That video reminds me of the “I’m a Mac” ads in that it does a great job of making Apple look dated and out of touch. I love good marketing.
“It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
271–280 of 1001 posts
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it is not. The RCS standards are managed by the GSMA. It is supported by many companies, one of which is Google.
So where is it used except Android? With any market share that makes it significant beyond android?
Nowhere because it requires a phone company SIM. No SIM no RCS. So no RCS between a tablet and phone or two tablets or a PC and phone. Also, ever so wonderfully, carrier provided RCS has no E2EE. So you need Google's app using their RCS gateway to have E2EE only between Google messages users.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#273One way looking at it is that carrier job is only to provide data service. They should not be in the business of messaging. Users (and market) will chose to use whatever messaging service they want. This even applies to voice. I rather do Signal voice call than carrier voice call with most of my friends. Better quality, encryption, etc.
I like this in theory, but in practice it is very useful to have a universal way to contact people that doesn't depend on both parties having the same proprietary[0] app installed.
If I give someone my phone number (or email address, for that matter), I know they will be able to contact me without any more coordination required. That has a lot of value to me. If we eliminate phone numbers entirely (and thus SMS, MMS, and telco-mediated voice calling), we lose that ability.
I do think that, in the future (perhaps not in our lifetimes) we'll do away with phone numbers, but only after there is another universal way to contact via messaging or voice that involves only sharing some sort of identifier, without any other setup required.
[0] Yes, Signal is open source, but since they refuse to allow people to use modified clients, or build support for federation, they are a proprietary, closed system, just like WhatsApp or Telegram. It's just we can have more confidence in the privacy of our communications on Signal due to its open source nature.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#274This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service such as Signal or WhatsApp like the rest of the world has. Why are US citizens so set on having a terrible experience when messaging half of the population? How did other countries decide that using platform agnostic messaging services are better? I believe the UK has a similar s…
It's just too late for anyone to switch. The network effect went in Apple's favor. It could've happened to any country.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#275> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…
These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything.
First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so.
Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
“Right now, Google runs three mainline messaging apps: Besides this Google Messages/RCS platform, there's also Google Chat, which is a more traditional over-the-top messaging service, and Google Voice, which is a Google-provided phone number with SMS. Google Hangouts is technically still around as the fourth messaging app, though that's shutting down in November. There are also siloed messaging apps built into Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Stadia, Google Pay, Google Assistant, and Google Phone, and none of them talk to each other.
Google's head of messaging also quit last month, so there's no telling what the future of Google messaging holds until someone takes the reins. I would suggest Google get its house in order before it starts throwing rocks at Apple.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#276Contrary to everyone complaining, I would argue fragmentation is part of the innovation process. FireWire vs USB, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD etc. Whoever the market chooses is the winner and survivor. No one needs to “fix” anything. You just make a product that people will buy to survive.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it is not. The RCS standards are managed by the GSMA. It is supported by many companies, one of which is Google.
So where is it used except Android? With any market share that makes it significant beyond android?
It's used by the manufacturers of phones, not just the Android base system. You don't need to be on the Google Messages app to use RCS. Eg it's supported on Samsung.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#278> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background. Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users. Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just t…
This point is a fallacy.
Prior to the invention of iMessage - (iOS 6?) - all iPhone texts were this colour of green. It was the same no matter who you texted.
This means Apple never intentionally designed the green bubbles to be more difficult to read.
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#279This is pretty disingenuous I think. Other than Android who is using RCS? Why can't I message between WhatsApp and an RCS client. Or any other chat technology, how about Google Chat to RCS, or Slack to RCS, or anything else. Their examples for 'the modern standard adopted by most of the mobile world': Motorola, OnePlus, Google Pixel, Samsung, Snapdragon are all providers of Android phones, so clearly they would use t…
It's no different than half a dozen web "standards" Google invented like Web Serial, WebUSB, Web MIDI, etc. Google implemented it on their monopoly platform, and then declared it a "standard" and started getting their staff to start trying to shame everyone else for not adopting it as such.
Actually it came from the GSMA
https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/rcs/
Re: “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
#280Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. Th…
I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own. I'm not unsympathetic to Apple's difficulties and goals here (assuming this spam problem is actually the reason, though I'm skeptical that there aren't also self-serving reasons that…
> rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices
So use Android! I have friends with Android. We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!