Tim Cook's response to Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone'

My Android phone has occasionally prompted me about switching on enhanced messaging features, RCS, but to do so required agreeing to some Google T&Cs that I wasn't comfortable with, so I've consistently declined.

RCS is a weird thing. It's supposed to be operated by carriers - but it's inconsistently supported by carriers, so Google provides the service. I'd rather not send photos and all my personal messages to Google. No, I don't use Gmail, and no I don't backup my Android phone to Google servers.

SMS seems to have gone out of fashion for personal conversations, except when mobile signal is poor and SMS is the only thing that still works. So I don't particularly feel the enhanced features matter. Commercial SMS is still used a lot, but I probably prefer to _not_ have enhanced messaging from those anyway.

Because of Apple's clearer privacy stance compared with Google, especially with Google being primarily an advertising and tracking company by revenue, I sometimes think I'd feel ok using Apple's services - if only iOS wasn't so limiting. But because of iOS limitations I pretty much have to use Android and live with the compromises. I am conflicted about this, because if iOS is forced to open up, it'll be more useful to me for some things, but also more of a cesspit of scam apps, and Google Chrome and related services will dominate the landscape more.

Although everyone recognises Apple uses iMessage for "prestige" and lock-in, I think there are good reasons why even if Apple didn't care about its own benefits, and only wanted to protect users' pricacy, Apple should perhaps not go all-in on RCS in its current form. From Wikipedia about RCS:

"Amnesty International researcher Joe Westby criticized RCS for not allowing end-to-end encryption, because it is treated as a service of carriers and thus subject to lawful interception.

"The Verge criticized the inconsistent support of RCS in the United States, with carriers not supporting RCS in all markets, not certifying service on all phones, or not yet supporting the Universal Profile. Concerns were shown over Google's decision to run its own RCS service due to the possibility of antitrust scrutiny, but it was acknowledged that Google had to do so in order to bypass the carriers' inconsistent support of RCS, as it wanted to have a service more comparable to Apple's iMessage service available on Android.

"Ars Technica also criticized Google's move to launch a direct-to-consumer RCS service, considering it a contradiction of RCS being native to the carrier to provide features reminiscent of messaging apps, counting it as being among various past and unsuccessful attempts by Google to develop an in-house messaging service (including Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, Hangouts, and Allo), and noting limitations: such as its dependencies on phone numbers as the identity (whereas email-based accounts are telco-agnostic), not being capable of being readily synchronized between multiple devices, and the aforementioned lack of end-to-end encryption.[8 In June 2021 Google introduced end-to-end encryption in Google Messages, an app supporting RCS. Encryption is supported only if two users are on Messages in a 1:1 chat (not group chat), both with RCS turned on."

I'd say higher, but not substantially. iPhone dominates the premium smartphone market, and iTunes is massive too.

They already support good, old-fashioned text messages, they could just do it without being petty.

Oh, like when my mother had to spend over a year using her phone only while plugged in because the battery was so underspecced for the task that it literally could not boot the phone despite showing 80% battery, and everything else about her phone basically stopped functioning, and she couldn't buy a new one because they're $1000 and she's an average person without a shitload of money to burn?

Oh wait, that was her iPhone, that she bought because she needed a more modern phone that wouldn't cause her issues like android.

Well I guess that’s Cook’s argument as well.