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Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

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

#121

Post by hbn »

commoner wrote: post #80

Excellent. The next step is for Google to release a free and open source way for Android developers to build apps that send RCS messages. Currently, the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS is Messages by Google, which is closed source and requires Google Play Services to activate RCS features. Also, end-to-end encryption is not part of the RCS specification, but is a proprietary extension to RCS tha…

This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. The current version of it that people are using on Android isn't even a "standard" by any normal usage of the term, it's just another Google messaging service. No one can make their own app, and there's barely any carrier adoption, so Google is basically running the whole network.

Does this mean that now if you send a message to someone from an iPhone that doesn't go through iMessage, it will instead go through Google's servers? Sure the service will hopefully be better than SMS but at the cost of giving Google the keys to pretending they're a "standard."

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

#122

Post by cma »

eropple wrote: post #30
ryandvm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I don't mind them having their messaging platform. I don't mind it being technically superior to RCS. I DO have an issue with them intentionally doing a shit job of integrating with a telecommunications standard and then slapping a green bubble on it to get their oblivious users to ostracize people's kids.

Apple doesn't put a green bubble on SMS "to ostracize people's kids". Kids are ostracized just for having a default skin in Fortnite--because kids can be little shitheads. Apple differentiates because what you can do with SMS is different from what you can do with iMessage and that's a clear way to demonstrate it (and also to indicate if there's something weird going on when it changes from iMessage to SMS). RCS is a…

White on green is one of the hardest color pairings to read due to how cone cells are distributed in the retina (this image isn't completely representative, in the fovea green gets even higher as a proportion):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell#/media/File...

That's RGB lit up contrasted with just G lit up. One of the only worse pairings would be white on yellow, which would be RGB vs RG lit up, with the only distinguishing signal coming through blue, which we have the lowest resolution of.

White on blue is RGB vs B, all the visual difference in RG which we have the highest resolution of.

This is why you generally want different color schemes for light vs dark terminals, if the color saturation is high (saturated blue text on black is bad, saturated blue text on white is fine and vice versa for green and yellow).

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

#123

Post by lxgr »

rgbrenner wrote: post #97
edent wrote: 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…

Reminder to everyone who wonders why WhatsApp and iMessage won: US phone carriers used to charge $0.10 to $0.25 per message. Yes, it was as ridiculous as it sounds. There used to be news articles about kids racking up hundreds of dollars on their phone bill. Here's one from the same year the iphone was released: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/0...

Was that really a concern in the US? WhatsApp and iMessage require data plans, and as far as I can remember these have largely included unlimited SMS as well.

It was definitely a factor in the EU, though: SMS still aren't free on many prepaid plans there. WhatsApp was the first popular application supporting unlimited messaging on mobile phones for many.

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

#124

Post by Obscurity4340 »

Tagbert wrote: post #94
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you can do is different Can you talk a bit more about how iMessage is fundamentally diferent than SMS on the functionality level? Is it like "Signal" different or is it like "different" different? Edit: bonus points if you can offer why iMessage is able to be the skeleton key into your iPhone, as often it and WebKit seem to be behind most of the serious 0-days...

Both iMessage and Webkit have to accept requests from unknown sources that can contain a wide variety of content type. some other content types, like EPS are themselves programming languages that could contain infiltration scripts. That is why Apple has dropped EPS support. Similar situation can happen for other kinds of image and video content. I don't know much about how iMessage communication is implemented but it…

I just laugh because Signal is way better than all of this and—wouldn't ya know—the default is "blue bubbles". They are the ultimate blue bubble to me because its almost all yours and gives you way more control than anything else like iMessage and its all audited and open for examination (theoretically)

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

#125

Post by freedomben »

stephenr wrote: post #39
jwells89 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not green, but it should probably remain different so there’s an unmistakable visual indicator of which conversations are encrypted (assuming Apple implements carrier-flavor RCS, which to my knowledge is not encrypted unlike Google-flavor).

It says they're going to support Universal Profile, which is the GSMA defined feature set, and it's not immediately obvious to me if that includes E2EE capacity (I highly doubt it's a requirement ) - I recall seeing something saying that "standard" (non-Google) RCS group chat doesn't support it.

I would be very surprised if they integrated E2EE with Android phones. Being able to say "green bubbles aren't encrypted so everyone can read them" is a big competitive advantage and reason to justify why people need an iPhone. Plus there might be calls for doing away with stigmatized bubble colors if there aren't good reasons. Apple will want to maintain the bubble colors as long as they can, so it's win-win for them to not implement encryption.

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

#127

Post by swozey »

lxgr wrote: post #123
rgbrenner wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder to everyone who wonders why WhatsApp and iMessage won: US phone carriers used to charge $0.10 to $0.25 per message. Yes, it was as ridiculous as it sounds. There used to be news articles about kids racking up hundreds of dollars on their phone bill. Here's one from the same year the iphone was released: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/0...

Was that really a concern in the US? WhatsApp and iMessage require data plans, and as far as I can remember these have largely included unlimited SMS as well. It was definitely a factor in the EU, though: SMS still aren't free on many prepaid plans there. WhatsApp was the first popular application supporting unlimited messaging on mobile phones for many.

I'm 39 and SMS not being unlimited was a huge thing. I never thought it would be unlimited, when that happened (Suncom? I forget who started it) it was huge. This was a LONG time ago though, long before WhatsApp. Probably 15-18 for me.

I remember a lot of conversations in high school going "My plans maxed out can you text $friend?" IIRC you had to specifically turn off receiving texts or they'd charge you for each one and we were broke HS kids.

edit: Oh that article posted above is 2007. I guess it lasted way longer than I thought.

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

#128

Post by code_duck »

Tagbert wrote: post #94
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what you can do is different Can you talk a bit more about how iMessage is fundamentally diferent than SMS on the functionality level? Is it like "Signal" different or is it like "different" different? Edit: bonus points if you can offer why iMessage is able to be the skeleton key into your iPhone, as often it and WebKit seem to be behind most of the serious 0-days...

Both iMessage and Webkit have to accept requests from unknown sources that can contain a wide variety of content type. some other content types, like EPS are themselves programming languages that could contain infiltration scripts. That is why Apple has dropped EPS support. Similar situation can happen for other kinds of image and video content. I don't know much about how iMessage communication is implemented but it…

I can picture teens or younger acting snobby about phone choice. Not really clear why, if it’s a financial thing, as it’s been years since iPhones were priced at a premium relative to competitors. But well, they’re kids. However, I’ve experienced critical attitudes from adults well into their 40s when I had an Android phone. Personally I prefer iOS, but to judge someone based on their phone choice seems fairly ridiculous for an adult.

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

#129

Post by lxgr »

hbn wrote: post #121
commoner wrote: post #80

Excellent. The next step is for Google to release a free and open source way for Android developers to build apps that send RCS messages. Currently, the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS is Messages by Google, which is closed source and requires Google Play Services to activate RCS features. Also, end-to-end encryption is not part of the RCS specification, but is a proprietary extension to RCS tha…

This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS. The current version of it that people are using on Android isn't even a "standard" by any normal usage of the term, it's just another Google messaging service. No one can make their own app, and there's barely any carrier adoption, so Google is basically running the whole network. Does this mean that now if you send a message to someone…

> This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple for not adopting RCS.

Google is literally operating an RCS SaaS company for marketers and telcos, so I'd take any of their statements in support for RCS with a grain of salt: https://jibe.google.com/

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

#130

Post by JCharante »

ceejayoz wrote: post #20

Hopefully this'll mean better Google Fi support for the iPhone. It's a little janky, but $20/line is hard to pass up.

I use Google Fi for my iPhone. What am I missing out on? (asides from using more than 1 carrier's network simultanously)
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