Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 270 posts

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#181

Post by jeroenhd »

DownrightNifty wrote: post #94
DownrightNifty wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many developers are waiting for Google to add RCS to the same API that SMS/MMS already exposes because they don't want to implement RCS themselves. Is that a planned feature? It's frustrating that third party messaging apps don't work with RCS. I hope we don't have to get the EU involved here...

Extra context I forgot to provide: > RCS may require access to certain SIM card information, which only pre-installed apps can do > because they don't want to implement RCS themselves. Sounds like they can't implement RCS themselves even if they wanted to, not simply that Google doesn't provide an open source implementation? (Referring to app developers here, not custom ROM devs.)

They can't implement RCS for every carrier, but they can implement it for some. Others require nothing more than a network call to a predefined HTTP address over a data connection.

Although Google may dislike it, I don't believe Google's RCS implementation (the one most of the world uses) requires elevated permissions. Their activation sequence is proprietary and closed source, though so I'm not 100% sure.

Just having a base implementation for custom ROMs would be a start. Given that Google will block custom ROMs from RCS in their app (I believe because the spec says to), there is a need for an independent implementation if this makes RCS popular enough under American users.

Someone will have to inventory the activation mechanisms for each carrier to see if there really is a disadvantage. I'd start with mine, but all of the carriers in my country have shut down their RCS servers a decade ago.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#182

Post by jeroenhd »

acdha wrote: post #63
g-b-r wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That text seems more a reflection of the fact that only Messages supported it, when the document was written If they seriously wanted random third parties to implement it, anyhow, they'd have published a specification, not an "overview"

Only Messages was allowed to support it. At the time it was written, for example, it was years after the Signal developers had asked for basic RCS support (2015) and given up on Google relenting and allowing it in 2018. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/4837

Signal has been rather dismissive of RCS in general. Of course RCS was as insecure and unencrypted as regular SMS/MMS until now, but I haven't found a sign that Signal ever even looked into supporting RCS at all.

At this point I think they just wanted to get rid of their SMS backup feature and used RCS as an excuse.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#183

Post by jeroenhd »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #36

Unfortunately, RCS on Android requires google apps, so this isn't really a solution to anyone who doesn't want to be tracked by Google everywhere they go. I'm still a little confused as to what problem RCS is supposed to solve. It is just as centralized as any other chat app, and is a bit more invasive (often requiring device attestation). Is it really worth all this hassle just to not have to install, let's say, Sig…

That's not necessarily true. For full compatibility you'd need a pre-installed app on Android, but vendors like Samsung and Sony and OnePlus can build their own RCS messengers for those devices should they choose to. Same with custom ROM developers for an open source implementation.

For non-ROM developers, it depends on what RCS activation technique your carrier uses.

RCS isn't a Google spec, or an Apple spec, or even an IETF/IEEE/ISO spec. It's part of the core mobile networking specifications. It was created by the people who designed the MMS spec after 4G switched mobile networks to everything-over-IP. Unfortunately, the 4G spec didn't require RCS, it was just an optional side feature, so carriers never bothered with it.

RCS solves the problem that most of the US uses iMessage or SMS/MMS, but the SMS/MMS part of that equation is absolutely dreadful. File size limits are stuck in the mid 2000s, messages are split over multiple SMS packets if you send more than one sentence, the entire thing is unencrypted. Sometimes people like to send photos to each other and the 150KiB or so file size limit on MMS isn't enough for that anymore.

As for why not have people install Signal: why would they, because everyone is already using something else? I live in a country where everyone uses chat apps and all but one of my contacts are on WhatsApp. In other places, that'll be Telegram, and in some North American countries, that'll be iMessage/MMS, the texting app that comes with the phone for sending texts.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#184

Post by jeroenhd »

lxgr wrote: post #83

I really, really, really hope RCS doesn't make it as a standard. Now that it's end-to-end encrypted, it's slightly better than SMS, but it's still laughably incapable compared to decades-old protocols that support multiple devices, phone-number-independent identifiers, self-hosting, have open implementations and non-insane specifications etc. As it is, RCS is just Google Talk (Google runs most of the infrastructure),…

RCS is a GSMA standard, like VoLTE and SMS messages. Of course it's going to use telecoms features as unique identifiers, that's what it was designed to do.

While I agree that tying everying to a phone number is far from optimal, it's the status quo in messenger land. Only tech nerds use services like XMPP and Matrix, the rest all use either chat apps that tie you to a phone number or just text directly.

RCS is there for the people who still use SMS/MMS. In my country, that's basically nobody. In Canada and the US, that's the majority of non-iPhone people, and the iPhone people have been complaining about the shitty integration between iMessage and MMS since the day iMessage took off (because MMS is terrible for modern messengers).

RCS runs on your carrier's infrastructure. Google hosts RCS services for people whose carrier doesn't support RCS, but Apple won't be using those. RCS on iOS requires carrier support, which many carriers still have yet to turn back on.

I think you're confusing the status quo with the goal behind RCS. The unfortunate truth is, the people who are using RCS would've used SMS/MMS before. RCS just appeared in their messengers some day and made texting a lot better.

I'd still advocate for signal over RCS any time of the week (though I don't need to, because nobody uses SMS/RCS here anyway thanks to WhatsApp), but RCS is an abject improvement over the terrible messenger protocols it replaced.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#185

Post by nottorp »

jeroenhd wrote: post #183
alwayslikethis wrote: post #36

Unfortunately, RCS on Android requires google apps, so this isn't really a solution to anyone who doesn't want to be tracked by Google everywhere they go. I'm still a little confused as to what problem RCS is supposed to solve. It is just as centralized as any other chat app, and is a bit more invasive (often requiring device attestation). Is it really worth all this hassle just to not have to install, let's say, Sig…

That's not necessarily true. For full compatibility you'd need a pre-installed app on Android, but vendors like Samsung and Sony and OnePlus can build their own RCS messengers for those devices should they choose to. Same with custom ROM developers for an open source implementation. For non-ROM developers, it depends on what RCS activation technique your carrier uses. RCS isn't a Google spec, or an Apple spec, or eve…

> For non-ROM developers, it depends on what RCS activation technique your carrier uses.

There's your problem right there. You may not remember being charged per message, but trust me, it was a thing.

The carriers would love to go back to 2 cents per sms, 5 per rcs "rich message" and 10 per encrypted "rich message".

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#187

Post by oblio »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #38
alwayslikethis wrote: post #36

Unfortunately, RCS on Android requires google apps, so this isn't really a solution to anyone who doesn't want to be tracked by Google everywhere they go. I'm still a little confused as to what problem RCS is supposed to solve. It is just as centralized as any other chat app, and is a bit more invasive (often requiring device attestation). Is it really worth all this hassle just to not have to install, let's say, Sig…

Now that Signal cannot be the SMS / RCS app, yes that's too much hassle. Network effects are too powerful.

Oh, what's up with Signal?

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#189

Post by jeroenhd »

eknkc wrote: post #164

It’s funny that everyone bashed Apple for their lack of RCS support and now that they have it, all posts seem to indicate RCS is a shit standard at best. I have no idea if it is but that’s the impression I got. I guess it was just a talking point to shit on Apple’s approach? I don’t care anyway. Here everyone uses WhatsApp so RCS is not important but just an outsider observation.

I think the RCS users are quite happy that iOS has RCS now. Though, they may be disappointed that Apple didn't set up an RCS server like Google did, because now people find out that their carrier doesn't do RCS so they're still missing out in the advantages.

But, when RCS works, it works well. The stupid compatibility hacks Google and Samsung and everyone else implemented to make SMS/MMS pretend to be good at group messaging (like the ways they indicate emoji reactions) no longer need to be encoded in human-readable form.

The encrypted component of RCS was a Google special and I think everyone knew that. People wanted Apple to immediately take up Google's encryption spec, but Apple waited for the GSMA spec to be updated with E2EE which is a much cleaner solution.

The opponents of RCS have a point; using RCS is a bit like using your ISP's email servers in that the quality of your ISP determines how good of a time you'll behaving with it.

There are also many advantages to full RCS support that nobody seems to have implemented yet. Things like video calls, or sending money over text. No longer needing third party services like FaceTime or WhatsApp to do video calls is a step in the right direction in my book.

Re: Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users

#190

Post by TekMol »

oblio wrote: post #186

I've disabled RCS. RCS groups are used for spam. Unknown numbers in random countries add me and many other numbers to said groups, send spam and then quit the groups. And there is no recourse.

Same here. Disabled it on Android. Too bad. I would use it if I could enable it only for selected users.
Post reply on HN