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Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year (9to5mac.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.

Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.

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[–] 162 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Ironically, despite Apple's whining to get to this point, between this, and the EU forcing them to adopt USB-C, and, hopefully 3rd party stores and browsers, I may consider an iPhone for my next phone.

It's a pity you almost need to point a gun to their head for them to consider unshittifing their products.

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  • [–] 92 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yeah. My iphone fanatic of a friend was complaining about something on hers the other day, and was like "Why doesn't Apple just do {whatever}?"

    My reply was basically that Apple didn't become a trillion dollar company by giving customers what they want. They became a trillion dollar company by telling customers what they want and marketing the crap out of it.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That was Jobs’ (Jobs’s …? Jobses..?) whole thing. People don’t know what they want until we’ve told them.

    And I’d say it’s worked out pretty well for the entire tech industry so far.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's popular idea for a lot of innovation focused groups tbh. "If I have the people what they asked for I would have given them faster horses." -Henry Ford

    And to a certain degree there is truth to it.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Let’s be fair, things like RCS E2E encryption are firmly under control by Google. People like to claim RCS is open, but it’s not.

    If RCS was a proper open standard, we would have a lot of awesome messaging apps to choose from. We don’t, and the reason is because Google has been gatekeeping.

    I’m annoyed that Apple is late to the game, and I hate that they needed to be pressured to get here, BUT I’m glad to see that they’re going to support universal alternatives to the crap you still have to ask Pichai to please let you use.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Also RCS is build that way. It has more features than SMS, but underneath is even worse than it. Why in the 2023 people massively want to go back tying their chat app with mobile carrier? Like, giving what Internet standards we now have RCS should really be considered deprecated, hope we won't be stuck with it for next 30 years.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Because who is going to operate the servers?

    Originally with RCS it was the carrier, but basically every carrier switched to using Jibe (by Google) for the backend.

    And it sounds like Apple is going to operate their own as well.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I saw a rumor mill style post that Apple was going to allow sideloading of apps. If so, that'll probably get me to switch. These changes and choice in software eliminates my gripes with iOS vs. Android.

    As a point of clarity, I think both suck. But if Apple removes it's disadvantages (even if by force) and is the more privacy respecting option out of the box, it makes sense to me.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don’t know how much of a gun it was. Apple has definitely been working on RCS support for a year; you don’t add that in a few months. Similarly I’m pretty sure Apple has been considering USB C in iPhone since at least when they started working on the USB C on iPad, which is what 5 years old?

    Of course without pressure they would have probably be slower to move forward, and with Apple secrecy it’s always hard to tell how long things have been ready to ship. But let’s not pretend they just woke up this morning with a horse head in their bed and told their direction team to start working on this.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    I hear you, but isn't the proverbial horse's head the fact that the EU is looming over them and forcing them to make a move?

    RCS and USBC have been available for a while. It seems disingenuous not to acknowledge that Apple has purposely dragged their feet so they could make more profit selling proprietary software and hardware which is probably why you're being downvoted

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  • [+] -10 points 2 years ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Actually all three of those things have been possible for a couple of years now.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Are any of the browsers not responded safari now?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You mean rebranded safari? That would be a no, but when I say rebranded Safari, that’s just the rendering engine, not the whole app. Other browsers can add features.

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