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 (19 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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  • [–] 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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    [–] 95 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Love to see Apple being forced into making good decisions against their will.

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

    I’m hoping that they also force Google to do the same. Pushing for a universal RCS E2E encryption standard is great. I’m sick of Google saying RCS is the open alternative to iMessage, when key things like their E2EE implementation are not open at all.

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

    What kind of openness are you hoping for? Google has built their solution with a bunch of already open pieces.

    RCS + Signal protocol + MLS

    https://www.androidauthority.com/google-messages-mls-3346918/

    https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/20/23801536/google-messages-app-mls-support-announce

    @Ghostalmedia

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  • [–] 74 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Really? Like honest to God? They aren't gonna gimp the implementation, are they?

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

    Yellow bubbles for all RCS messages.

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

    Yellow bubbles and the text notification sound is permanently a teenage girl saying "ewww"

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  • [–] 64 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I just want to point out that this announcement comes after Nothing phone company announced they partnered with a company that will bridge the two protocols so apple was about to lose their ability to force android images and videos to look like a potato so iPhone users wouldn't want to leave the apple ecosystem.

    This just exactly like when apple decided they were going to be champions of privacy by improving the security on their phones, which coincidentally happened right after a company called cellebrite started selling a product that would allow police to bypass passcodes and fingerprints to access a users data which previously could only be unlocked by the police department paying a fee for each time to unlock a phone.

    They will always default to being shitty like any other company treating their users like the enemy until they can't and then they spin it in their favor.

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    [–] 53 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    So great to see Apple finally invent RCS! /s

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

    Holy crap. Now my uncle can stop complaining about degraded quality when Android users are in message rooms. When it comes to tech, he really doesn't care about the culprit. He just complains that people aren't playing in Apple's walled garden.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I don't message anyone with an iPhone. Other than the different colored bubbles what does it do? How is the quality degraded?

    It just seems like Apple kept it separate so their obsessed fans would have something to feel superior about.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago*

    The biggest thing is attachments like photos/videos.

    While MMS pretty universally sucks, Apple is very aggressive with the compression they apply to attachments over MMS so the resulting user experience is garbage akin to what we used to have when MMS was new.

    Modern phones from other manufacturers will make use of the full MMS attachment size available, typically 100MB or more (depending on your carrier) iPhones will compress that video down to a couple MB regardless of the higher capacity available.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    iMessage is a rich communication layer backed by HTTPS and web sockets so think something like WhatsApp or Telegram; you can send 2 gig files, embed maps and other rich content, etc etc. SMS is well… SMS. So the blue versus green bubble is a dumb reductionist view but the practical impact is visible in say video messaging, where an iMessage can attach a 50mb 4K H.265 clip same as a real messaging app, whereas an MMS will be a 256k 3gpp potato.

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  • [–] 35 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    ** checks if hell has frozen **

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    [–] 33 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    When will I be able to use RCS in other messaging apps than Google Messages on Android?

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    It looks like Apple is addressing one of the biggest gripes with RCS - Google’s proprietary crap that isn’t opened up to small 3rd parties. Apple wants things like E2EE to be a universal standard that anyone can use, not something Google only dishes out to big phone manufacturers.

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

    Wait, so Apple is doing something good for 3rd party apps? I did not expect that to happen in my lifetime

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

    Apple, Google, and Microsoft all magically become really into open alternatives when one of their competitors starts to dominate or control a significant portion of the marketplace with proprietary tech.

    Apple specifically had LOTS of examples of this back when they were a smaller player. OS X and Safari really leaned into open standards when MS was the 900lb gorilla.

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The RCS standard, not Google’s implementation. There are still going to be iMessage features that won’t work.

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    [–] 24 points 2 years ago

    The elephant in the room is impending legislation in the European Union that could’ve ultimately required Malus to open up iMessage.

    Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to The Brussels Effect!

    Apple is being Brusseled 🙂

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    Around 2010 Google, Facebook, MySpace, even OkCupid were all running on the XMPP standard protocol. The corpos were generally bad stewards not following protocol updates, implimenting features in incompatible ways, & eventually realized there was more to gain be defederating forcing folks to use their platforms & let those corporations siphon the (meta)data of messaging.

    What gets me is why they saw the need to invent yet another similar protocol with XMPP still being feature rich, battle tested—as well as Matrix to a lesser extent—unless they already have their plans on how to circumvent the system & repeat this same cycle.

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

    And they will act like they invented it

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    Regulations strike again!

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