this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.

Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.

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[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 162 points 1 year ago (20 children)

Ironically, despite Apple's whining to get to this point, between this, and the EU forcing them to adopt USB-C, and, hopefully 3rd party stores and browsers, I may consider an iPhone for my next phone.

It's a pity you almost need to point a gun to their head for them to consider unshittifing their products.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 92 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah. My iphone fanatic of a friend was complaining about something on hers the other day, and was like "Why doesn't Apple just do {whatever}?"

My reply was basically that Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company by giving customers what they want. They became a trillion dollar company by telling customers what they want and marketing the crap out of it.

[–] PreviouslyAmused@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That was Jobs’ (Jobs’s …? Jobses..?) whole thing. People don’t know what they want until we’ve told them.

And I’d say it’s worked out pretty well for the entire tech industry so far.

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

To be fair, Google has been doing the same stuff with RCS E2E encryption. It ain’t open. There is a reason why Android isn’t littered with dope messaging apps that support encrypted RCS.

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let’s be fair, things like RCS E2E encryption are firmly under control by Google. People like to claim RCS is open, but it’s not.

If RCS was a proper open standard, we would have a lot of awesome messaging apps to choose from. We don’t, and the reason is because Google has been gatekeeping.

I’m annoyed that Apple is late to the game, and I hate that they needed to be pressured to get here, BUT I’m glad to see that they’re going to support universal alternatives to the crap you still have to ask Pichai to please let you use.

[–] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Also RCS is build that way. It has more features than SMS, but underneath is even worse than it. Why in the 2023 people massively want to go back tying their chat app with mobile carrier? Like, giving what Internet standards we now have RCS should really be considered deprecated, hope we won't be stuck with it for next 30 years.

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[–] MarioBarisa@lemmy.ml 95 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Love to see Apple being forced into making good decisions against their will.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 70 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’m hoping that they also force Google to do the same. Pushing for a universal RCS E2E encryption standard is great. I’m sick of Google saying RCS is the open alternative to iMessage, when key things like their E2EE implementation are not open at all.

[–] tcely@fosstodon.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What kind of openness are you hoping for? Google has built their solution with a bunch of already open pieces.

RCS + Signal protocol + MLS

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-messages-mls-3346918/

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/20/23801536/google-messages-app-mls-support-announce

@Ghostalmedia

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

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[–] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 74 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Really? Like honest to God? They aren't gonna gimp the implementation, are they?

[–] ayaya@lemdro.id 88 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yellow bubbles for all RCS messages.

[–] Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world 80 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yellow bubbles and the text notification sound is permanently a teenage girl saying "ewww"

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

What if we call it “rose gold”?

[–] mean_bean279@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Honestly that would make texting people on Android from an iPhone so much fun.

If they wanted it to have a dark pattern they should make the text slightly blurry or move one pixel back and forth to annoy us and the text tone is the sound of someone throwing up and is un-mutable so you’re forced to either listen to it at full volume or block them (ideal??).

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[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 61 points 1 year ago

Probably will. They're only doing it for legal reasons, not out of the kindness of their heart

[–] Thatuserguy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It feels almost a guarantee they're gonna do something stupid to ruin it somehow, don't you worry about that

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[–] GuyFleegman@startrek.website 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We all know the bubbles will still be green

[–] Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Meh, doesnt bother me, its the iphone users that tend to care

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[–] extant@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I just want to point out that this announcement comes after Nothing phone company announced they partnered with a company that will bridge the two protocols so apple was about to lose their ability to force android images and videos to look like a potato so iPhone users wouldn't want to leave the apple ecosystem.

This just exactly like when apple decided they were going to be champions of privacy by improving the security on their phones, which coincidentally happened right after a company called cellebrite started selling a product that would allow police to bypass passcodes and fingerprints to access a users data which previously could only be unlocked by the police department paying a fee for each time to unlock a phone.

They will always default to being shitty like any other company treating their users like the enemy until they can't and then they spin it in their favor.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There are several of these solutions in the wild now. Basically, the phone tunnels into MacOS VM that sends the message through actual iMessage.

Kind of janky, but it works.

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[–] habanhero@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Nothing is literally nothing, Apple could care less about them.

Nothing's solution is basically getting you to send your messages to them, and they'll send it through a Mac logged into your Apple ID hence achieving the "blue bubble" lol. Hugely insecure, hacky solution and hardly groundbreaking.

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[–] Coach@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So great to see Apple finally invent RCS! /s

[–] bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A messaging system that breaks away from SMS and MMS? Apple is so brave.

[–] Coach@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

...and don't forget "innovative." Now, where is my wallet?

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[–] Chozo@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Apple was kind enough to beta test it on Android for years, too!

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy crap. Now my uncle can stop complaining about degraded quality when Android users are in message rooms. When it comes to tech, he really doesn't care about the culprit. He just complains that people aren't playing in Apple's walled garden.

[–] ChewTiger@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I don't message anyone with an iPhone. Other than the different colored bubbles what does it do? How is the quality degraded?

It just seems like Apple kept it separate so their obsessed fans would have something to feel superior about.

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The biggest thing is attachments like photos/videos.

While MMS pretty universally sucks, Apple is very aggressive with the compression they apply to attachments over MMS so the resulting user experience is garbage akin to what we used to have when MMS was new.

Modern phones from other manufacturers will make use of the full MMS attachment size available, typically 100MB or more (depending on your carrier) iPhones will compress that video down to a couple MB regardless of the higher capacity available.

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago

The biggest issue I've heard of is that message size is very constrained, so photos and videos are reduced to postage stamps.

[–] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 13 points 1 year ago

iMessage is a rich communication layer backed by HTTPS and web sockets so think something like WhatsApp or Telegram; you can send 2 gig files, embed maps and other rich content, etc etc. SMS is well… SMS. So the blue versus green bubble is a dumb reductionist view but the practical impact is visible in say video messaging, where an iMessage can attach a 50mb 4K H.265 clip same as a real messaging app, whereas an MMS will be a 256k 3gpp potato.

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

** checks if hell has frozen **

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Apple RCS messaging and USB-C, Microsoft complying with beingle able to renove Edge, Google not challenging being a gatekeeper corp...

Did someone introduce a plot twist for the sake of entertainment in the Matrix overworld? Did I miss something?

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[–] MartinXYZ@lemmy.ml 33 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When will I be able to use RCS in other messaging apps than Google Messages on Android?

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It looks like Apple is addressing one of the biggest gripes with RCS - Google’s proprietary crap that isn’t opened up to small 3rd parties. Apple wants things like E2EE to be a universal standard that anyone can use, not something Google only dishes out to big phone manufacturers.

[–] MartinXYZ@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait, so Apple is doing something good for 3rd party apps? I did not expect that to happen in my lifetime

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple, Google, and Microsoft all magically become really into open alternatives when one of their competitors starts to dominate or control a significant portion of the marketplace with proprietary tech.

Apple specifically had LOTS of examples of this back when they were a smaller player. OS X and Safari really leaned into open standards when MS was the 900lb gorilla.

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[–] phillaholic@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The RCS standard, not Google’s implementation. There are still going to be iMessage features that won’t work.

[–] PHLAK@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd rather they use the open standard. Google should, too. If there are shortcomings with the standard then let's improve the standard, not create a custom implementation of it.

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 24 points 1 year ago

The elephant in the room is impending legislation in the European Union that could’ve ultimately required Malus to open up iMessage.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to The Brussels Effect!

Apple is being Brusseled 🙂

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Around 2010 Google, Facebook, MySpace, even OkCupid were all running on the XMPP standard protocol. The corpos were generally bad stewards not following protocol updates, implimenting features in incompatible ways, & eventually realized there was more to gain be defederating forcing folks to use their platforms & let those corporations siphon the (meta)data of messaging.

What gets me is why they saw the need to invent yet another similar protocol with XMPP still being feature rich, battle tested—as well as Matrix to a lesser extent—unless they already have their plans on how to circumvent the system & repeat this same cycle.

[–] Michal@programming.dev 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And they will act like they invented it

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Apple: (Finally supports a standard the rest of the world has been using for years) Look at us. So brave, so innovative. Also, we removed another port. Here's a link to a $29 dongle in the Apple store.

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[–] moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago

Regulations strike again!

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