561–570 of 1001 posts
Group chats? Totally plain text in the clear. No encryption at all.
RCS is not good enough. Fix the issues, develop something better, I don’t care.
Only E2E is good enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RCS is infinitely better than the current state. Google isn't pretending it's a standard. They're trying to improve messaging between android and iphone uers. Apple won't because the current standard helps their business. It's pretty simple.
> Google isn't pretending it's a standard. They call it “the modern industry standard” half a dozen times on the page. Zero mention of their affiliation.
Google, however, added their own extension for E2EE and started roll out with their self-hosted RCS rather than carrier hosted.
Given that RCS is mandatory in 5G networks and supported by world's largest carriers - Yes, it's an industry standard. Given that version used today is published in 2016 - Yes, it's modern. So, what's the problem?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny thing is the EU doesn't give a fuck and is going to force them.
I find it interesting how many HN'ers now think bureaucratic control of technology is a Good Thing(tm).
I setup a BlueBubbles server on a spare Mac and I installed the BlueBubbles App. Boom. iMessages on Android. Done. Messaging is already extremely fragmented. BB is only the eighth messaging app on my phone. Considering getting on Beeper to consolodate this madness. Matrix/Element was too rough to utilize as is. Almost everyone I text with is on iMessage in the US. 95% or more of my regular contacts. Many are often ou…
Well, technically it was relayed through your Mac. Not sure how many Galaxy users have Macs to send message through, so I’m not sure it’s a workable solution for most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
> The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. Why not? > And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives. Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.
> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need an Apple ID to use iMessage. Just an Apple device.
Uh, don't you need an Apple ID to activate an iPhone?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch. Bottom line is iMessage works really well and people like it. Same with FB messenger and Whatsapp. You want to move friends to something else? There needs to be a selling point much larger than just security.
The problem with moving groups over to iMessage is that you'll always leave some Android users out. Here in Spain Apple has a minority marketshare so that makes iMessage a total non-starter. But even in the US not everyone has an iPhone. And really iMessage is not so much better than the cross-platform alternatives that it's worth leaving some friends out.
" In another exchange, Apple executives discussed in 2013 whether releasing a version of iMessage for Android would make it easier to switch phone brands. iMessage is still exclusive to Apple products.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/epic-games-v-apple-trial-app...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS. I re-iterate, t…
> I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased. Again, no it's not. My family have iPhones, I have Android. Apples garbage SMS?MMS group messaging made it so that I missed a huge number of messages from them, photos were poor quality, videos were unwatchable. We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it, but this impacted us for about 2 years. And I'm a tec…
My wife has Android, I have iPhone, I know exactly what you're referring to. But this isn't "Apple's garbage SMS/MMS group messaging", this is just SMS/MMS group messaging, period. SMS/MMS is ancient, and it sucks, it was a hack when it was originally implemented and never really got better. Nobody here is claiming that SMS is good, we're merely pointing out that RCS is not the right answer and that SMS is the most viable /fallback/. Nobody should be using SMS as their primary messaging platform in 2022.
> We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it
Good, I'm glad to hear this. More people should use Signal. I even managed to get my 72 year old mother using it without any serious issues.
> This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.
It only affects people who refuse to use any one of the myriad other carrier-agnostic messaging apps. I travel extensively around the world, nearly everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp, and nearly everyone inside the US I interact with has at minimum FB Messenger or Discord. Obviously, all of these are operated by other for-profit tech entities and getting more people on Signal would be ideal, but it is what it is.
The right answer here is creating a new carrier-agnostic messaging standard with interoperability and privacy in mind, and then Google, various Android integrators, Apple, Microsoft, et al can build their own clients. RCS is not carrier agnostic, does not support E2E, and is really horribly designed protocol. Worse, because the carriers don't want to deal with it, de facto almost all RCS infrastructure globally is run by Google.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Apple should stick to en even older standard (SMS/MMS)? All that Google is asking is for the fallback to be at least in the current century, is that too much to ask.
Isn’t that the safest fallback, if you know they aren’t using iMessage? The other phone could be a phone that can’t accept RCS or iMessage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's really ridiculous is that Android is now parsing this and displaying a reaction bubble.
What's really ridiculous is that iPhone _doesn't_ parse this and display the reaction bubble, so the SMS experience is better for Android people talking to iOS people than it is for iOS people talking to iOS people.