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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

#491

Post by acdha »

nicce wrote: post #457
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…

>Also, end-to-end encryption is not part of the RCS specification, but is a proprietary extension to RCS that Google has made exclusive to Messages by Google.[1] This feature should be made open and added to the actual RCS specification so that Apple and other vendors can make use of it. I thought it is based on Signal protocol? Maybe some commercial wrapper around it.

It’s based on Signal but the key management is completely proprietary. If you read their white paper it directly says that both parties have to be using Google Messages to use E2EE RCS.

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

#492

Post by amadeuspagel »

devilbunny wrote: post #473
lotsofpulp wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blue bubbles can message me in those areas; green cannot. They can, but one or both parties is refusing to use any of the numerous alternative messaging options like WhatsApp.

I'm one guy. Six years ago, there were two of us out of ~30 that used Android. Both of us switched in the next year or so because nobody else would use a different app just to talk to us . So we were missing out on fairly critical information, and forget anything time-sensitive. On Android, it wasn't an issue to use Signal, because it will communicate securely if it can and by SMS if it can't. So you can still text a…

> I'd stay away from Whatsapp just to keep away from Meta.

This seems prejudiced. If one company supports end-to-end encrypted chats with everyone, and the other only with people who buy their devices, I think it's clear who cares more about privacy.

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

#494

Post by aalimov_ »

paxys wrote: post #466

Despite the usual "I want Apple to be a walled garden" sentiment that is prevalent on HN, I'm glad that the EU, DoJ and all the various corporate lawsuits are finally forcing Apple to open up their ecosystem, even if it is still far from where it should be. The smartphone is now the primary personal computer for most of the planet, and deserves to be treated as such.

I would assume that if you buy an iPhone you are (at least nowadays) aware that you are not going to be side loading applications or getting a device with third party bloatware installed that you can’t remove without a level of technical skill. How is it that they can be forced to open up their ecosystem if nobody is forced to purchase their devices, and when there are so many alternatives available. Especially when it seems (to me) that the only real beneficiaries from that move would be advertisers or companies like epic, spotify, google.

> even if it is still far from where it should be.

Where do you reckon it should be? Do you think they should let developers do/access whatever they want, or do you mean something else? Do you personally use an android or ios device (or maybe some niche os)?

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

#495

Post by acdha »

greentea23 wrote: post #136
hedora wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason they'd move to E2EE would be if Apple forced them. Looking at / selling message contents is a large potential revenue source for all the other major players.

I am fairly certain that it's illegal to sell the content of SMS messages in the United States at least. The metadata like who is messaging who and timestamps and best guess locations maybe is sold though. But the contents can be obtained by law enforcement. However, I think the contents are purged after some expiration time.

They don’t need to sell the content: imagine if they ran a classifier on everything and added it to the information they send to advertisers? They’d be able to say they sold the actual messages, just the profile they’d built of your interests.

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

#496

Post by kmeisthax »

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…

When you set up a new phone on Google Fi, the first thing Messages tells you to do is turn RCS off, because for whatever reason Google can't make Fi's native cross-device SMS[0] work with RCS. It's a damned shame.

[0] Google Fi integrates with Messages for Web to allow you to use your phone number even if your phone is damaged or destroyed. It's absolutely amazing. I've used this (back when it was Hangouts integration) to use my number on an iPod touch and it worked surprisingly well when I was waiting for a replacement on my Nexus 6P that I had shattered. I also have Messages for Web pinned to my iPad dock for similar reasons.

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

#497

Post by acdha »

nerdix wrote: post #238
swozey wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn 2014?? My years are all skewed nowadays.

I think he's in the minority because everyone I knew had unlimited SMS by the mid-00s before the iPhone was released.

There were big variations by carriers - that certainly wasn’t ubiquitous by the time the iPhone was released, because iMessage sidestepping it was important to enough people that everyone mentioned it in their reviews. For example:

> Besides ease of use, there's another side benefit to this seamless integration. If you send messages regularly to iOS 5 users, you may be able to switch to a cheaper texting plan from your carrier. Assuming you send messages exclusively to iOS 5 users, you may one day be able to ditch a texting plan altogether.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/06/more-upcoming-ios-5-...

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

#498

Post by kelnos »

hbn wrote: post #168
lxgr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

Yup. The shaming campaigns are just a way to play the moral high ground in their effort to replace an actual messaging standard with their own proprietary service. SMS is certainly long overdue to be replaced, but I don't want it replaced with a Google service. Hopefully the iPhone adoption will be some incentive for carriers to implement RCS properly.

I don't really care if the shaming was done in good or bad faith. At the end of the day, I'm an Android user in a sea of iPhone users, and I'm tired of the fact that our default communication mode has to be SMS or MMS. If this fixes that problem, I don't quite care how we got here.

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

#499

Post by kelnos »

dwaite wrote: post #424
rickdeckard wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly is the wrong term here, the root-cause of this situation is that Google is now maintaining the largest OS-implementation of RCS by far, only followed by Samsung, and then some carriers who also use RCS for other platforms (web-apps, STB,...). Apple adopting RCS means that there is another player to balance this field. A much-needed player, and the only one that's relevant (other than maybe WeChat and WhatsAp…

> Monopoly is the wrong term here, the root-cause of this situation is that Google is now maintaining the largest OS-implementation of RCS by far, only followed by Samsung, and then some carriers who also use RCS for other platforms (web-apps, STB,...). Clarification - many of the carriers are using Google-hosted RCS servers as well. I don't think Apple especially likes the idea of iPhone user metadata (and message c…

> I don't think Apple especially likes the idea of iPhone user metadata (and message contents) going through Google-hosted chat servers every time they message an Android user.

Every time an iPhone user sends an SMS or MMS to an Android user, it ends up on an Android phone, which Google could snoop on if they so desired.

And, regardless, if Apple implements Google's E2EE extension to RCS, it doesn't really matter whose servers they go through.

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

#500

Post by GeekyBear »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #352
hbn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the trap door in this. Apple is going to implement RCS exactly as the specification says it should be implemented, no more or no less. Any incompatibilities with Android will be laid at Google's door to resolve. Having beaten Apple with the RCS stick for the last year, Google might find themselves now getting beaten back.

> Any incompatibilities with Android will be laid at Google's door

Where it belongs. Google's fork of the open RCS standard is closed source and proprietary.

> Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way. If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

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