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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

#581

Post by bigfudge »

chimeracoder wrote: post #555
zanderwohl wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sure as hell would never beg them to migrate to Whatsapp of all things. In many places, most people wouldn't. But Europeans (and some others) seem eager to BCC all their texts to Mark Zuckerberg for some reason.

> In many places, most people wouldn't. But Europeans (and some others) seem eager to BCC all their texts to Mark Zuckerberg for some reason. There is zero evidence that Facebook is engaging in passive mass surveillance of WhatsApp messages.

Does that mean your prior for whether it’s happening is strongly against? That seems irrational given the history of both meta and the tech industry and govt generally.

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

#582

Post by Shekelphile »

swozey wrote: post #23
baz00 wrote: 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.

> What if you hire a contractor for some work and they need to send you pictures/video from an Android?

I would absolutely not want to do business with a contractor that uses an android phone. That's a serious red flag for someone doing work on a (usually very expensive) home to be using cheap tools.

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

#584

Post by justworkout »

rattlesnakedave wrote: post #61
bastard_op wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't the carriers, it was Apple mostly winning the race in creating their walled garden, and everyone else being disinterested in an alternative in the phone race wars. It's now some badge of shame Apple users discriminate against the blue vs green windows if a friend or relative doesn't have an i-thing, and Apple loves it all the way to the bank.

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…

> Everywhere else in the world people use Whatsapp.

Not really. It's dominant in some regions but definitely not a huge chunk of Asia.

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

#585

Post by ridewinter »

JohnFen wrote: post #380
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of becomes a people problem as people use messaging to communicate and organize events and exclude you because you'll break group chats. Probably not a big issue if you already have a solid social circle of old tight friends who don't care about you breaking chats as they can also call you, but it can be huge issue when you move to a new city and trying to make new friend, as any extra friction you add to gro…

> it can be huge issue when you move to a new city and trying to make new friend Meh. I'm not interested in being part of a social circle that is as petty as that.

There's 40 million American teenagers who are very interested in being a part of petty social circles.

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

#586

Post by rickdeckard »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #387
rickdeckard wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RCS is still standardized and maintained by the GSMA, of which Google is a member. Google acquired Jibe in 2015 in order to get their RCS server and client architecture (Jibe was a leader in shaping the RCS-Standard). Everyone can make his own app, it's just that he would need to develop a whole RCS-client for it to interact with (Google's or carriers') RCS-Servers as well. So what is missing is Google offering their…

RCS is still standardized and maintained by the GSMA Yeah. And that version of RCS is prone to wild incompatibilities and still lacks E2EE. The only way carriers have figured out how to interoperate with each other is to adopt Google's server and client. https://www.engadget.com/att-starts-using-googles-jibe-platf...

The only way for carriers to interoperate with each other is by having an intermediary party which limits their freedom of customizing any given specification.

This is applicable ESPECIALLY to large-scale carriers of US, which are big enough to customize every spec and force their suppliers to adopt it.

The only reason why Google's RCS works better than any attempt before that, is that Google is forced to unify the implementation. It's not their spec, they are part of the RCS working-group like everyone else, but by stepping in they instantly reached a cross-carrier rollout-scale where they can't comply to every custom requirement of ATT, Verizon, Vodafone, T-Mobile unless they all agree to make it part of the standard.

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

#587

Post by Shekelphile »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #339
Racing0461 wrote: post #212

Yay, more third world pressure to bring ios down to android's level. What's next? My iphone coming preinstalled with whatsapp with 5 norton antivirus refund rooms already prejoined?

It's not "third world pressure", what the heck? Besides, I think you mean UP to Android's level. It's pressure to adhere to standards. Maybe you can't see it, but it's a good thing .

> Besides, I think you mean UP to Android's level.

Uh no, considering RCS is seriously flawed in design and implementation and doesn't encrypt messages end-to-end or even in flight.

> It's pressure to adhere to standards. Maybe you can't see it, but it's a good thing.

Calling RCS a standard is loaded. It was all but abandoned for years until google started forcing it on users and tacking proprietary extensions on top of it.

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

#588

Post by physicsguy »

It's almost too late, at least here in Europe, WhatsApp is pretty ubiquitous, probably because the split between Android and iPhone is much more even.

Even my elderly relatives use WhatsApp, it's that popular. My local village has a chat group on it.

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

#589

Post by Shekelphile »

myself248 wrote: post #77
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #51

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.

There's plenty of options on the market for phones with headphone jacks. You won't find an apple or samsung flagship with one because it directly impedes waterproofing and isn't desired by the vast majority of people buying those devices. It's common to see on low and midrange phones.

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

#590

Post by joecool1029 »

wtallis wrote: post #560
flashback2199 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS is Messages by Google Why would you want to use another messaging app? Your data is more safe with some randos than Google?

Ironically but unsurprisingly, Google Voice doesn't even support RCS.

Been a user since 2009ish, Google Voice also still exists because Google doesn't really fully run it (Bandwidth.com does).

I really do think it was living on life support for years and around 2014[1] or so it really seemed like any day it would get shut down or merged into one of their halfassed messaging apps but they couldn't do it since the underlying infra was outside their own. It seemed like at some point around 2018 a manager woke up and decided they'd have the interface rewritten 80% and the legacy interface stuck around like the old Windows 'add font' menu until earlier this year.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2014/03/18/google-plans-kill-google-v...

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