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I hope Apple never adopts RCS

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Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#131

Post by woojoo666 »

jaywalk wrote: post #94
throw0101a wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard. And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends? "The perfect is the enemy of the good." RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't…

What's stopping you from having group chats with your Android-using friends? I have plenty of them on my iPhone.

I believe GP was talking about sms group chats. And if you have sms group chats with android users, it sucks for them, especially how reactions and replies show up on their side. iMessage group chats degrade the experience of your android friends for the convenience of iPhone users. It's not a great way to treat friends imo. 3rd party apps are the same amount of convenience for everybody.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#132

Post by pornel »

throw0101a wrote: post #13

So those of us who happen to own iPhones, and have friend who have Android devices, and would like to have (e.g.) group chats can go pound sand? Or try to get all of our friends/family to install yet another app? What is the main argument(s?) against implementing RCS? That it doesn't have E2EE? Neither does SMS, so RCS is no worse in that regard, but seems to have some extra nice things.

It gives power back to mobile operators, and that's a step back for net neutrality. My experience with mobile operators is that they are universally horrible, both on technical and business level.

MMS has been a dumpster fire since the beginning. They haven't improved it in all these years, but still price it as if they hand deliver the messages on a golden plate (my operator's cheapest MMS price is 20x more expensive than the same bandwidth on their data plan, and the regular price is closer to 300x markup).

These are the operators that put uninstallable crapware on phones they're able to touch (Apple has won a hard battle here; phones used to be sold on operators' terms before the iPhone). These are the operators that are unwilling to secure caller ID. These are the operators that sell their user's traffic. These are the operators charge fuck-you prices for roaming. I don't want them to be in control of anything.

RCS will be just an extra item to upsell, and the technology — which is already worse than every competitor — will be left to languish forever.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#133

Post by 416chad »

duskwuff wrote: post #127
kbelder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll ask this here... I haven't touched any 3rd party messaging app, and I'd like to have my family start using one. But I'd like one that works on desktop as well... windows and linux. Does Signal, Telegram, or the others let you do that without jumping through hoops?

Telegram works pretty smoothly in that regard. The desktop apps are fully featured; the only thing you have to use a phone for is the initial signup.

You just have to give up E2EE if you use telegram and want chats sync'd across your devices.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#134

Post by hnburnsy »

>iMessage uses end-to-end encryption, and Apple has, on multiple occasions, refused to add a backdoor to its systems.

The backdoor is that you cannot exclude iMessage from your enabled by default iCloud backup.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#135

Post by skinnymuch »

poisonborz wrote: post #77
Gualdrapo wrote: post #66

As a not-that-techy person I just sorely miss the glorious days of multi-service IM apps which made your messaging transparent, reliable and fully integrated to whatever you were using. I find utterly ridiculous to have multiple half-baked apps in both desktop and mobile for each service because reasons . I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seem…

At least on desktop you have easy multi-messenger apps (Electron apps that have nice tabbed interface for web versions) like Ferdium or Hamsket. Sure, it's a bit of a resource hog, doesn't work for all services (eg. Signal) but you do get universal notifications and a single app window.

We have Matrix bridging and Mattermost nowadays so we have https://Beeper.com and https://Texts.com and similar open source matrix installs. All in one app is amazing.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#136

Post by skinnymuch »

Gualdrapo wrote: post #66

As a not-that-techy person I just sorely miss the glorious days of multi-service IM apps which made your messaging transparent, reliable and fully integrated to whatever you were using. I find utterly ridiculous to have multiple half-baked apps in both desktop and mobile for each service because reasons . I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seem…

I pay for https://Beeper.com, but Matrix bridging via self hosting for free allows a solid experience for all in one

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#137

Post by Gigachad »

Gualdrapo wrote: post #66

As a not-that-techy person I just sorely miss the glorious days of multi-service IM apps which made your messaging transparent, reliable and fully integrated to whatever you were using. I find utterly ridiculous to have multiple half-baked apps in both desktop and mobile for each service because reasons . I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seem…

These became irrelevant with the creation of centralised notification services from google and apple which allow your device to receive messages from an unlimited number of services without having to have the apps running or consuming resources.

It is still an issue for desktop but that’s a minority of IM users these days.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#138

Post by Gigachad »

capableweb wrote: post #10
nikanj wrote: post #3

iMessages are tied to Apple serial numbers, making spamming a lot harder. RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant

SMS spam can be solved on the operator level instead of forcing devices/software to protect against it. Just because your country has poor telecom operators doesn't mean that applies to the rest of the world. My main phone number is a western Europe number that is added to all my outgoing emails + visible on my public website (and lots of other places) and I almost never receive spam SMSes. Last one was pretty much e…

The less the network operator does, the better imo. Just let them be dumb data types. Apple and Google will always be vastly superior at keeping out spam.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#139

Post by qubex »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #4

The SMS/RCS/iMessage/blue bubble-green bubble debate is almost entirely exclusive to the strange market of the US. Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc. EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't hav…

I’ve often hoped that Apple would adapt the iMessages app to accept ‘plugins’ that would implement the various protocols (WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal, & cetera) so that all messaging were located in a single location à la Blackberry circa 2008.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#140

Post by poisonborz »

skinnymuch wrote: post #135
poisonborz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on desktop you have easy multi-messenger apps (Electron apps that have nice tabbed interface for web versions) like Ferdium or Hamsket. Sure, it's a bit of a resource hog, doesn't work for all services (eg. Signal) but you do get universal notifications and a single app window.

We have Matrix bridging and Mattermost nowadays so we have https://Beeper.com and https://Texts.com and similar open source matrix installs. All in one app is amazing.

With how complex messaging became, I'm not even sure this is the best method for everyone. Sure, having basic chat functionality and interoperability is great and should be even mandatory. But there are a lot of platform-specific feats that break or are impossible this way. Until the utopia that everyone unites in a common protocol, webapps and these kind of switching apps are a great alternative, not just a stopgap.
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