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Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#111

What’s the story around e2e encryption on RCS these days? In the past there were a few countries that didn’t allow it, no idea if that has changed. Also, will iMessage support for RCS include e2ee?

There's a new IETF standard Google has been implementing. It's up to Apple to adopt it.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the carriers, it was Apple mostly winning the race in creating their walled garden, and everyone else being disinterested in an alternative in the phone race wars. It's now some badge of shame Apple users discriminate against the blue vs green windows if a friend or relative doesn't have an i-thing, and Apple loves it all the way to the bank.

Apple only has dominant marketshare in the US. Everywhere else in the world people use Whatsapp. Why didn't they all hop on the RCS train? Because it sucks to implement and is a black box to use. Google was stuck with SMS because of their inability to implement a cohesive messaging app, despite owning and distributing an operating system. So what did they do? Pitched sob stories and got the europeans to threaten to r…

> Apple only has dominant marketshare in the US.

Japan: 65.88%

Denmark: 64.04%

Norway: 61.94%

Canada: 57.84%

Australia: 57.47%

United States: 56.74%

Switzerland: 55.92%

Sweden: 55.33%

United Kingdom: 51.63%

Taiwan: 51.32%

from: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#113
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you turn it off? What if you hire a contractor for some work and they need to send you pictures/video from an Android? Or a realtor, mechanic, craigslist seller, or just someone you don't have/want a personal relationship with. You're not adding these people to WhatsApp/Telegram.. I have probably hundreds more phone contacts than people I have on whatsapp.

As an Android user I've asked a very similar question before to my iPhone friends, and most of them are just apathetic and don't care either way, but some of them will actually say some variation of: "if somebody is on Android, I don't want to talk to them anyway. It's a useful filter." The first time I heard that it was a little shocking, but especially with Gen Z, it's a minority but not unusual opinion.

I feel like this is something way more talked about online than actually occurs IRL. I didn't get an iPhone until the 13 (2 years ago?) and I'm still on it. Nobody stopped talking to me because I had green bubbles throughout my, I dunno, 10-15 years of Android phones. They would make fun of me for how reactions (Bob laughs at $reply) looked on my screen but just friendly jabs.

I am a millennial though.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#114
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cable industry did the exact same thing. Kinda but not really. The cable providers were and continue to be hamstrung by the networks who force the cable providers to buy channel packages. Cable never had the leverage to, say, tell Disney that they only want to offer ESPN but not the 10 other Disney branded networks being offered. It was often all or nothing.

Exactly right. A lot of people have tendency to simplistically choose heroes and villains. SO Disney is hero, cable TV bringing disney to home via their Coax cable is villain. Top artists are heroes, but ticket booking service which ultimately are reason for enormous payout to these artists are villains gouging fans.

I get your point but how is Ticketmaster not a parasitic price-gouger?

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#115
post #58
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they pick an ugly shade of green though. I currently have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and have also used Android devices in the past. I like to switch each time I get a new phone. Apple definitely picks an ugly color to make you feel uncomfortable texting with a non iPhone user. They should at least let users choose the color (which will never happen).

The green predates the existence of iMessage . That green is the color that was used from the beginning of the iPhone in 2007; iMessage was only added in 2011. iMessage was given a different color than the preexisting one. Trying to claim that Apple picked an "ugly color to make you feel uncomfortable" is simply false.

The original green bubbles used a different shade but more importantly they used black text. iOS 7 switched to white text and a shade of green that means the contrast for SMS failed Apple's own guidelines. Even for people with decent eye sight it can cause additional eye strain and be perceived as ugly even if the green on its own would be fine.

To be fair the blue they choose is also not ideal, but it is a lot better than the green.

https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce...

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#116
post #14

I was working on RCS systems back in 2012. It was the future back them - incredible low latency for messaging and gaming, rich messaging, and a decent SDK. How did carriers fuck it up so badly that, a decade later, it's barely a blip on the messaging landscape? The were so desperate to stop OTT (over the top) services that they... locked everything down in the hope that customers wouldn't churn. It backfired spectacu…

It wasn't the carriers, it was Apple mostly winning the race in creating their walled garden, and everyone else being disinterested in an alternative in the phone race wars. It's now some badge of shame Apple users discriminate against the blue vs green windows if a friend or relative doesn't have an i-thing, and Apple loves it all the way to the bank.

What do you mean it wasn't the carriers?

SMS revenues to hit $67B - 2007

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/metric-sms-revenues-...

They used to love using SMS to take as much money as possible from their customers. Imagine texting "Hey" to a friend and getting charged $0.20 for it.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see what color they choose for RCS. Right now, blue indicates an end-to-end encrypted message and green indicates not encrypted. Even when messaging between two Apple devices you can get a green bubble if, for some reason, the message is routed over SMS. If it were up to me, encrypted RCS would be blue and not-encrypted RCS would be green.

Why do you think that blue represents E2EE and not simply iMessage? If data isn't available and the iPhone sends an SMS, like you mentioned, the bubble is green, but this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with encryption. For example, the satellite SOS messages are represented as gray. It seems more like the color represents the transport.

Because blue means iMessage and iMessage means E2EE.

Grey and Green means not encrypted. Simple.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#118
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I don't see them mandating bubble color I personally see no limit to what arbitrary nonsense regulation the EU is willing to push.

The EU is interested in fair competition. Apple has managed to provide a terrible cross-platform messaging experience to their own customers for years while successfully convincing everyone that the problem is due to every other phone besides theirs. I agree it's almost comical, but it certainly affects competition in a negative way.

I don't buy this. Customers needed no convincing from Apple. Even where iOS isn't dominant they saw their dropped and expensive SMS/RCS messages and picked up whatsapp.

Re: Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

#120
The lede is quite cleverly buried here. Key sentence is "We will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association"

So no end to end encryption and the bubbles will most still likely be green.

Even with the mutterings about improving security etc it's unlikely that the GSM Association will ever sign off on any encryption scheme that isn't weak or backdoored.

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