosystem, fine, and that is kinda the target of the article; but it’s worded in a way that I don’t like and find extremely misleading, since it’s also about interactions with others, who have a fair chance of not possessing the required hardware.
That's fantastic that you have a mobile number that works. How can you use it on a WiFi-only tablet to send messages to people using that number?
Yeah, I know, you use third-party apps for that. That's not the point.
How is a third-party app that's available for both Android and iOS worse than iMessage that's iOS only? How is a mobile number that can be bought from literally hundreds of different carriers all over the world worse than an Apple ID that only Apple can provide and can take away at any time?
Haven’t done it on a tablet, but from my laptop I SSH into my phone and run sxmo_modemsendsms.sh ‹contact-name-or-number› ‹message›. :-)
Ah, sorry. I didn't realize this problem was solved for the general public already :)
How does that work without internet? And you can only send iMessage to a small part of the population, as only people who have iMessage can receive it, is that correct?
“Without cellular connectivity” ≠ “without internet”.
So those of us who happen to own iPhones, and have friend who have Android devices, and would like to have (e.g.) group chats can go pound sand? Or try to get all of our friends/family to install yet another app?
What is the main argument(s?) against implementing RCS? That it doesn't have E2EE? Neither does SMS, so RCS is no worse in that regard, but seems to have some extra nice things.
I keep being surprised how utterly selfish can brand fans be when it comes to their electronics toys. This doesn't affect pure Apple fanboys at all and yet they still want to mess it up.
So we (Apple brand fans) must adopt a garbage standard (RCS) just because the brand you're a fan of (Google/Android) created and adopted it?
RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.
> RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.
And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't we implement the nice things of RCS?
What's stopping you from having group chats with your Android-using friends? I have plenty of them on my iPhone.
I believe GP was talking about sms group chats. And if you have sms group chats with android users, it sucks for them, especially how reactions and replies show up on their side. iMessage group chats degrade the experience of your android friends for the convenience of iPhone users. It's not a great way to treat friends imo. 3rd party apps are the same amount of convenience for everybody.
> And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?
There are how many different cross-platform messaging apps?
If Apple were really interested in a standard, they would be promoting iMessage as a standard. Instead, when Google proposes RCS, they just sit and shake their head and say "no, not good enough."
That's a totally separate issue, and I generally agree with you. Apple should put in some work on this as well, and they have not.
But that still doesn't mean RCS is good.
The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.
There is no point moving to RCS which just prolongs this death and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
> The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.
Each of which is a wall gardened onto itself. So instead of having one app where I can chat, I have App A to talk with Group-of-Friends 1, App B to talk with Group-of-Family/Friends 2, App C…
Thanks, but I'll happily give up E2EE to not have to deal with the above hassle.
At that point I might as well give up on SMS/RCS and go back to only sending e-mails which is an open, federated standard.
> […] and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client. I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
Except SMS isn't being replaced, the new protocols work along side SMS. That's like saying WhatsApp is replacing iMessage.
RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.
> RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.
Only if you don't count building/support/maintenance of RCS. SMS works well enough for it's main jobs: fallback for people that won't install a 3rd party app, an insecure channel for TOTP (something RCS doesn't improve on), and the one near-guaranteed messaging channel for a whole range of services that can't or won't write an app with push notifications.
Adding RCS is not free/easy and it continues to make us dependent on the carriers and Google, two groups I trust about as far as I can throw them. RCS is a crap "standard", this isn't a case of good being the enemy of great, it's a case of Google trying to force their latest messaging platform on everyone.
It gives power back to mobile operators, and that's a step back for net neutrality. My experience with mobile operators is that they are universally horrible, both on technical and business level.
MMS has been a dumpster fire since the beginning. They haven't improved it in all these years, but still price it as if they hand deliver the messages on a golden plate (my operator's cheapest MMS price is 20x more expensive than the same bandwidth on their data plan, and the regular price is closer to 300x markup).
These are the operators that put uninstallable crapware on phones they're able to touch (Apple has won a hard battle here; phones used to be sold on operators' terms before the iPhone). These are the operators that are unwilling to secure caller ID. These are the operators that sell their user's traffic. These are the operators charge fuck-you prices for roaming. I don't want them to be in control of anything.
RCS will be just an extra item to upsell, and the technology — which is already worse than every competitor — will be left to languish forever.
> It gives power back to mobile operators, and that's a step back for net neutrality.
I see that as a huge positive - I'd rather that my personal communication never be under the control and mercy of foreign BigTechs, and would prefer that it be under the telecom companies who are obliged to follow certain laws and regulations on pricing and QoS. I don't see it as having anything to do with net neutrality.
Looking at pricing of MMS, roaming charges, and lack of security in interchange that allows spam and fake caller IDs, these laws are insufficient. A technical solution that makes operators "dumb pipes" solves it better. It's a Net Neutrality issue, because it allows operators to charge for bytes of RCS messages differently than bytes of Signal messages or Matrix messages or any other packet.
Ideally messaging shouldn't be controlled by either BigTech or BigTelecom, but RCS being a Google-telecom cooperation fails on both counts at the same time.
> It's a Net Neutrality issue, because it allows operators to charge for bytes of RCS messages differently than bytes of Signal messages or Matrix messages or any other packet.
That's a disingenuous argument as voice and data (sms, video calls, mms etc.) on any telecom network has never been considered a part of the internet. Even though RCS uses parts of internet technologies (only because 4g / 5g are IP based and have replaced switch based technology), it's still a stretch to call it part of the "internet" as it is part of the telecom infrastructure and can connect to other telecom networks without necessarily needing the "internet" to do so.
And this legally mandated "inter-connectivity" remains the key point and advantage of telecom networks. The internet is also supposed to be like that, and many early internet technology were built with this feature of distributed inter-connectivity too. But WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, Skype etc. are all disconnected islands that are actually an aberration of this core value of the internet, and devalues the internet as a whole.
The distinction of what belongs to telecoms and what belongs to the Internet is only due to how the technologies have evolved. It's a legacy quirk of the "it's always been like that" type. I'm all for reducing telecoms entirely to "dumb pipe" ISPs and moving everything to IP, calls too. Mandated inter-connectivity only exists to fix a problem that telecoms have created by having access to unencrypted insecure special-purpose comms traffic and being able to abuse this privilege. This should have been encrypted IP data they can't touch or discriminate.
Phone numbers are an outdated idea, and shouldn't exist any more (and Signal is terrible for using them). You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows. For example in most countries in Europe you can't get a phone number without a government ID tying it to your legal identity, and telecoms may be obliged to log your call metadata. Would you prefer e-mail as an open IP protocol, or a setup of traditional licensed postal operators that require government's permission to make an e-mail account for you?
> The distinction of what belongs to telecoms and what belongs to the Internet is only due to how the technologies have evolved.
True. But it is also a fact that telecom networks inside a country offer better privacy and better protect democratic rights (in a democratic country) than some foreign powered network like the internet - if Google or Facebook misuse my data, I have less recourse to complain about them with the law than against a telecom company who have to follow stricter laws and regulations.
> You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows.
This is again a disingenuous argument when it is a fact that telecom companies in democratic countries better protect your privacy because they are legally mandated to. In a democratic setup, the government requiring identity documents or logging 6 months of CDR are completely acceptable (and necessary) compromises as your rights are safeguarded in a democracy. Foreign BigTechs have no such obligations to us and even misuse the trust some people place in them to be truly abusive in violating a users data by invasively collecting vast amounts of data that they feel they are free to exploit in any manner. (E.g. WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy Shares Sensitive Data With Facebook, Forces Users Into Agreement By Providing Mirage Of Choice: Delhi HC - https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/delhi-high-court-whatsap... ).
Offering "free" services to hijack communication in a country is both anti-democratic and anti-competitive that needs to be curbed strongly by all democratic nations.
We initially tried getting on-board the RCS train about 3 or 4 years ago, to be able to do "rich content delivery" to customers. Specifications and feature-sets were hazy and seemed to be poorly agreed upon, and service providers offering RCS termination to the mobile grid were few. Besides only Android having support for it, it turned out that in all of Europe we found just 4 cellular operators that supported it. Consequently the reach of RCS was extremely limited, so we abandoned the idea.
In the beginning of this year we had another look at the situation, and somewhat surprisingly there has been very little progress in terms of operator support. As we would say in Sweden: it appears to be moving slower than a snail on vacation.
It might be that you looked in the wrong place. I didn't check the RCS-situation in a while, but last time I checked (~1.5y ago) the Europe operators who haven't deployed RCS already (3-4 operators) dropped investment plans and decided to support RCS via Google's RCS cloud-service instead, mandating the use of Google Messaging as device-client.
(Google acquired jibe, a major company developing RCS clients/servers, and started rolling their own RCS-server and moving almost all vendors to the same client)
My expectation would be that by 2022 the majority of Europe carriers support RCS, not as an in-house service but by using either Google's cloud-based RCS or Samsung's RCS and their respective device-clients (with Samsung on steady decline).
The situation is a bit opaque, but if you look deeper on the device-side, RCS is no longer a carrier-controlled service. Google and Samsung combined control >90% of the client/server development and operations. They surely both align via the GSMA, but I doubt that the GSMA has actual control over the roadmap of RCS any more today than it had control over it ~2 years ago (which was close to zero)
Although i'm very much a fanboy of the matrix protocol, i really wish Apple and other big players would at least consider something like matrix...That is, a protocol that is secure, extendible, but still universal enough to be federated; not proprietary. I imagine decades ago there might have been similar (though maybe lower intensity) debates when email was becoming popular. I'm so glad the elders were wise enough (and not money-grubbers like nowadays) and came to an agreement around mail protocols like smtp, imap, etc. Even if its not matrix that is chosen, i really wish we had better choice for a chat/text messaging protocol. I get that lay people may not care about open protocols, or federation as much, etc...but my goodness in this day and age, it astounds me that we have not gotten our collective act together to standardize on secure, federatable, and straight-forward basic messaging.
This is what the new EU DMA regulations are hoping for too.
I sure hope they succeed!
> Adoption
This is a chicken and egg argument.
> Security > Prerequisites
Both of these arguments rest on the assumption that RCS replaces iMessage. That's not the point. The data is already unencrypted. You already need a paid phone number. The benefit is that two large groups of users' devices that interact poorly today interact better with RCS. Google isn't asking Whatsapp or Signal to implement RCS, it doesn't make sense that they'd expect Apple to shut down their proprietary service to use a less-featurefull option instead.
How is Adoption a chicken and egg argument? RCS is, by its design, slower to update than iMessage.
Because iOS has a large enough market share that carriers don't prioritize adoption ("It doesn't benefit our customers"), but a lack of adoption means Apple can say "Why would we waste our time on something that's not well supported?"
Still find it incredible the green/blue bubble thing in the US isn’t a joke.
It’s real. Part of it is teens being judgy because teenagers do that. her bubbles are green because she’s poor and her parents can’t afford an iphone etc.
But also there is a real experience difference between iMessages and SMS and especially mixed group chats. Social people -even adults- who have lots of group chats via default messaging inadvertently punish android users for using SMS and that worse experience is represented in green. It’s just a symbol for that worse experience.
In fact, it’s getting worse not better. I have every messaging app imaginable on my iPhone (because it’s just an app why not). If I group chat mixed iPhone and android - I get the expected bad experience. But a lot of android users have now set up Signal to be their SMS app. So my iPhone will mix SMS iMessage going out, only for an android user to mix SMS signal messages coming back. So now the conversation is smeared across three apps and ruined.
Hence why I just install every app. So i can increase the odds of finding an alternative common ground.
PS. Everyone blames the android guy not the iPhone guy. “Stop being poor” or whatever. People are cruel.
It is for 80% of people. I am already mid 30s, but I assume the only people who care are young people who use it as an in group vs out group signifier. Which, if not green and blue chats, would be something else.
Everyone else simply uses WhatsApp if everyone does not have iMessage.
It is also an issue for Android users in general. In large group chat instantiated by an iPhone user, Android users may be unable to respond. My mother has encountered that on numerous occasions.
That might be a temporary technical issue, but I presume adults would just call each other and switch to Whatsapp so as to not make it a social issue like teens might by continuing to exclude someone.
Nah. I’m a “real adult” (in a wealthy American city) who makes plans like an adult and isn’t driven by childish cliques and in-group behavior but I have 100% excluded android users or asked someone to manually relay messages to them when they got dropped from an iPhone group chat.
SMS is botched and finding an overlapping app across 15 people is impossible. How are you supposed to coordinate that if you can’t even use SMS groups? How do you find a common app? You’d need one or two people doing person to person investigation to figure it out. At that point, it’s easier just to find the one person who’s phone doesn’t work and relay messages to them. Half the people don’t want to download a new app. Another half don’t trust Facebook apps. Another half think email is too slow (and too easy to exclude someone).
The general social sentiment is that the android users did this to themselves by choosing a cheap phone or choosing to care more about “not letting apple be in control”.
> That might be a temporary technical issue,
It's temporary technical issue if Apple were to support RCS; otherwise, it is a long term issue. It is due SMS limits. This is why Google is trying to pressure Apple into supporting RCS. Apple certainly won't loosen control of iMessage.
> I presume adults would just call each other
We are talking about a large group chat. Easily 15+ people. Calling is not really an option for replying there.
> switch to Whatsapp
Not going to happen. We are talking about people who only recently became comfortable with messaging. Trying to throw them into a new application would take too long and cause too much frustration. The better answer is for Apple to support RCS.
I always thought it was a Joke/Meme. I saw it come up years ago on 4chan, but now it's everywhere.
Apparently teens in the US judge each other by the colour of their message bubbles [0].
I don't know if this is merely immaturity, or sheer vapidness.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... (paywalled)
When I was growing up it was mostly about where you bought your clothes.
It's immaturity, if you will. Wanting to set oneself aside as a bit better than others, and the harsh group mechanics of building constellations with a select few through exclusions of others, is a social behavior of growing up. Almost every kid and teenager will partake in it or at the least experience it.
I don't know child psychology, but if I were to guess it's a manifestation of "survival of the fittest".
I am under the impression teens should be expected to be immature and vapid…because they are teens.
paywall bypass for chrome & firefox : https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
RCS is inferior to iMessage simply because it doesn't work on tablets and desktop computers. Since RCS is tied to mobile carriers, who don't want to give up control over those juicy messages, the problem will persist forever.
EDIT: wrong
iMessage is device centered - your messages are just relayed to desktop by the mobile messaging app. Android messages can do this too [1], So can Samsung [2]
No. SMS is proxied to your phone from your desktop but iMessage to iMessage communications don’t need an iPhone at all.
Ah thanks for the correction
Wildly wrong.
The author lost me on the assumption that RCS is a carrier-controlled service. I doubt that carriers have much control over the roadmap of RCS, they haven't had real control over it for years now. It's basically a service of Google (and to a decreasing extend Samsung).
Until 2015 the direction of RCS was for every carrier to setup infrastructure to operate a own RCS server. A few companies offered such RCS infra, but a key player in the center of the whole standardization and interoperability matter was a company called jibe. Jibe was selling RCS servers (and clients) to network operators, and got a few of the key-carriers as customers from the start.
As each device-manufacturer was expected to develop/source his own client, and network carriers needed servers to interoperate as well, alot of interoperability discussions, testing and refinement was needed. As a key server-vendor, jibe was at the heart of all those topics and a strong participant in GSMA RCS.
In 2015 Google made a move to enter the RCS space and acquired jibe. It started the trajectory which transformed RCS into the mostly Google-operated service that it is today. Google integrated RCS-client capabilities into their Android Messages application and offer RCS as a unified cloud-based service to operators.
Within just a few years:
- All network operators who planned to invest into RCS infrastructure scrapped those plans, entered an agreement with Google to use their cloud-based RCS-service instead and mandated towards device-vendors to adopt Android Messages.
- Network operators who had no concrete plans for RCS made the same agreement with Google as it promised revenue-share but required zero investment from them.
What remains is a handful of network carriers who #1: already have RCS-infra and #2: Didn't shut it down yet.
I'd say that 99% of all Android Smartphones today either use a Google Messages client or a Samsung Message client, with the majority of them connecting either to a Google RCS-server or a Samsung RCS-server.
The companies surely still align via GSMA, and the carriers / network operators are still involved in discussions about the specification, but given the direction of the past 5 years I don't see that they have actual control over the roadmap of RCS.
---
All that said, RCS is the best candidate we have to replace SMS, with a majority of carriers chipping in, so it would be reasonable for Apple to adopt RCS as a replacement for SMS and align with the industry on how this standard should be shaped.
As a not-that-techy person I just sorely miss the glorious days of multi-service IM apps which made your messaging transparent, reliable and fully integrated to whatever you were using. I find utterly ridiculous to have multiple half-baked apps in both desktop and mobile for each service because reasons.
I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seems this horrible too-many-IM-apps won't be ever solved.
These became irrelevant with the creation of centralised notification services from google and apple which allow your device to receive messages from an unlimited number of services without having to have the apps running or consuming resources.
It is still an issue for desktop but that’s a minority of IM users these days.
At least on desktop you have easy multi-messenger apps (Electron apps that have nice tabbed interface for web versions) like Ferdium or Hamsket. Sure, it's a bit of a resource hog, doesn't work for all services (eg. Signal) but you do get universal notifications and a single app window.
We have Matrix bridging and Mattermost nowadays so we have https://Beeper.com and https://Texts.com and similar open source matrix installs. All in one app is amazing.
With how complex messaging became, I'm not even sure this is the best method for everyone. Sure, having basic chat functionality and interoperability is great and should be even mandatory. But there are a lot of platform-specific feats that break or are impossible this way. Until the utopia that everyone unites in a common protocol, webapps and these kind of switching apps are a great alternative, not just a stopgap.
I think this stuff is too much for most people to use, but Beeper is not missing anything deal breaking. I use it daily and besides being bulky, it has nearly everything one would expect. For most apps, it has their reactions functionality for example.
What’s missing: The reply mechanism doesn’t work as well as it does for specific apps that are better with this. It does basic reply quoting but that’s all.
Notifications could be better. There’s no customization per type of app. They do all keyword notifications which almost no app does. However since notifications are all or nothing it is just okay.
—
Overall, the app is super solid and works well. I agree I don’t think it’s perfect and has plenty of bugs or lacks specific nuanced features.
I don’t think we will ever get a common uniting protocol. We never had it. Even when jabber was the common protocol, FBM didn’t support group chats with it.
I am assuming Matrix is the best we will get. Or some other sleeker app building off Matrix will come out. We do have MatterMost too but it seems Matrix “won”
I pay for https://Beeper.com, but Matrix bridging via self hosting for free allows a solid experience for all in one
"RCS embraces the flaws of GSM, and Apple using it would be a step backwards."
Nope. As RCS is better than SMS, adopting it would be a step forward. The whole article can be summed up to "RCS is not perfect, so it should not be used". Which is of course silly as RCS is better than the current option it replaces, SMS.
RCS is a step backward.
At least SMS is a standard where as Google has their own proprietary version.
> At least SMS is a standard where as Google has their own proprietary [RCS] version.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's RCS client implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client.
I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
Glad we can agree it's proprietary.
So the question is if Google was willing to deviate from the standard for encryption what else will they do in the future.
> Glad we can agree it's proprietary.
No. If I telnet to tcp/25, do a "EHLO foo", and in addition to:
There is a line:250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-PIPELINING 250-8BITMIME 250-SIZE 27962030 250-DSN 250-ETRN 250-DELIVERBY 250 HELP
Or even:250-X-GOOGLE-CRYPTO
That does not mean that Google (Apple) is running a (completely) proprietary SMTP server. They have a proprietary option/capability, but if my Postfix can send a regular RFC 821 message then they have a non-proprietary base implementation that they have extended.250-X-APPLE-CRYPTOIf I can send SMS messages between iPhones and Androids, then I'm content. If I could send (non-extended) RCS messages between iPhones and Androids, then I'd be content. If either company wants to add 'extra' features between their own clients, go right ahead.
And, using the above analogy, it would be best if there was a "250-STARTTLS" RCS-equivalent that anyone could implement.
No it is not. RCS provides valuable features for users which are not present in SMS.
But Google RCS is proprietary.
So then why not use another proprietary client like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc.
Because taking any of those services into use requires you to take those services into use. RCS requires no action from the user. That's why. Before you ask a question, please spend 15 minutes thinking about the answer.
e.g. you can't send rcsmessage if target telcom does not support it (fallback to sms exists but that's runis the idea). Since adoption is (almost) always s-curved, last gsm operator to adopt it will do that ... not anytime soon
Which means that at its worst, RCS is just SMS. Which is an argument for RCS replacing SMS.
Like the author, I hope to see some kind of open system get adopted. 3rd party apps are popular in a lot of places but they are the wrong solution because you rely on a company offering a free service to behave. In Japan, the dominant messaging app LINE has been struggling to get spam under control, and has had some recent security scandals with personal information being viewed by a Chinese affiliate and user payment data being leaked on GitHub. Because of these and other issues, some younger users want to drop LINE completely and move to alternatives like Discord and iMessage, which is bringing fragmentation back.
If a centralized messaging app became dominant in America, it would likely attract antitrust attention too. These apps have to make money somehow, usually by selling emoticons, charging business users, or adding features like payments. I doubt the current FTC would be pleased if Meta realized their old ambition of creating America's WeChat.
RCS may not be perfect but I would rather see Apple adopt it if the alternative is nothing. The messaging experience for America would be a lot better for it. Google's rhetoric around this seems to indicate there's no current interest in collaborating to build a better standard, so it seems to be a far off ambition.
All the problems this article are addressed by using Google's own Messages app. Carrier support is not needed, it supports E2E encryption, it's a Google app so it's available on every Android device, etc. You do need a phone number, that is an accurate criticism.
Of course Google's app isn't straight RCS, but it _is_ what everybody actually uses, because RCS failed to gain cross-platform, carrier, and manufacturer acceptance. So Google basically followed Apple's lead and created their own centralized messaging.
So this isn't about "Apple should support the open-standard known as RCS", it's "Apple should natively integrate Google's messaging app".
I hope there is an interoperable standard but it needs to be (a) end to end encrypted and (b) controlled by some standards organisation. RCS is neither.
And worst of all Google implemented encryption by layering it on top i.e. creating their own proprietary version.
>iMessage uses end-to-end encryption, and Apple has, on multiple occasions, refused to add a backdoor to its systems.
The backdoor is that you cannot exclude iMessage from your enabled by default iCloud backup.
Apple’s iMessage Is Secure … Unless You Have iCloud Enabled - https://www.howtogeek.com/710509/apples-imessage-is-secure.....
Unless you have iCloud backup enabled, actually.
Since RCS is a chat standard backed by Google, I wonder which company would spend money and time to support it. I guarantee, regardless of adoption, in two years, Google will have killed RCS or gotten out of it, maybe leaving it to carriers.
Google is not in it for the long haul. Companies whose entire modus operandi is providing value to paying customers (e.g. Apple) will do well to steer clear.
I was wary about Google pushing AMP to "help the web", and I am equally wary about Google pushing RCS to "help people/messaging". Because Google.
Who ever need carrier based messaging in the modern world? SMS moved to 2 factor mechanisms and other b2c needs.
Yep. I don't want mobile carriers to be anything but dumb pipes.
They won’t adopt RCS
As an avid Matrix user on Android and Linux, I don't see how Apple couldn't adopt both RCS and Matrix.
Oh, I thought RCS, as in OpenRCS.
I thought of the RCS as in the Revision Control System, which was sort of the git of the 1980s, and wondered why anyone still cared about that.
iMessages are tied to Apple serial numbers, making spamming a lot harder. RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant
SMS spam can be solved on the operator level instead of forcing devices/software to protect against it. Just because your country has poor telecom operators doesn't mean that applies to the rest of the world. My main phone number is a western Europe number that is added to all my outgoing emails + visible on my public website (and lots of other places) and I almost never receive spam SMSes. Last one was pretty much exactly one year ago.
Funfact: The only spam I got was by my phone operator (Magenta / T-Mobile Austria, the same guys that save passwords in plaintext). Never by someone else though, but im wary where I publish the number.
The less the network operator does, the better imo. Just let them be dumb data types. Apple and Google will always be vastly superior at keeping out spam.
> iMessages are tied to Apple serial numbers, making spamming a lot harder.
Except that you can already get spam "in iMessage" because the iMessage app is also the (default) SMS app on iPhones, and so anyone can send an SMS to your phone number and you'll receive it.
> RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant
You already have no protection against SMS on your iMessage app, so not having protection against RCS spam is no worse than the current situation in that regard, but at least RCS has extra things like group chat which would be nice for cross-platform interoperability.
> Except that you can already get spam "in iMessage" because the iMessage app is also the (default) SMS app on iPhones
The app is Messages, the protocol is iMessage. Don't confuse the two, it's an important distinction. There is practically zero iMessage spam.
Nothing you have said invalidates my point:
* You can get spam in the app because it displays SMS.
* If it implemented RCS you could also get spam in the app too.
* But RCS also gives you extra capabilities.
How is this a worse situation?
The point is that if we're going to finally replace SMS (which we should) then we should replace it with a protocol that's better. Saying "you can get spam on SMS, so who cares if RCS can spam you too?" is ridiculous. Maybe 20 years ago RCS would have been a nice protocol. Nowadays, it's utter trash. We need a proper, interoperable standard that doesn't involve carriers. RCS is not even remotely it.
And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't we implement the nice things of RCS in the meantime?
For all intents and purposes, progress stopped with carriers after MMS came around. Hey, you can send pics and videos now! And group messages! It's good!
RCS requires carriers to implement it. We don't need RCS, we need something better. I'm not opposed to stopgaps, but the complexity involved with RCS makes it much more than just a stopgap. Which is why it needs to die.
And should RCS die we're stuck with SMS/MMS. Awesome.
If we globally adopt RCS now, we're likely to be stuck with it for the next 20 years.
I'd rather hold out for something that's more than a tiny incremental improvement over SMS.
As opposed to the current situation of being stuck with SMS/MMS?
I'd rather move the ball forward with RCS and try to get something better, rather than just trying get something better—with no guarantee that it actually will happen, in which case we lost even the "incremental" opportunity of RCS.
If I thought that was likely to work, I'd agree in a second.
I've seen the way these things go too often for that, though. Once there's something "good enough" in place the carriers and others who have the power to change things will just ignore all the calls for anything better. After all, we just got them to change to RCS! If that wasn't good enough, why were we pushing for it??! No, we have to take another 15, 20, 25 years to amortize the costs of switching to that.
RCS improves SMS, it doesn't replace iMessage.