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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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market has spoken. People don't care about that feature. Or at least, they don't care enough about it to vote with their wallet.

Supposing I did want to vote with my wallet, where would I have spent my money to make that vote heard? They seemed to disappear from everywhere at once, at least during the time I kept my last phone.

Motorola has been consistently producing Androids with SD card slots. Heck, they still even have headphone jacks.

Though AFAIK, it's only on the Moto G family, which isn't a flagship series, so it won't be as capable as a Galaxy, Pixel, or iPhone.

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

#342
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's kind of depressing honestly.

Also surprising as I always thought Android was more popular because there is more variety and cheaper options.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT Google Messages is simply encrypting the data sent over RCS, i.e. RCS is dumb pipes for the encrypted data, and the carries don't explicitly cooperate one way or another. The consequence would be that only users of Google Messages are able to send and receive encrypted messages to/from Google Messages, not other RCS compatible messaging apps. Pretty ironic given the context.

If a customer of carrier A wants to send a message to a customer of carrier B and the carriers aren't cooperating with key management, then I think the message is not encrypted because customer A needs to know B's public key and when B gets the message, they need A's public key to verify the sender.

That's my understanding as well. My original reply was in response to your suggestion that iMessage differentiate RCS encrypted vs RCS unencrypted using colors, and it appears that wouldn't even be possible because Google is applying proprietary encryption on top of RCS using their app.

I find this absolutely hilarious and almost beautiful: Google has been harassing Apple to implement RCS because it's an open standard and because its users feel green bubbles on iMessage are exclusionary. Now Google has implemented a proprietary protocol on top of RCS that only works with its messaging app, and only messages sent between users of that app appear in a darker blue color with a special lock icon.

So Apple will ship the RCS standard in iMessage, and communication between Android users and iMessage will be sent using RCS, but iMessage users will appear to Android users in the lesser light blue bubbles alongside the dark blue bubbles only given to Android users with Google's proprietary app! Huzzah!

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

#344

What a surprise! I'm quite sure RCS bubbles will be green though, and that's still going to be enough of a difference when it comes to teen groups and even adult dating. The EU may mandate interoperability, but I don't see them mandating bubble color...

[flagged]

Just avoid red states.

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

#345
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation was only resolved after Google acquired Jibe Mobile (the biggest player in developing RCS server/client applications for carriers) and basically created a single RCS-client/server implementation using their Android Messages app and a Google-owned server. Thank you for highlighting this. This important piece of information often gets lost in the "green bubble" discussion. Google has significant incenti…

Agreed. I hate that we pretend Google is somehow altruistic with their support of RCS. They have many, many incentives and pretending otherwise is naive and obtuse.

> They have many, many incentives and pretending otherwise is naive and obtuse.

Okay. The main incentive is to create a competitive method for messaging which allows rich communication with everyone, regardless of platform or ecosystem just via their phone number.

Name five more.

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

#346
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

With every princelet or otherwise rich folk in the world using Apple, does it matter?

It's still a race war, apple (rich folk) vs. everyone else. Some middle ground probably, but not much - apple folks are obviously the richer targets.

I know who to target with spyware and otherwise get rich quick schemes, ransomware, kidnapping, almost any other major crimes. The best demographic with 1200 to spend on a phone.

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

#347
post #23
post #3

Hopefully I can turn it off. I do not know anyone who uses RCS who didn't end up on WhatsApp or Telegram pretty quickly afterwards.

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.

you can still send photos over MMS.

and you can also add your plumber or realtor on whatsapp. there's no reason not to. it's just a messaging app, i've got all kinds of customers and vendors on my whatsapp.

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

#348
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.

If you can't afford a data plan then it just essentially blocks all your incoming/outgoing messages when it enables itself.

>If you can't afford a data plan

or if you're like my parents, and pay for a plan with plenty of data but leave it switched off at all times just because you don't want to accidentally go over your cap.

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

#349

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…

I have no insider knowledge here, but Google tried to go the high route of working with carriers for years before giving up on their intransigence.

I suspect that Google's RCS is proprietary as a blunt instrument to prevent carriers from trying to either (a) undermine e2ee in some weasely way or (b) have the ability to pick and choose the pieces of the implementation they want to support. You either get the whole thing, with e2ee that you don't control, or nothing.

Sadly the lesson from Google, Apple, and Whatsapp here appears to be "cooperating with telecom carriers is a fool's errand".

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

#350
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Both iMessage and Webkit have to accept requests from unknown sources that can contain a wide variety of content type. Lockdown mode rejects unknown sources, and doesn't autoplay content types. So they don't have to any more, it's up to the user.

Its weird how much they deemphasize it and every time there's a zero-day, the solution is to upgrade. Let us add more to the pile while taking away a single point of entry.

Actuvate LockDown, and its all gone. Indefinitely cuz it blocks the original sin. And there's basicaly 0-downsides.

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