[HN Gopher] Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone...
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Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year
Author : dm
Score : 749 points
Date : 2023-11-16 18:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| alexb_ wrote:
| > This is not Apple opening up iMessage to other platforms.
| Instead, it's the company adopting RCS separately from iMessage.
|
| Very important.
| dmonitor wrote:
| I don't mind Apple adopting RCS the same way that SMS is
| implemented. I like that iMessage can add features at whatever
| pace Apple wants. RCS will at least fix the annoying group
| message problems that Android/iOS have.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Agreed. I don't mind them having their messaging platform. I
| don't mind it being technically superior to RCS.
|
| I DO have an issue with them intentionally doing a shit job
| of integrating with a telecommunications standard and then
| slapping a green bubble on it to get their oblivious users to
| ostracize people's kids.
| eropple wrote:
| Apple doesn't put a green bubble on SMS "to ostracize
| people's kids". Kids are ostracized just for having a
| default skin in Fortnite--because kids can be little
| shitheads. Apple differentiates because what you can do
| with SMS is different from what you can do with iMessage
| and that's a clear way to demonstrate it (and also to
| indicate if there's something weird going on when it
| changes from iMessage to SMS).
|
| RCS is a suboptimal standard, and while it's good that
| Apple will support it to try to de-jank mixed-platform
| group messaging, I'd expect it also to be a different color
| because RCS in turn introduces its own jank that iMessage
| doesn't have. So people who want to make up an Apple to get
| mad at will still have their chance, I guess.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| > what you can do is different
|
| Can you talk a bit more about how iMessage is
| fundamentally diferent than SMS on the functionality
| level? Is it like "Signal" different or is it like
| "different" different?
|
| Edit: bonus points if you can offer why iMessage is able
| to be the skeleton key into your iPhone, as often it and
| WebKit seem to be behind most of the serious 0-days...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I can edit an iMessage after sending it, I can use
| threads and it doesn't require a cell carrier - just an
| Internet connection. It's also e2e encrypted and I can
| optionally let people know I have do not disturb on.
|
| It integrates with sharing my location and I can tell
| when someone is actually typing
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > Can you talk a bit more about how iMessage is
| fundamentally diferent than SMS on the functionality
| level
|
| It's different in the same way every messaging app is
| different from SMS:
|
| * Group chats, with custom group names and icons
|
| * High quality images/videos
|
| * Reactions
|
| * Stickers
|
| * Rich link previews
|
| * Threads
|
| * etc. etc.
|
| > why iMessage is able to be the skeleton key into your
| iPhone
|
| I don't think a lot (any?) of the vulnerabilities are
| unique to iMessage. It's more about the fact that
| SMS/iMessage is a means for someone to send you data
| that's then parsed/decoded immediately by the system.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Isnt that the reason sandboxes exist? I just feel like
| these thins happen way less often with Signal and
| [shudder] Whatsapp...
| dmonitor wrote:
| iMessage is a much juicier potential attack vector. over
| 50% of the US market (trends towards the richer half,
| too).
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| Some carriers charge per SMS - after X SMSs per month.
| iMessage is completely free.
|
| Kind of important to be able to tell if you are burning
| up your SMS quota.
| Tagbert wrote:
| 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 does offer end to end encryption and
| supports richer interaction and content than plain SMS
| does. that was one of the reasons that Apple marked SMS
| clients with the green bubbles to indicate not to expect
| the same interaction with them. It was some little shits
| that turned that into an anti-status symbol.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I just laugh because Signal is way better than all of
| this and--wouldn't ya know--the default is "blue
| bubbles". They are the ultimate blue bubble to me because
| its almost all yours and gives you way more control than
| anything else like iMessage and its all audited and open
| for examination (theoretically)
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Sorry in which way is Signal better?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Signal can be better in all ways except the one that
| matters most. Not a single person I communicate with uses
| it. So it's useless.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| You gotta find a way to make it clear you dont consent to
| be sharing your stuff with anyone but you , case closed.
| It has all the same toys and whistles so theres just no
| excuse.
|
| Its a boundary and we all need to get real better at
| understanding and being respectful thereto.
|
| Only issue is if you want them more than they you,
| there's a bit of a dance to navigate . If the like Musk,
| send them to all his endorsementz. At the end of the day,
| it will have to be a negotiation at play and its more of
| a toughlove ultimatun purely for the area of which
| messenging platforms to engage with.
| code_duck wrote:
| I can picture teens or younger acting snobby about phone
| choice. Not really clear why, if it's a financial thing,
| as it's been years since iPhones were priced at a premium
| relative to competitors. But well, they're kids. However,
| I've experienced critical attitudes from adults well into
| their 40s when I had an Android phone. Personally I
| prefer iOS, but to judge someone based on their phone
| choice seems fairly ridiculous for an adult.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _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.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| 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.
| andylynch wrote:
| Different like ... totally. SMS was part of the very
| early GSM design work in the mid '80s and is built into
| the network at a fundamental level (this is why the
| particular character limit etc etc)- it was designed in
| the GSM/SS7/ telco world and has been used for over
| thirty years. iMessage was designed and built by Apple as
| a single operator with virtually total control of the
| backend and user devices. They achieve similar results in
| completely different ways, the best analogy I can think
| of is how octopus's and jellyfish can see too, but
| evolved eyes very different to our own.
| ronyeh wrote:
| But they pick an ugly shade of green though.
|
| I currently have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and have also used
| Android devices in the past. I like to switch each time I
| get a new phone.
|
| Apple definitely picks an ugly color to make you feel
| uncomfortable texting with a non iPhone user. They should
| at least let users choose the color (which will never
| happen).
| ladberg wrote:
| All texts were green for years before iMessage (and blue
| texts) existed, so I highly doubt it was picked to be
| ugly on purpose.
| kyralis wrote:
| The green _predates the existence of iMessage_. That
| green is the color that was used from the beginning of
| the iPhone in 2007; iMessage was only added in 2011.
| iMessage was given a _different_ color than the
| preexisting one.
|
| Trying to claim that Apple picked an "ugly color to make
| you feel uncomfortable" is simply false.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The original green bubbles used a different shade but
| more importantly they used black text. iOS 7 switched to
| white text and a shade of green that means the contrast
| for SMS failed Apple's own guidelines. Even for people
| with decent eye sight it can cause additional eye strain
| and be perceived as ugly even if the green on its own
| would be fine.
|
| To be fair the blue they choose is also not ideal, but it
| is a lot better than the green.
|
| https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-
| acce...
| Lazonedo wrote:
| iOS 4 : https://i.imgur.com/3LIpvX9.png
|
| iOS 5 (introduction of iMessage) :
| https://i.imgur.com/v2Wths4.png
|
| iOS 7: https://i.imgur.com/7k8QL3z.png
|
| Yes, it was green before, but it didn't look so vile.
| Since the redesign of iOS in 7 the difference of green vs
| blue is a difference in legibility.
| icehawk wrote:
| They didn't pick it for that:
|
| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/277597847631822848
| /11...
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > They should at least let users choose the color (which
| will never happen).
|
| You can turn on high contrast mode in Messages settings
| which gives you a forest green color that's imo pretty
| nice to look at.
| pb7 wrote:
| It's the system "green" color. It's used anytime there is
| a UI element that's supposed to be green, same as system
| "blue" is used for iMessage and everything else in the
| OS.
| cpeterso wrote:
| > Apple definitely picks an ugly color to make you feel
| uncomfortable texting with a non iPhone user.
|
| But what's Apple's motivation? Making _me_ feel
| uncomfortable reading an Android user 's messages does
| little to influence that Android user into buying an
| iPhone.
|
| That said, I don't know why Apple thinks the transport
| protocol (iMessage vs SMS) is so important that users
| want to see a color indicator for _every_ message.
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| SMS can also cost money. There are plans that charge per
| SMS after X amount per month.
|
| It's important users can tell if they are using SMS so
| they don't get a giant phone bill at the end of the
| month.
| cma wrote:
| White on green is one of the hardest color pairings to
| read due to how cone cells are distributed in the retina
| (this image isn't completely representative, in the fovea
| green gets even higher as a proportion):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoreceptor_cell#/media/F
| ile...
|
| That's RGB lit up contrasted with just G lit up. One of
| the only worse pairings would be white on yellow, which
| would be RGB vs RG lit up, with the only distinguishing
| signal coming through blue, which we have the lowest
| resolution of.
|
| White on blue is RGB vs B, all the visual difference in
| RG which we have the highest resolution of.
|
| This is why you generally want different color schemes
| for light vs dark terminals, if the color saturation is
| high (saturated blue text on black is bad, saturated blue
| text on white is fine and vice versa for green and
| yellow).
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I DO have an issue with them intentionally doing a shit
| job of integrating with a telecommunications standard and
| then slapping a green bubble on it to get their oblivious
| users to ostracize people 's kids._
|
| The green bubble is there because in the past, when telcos
| charged money for individual SMS messages, green meant
| _money_. I.e., greenbacks, US dollars.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenback
|
| * https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263943/meanin
| g-o...
|
| Blue meant _no charge_ for the message, since it went over
| the data plan and through Apple 's servers.
|
| The tribal/clan split of iPhone/no-iPhone came later.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Speaking of opening up to other platforms due to Digital
| Markets Act: maybe we'll finally get FaceTime as an open
| industry standard at some point?
| greedo wrote:
| I thought Apple intended to do that but found out the a lot
| of the tech was patent-encumbered.
| MBCook wrote:
| The story is Steve Jobs just announced that without
| consulting any engineers first. It was a total surprise to
| them.
|
| They actually seemed to be working on it, but Apple was
| quickly hit with a patent suit from some company over
| FaceTime. I believe they had to re-architect how it worked
| to get around the patent.
|
| They haven't done anything about it since then. I wonder if
| they simply can't because of patents. Either way by now I
| think they've decided it's a strategic advantage and they
| wouldn't do it by choice.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| That would be an interesting chance: buy an iPhone and get it
| with the hardware, or download and app and pay Apple a
| subscription. I wonder how many Android users would be
| willing to pay the subscription?
| SSLy wrote:
| AIUI FaceTime is already made from 3GPP and IETF standards,
| just apple holds the encryption keys and the auth servers.
| baz00 wrote:
| 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.
| swozey wrote:
| 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.
| NOWHERE_ wrote:
| Funnily it's vice versa for me. I don't give out my phone
| number to random people, but instead give them my telegram
| handle of a throwaway account.
| baz00 wrote:
| It's just so bloody unreliable. UK here. Literally everyone
| is on WhatsApp. I haven't found anyone who isn't!
| mnd999 wrote:
| All the carriers in the UK use Googles service. Perhaps you
| don't want to send all your messages via the worlds biggest
| advertising company.
| danieldk wrote:
| Google's service uses end to end encryption. Of course,
| Apple can choose not to implement it (seems that they'll
| only implement it if it's standardized).
| mnd999 wrote:
| Metadata
| freedomben wrote:
| As an Android user I've asked a very similar question before
| to my iPhone friends, and most of them are just apathetic and
| don't care either way, but some of them will actually say
| some variation of: "if somebody is on Android, I don't want
| to talk to them anyway. It's a useful filter." The first time
| I heard that it was a little shocking, but especially with
| Gen Z, it's a minority but not unusual opinion.
| swozey wrote:
| I feel like this is something way more talked about online
| than actually occurs IRL. I didn't get an iPhone until the
| 13 (2 years ago?) and I'm still on it. Nobody stopped
| talking to me because I had green bubbles throughout my, I
| dunno, 10-15 years of Android phones. They would make fun
| of me for how reactions (Bob laughs at $reply) looked on my
| screen but just friendly jabs.
|
| I am a millennial though.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think the age does make a big difference. I'm about 40,
| and I've rarely heard this IRL among people near or older
| either. The people I've heard it from were mostly in
| their teens or early 20s. Some 30s and 40s have admitted
| to leaving friends or family out of group chats because
| they were on Android though.
|
| But that said, how do you know nobody stopped talking to
| you because of it? One of my friends (who is early 40s)
| said his family started leaving one of their family
| members out of the group chats because it "degraded the
| whole experience" and I doubt he ever told the person he
| was being left out, let alone why. I would imagine it's
| kind of like telling somebody that you aren't going to
| date them anymore because they're not attractive enough.
| Not something you want to admit, and even though it
| obviously happens, I've never heard of somebody actually
| being told this.
| swozey wrote:
| Maybe I've been kept out of group chats, it is annoying
| group chatting an imessage thread with android in it. I
| forget what it does but something is strange about it,
| but I'd definitely remember if someone I remotely cared
| about talking to just ghosted my SMS one day. I can't
| think of that ever happening. I had tons of friends in my
| 20s and almost none of them ever used Android. It was
| mostly tech people I knew that used Android.
|
| But, yeah, who knows. Probably nothing lost.
| baz00 wrote:
| Most of my friends are in their 40s/50s. No one knows
| what iMessage or RCS even is if they have an Android or
| iPhone. WhatsApp spread like wildfire here because no one
| gives a shit :)
| hot_gril wrote:
| > You're not adding these people to WhatsApp
|
| So far, yeah I have been. Android users don't seem to use RCS
| for anything advanced, they use WhatsApp. Anyway, iPhones
| already let you toggle MMS, so RCS might be togglable too.
| turquoisevar wrote:
| Then, they can text me over SMS/MMS like they already do.
|
| Besides, some of the examples you mention I'd rather have via
| email instead of text for record-keeping purposes.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I had a mechanic send me a video about a problem with my car.
| He just SMSed me a link to their systems, where I could also
| approve the additional work after reviewing the video.
|
| It worked just fine.
| qingcharles wrote:
| If you can't afford a data plan then it just essentially
| blocks all your incoming/outgoing messages when it enables
| itself.
| notatoad wrote:
| >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.
| notatoad wrote:
| 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.
| microflash wrote:
| The reason I'd turn off is because of spam. Everytime RCS was
| enabled on my phone, I was bombarded with all kinds of
| nauseating spam. I'd like an option to avoid this infliction.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| > 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.
| thirdsun wrote:
| Wow. I mean, I'd never buy an Android device myself but I
| find such a strong opinion very surprising.
| wiredfool wrote:
| And eventually, we'll go through cvs, svn, and then _finally_ get
| git on the iPhone?
| mattl wrote:
| yeah but first you're going to have to deal with them putting
| ,v after all the names in your address book.
| nailer wrote:
| I know we're not supposed to use HN for throwaway jokes, but I
| came here for this comment and I love you.
| summerlight wrote:
| The next significant step would be opening up iMessage and I'm
| pretty sure that Apple already has implemented most of it.
| Otherwise, they cannot realistically follow the DMA timeline in
| the worst case where EU designate iMessage as a gatekeeper.
| progbits wrote:
| Yeah this sounds like they consider that outcome is at least
| possible, if not outright expecting it.
| turquoisevar wrote:
| That's never going to happen for two main reasons.
|
| The first one is that, despite the EU's blatant attempt to
| carve the rules around the likes of Apple while simultaneously
| trying to shield EU companies, they've overestimated the amount
| of iMessage users, excluding iMessage from the DMA rules.
|
| The other one, which is more important in this discussion, is
| that the EU kept the definitions of services rather broad to
| the degree that Apple's adoption of RCS will automatically
| fulfill the interoperability requirement.
| summerlight wrote:
| > That's never going to happen for two main reasons.
|
| I wouldn't say "never". DMA is inherently political at its
| heart and designed to target US big techs precisely. Apple is
| not immune and EU gave the regulation board enough
| flexibility to target all of US big techs. Apple knows this
| and they decided to support RCS for this exact reason to gain
| public supports.
|
| > The other one, which is more important in this discussion,
| is that the EU kept the definitions of services rather broad
| to the degree that Apple's adoption of RCS will automatically
| fulfill the interoperability requirement.
|
| EU already has defined iMessage as a separate core platform
| service from iOS and Apple hasn't argued against it because
| it would give them a chance to exclude iMessage from the
| scope of the regulation. Hence, OS level support for RCS
| won't cover iMessage if it's also designated as a gatekeeper.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Apple wouldn't need to be blatantly targeted if they hadn't
| been engaging in significant anti consumer practices for
| years.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| iMessage is not really a gatekeeper in the EU, because the
| number of friend groups that are close enough to iPhone
| exclusive isn't that big. Instead we use any combination of
| Whatchapp, FB messenger, Snapchat and Signal.
| moritonal wrote:
| Note that this is "Rich Communication Services", not "Reaction
| Control System" from KSP which would have been a much more
| dramatic update.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think that's a feature of the next XKCD Phone [1].
|
| [1]:
| https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:xkcd_Pho...
| smoldesu wrote:
| I can imagine a pretty great commercial where Craig Federighi
| throws an iPhone like a football, and a tracking shot zooms in
| to show it swiveling around to correct it's orientation mid-
| flight.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| I think "Reaction Control System" is from more than just a
| simulator.
| JCharante wrote:
| "Realtime... Control.. System?" was my 2nd guess.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It would be a pretty awesome feature of the next phone if it
| has RCS fall control.
| exabrial wrote:
| Can we please get SD Card expandable storage back next?
| mattl wrote:
| iPhone never had this, so it wouldn't be "back".
| hot_gril wrote:
| Yeah, the thing to bring back would be headphone jack.
| mattl wrote:
| Do any mainstream phones ship with a headphone jack now?
| hot_gril wrote:
| Not any one I've heard of. Which will be an issue when my
| iPhone 6S eventually dies.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| myself248 wrote:
| 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.
| JCharante wrote:
| The latest 7nm phone from Huawei lets you choose between
| using the second sim card tray for a sim card or removable
| storage up to 256GB (albeit their proprietary storage
| medium). From my experience, plenty of Chinese phones offer
| what geeks in the US want (expandable storage and removable
| batteries).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei_Mate_60
|
| Removable storage NM card 256GB
|
| SIM
|
| Card slot 1: NANO-SIM
|
| Card slot 2: Choose one of the two NANO-SIM or NM memory
| card"
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| 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.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Why? Do you have an edge case where you need > 1TB storage on
| your phone?
| exabrial wrote:
| brah, cat videos.
| stephenr wrote:
| I'm curious if this means Apple will run their own RCS service
| for their customers or will rely on a telco provided one.
|
| I tried to find info for example about RCS in Australia, and saw
| a piece about Telstra launching RCS in 2017... but now it's
| apparently turned off and customers are expected to use the
| Google RCS service?
| mattl wrote:
| I wonder what color the bubble will be?
| CharlesW wrote:
| Not blue, because that signals capabilities which are specific
| to iMessages (E2E encryption, message effects, stickers, etc.).
| jwells89 wrote:
| Maybe not green, but it should probably remain different so
| there's an unmistakable visual indicator of which conversations
| are encrypted (assuming Apple implements carrier-flavor RCS,
| which to my knowledge is not encrypted unlike Google-flavor).
| mdasen wrote:
| I think it'll remain green. Apple might feel pressure to
| implement RCS to ward off regulators, but keeping the chats
| green will likely still serve Apple's purpose. Even if RCS is
| 100% as good as iMessage, a decade of green bubbles has
| cemented the perception in people's minds. Even if people
| don't know why a green bubble is worse (and even if they
| aren't worse), it will still be their perception.
|
| Apple has no reason to change the color from green and let
| users know that they shouldn't care as much as they used to.
| mattl wrote:
| I don't know many people with Android who don't use
| WhatsApp or Signal.
|
| Keeping SMS green would be good for purely transactional
| type SMS messages, and using another color for RCS would be
| good.
| stephenr wrote:
| It says they're going to support Universal Profile, which is
| the GSMA defined feature set, and it's not immediately
| obvious to me if that includes E2EE _capacity_ (I highly
| doubt it 's a _requirement_ ) - I recall seeing something
| saying that "standard" (non-Google) RCS group chat doesn't
| support it.
| freedomben wrote:
| I would be _very_ surprised if they integrated E2EE with
| Android phones. Being able to say "green bubbles aren't
| encrypted so everyone can read them" is a big competitive
| advantage and reason to justify why people need an iPhone.
| Plus there might be calls for doing away with stigmatized
| bubble colors if there aren't good reasons. Apple will want
| to maintain the bubble colors as long as they can, so it's
| win-win for them to not implement encryption.
| tech234a wrote:
| I'm predicting either purple or a (light) gray.
| edent wrote:
| I was working on RCS systems back in 2012. It was the future back
| them - incredible low latency for messaging and gaming, rich
| messaging, and a decent SDK.
|
| How did carriers fuck it up so badly that, a decade later, it's
| barely a blip on the messaging landscape? The were so desperate
| to stop OTT (over the top) services that they... locked
| everything down in the hope that customers wouldn't churn. It
| backfired spectacularly.
| bastard_op wrote:
| 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.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| 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
| regulate. Shitty move. They should have just built something
| good.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > They should have just built something good.
|
| This, but with Apple. Whether or not Google whined about
| it, iMessage was never going to last. It was never a matter
| of _if_ iMessage would be forced to reconcile itself with
| the interoperable protocol it replaced, but _when_.
|
| So... Apple should have been ready. They should have been
| drafting absurd standards centered around their own
| servers, and taunting Google into adopting it. They could
| have even charged a license fee for the software. But
| instead they played high and mighty, and now they have to
| contend with the law. Frankly, I'm glad Google summoned
| Shai Hulud.
| discard124 wrote:
| > They should have been drafting absurd standards
| centered around their own servers, and taunting Google
| into adopting it.
|
| It's hard to imaging you sincerely think this would have
| been better. It seems like you _want_ them to engage in
| dishonesty.
|
| > But instead they played high and mighty, and now they
| have to contend with the law.
|
| iMessage isn't going anywhere. They're just going to add
| RCS support in the same way that SMS is supported,
| because now there is momementum for carrier support. This
| is really a storm in a teacup.
| mcphage wrote:
| > They should have been drafting absurd standards
| centered around their own servers, and taunting Google
| into adopting it. They could have even charged a license
| fee for the software. But instead they played high and
| mighty, and now they have to contend with the law.
|
| Isn't the situation in the EU that they're looking to
| force Apple to allow others to use the iMessage protocol?
| So why would Apple work on getting Google to support
| iMessage, when Google is putting in work to get access to
| it?
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| Well... let's say also that the telco investment were not
| light. That Google was pushing for RCS, and SMS, and their
| messenger of the moment. Apple refused to implement RCS,
| because why do so, since there was no carrier at the time
| proposing it. So yeah, no.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| As Google demonstrated, carrier support for RCS is not
| necessary.
| lxgr wrote:
| Google absolutely had a cohesive messaging app (Google
| Chat, later called Hangouts), they just threw it away and
| tried to rebuild it several times and under various other
| names and paradigms rather than iterating on it.
|
| If they'd simply added a "WhatsApp/iMessage mode" to Google
| Chat in 2015 (i.e. allow Google account based users to
| seamlessly communicate with phone number based users), I
| think we might be seeing a very different messaging
| landscape today.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| Google Chat was great back in its day (standard XMPP) and
| had a somewhat "loyal" and large user base. Rebranding it
| into Hangouts, rebuilding it, and generally sabotaging
| themselves was, well, their own doing.
| dev_daftly wrote:
| We wouldn't because the issue always was iphone users
| never willing to use an app outside of imessage. What
| good is a messaging platform if more than 1/2 your
| network won't use it?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| WhatsApp succeeded. Google misfiring 10 times giving
| people zero reason to invest was the problem.
| zik wrote:
| > If they'd simply added a "WhatsApp/iMessage mode" to
| Google Chat...
|
| They'd have been sued by WhapsApp and Apple if they did
| that since they're proprietary protocols.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I think _iMessage_ doesn 't have the most dominant
| marketshare outside the US (and possibly Canada)
|
| iOS /iPadOS (and by extension, iPhone and iPad) however,
| has slim-to-major majorities in most lucrative markets[0]
| and even in markets where iOS is not a majority, its well
| known in the mobile industry that iOS / iPadOS customers
| are far more lucrative
|
| [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ios-vs-android-market-
| share-1...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This more money on apple thing is a selection effect
| caused by Apple phones being more expensive, such that
| the distribution of revenue is truncated.
| kmlx wrote:
| > 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...
| aeadio wrote:
| I think the parent comment was referring to messaging, ie
| iMessage vs the others. Ie, in Taiwan and Japan the
| dominant solution is Line, not iMessage or SMS.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| That's kind of depressing honestly.
|
| Also surprising as I always thought Android was more
| popular because there is more variety and cheaper
| options.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I mean with the iPhone SE starting at $429 new Apple has
| a lot of price brackets covered.
| bastard_op wrote:
| 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.
| prewett wrote:
| > It's still a race war, apple (rich folk)
|
| It's not a "race war" if you need to clarify that apple
| <=> "rich folk". I might give you "class war", except
| there is no "war" part and no need to include it.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| In the UK at least in practice it means you text (whether
| iMessage or not) with companies/builders, but otherwise
| use WhatsApp. Especially with groups.
| justworkout wrote:
| > Everywhere else in the world people use Whatsapp.
|
| Not really. It's dominant in some regions but definitely
| not a huge chunk of Asia.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| What do you mean it wasn't the carriers?
|
| _SMS revenues to hit $67B_ - 2007
|
| https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/metric-sms-
| revenues-...
|
| They used to love using SMS to take as much money as possible
| from their customers. Imagine texting "Hey" to a friend and
| getting charged $0.20 for it.
| mr_toad wrote:
| I remember those days. You didn't text 'Hey', you did your
| best to cram a whole conversation into 160 characters.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| Bingo. The cartel was so focused on trying to save their
| existing money printing machine they took their eye off the
| ball and refused to disrupt themselves.
|
| The cable television industry did the exact same thing. If
| they'd been willing to go OTT a decade ago and not force
| agreements based on geolocation, a lot of the streaming
| services that exist wouldn't even need to exist today.
| AequitasOmnibus wrote:
| > The cable industry did the exact same thing.
|
| Kinda but not really. The cable providers were and continue
| to be hamstrung by the networks who force the cable providers
| to buy channel packages. Cable never had the leverage to,
| say, tell Disney that they only want to offer ESPN but not
| the 10 other Disney branded networks being offered. It was
| often all or nothing.
| geodel wrote:
| Exactly right. A lot of people have tendency to
| simplistically choose heroes and villains. SO Disney is
| hero, cable TV bringing disney to home via their Coax cable
| is villain. Top artists are heroes, but ticket booking
| service which ultimately are reason for enormous payout to
| these artists are villains gouging fans.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I get your point but how is Ticketmaster not a parasitic
| price-gouger?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The artist is their customer, not you. If Ticketmaster
| didn't gouge you, give most of the gouging proceeds to
| the artist, and take the flak like a lightning-rod, they
| would quickly be replaced by a service that did.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What if there was more competition in the space, and
| there were operators of that didn't gouge quite so much.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is. But the nature of popular media is that it is
| desired by the populous. Lots of cheap places and venues
| have no name bars with no name musicians and singers
| playing all the time.
|
| But if you want to see someone that appeals to the whole
| populace, then you will have to compete with the whole
| populace.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Nope. Pearl Jam basically proved that TicketMaster is a
| monopoly.
|
| TicketMaster is a textbook example of a consumer-harming
| monopoly, and yet they have gone unprosecuted for
| decades. No excuse.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Ha ha ha, some TicketMaster/LiveNation shill actually
| down-modded that.
|
| Pathetic.
| piperswe wrote:
| A significant amount of Ticketmaster's fees go to the
| artist. It lets the artist make more money while fans get
| mad at Ticketmaster instead of the artist.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ticketmaster could take a smaller cut... or maybe just
| make their overall UX better for the end user.
| jasode wrote:
| > _I get your point but how is Ticketmaster not a
| parasitic price-gouger?_
|
| Ticketmaster isn't the true price-gouger. It's _actually
| the artist + promotor + venue_ that collectively set the
| high prices. Ticketmaster is just the administrative
| computer system to implement the high prices that the
| artist /promoter/venue want to charge.
|
| For example, top artists can negotiate to get _105% of
| ticket 's face value_ from the concert promoter. Indeed,
| people have speculated that Taylor Swift had so much
| leverage in negotiating the terms of the Eras tour that
| she got _110% of the ticket 's face price_.[1]
|
| If Taylor gets 110% of the ticket money, how does that
| leave anything left for the promoter and the venue?!?
| With those artists' financial demands, you now have a
| math problem: where to get the extra +5% or +10% and also
| pay the promoter+venue without taking a loss? _By
| charging extra fees_.
|
| It's a very clever bit of financial sleight-of-hand. The
| artist/promoter/venue can all _charge more money but hide
| the blame_ by embedding it in Ticketmaster 's
| "convenience fees", "service fees", "order processing
| fees", etc, etc. In this way, Ticketmaster is _perceived
| as the parasite_.
|
| Your question where Ticketmaster is already assumed to be
| the _" bad guy"_ means Ticketmaster's deliberate
| manipulation of public perception is working _exactly as
| designed_.
|
| [1] https://archive.is/J5Eg3
| sbuk wrote:
| Ticketmaster merged with LiveMaster, a promoter and venue
| owner/operator. They are the promoter + venue in your
| equation and have a global monopoly.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Ticketmaster merged with LiveMaster, a promoter and
| venue owner/operator._
|
| Yes, but when other promoters (not Live Nation) book
| artists at non-LN venues and use Tickemaster as the
| ticketing agent, _all the extra convenience fees are
| still there_.
|
| E.g. Taylor Swift's promoter for Eras Tour was _AEG_ ,
| not Live Nation. And in Dallas, she performed at AT&T
| Stadium which is a _venue owned by City of Arlington_ ,
| not Live Nation. Ticketmaster was _only the agent_
| selling tickets for that Dallas show and it _still had
| all the extra TM service fees padding out the price_. In
| that case, Taylor Swift + AEG + AT &T Stadium got their
| slices of the pie by using Ticketmaster fees as the "bad
| guy".
|
| Live Nation acquiring Ticketmaster in 2010 _doesn 't
| fundamentally change what Ticketmaster is designed to
| do_: take the public relations blame for artists, etc
| charging the higher prices.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They don't have any global monopoly.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| The networks and the cable companies are both complicit
| with their demise. No one is arguing otherwise. I
| mentioned cable companies specially because they have the
| same legal monopoly that telephone companies had even
| post AT&T breakup in terms of location-based authority
| (it took widespread nationwide wireless for that to
| change in the U.S., which was like the early 2000s in
| terms of not having to get a regional wireless plan that
| could roam on a friendly network spectrum) and because
| like wireless carriers, cable companies have refused to
| acknowledge they are just a dumb pipe offering data and
| that they can't continue to print money off of things
| that cost them nothing anymore. Oh, and because in the
| US, ISPs and cable companies are overwhelmingly the same
| companies.
|
| The networks ruined their own businesses too -- even if
| some were smarter than others (HBO being the smartest and
| also why it was the most valuable asset of the AT&T
| acquisition and the Discovery acquisition) -- but I chose
| to focus on the cable companies b/c they are dumb pipes
| the same way wireless carriers are and they refused to
| disrupt themselves.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| That was true until the cable companies themselves bought
| networks. Comcast owning NBC Universal, the various cable
| associations with the artists formerly known as Time
| Warner, the various local station and sports station roll
| ups for the various providers, all make them entwined.
|
| And the networks were already offering online access to
| their content via TV Everywhere. They didn't want to do the
| geolocation thing, that was all requirements of the cable
| companies (the issues with the network broadcasters like
| ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are much more complex).
|
| In fact, you could (and I would) argue that it was the
| cable companies insistence on maintaining their defacto
| monopolies on who could get what service where (because
| there was never consumer choice in who your cable provider
| is, unless you count satellite, which I do not) that pushed
| the networks hands into creating their own competing OTT
| services based on the content they owned. Because as people
| cut the cord, the networks weren't going to watch their
| businesses completely go up in flames. Now, should they
| have done that sooner and more aggressively (HBO did it
| best and earliest with HBO Now as a companion to HBO Go --
| a move that earned them the ire of the cable industry, the
| same industry who often refused to let HBO Go subscribers
| who paid the cable companies directly for HBO, do things
| like access the service on an Xbox b.c they didn't like the
| idea of people not paying a $5 a month fee for an extra
| box), yes. 1000%
|
| But let's not pretend like the cable companies were without
| leverage. If they'd acted decisively and disrupted
| themselves early enough, they were the ones with the direct
| relationship with the customer, not the networks. They were
| the ones who could have created their own bundles of OTT
| content. But no, they refused until it was too late and got
| to see the whole industry bleed itself and for live content
| to essentially die.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| And carriage fees are not at all related to the cable
| companies refusal to adopt or accept OTT solutions. They
| could have still offered the same shit they offered coax
| but you know, over a web browser, without requiring you be
| on a home network from an ISP also your cable producer
| (Comcast), or on whatever device you want (Comcast,
| Charter) all to save the stupid extra box fees that they
| lost anyway.
|
| People didn't quit cable because of price. They did it
| because of price to perceived value. As has been shown with
| the current state of streaming services, it isn't actually
| cheaper to cut the cord. But what you do get is a lot more
| flexibility.
|
| Imagine if Comcast had offered its own YouTube TV style
| service in 2012 (something Intel tried to do in late 2013
| before it was summarily canceled -- I almost took a job on
| that team and dodged a bullet), rather than hoping against
| hope that cord cutting wouldn't take off? You'd probably
| have a bunch of Comcast subscribers to this day who were
| satisfied that they could watch all their TV live and on
| demand whenever they wanted.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| "It isn't actually cheaper to cut the cord"
|
| No idea what kind of poor purchasing decisions would lead
| to that. You can't get any form of cable package for less
| than $150 a month last time I checked. I don't pay
| anywhere near that for Internet + a couple of streaming
| services.
|
| Oh, and the $30 a year or whatever for a VPN.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Reminder to everyone who wonders why WhatsApp and iMessage won:
| US phone carriers used to charge $0.10 to $0.25 per message.
|
| Yes, it was as ridiculous as it sounds. There used to be news
| articles about kids racking up hundreds of dollars on their
| phone bill.
|
| Here's one from the same year the iphone was released:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/0...
| lxgr wrote:
| Was that really a concern in the US? WhatsApp and iMessage
| require data plans, and as far as I can remember these have
| largely included unlimited SMS as well.
|
| It was definitely a factor in the EU, though: SMS still
| aren't free on many prepaid plans there. WhatsApp was the
| first popular application supporting unlimited messaging on
| mobile phones for many.
| swozey wrote:
| I'm 39 and SMS not being unlimited was a _huge_ thing. I
| never thought it would be unlimited, when that happened
| (Suncom? I forget who started it) it was huge. This was a
| LONG time ago though, long before WhatsApp. Probably 15-18
| for me.
|
| I remember a lot of conversations in high school going "My
| plans maxed out can you text $friend?" IIRC you had to
| specifically turn off receiving texts or they'd charge you
| for each one and we were broke HS kids.
|
| edit: Oh that article posted above is 2007. I guess it
| lasted way longer than I thought.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Yes, I think I got my first iPhone around 2010, and at
| the time I was still on limited text message plan. I
| don't think I got unlimited texts until 2014 or
| something.
| swozey wrote:
| Damn 2014?? My years are all skewed nowadays.
| nerdix wrote:
| I think he's in the minority because everyone I knew had
| unlimited SMS by the mid-00s before the iPhone was
| released.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| The unlimited plans existed, but it was more expensive
| than the limited plan I used, since I didn't go over the
| limit.
| acdha wrote:
| 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-...
| lxgr wrote:
| I don't doubt that SMS were not always unlimited in the
| US.
|
| But the question here is: Were there any (reasonably
| popular) plans that provided data for smartphones, but
| not unlimited texting? If not, that couldn't have been a
| factor in the adoption of iMessage in the US.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you had wifi at home/work/school, you could send and
| receive without incurring any data usage at all.
| lxgr wrote:
| True, but at least in the case of iMessage, that would
| also mean not being able to text all while not within Wi-
| Fi coverage (since Apple absolutely refuses to let people
| actually send an SMS to a number it considers to be
| participating in iMessage).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No; the iPhone launched with data plans. It just wasn't
| unlimited, nor were the texts. Sending an iMessage cost a
| lot less than ten cents of data; you could send/receive a
| lot more of them within your plan without overages.
|
| (IIRC, my plan with Cingular didn't have _any_ texts
| built-in, so they were 10C/ a pop, in each direction. I
| could send many thousands within the data plan 's couple
| of gigabytes.)
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| > since Apple absolutely refuses to let people actually
| send an SMS to a number it considers to be participating
| in iMessage
|
| Are you sure? I remember iMessage falling back to SMS if
| for some reason it can't get through on iMessage.
| jdofaz wrote:
| I had a work blackberry on verizon that had unlimited
| data and no free sms texts. We used BBM and Google Voice
| to avoid paying sms fees
| wil421 wrote:
| It's not a factor at all. By the time smartphones and
| data plans came out, they all included unlimited texts.
| I'm sure there was a small carrier here and there but
| AT&T didn't offer it with the first iPhone. This is US
| specific.
| nilsherzig wrote:
| I'm 21 and from Germany, I absolutely remember paying for
| sms in the first years of my highschool time.
|
| I can also remember killing my data plan browsing
| Instagram while skipping my French class ... So about 7
| years ago?
| ok_dad wrote:
| Back in my day, you used to pay per minute for calls. Then
| they moved to a few hundred minutes free and the new SMS
| system cost a few cents per text. Then it was like
| 1500min/100sms free. Eventually it became unlimited minutes
| and texts but data cost some cents per kb or mb, then
| eventually that ratcheted up to "unlimited" everything with
| some "reasonable limits".
|
| As a kid I used to make a collect call to my mom and when
| they asked who was calling I'd say, "pick me up" and hang
| up. Free short messages even in the 90's!
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, good ol' Bob Wehadababyitsaboy.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Back in my day, you used to pay per minute for calls.
|
| Hello, fellow graybeard!
|
| This is something I pull out every once in a while to let
| kids these days know how rough we had it: we had to pay
| 10-25 cents per minute for any in-state phone calls that
| weren't "local", where "local" was an arbitrary boundary
| on the map not even related to area code.
|
| If we had to call out of state, charges started at $1 per
| minute. Every year at Christmas, we'd have an event where
| the local family would gather to make phone calls to out-
| of-state family. Because the cost was so high, we had to
| strictly ration time. Each kid (I was a kid then) got 3
| minutes talk time.
|
| This was late '70s/early '80s, and the figures are not
| adjusted for inflation.
| matwood wrote:
| And early 'unlimited' cell plans required the user to be
| 'local' usually in a city. Leave the city and boom, back
| to charge per minute because of 'roaming'.
| qingcharles wrote:
| RCS requires a data plan, and certainly Google's Messages
| app doesn't handle it well when there is no data. I know a
| lot of people who are too poor to afford data on their
| phones and they are regularly losing all their messages
| because of RCS.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _WhatsApp and iMessage require data plans, and as far as
| I can remember these have largely included unlimited SMS as
| well._
|
| The reason why WhatsApp was _huge_ internationally (like,
| 10^8 users huge) was because many teclos in developing
| countries included data usage in their plans but SMS was
| extra (and talking minutes were finite), so people used
| WhatsApp for all comms.
|
| WhatsApp's had a free tier, but their basic plan was (IIRC)
| $1/month, and they many (tens/hundreds) of millions of
| users that paid it.
|
| Facebook bought WhatsApp for $20B:
|
| * https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-whatsapp-
| idUSKCN...
|
| > _Evidently, Zuckerberg lied to the European and American
| trade commissions. It was in fact possible to interface
| Facebook and WhatsApp platforms to mine data. Facebook has
| been doing it since day one of its acquisition. As always,
| Zuckerberg admitted to the misdeed, apologized and paid the
| fine. He got away scot-free._
|
| > _Months later, co-founder Jan Koum discovered that
| Facebook's management weakened WhatsApp encryption system
| to make it easier for them to mine data. Koum resigned
| too._
|
| > _Fast forward to today and Zuckerberg continues to mine
| our data through Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram (which he
| acquired in 2012). Facebook has become a surveillance
| behemoth - arguably the biggest surveillance organization
| in the world._
|
| * https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2023/04/05/2256935/real-
| rea...
| daft_pink wrote:
| I don't think that's true. I think the fees are why Whatsapp
| won outside of the US.
|
| US users quickly had access to unlimited SMS and calling on
| most phone plans, which is why Whatsapp never took root.
| no_wizard wrote:
| While its true that SMS used to cost per message (and
| outrageously at that) unlimited SMS/MMS (AKA, unlimited text)
| plans were cheaper (and on some carriers, predate) than
| unlimited data, often being only $10 a month or so as an add-
| on. Unlimited talk & text plans were relatively common as
| well.
|
| In the EU for instance, the reverse was true. Particularly,
| unlimited data was cheap and affordable, where as SMS was
| quite costly (even more than in the US in some cases) so data
| heavy apps were easier to adopt. Hence, WhatsApp, Telegram
| etc. gaining so much popularity. iMessage was introduced much
| later to the rich messaging market than these apps in those
| countries (because mobile messaging apps were cheap to adopt
| in markets where mobile data is cheap).
|
| There is much more competition in those countries with cheap
| mobile data in the rich messaging services space. In the US,
| unlimited data has had a more sordid history, and SMS / MMS
| had a much bigger adoption rate early on
| doublerabbit wrote:
| The days when each vendor of mobile phone were different
| from all the rest. Now all of them are Android and just
| unappealing.
| MBCook wrote:
| Sure it was $10/line.
|
| iMessage was free once you had a smartphone plan.
|
| And no, smartphone plans didn't automatically come with
| unlimited SMS. I had to "upgrade" for that.
| ImJamal wrote:
| >iMessage was free once you had a smartphone plan.
|
| Unless you went over your data limit.
| MBCook wrote:
| Good point. If you stick to text (like SMS was) that
| would be extremely difficult.
|
| Start sending any kind of media and all bets are off.
| giantrobot wrote:
| If your phone spent most of its time on WiFi that was
| never a problem.
| duped wrote:
| My recollection is that unlimited text plans became the
| standard around 2008ish, well before iMessage came out.
|
| iMessage "won" because it was the default for iPhone users in
| the US. Similarly, Whatsapp is the default nowhere and I
| don't know anyone who uses it, but that might be a
| generational thing. Whatsapp has always struck me as common
| in Europe, but rare in the US. We just use text and FB
| Messenger.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I disagree, unlimited domestic SMS/MMS was common by iPhone
| 3G (summer 2008) I specifically remember getting an unlimited
| plan from ATT, which was novel.
|
| However, international SMS/MMS was extremely expensive, and
| that was the main impetus for WhatsApp. It required no
| password or making accounts or remembering all of that, hence
| all non tech savvy people could easily use it. And it worked
| flawlessly, with zero exorbitant international charges,
| because you knew everything was going via data.
| userinanother wrote:
| By the time I message became big it was a non issue. SMS is a
| garbage standard in comparison. I send full pictures and
| movies via I message if there is a Android phone on the chat
| they all turn to garbage tiny images
| rickdeckard wrote:
| The answer is that the carriers worked out a specification and
| both infra-vendors and device-vendors were left to develop the
| server/client based on that spec.
|
| So each major device-vendor developed his client-app, and ended
| up with interoperability issues not only with the RCS-servers
| used by a given carrier, but also with devices of OTHER
| vendors. And that doesn't even begin to cover the issues on
| inter-carrier messaging...
|
| 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.
|
| But when you were working on RCS back in 2012, you may remember
| that at that time, RCS didn't even support store&forward (!!).
|
| So if the receiving device was not available when a message was
| delivered (because it had no network or client wasn't running
| on a device, which happened alot especially on iOS because the
| client was in a constant fight with the OS), the message wasn't
| queued anywhere.
|
| Apart from the obvious issue of missing messages, it caused the
| even worse UX-impact that the entire conversation looked
| different on sender/receiver.
|
| --
|
| Ah yes, and: RCS was originally designed with per-message
| billing in mind (of course). At the time it was launched it was
| finally clear to the carriers that those times are over, but
| the whole architecture had quite a chunk of billing
| architecture in it as well...
| lxgr wrote:
| > 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 incentives for pushing RCS for more
| than one reason.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| The situation was resolved by Google taking effort to unify
| the Android landscape and maintain a single client for that
| OS, instead of carriers (like Orange Group) developing one
| client, Samsung, LG, Sony, Huawei, ZTE each developing
| other clients
|
| Google doesn't own the RCS-specification, the spec is still
| defined and maintained by GSMA, with Google just having one
| of the seats at the table (along with carriers and device
| manufacturers).
|
| Apple is also a member of GSMA, them adopting RCS means
| that they just take another seat at the table of the RCS
| working group.
|
| --
|
| > Google has significant incentives for pushing RCS for
| more than one reason.
|
| I don't know if you mean to imply some hidden Agenda. The
| incentive is to standardize "rich communication" across
| mobile platforms. "Green bubble" is one manifestation of
| the bigger issue that 27 years after the creation of SMS
| there is still no other universal method for me to send a
| text to your phone number today.
|
| The main reason for that is, that several players still
| hope to own this communication channel to the user with
| their proprietary app, become the "Western WeChat" and sell
| access to the users.
|
| RCS could be an universal non-proprietary method, open to
| be adopted by Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp and whoever wants
| to build a Message ecosystem. It has the potential to end
| this hassle and allow me to send a text to your number and
| reach you regardless of your OS and application of
| preference.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| 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.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| > 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.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Running a messaging gateway means Google gets all that
| sweet metadata at the very least and message content in
| the many cases where E2EE isn't enabled. That's a lot of
| data to build advertising derivatives all linked to a
| specific identity.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| In best case for Google they can operate the RCS-server
| for Android devices. Google already owns the Messaging
| CLIENT for SMS/MMS/RCS on nearly all Android devices as
| well as the underlying OS itself.
|
| There is little new information to gain for them, no
| matter how Android users communicate with Apple users
| right now.
|
| There is however a lot to gain for them if a unified rich
| communication standard is established in the market,
| because apart from finally being able to replace SMS, it
| would drive platform-agnostic innovation in this area.
|
| Google and Apple agreeing on a standard could disrupt the
| ecosystems of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Vibr, Zoom,
| MS Teams etc.
| cubefox wrote:
| Carriers supported it. Just Apple didn't, for a long time. The
| reason is obvious: To increase their market dominance in the
| US, where iMessage is common. Especially among US teens this
| was apparently successful. Teens didn't want to be the lame
| green bubble kids with reduced messaging features. They flocked
| to iPhones.
|
| RCS is (was) the prime example of Apple's anticompetitive
| behavior, after the App Store exclusivity, preventing side
| loading, and disallowing alternative browsers.
| onlyhumans wrote:
| Google could have released a rcs messenger app on iOS this
| whole time. Not sure what they were doing
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Doubly so considering releasing chat apps is #2 on the list
| of things they are the most well known for after their
| search engine.
| zorrotorro wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's literally impossible? I suspect RCS,
| just like SMS needs some special telecom interaction.
| cubefox wrote:
| An RCS app for iOS wouldn't make iMessage Android
| compatible.
| zik wrote:
| Even when they adopt RCS I bet they still punish non Apple
| users with green bubbles.
| zuppy wrote:
| the green buble is not for the Android users, it's for the
| iOS users to know that there may be some taxes for sending
| the message. even on iOS you get a green bubble if you
| disable imessage. i don't understand what's in it for you
| guys for repeating that rethoric about the punishment.
| simbolit wrote:
| this is meant to hold back regulators, just for a couple more
| years, so, for a couple more years it will be green bubbles
| android, blue bubbles iOS.
|
| The teenage market share is 87% currently. just a couple more
| years is all they need.
| partiallypro wrote:
| There isn't enough discussion about the impending Apple phone
| monopoly in the US. It's inevitable at this point.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Hopefully this'll mean better Google Fi support for the iPhone.
| It's a little janky, but $20/line is hard to pass up.
| JCharante wrote:
| I use Google Fi for my iPhone. What am I missing out on?
| (asides from using more than 1 carrier's network simultanously)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I can't add cellular service for my Apple Watch, at all.
|
| Enabling MMS requires a somewhat convoluted set of changes to
| the phone's cellular settings, and despite having done them
| correctly I periodically get a "we couldn't send you all your
| texts, fix your settings" warning SMS from Google.
| JCharante wrote:
| Oh right. I have a cellular apple watch too but I've just
| forgotten about that.
| photoGrant wrote:
| Looks like those Android iMessage guys had some information ahead
| of time.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| How? Seems like they would've have gone through the effort if
| they knew.
| nickvanw wrote:
| I'm pretty happy about this, I don't think Apple should be forced
| to open up iMessage, but not adopting the RCS standard always
| seemed a bit underhanded to me. Even if it sucks, better cross-
| platform messaging is a win for everyone.
| simse wrote:
| This is great to hear. Apple should be selling phones because
| their phones are better, or iMessage is, not because of social
| pressure, which is crazy.
| voidwtf wrote:
| What if the social pressure, is in part, a result of the better
| experience one gets with iMessage?
|
| Photos, videos, group messaging are all a significantly better
| experience with iMessage in my experience. This is not to say
| that other apps don't offer a similar experience, you can
| achieve much of the same functionality on Telegram or WhatsApp.
| It's just that it's built into the phone.
|
| Google might have achieved similar success with their own
| messaging platform had they'd not constantly thrown it under
| the bus and created a new one every month. Allo, Duo, Meet,
| Google+, Google Chat etc....
| nerdix wrote:
| Mobile messaging should be either be interoperable or cross
| platform. And any messaging platform that is tied to one
| mobile operating system is user hostile.
| Affric wrote:
| I received my first piece of spam on iMessage last week
| (used it since 2011) and it was deleted instantly by Apple.
| I presume because they identified and removed the account's
| iMessage privileges.
|
| Any messaging app that permits spam is user hostile. Spam
| takes up more of my time than I would ever want to give on
| Whatsapp/Messenger/Text. iMessage has prevented me from
| contacting precisely zero people. If I were to walk away
| from my iPhone I would lose nothing after exporting some
| messages.
|
| The barrier to entry to other potential users of $100s is
| well worth it for me.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Imagine being an exec at Nothing and seeing your acquisition turn
| into dust
|
| Edit: it was not an acquisition but a partnership
| bertman wrote:
| Context:
|
| https://nothing.community/d/2968-introducing-nothing-chats
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Wouldn't worry at all. It's a cool feature if it works. The
| value in that blue bubble is less about the features of
| iMessage and more about social capital, not that I personally
| care.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| It is about the features though. Apple users snob Android
| users because group messaging doesn't work well, media
| features are not supported, etc.
|
| RCS offers such a rich environment that Apple could finally
| truly integrate most stuff transparently with iMessage. Send
| a video to the group chat? Everyone gets it at full quality.
| Make a poll? Everyone can vote.
| freedomben wrote:
| You're both right. The features matter, but so does the
| social stigma of bubble color.
|
| Nothing will still have a feature and an edge by offering a
| "blue bubble" on Android, but this announcement would
| reduce my excitement a little bit if I were them.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The features Apple could not integrate with RCS will be
| very few, like watching an AppleTV show together or
| create a FaceTime call without having visible links in
| the chat.
|
| The social stigma stems from iMessage giving Apple users
| advanced and integrated messaging for free since the very
| beginning, which "spoiled" people into not wanting to
| deal with pure SMS chats.
| paldepind2 wrote:
| Why do you say "acquisition"? I thought Nothing just partnered
| with Sunbird.
|
| But I do wonder if the timing is completely coincidental.
| code_duck wrote:
| There is almost no chance Apple would tolerate an unofficial
| iMessage client for long, anyway.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This is something I never thought I'd see. I hope the GSM
| association moves fast to make robust E2EE a standard required
| for proper implementation for carriers. That would go a long way
| in making a huge improvement over SMS/MMS.
|
| This is a win for RCS, ultimately. Maybe this will kick carriers
| into high gear to up their messaging standard support game and
| have standard interop.
|
| I don't think this will lead to a decline in iMessage usage, nor
| do I think it will be catalyst enough to get people to move to
| Android, because there are still things RCS won't be able to
| support[0] but its a big step forward for a more pleasant
| experience between iOS and Android.
|
| [0]: Memojis, reactions (tapbacks I think their called) and I'm
| curious about threaded messages. Also, at _this time_ the actual
| RCS standard does not specificy that messages must be end to end
| encrypted. iMessage on the other hand has robust E2EE encryption
| (and you can get even more robust encryption by enabling Advanced
| Data Protection)
| hedora wrote:
| 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.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Lets hope they will. Apple is a bit of a forcing function in
| the cellular industry, especially in the US.
| greentea23 wrote:
| 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.
| xattt wrote:
| > ... fairly certain that it's illegal to sell the content
| of SMS messages in the United States at least
|
| There will be some ridiculous loophole like leasing will be
| allowed of all vowels on Mondays, and all consonants on
| Tuesdays.
| hedora wrote:
| Well, here's Verizon's privacy policy:
|
| https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/full-privacy-policy
|
| They definitely sell things like your real-time location
| (you can opt out by turning your phone off, or if they're
| legally obligated to let you), who you contact, what
| websites you visit, what DNS entries your phone looks up,
| your subscriber information (assuming they can link it to
| an advertising ID that other apps are using), and what TV
| shows you watch, joined with all the stuff you use your
| broadband and phone for.
|
| As for communications content, it's fuzzy.
|
| My reading of it says that they can aggregate that all
| together in a way that is only personally identifiable to
| their internal marketing team and their partners (i.e.,
| anyone that pays them and also signs a contract), so I
| guess it's not "for sale"? So, for instance, they could
| take all the RCS messages in the US, cluster them, and sell
| the cluster to, say, meta. Then, meta could use it for ad
| targeting of third party ads, but they wouldn't be able to
| resell the raw data unless they first de-anonymized it.
|
| I could be wrong though. The privacy policy is very long
| and incredibly vague. Maybe they don't share the contents
| of your private communications with their "trusted
| partners" or internal advertising division yet.
|
| The only way this sort of crap will get better is if the US
| passes a right to privacy constitutional amendment. (Of
| course, congress is more likely to pass laws that somehow
| make it worse.)
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I hope the GSM association moves fast to make robust E2EE a
| standard required for proper implementation for carriers. That
| would go a long way in making a huge improvement over SMS
| /MMS._
|
| Can telcos actually offer E2EE given the various lawful
| intercept statutes that they are usually subject to?
| Andrex wrote:
| I mean, they're doing it right now.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-
| messa...
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The telcos don't actually provide E2EE. That layer is
| offered by Google itself, and RCS carries encrypted data,
| last I checked. Not sure if Apple is going to interoperate
| with it.
| tg180 wrote:
| > That layer is offered by Google itself > Not sure if
| Apple is going to interoperate with it.
|
| Only if both users in a 1:1 chat are using Google
| Messages. E2EE is not possible even with Samsung
| Messages, so I highly doubt it.
| olliej wrote:
| Wait so google doesn't support e2ee for more than two
| devices in a chat?
| tg180 wrote:
| The last time I checked was in 2021 when they launched
| the feature, and it was only for 1:1 chats. Google might
| have extended e2ee to group chats (I would hope so).
|
| Pretty sure everyone would still have to use Google
| Messages.
| rezonant wrote:
| Yes, it does, as long as everyone is using RCS via Google
| Messages.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Google finished rolling out RCS group chat E2EE in
| August.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Can't they support RCS but still have iPhone users blue ?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Yup. That's exactly what I predict Apple will do. RCS
| messaging will still have green bubbles. And it will continue
| to have the same psychological effect as SMS green bubbles do
| today. I think that's also why GP said there won't be a
| decline in iMessage usage.
| danielbln wrote:
| So weird reading this from the transatlantic sidelines,
| where noone cares one little bit what device a message was
| sent from.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Nobody does, it's a bitchy trope.
|
| Green bubbles matter in group chats. You can't easily
| change participants and stuff like reactions generate
| junk messages.
| ghodith wrote:
| Very much not a trope. I personally know multiple people
| who refuse to text green bubbles, to the point of
| refusing dates from people who have Android.
| spike021 wrote:
| That sounds like a people problem, not a tech problem.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 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 groups
| lessens your chances of being accepted and invited
| further.
|
| Yeah, people can be quite lazy and petty even about such
| trivial things, when they don't know you and don't have
| any attachment to you yet, and you breaking group chats
| won't improve your first impressions and chances of being
| accepted. Hence the ever increasing loneliness crisis
| we're facing.
|
| Thank fuck I live in Europe where nobody uses iMessage
| for group chats. Honestly fuck Apple for creating that
| unnecessary friction, it's not like they couldn't have
| accommodated blue bubbles to not break group chats but
| it's more profitable to emotionally extort people to buy
| your iJunk by making them feel outsiders.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > 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.
| ridewinter wrote:
| There's 40 million American teenagers who are very
| interested in being a part of petty social circles.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Pretty much. Peer pressure is an insanely powerful thing
| when you're young and trying to fit in and Apple knows
| teens aren't gonna die on the "stick to an Android to
| stick it to them" hill.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I was assuming this discussion was about adults, not
| children. Teenagers have always found petty reasons to
| reject others, but they usually grow up and learn better.
| This seems no different, so that part doesn't concern me
| much. If adults are doing it, though, that's entirely
| different.
| spike021 wrote:
| Is the argument you're making that the people complaining
| about this on HN are American teenagers?
|
| Seems like a completely different situation.... and
| really, again, a people problem.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| People rightly criticise social media companies for the
| behaviour their platforms encourage, and iMessage
| encourages this behaviour as much as twitter encourages
| outrage.
| spike021 wrote:
| I still believe that's a people problem.
|
| On Twitter you can easily curate Twitter lists of people
| to follow without being forced to use the generated feed.
| I'm rarely if ever outraged or otherwise emotionally
| charged when I'm using it. (Maybe except when I come
| across reply-bots)
|
| And as I said elsewhere in the thread, I've never
| experienced that problem with any friend groups when it
| comes to iMessage.
| filoleg wrote:
| And I know multiple people who refuse dates from those
| who have a zodiac sign that is "incompatible" with
| theirs. I think we can safely disregard that as a factor,
| despite how relatively not-that-rare it could be.
| rospaya wrote:
| Yeah but bubbles sound like a class difference, astrology
| is just pseudoscience. People seldom get mocked for being
| a libra, but they often get prejudiced for having less
| money.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Given that there are Android phones on the market as or
| more expensive than iPhones, how can these people tell
| which Android users are poor?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's literally no difference in price. The only
| difference is that people more receptive to retail sales
| pitch buy androids as the reps get spiffs to move them.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I mean, the argument isn't that they should accept the
| date (on the contrary, these signs are actually
| beneficial for staying the fuck away from these people),
| the argument, or rather statement is that this sort of
| "tech jewelry" is very embedded in modern society, with
| Apple being the frontrunner.
|
| And this has real effects. For example, Im forced to use
| a piece of shit Macbook at work, where literally
| everything else in our cloud runs on linux, because the
| company issues Macs as a way of attracting talent since
| "tech" people also want tech jewelry.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the company issues Macs as a way of attracting talent
| since "tech" people also want tech jewelry.
|
| Only a very specific demographic, though. Such companies
| are missing out on a lot of talented tech people.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| This is not even among the top five weirdest things I
| have heard some base a dating decision on. People are
| complicated.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| > I personally know multiple people who refuse to text
| green bubbles, to the point of refusing dates from people
| who have Android.
|
| Those people don't sound like people worth knowing.
| Ignorant and judgy to say the least.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Life isn't so simple. What if that person is your boss or
| your client, or someone you love?
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I mean the comment I replied to mentioned refusing dates
| from people with green text bubbles.
|
| If it's a boss or someone I love and they want to ignore
| my messages that's on them. If it's a work issue possibly
| HR could be involved as discrimination or outright
| ignoring messages based on device wouldn't really fly.
| Zak wrote:
| Someone you love? If the affection is mutual they're not
| going to cut off communication with you because your
| phone doesn't run their favorite chat app.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| A good friend doesn't have phone number for reasons that
| important to her.
|
| She's not "cut off", but it requires a conscious effort
| to contact her. So while I may be keeping a group of
| people up to date or inviting folks for a bbq, open
| house, etc casually, I need to specifically invite her
| via some other channel.
|
| Sometimes I forget. Feelings are hurt. I'm a single
| parent with a demanding job. Low friction rules the roost
| for me, and our group of friends all sort of support each
| other with these types of things and do alot of ad-hoc
| stuff.
| Zak wrote:
| Not having a phone number is much more unusual than
| having a phone that can do SMS but not iMessage. It adds
| considerably more friction; e.g. it makes some of the
| most popular third-party messaging apps like Signal and
| WhatsApp difficult or impossible to access as well.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| If your boss refuses to talk to you because of something
| as petty as imessage bubbles, they're petty enough to
| fire you for any number of reasons. That person is a
| horrible boss no matter what you do.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > to the point of refusing dates from people who have
| Android.
|
| The people who were refused dates dodged bullets, then.
| gsich wrote:
| Some mental illnesses can't be cured I guess.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > I personally know multiple people who refuse to text
| green bubbles, to the point of refusing dates from people
| who have Android.
|
| Sounds like not dating them is dodging a real bullet if
| they're that shallow.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's more than that. Videos and pictures sent via SMS
| absolutely suck because they were designed for 2004 era
| quality standards.
|
| I agree RCS will stay green. It will have text, good
| quality media, maybe read receipts.
|
| And that's it. No E2EE or other extensions. Apple is
| fixing one issue (bad media quality) and taking away a
| disingenuous Google talking point. Perhaps this is also
| an argument to legislators that they don't need to open
| iMessage.
|
| They're never going to go out of their way to make it
| preferable in any way.
| eitally wrote:
| Media quality would be a start, at least. The only other
| thing I'd love for them to "fix" is the inability to add
| non-iPhone users to existing group chats. With those two
| things I -- and probably most Android users -- would be
| at a "don't care, this is good enough for me" state.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| You can "add" SMS users to iMessage groups, if the group
| consists entirely of phone numbers and you're on a device
| that supports SMS.
|
| The newly created SMS group doesn't _replace_ the thread
| associated with the original group, though, so it's easy
| for the group to fork when this happens.
|
| Unlikely this will change with RCS.
| spike021 wrote:
| I live in America and literally nobody I know cares about
| this.
|
| Unfortunately I think it's just the typical remnant of
| the old Mac vs Windows haters who come out of the
| woodwork online to make it sound like a problem.
| devilbunny wrote:
| I care, actually a fair bit, but only because I work in a
| building that has two areas that are complete dead zones
| for cellular reception, and our IT department blocks WiFi
| calling (but not iMessage data). Blue bubbles can message
| me in those areas; green cannot.
|
| It's not at all unusual for my phone to explode in
| dinging when I leave one of those areas.
|
| I wish they didn't block WiFi calling, because my
| cellular reception at home isn't great, and I'd use it
| there. We have an internal WiFi network separate from the
| public one, with per-user authentication, so you don't
| have to worry about visitors overloading the
| infrastructure (it's a hospital, lots of families and
| patients in addition to the staff).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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.
| devilbunny wrote:
| 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 anyone from the app. On iOS,
| not so much.
|
| I'd stay away from Whatsapp just to keep away from Meta.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > 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.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It _is_ prejudiced. I assume Meta is going to make me the
| product.
|
| Signal does E2EE. They have not yet done anything to
| jeopardize the trust they have earned. Some do not like
| them, and that's fine. I have a different view.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Apple is right now making you the product in a way that
| limits your privacy, telling other people that they have
| to buy an apple device if they want encrypted
| communications with you.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is using Signal on iOS not as secure as using it on
| Android?
| eitally wrote:
| 1. Kids care about it. Why? Because you can use iMessage
| via iPad without needing a phone number, and this is how
| lots of tweens get started with messaging.
|
| 2. Any Android users with iPhone friends trying to use
| iMessage for group chat cares about it. It's impossible
| to add Android users to an existing group chat... and any
| time you have a mixed iPhone + Android group chat it
| degrades a number of the iMessage group chat features
| normally accessible to iPhone users.
|
| 3. Any Android users receiving media over SMS/MMS from an
| iPhone user cares. They'll be receiving images & videos
| that look like they were shot with a potato.
|
| The blue vs green _color_ doesn 't matter, but the
| effects mixed platform chatting has on both iPhone &
| Android users is significant.
| rezonant wrote:
| These are fantastic points, all of which I have
| personally experienced as an Android user with many
| iPhone family members.
|
| Apple adopting RCS won't solve #1, and is unlikely to
| solve #2, but solving #3 is a great start, and if the
| Apple faithful continue to give feedback to Apple that
| they care about fixing #2, we might see it one day.
| eitally wrote:
| I agree. Solving #3 is terrific (because it frequently
| bites you when the sender is someone you don't know
| particularly well... certainly not well enough to ask
| them to resend using a third party messaging app). I
| don't really care about #1, although I guess Google's
| answer would be "use Chat", which is absolutely
| ridiculous since it no longer has an interface to SMS/RCS
| like Hangouts did. This is a gaping hole in their product
| strategy, imho. #2 _could_ be solved by Apple if they
| want to, or else we 'll just continue to struggle along
| with a need for several different messaging apps for
| different social contexts. It's not like Whatsapp,
| Telegram, Signal, etc don't work.
|
| Another solution Google could perhaps pursue would be to
| license one or multiple of those to include in the
| default Android install, but I don't see that happening
| without regulatory interference.
| badwolf wrote:
| I have a feeling with the EU's DMA this will just become
| more prevalent with every messaging platform forced to
| "open up"
|
| FB Messenger will have a "green bubble" for messages to
| people using whatever other app they're forced to
| integrate. Same with Whatsapp, Telegram, etc...
| sbrother wrote:
| I care. It's fucking annoying when someone joins a group
| chat on Android and all of a sudden I can no longer
| access it from my computer, iPad or over WiFi.
| gsich wrote:
| Yes. In Europe it's common to use superior text messages
| like Signal. Even Whatsapp is better than iMessage.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Because everyone uses WhatsApp, because Apple did not
| reach enough market share early enough to push iMessage.
| That's lucky, I don't think europeans would be less
| susceptible to this kind of psychological manipulation.
| kccqzy wrote:
| To be frank, a lot of my WhatsApp-using friends were very
| upset that it was bought by Facebook. Fortunately they
| generally transitioned to Signal or Telegram, not
| iMessage due to significant Android market share.
| Angostura wrote:
| I suspect Apple will still allow fallback to SMS and green
| bubbles, iMessage will be blue ansd RCS will be a new
| colour
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| The important thing (to me) isn't the bubble color, but
| that conversations between Android and iOS users with RCS
| won't degrade media down to Game Boy Color quality. At
| least, that's what I hope the outcome of this move is.
| gumby wrote:
| Yeah, I assume SMS, RCS and iMessage messages will have
| different colors, like green, red, and blue.
|
| RCS is such carrier-dependent crap.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| > I hope the GSM association moves fast to make robust E2EE a
| standard required for proper implementation for carriers.
|
| This is pretty moot now. Google has effectively turned RCS into
| a proprietary protocol, they fully control the only relevant
| server implementation, carriers that want to interconnect have
| no choice but to deploy Jibe or use Jibe as a service.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This could possibly open an avenue for another party to show
| up around this. Google de facto having reign on this is
| because they're the only company in this space that cared
| enough about it to get it moving.
|
| Apple supporting RCS could create enough interest that it
| breaks their de facto control of the standard
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Yes maybe. While I understand Google's frustration, the
| number of carriers that implemented Universal Profile
| independently was not zero though, and in the end it was
| for nothing.
|
| I know from a friend that Facebook was looking into
| integrating RCS to Messenger (not Whatsapp somehow) and
| willing to be part of the Google federated RCS network,
| that also fell through, but I don't why.
| rezonant wrote:
| What would that look like? Do you mean having Messenger
| be the default SMS app for your phone, and having it able
| to receive RCS? If so, these restrictions in Android
| would stop it:
| https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/ims-single-
| regi...
|
| I've been trying to gain some insight on why Google is
| not making it easy (possible?) to implement a third-party
| RCS app for Android and was reading about these APIs
| (clearly intended for OEMs).
|
| > This means that third party apps aren't allowed to
| access RCS single registration APIs as they require
| carrier certification on the device.
|
| Could just be Google passing the buck here, but this does
| sound like something the carriers would do, if given the
| chance.
| kcb wrote:
| Apple implementing RCS will surely be a major change to that.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| I doubt it. I see no reason for Apple to get involved in
| the self-inflicted mess between carriers and Google.
|
| Working against a single server implementation with a
| standardized client provisioning mechanism is much easier
| too.
| 310260 wrote:
| > the only relevant server implementation
|
| That's not true. Mavenir offers an RCS platform that T-Mobile
| has been using up until recently. A renewed interest in RCS
| due to Apple supporting it might end up with their platform
| being more sellable.
|
| https://www.lightreading.com/mobile-core/mavenir-t-mobile-
| co...
| hocuspocus wrote:
| You're proving my point. T-Mobile had to switch to Jibe.
|
| I work at a carrier that deployed a solution provided by
| WIT. Then around 2019-2020 Google decided they weren't
| interested in an open and interconnected RCS backend
| anymore.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Reactions aren't in RCS? I thought that was one of the main
| motivators for it.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I thought the primary motivation for RCS was E2EE and
| secondary motivations were niceties like read receipts,
| reactions and HQ media. So far this thread has been very
| illuminating and shocking to me. Especially E2EE being an
| extension to a standard not a core part of it in 2023.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Hopefully vendors start putting better fallback into their
| messaging clients when RCS isn't available.
|
| It's been terrible for all the poor people I know who rarely
| have working data on their phones, but RCS enabled by default.
| They can't figure out why they're not sending or receiving any
| messages and I have to keep disabling it for them.
| tredre3 wrote:
| If you turn off RCS, Google Messages shows you a full screen
| prompt once a week to turn it back on. Indefinitely.
|
| And of course the prompt has a large blue button to enable,
| and a very small text underneath to dismiss, making it easy
| to accidentally enable it. It happened to me a few times
| already.
|
| It also tells you nothing about the downsides (that you need
| a data connection, mainly) that would make RCS unusable to
| certain people... So they trick users into subscribing then
| users begin experiencing difficulties receiving or sending
| texts and they don't understand why.
|
| Thank you, Google.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you turn off RCS, Google Messages shows you a full
| screen prompt once a week to turn it back on. Indefinitely.
|
| It doesn't do this on my phones.
| doctor_radium wrote:
| Indeed. Currently using an Android 13 Motorola until my
| Sony is fixed. It's not labeled RCS, but one of the first
| things I did was disable Messages Settings -> Chat
| Features -> Enable chat features - Use WiFi or data for
| messaging when available ...which disabled a bunch of
| other things. While I don't recall what appeared
| originally, the Send button for messages is labeled
| either SMS or MMS, so I suppose that did the trick. No
| nagging.
|
| I did just find and disable the RCS Config Service, too,
| and testing that everything still works.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The problem with developers is that we are often isolated
| from whole sections of the world. The people on the Android
| team, probably working in SF, have perhaps never been into
| the hood. Out here there are guys on every street corner
| stood next to the drug dealers (often it's the same guy)
| trying to get you to take a free smartphone or a tablet.
| They get paid some sort of kickback if they can get you to
| take it -- it comes from this free federal plan:
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-
| cons...
|
| The problem is that the phones generally only come with
| 15GB of data a month, and an average web page can easily
| run to 200MB now, so usually by the third day of the month
| they are all out of data.
|
| There is a better federal plan for poor people called ACP
| which allows you to get your own phone and plan, but it
| isn't as well-known.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Huh? I rarely use more than 2GB/month...
| notpushkin wrote:
| > and an average web page can easily run to 200MB now
|
| Wait, what? How did it come to that? I thought it was
| more like 50 MB if not even less. Thank God we have ad
| blockers.
|
| > guys on every street corner trying to get you to take a
| free smartphone or a tablet with 15GB of data a month
|
| Would it be possible to get it as a tourist?
| qingcharles wrote:
| As a tourist? No. You need to give your national ID
| (Social Security Number) to the salespeople so they can
| check you are receiving some sort of government
| assistance already.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm curious how you can have a phone connection but not a
| data connection in 2023. I don't think that's happened to
| me since the days of Edge. Is this a weird American thing?
| Do you guys still have 2G?
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Breaking: Apple will support RCS - the green bubble shame set
| to end_
|
| Note that the green bubble could be kept for other reasons: RCS
| is a major improvement over SMS/MMS, but there could still be
| functionality that isn't on par with a completely in-house system
| like 'iMessage'.
|
| The green/blue distinction may still be useful for setting
| certain expectations on how things work.
| TechRemarker wrote:
| Yeah definetly would not expect it to be blue as 9 to 5 noted
| how Apple mentioned it won't be as secure as iMessage and
| iMessage will be separate. So presumably people texting will
| still want to know if they see blue they get full privacy where
| is if they see green or a new color it means yes they get lots
| of new features like iMessage, but not as secure as iMessage.
| But the green bubble (or whatever new color) will be less
| shameful, if users in general can group chat and chat easily
| without worrying about not being able to do most all the
| standard features they can with other iPhone users. Time will
| tell.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| "Privacy" is not the reason a lot of people comment on green
| text bubbles. It's status. That's it.
|
| If they truly cared about sec, they would use something like
| Signal.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Both Signal and iMessage are E2EE, SMS is not.
|
| Why do you feel Signal is better security wise?
| sneak wrote:
| iMessage, in practice, is not e2ee as devices escrow
| their "Messages in iCloud" cross-device sync keys to
| Apple in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup.
|
| Even if you turn on e2ee for iCloud ("Advanced Data
| Protection"), your endpoint keys will stop being escrowed
| in a way readable to Apple in your backup, but the
| endpoint keys for everyone you message with will still be
| escrowed because _they_ have not enabled Advanced Data
| Protection (because it's off by default), so Apple will
| still be able to read all of your iMessage traffic.
|
| 99.9%+ of iMessages pass through Apple servers encrypted
| with keys that Apple has copies of (thanks to the
| insecure non-e2ee default nature of iCloud Backup). If
| the middle transit service has the private keys, it's not
| e2ee.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think it's become status, but there are genuine reasons
| as to why people don't like "green bubbles" in their chats.
| SMS breaks a lot of functionality that iMessage provides in
| group chats.
|
| I don't expect Apple to graduate RCS to a blue bubble, as
| it's advantageous to keep the blue bubble "special". I'll
| be interested to see if society adapts and starts treating
| whatever RCS gets categorized as as "acceptable" or if
| we're too far down the classism path for that to happen.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Unfortunately Signal makes it hard to backup photos people
| send you, and I know a few people who lost all their Signal
| chats and photos after switching phones (including myself).
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| If carriers can charge per RCS message like they do with
| SMS/MMS, usually after X amount used a month, Apple needs to
| make it a different color from iMessages which they provide for
| free.
|
| People have to know if they are using free iMessages when
| talking to other people or if they are using up their
| SMS/MMS/RCS quota.
|
| Edit: Maybe charging for SMSs is not a thing in your country
| but it is in mine. If I see a green bubble I would be mindful
| of the number of messages I send because after 200 SMSs I going
| to get charged per SMS.
| ephimetheus wrote:
| Or if you frequently message people in other countries where
| they charge you who knows what
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Charging for SMS is a thing on some plans here in Brazil, but
| I don't know in other countries, RCS works completely for
| free as it works even on Wifi. You don't need mobile data or
| SMS plans.
|
| If you are on mobile data, it just doesn't use your quota...
| wtmt wrote:
| Here in India the plans do include free SMS, but there _was_
| a government imposed limit of _200 SMSes per day from a
| single SIM_ (this applied to retail consumers, not
| institutions that may want to send transactional or marketing
| messages). [1][2] Beyond that, the per SMS charge gets
| expensive. Though that limit seems to have been removed in
| 2020, [3] I've only seen plans that allow 100 SMSes per day.
|
| Almost everyone in India with a smartphone uses WhatsApp. SMS
| is for receiving OTPs, transaction messages, marketing
| messages, spam, phishing messages, etc.
|
| [1]: https://trai.gov.in/notifications/press-release/trai-
| extends...
|
| [2]: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/200-sms-
| per-day...
|
| [3]: https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-
| techn...
| hedora wrote:
| I hope they continue the green bubble shaming. Apparently RCS (at
| least as implemented in practice) still doesn't support end to
| end encryption.
|
| In particular, they should color messages green if they can be
| forged by intermediaries / collected for bulk surveillance / used
| for ad targeting / sold to third parties by your carrier / etc.
| apienx wrote:
| Google ran a clever "Time for SMS to exit the chat" campaign some
| time ago. Might have helped precipitate this decision.
| https://youtu.be/N_B0riy__rw?si=C-gDkNbmb3MFyWao
|
| Telcos live in the Stone Age. A little disruption is well
| overdue.
| danieldk wrote:
| Unlikely. This is most likely due to regulatory pressure of the
| EU. The Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act both hit
| Apple pretty hard.
|
| Though the real losers here are potentially WhatsApp, Telegram
| and other third-party services (assuming that Apple will
| implement E2E encryption). Since iPhone is not as dominant in
| other countries as the US, WhatsApp and some other messaging
| services have become dominant outside the US. They are not
| really necessary anymore once there is a proper standard across
| platforms.
| apienx wrote:
| Right. They started investigating iMessage a couple of months
| back. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/6/23861030/imessage-
| bing-eur...
| lxgr wrote:
| Telcos should be utilities. They supply the pipes that deliver
| services and applications.
|
| RCS is unfortunately a step backwards from that idea.
|
| And regarding Google's motivations for that campaign: They have
| acquired a company offering RCS services to telcos and
| marketers... https://jibe.google.com/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Telcos live in the Stone Age. A little disruption is well
| overdue.
|
| I thought RCS was still a Telco-based service? Don't you have
| to have a telephone number to use it, at least? I keep hoping
| we go away from POTS, instead of continuing to invent reasons
| to be stuck with it.
| system16 wrote:
| > This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be
| the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users,"
| said an Apple spokesperson.
|
| I could be wrong but I don't see anything here to suggest non-
| iMessages will no longer have the "green bubble" like the author
| assumes.
| rconti wrote:
| agreed, in fact I suspect it'll remain a green bubble for
| "insecure" but at least more features will be supported.
| collegeburner wrote:
| it will remain green, which means the signaling effect will
| also remain. the funny thing is everyone claims it's down to
| quality but guessing it won't matter, plus no 8ball/facetime
| will still push people towards iphones.
|
| especially w young ppl, where i think like 90% have iphones. if
| i had a nickel for every time a gal mentioned green bubbles
| give her the ick, i wouldn't be rich but could probably buy a
| solid steak dinner off it.
| thedaly wrote:
| > green bubbles give her the ick
|
| I mean, I guess I would be grateful to have such an earlier
| indicator that someone is not worth pursuing. Truly, who
| cares.
| filoleg wrote:
| It's not that they would reject you if they already had
| some sort of a connection formed with you or that they
| consider having "green bubbles"to be an absolute
| dealbreaker. But if you have 5 similarly good on paper
| dating candidates, you are in the very initial stage of the
| process with them, and you need to narrow down the list, I
| don't think it is that unreasonable to do so based on "the
| ease of texting." You gotta narrow down somehow, and if
| doing so based on "green bubbles" eliminates 1-2 max out of
| 5 in the very initial stage, it is kind of a not that
| terrible of a metric. If it was eliminating half or more,
| it would be a bit more questionable.
|
| Of course, eliminating someone for "green bubbles" after
| you had already developed some interest in is way too much
| and is indeed a trait that would make one not worth
| pursuing.
| thedaly wrote:
| Are you serious? You think that the brand of mobile
| device a potential suitor uses is a good metric to
| eliminate candidates?
| ishtanbul wrote:
| this is a very real and powerful force that apple has
| shrewdly monetized
| panzagl wrote:
| Unfortunately you'd be eating that dinner by yourself....
| collegeburner wrote:
| Jesus right for the throat
|
| i didn't say they were directed at me
| scosman wrote:
| Green: iMessage
|
| Blue: RCS
|
| <blink>Red</blink>: SMS/MMS
| pb7 wrote:
| There is zero chance they're going to change iMessage to
| green. RCS will be green because anything other than iMessage
| is "other".
| FactolSarin wrote:
| I wonder if there will be a third color, maybe purple?
| MBCook wrote:
| I suspect "work alongside" is in that sentence to make it clear
| they are not _replacing_ iMessage.
|
| I agree with you that they're likely to have green bubbles.
| Green equals not iMessage, blue equals iMessage. It seems
| unlikely they would introduce a third color and it would never
| be blue because it doesn't support all the same features.
| signal11 wrote:
| What's the story around e2e encryption on RCS these days? In the
| past there were a few countries that didn't allow it, no idea if
| that has changed.
|
| Also, will iMessage support for RCS include e2ee?
| faet wrote:
| Apple will be pushing for RCS/Carriers to adopt e2e, but it'll
| probably just flag green/notify users that messages are not
| encrypted.
| lxgr wrote:
| Anything that needs the participation of every carrier on the
| planet is doomed from the get-go.
| threeseed wrote:
| As someone who has worked for two carriers Apple, Google etc
| have little clout.
|
| Governments and their intelligence organisations are what
| matters.
|
| And countries like UK will be pushing as hard as possible to
| make E2EE optional.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The current status iirc is that Google built its own e2e
| solutions in Android Messages, first for one-on-one
| conversations and as of August 2023 for group chats as well.
| They released technical papers but I don't think the
| implementations are part of the official spec. I think this
| section is basically Apple saying that they are going to push
| for that standardization:
|
| > Finally, Apple says it will work with the GSMA members on
| ways to further improve the RCS protocol. This particularly
| includes improving the security and encryption of RCS messages.
|
| I doubt anything has changed since 2020 in terms of China,
| Cuba, Iran or Russia but I couldn't find any news one way or
| the other
| danieldk wrote:
| The good news is that Google's E2E solution is the Signal
| protocol:
|
| https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf?sj.
| ..
| tapoxi wrote:
| There's a new IETF standard Google has been implementing. It's
| up to Apple to adopt it.
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9420/
| threeseed wrote:
| > RFC - Proposed Standard (July 2023)
|
| Proposed.
|
| And it's both ridiculous and sad that in 2023 we are going to
| see a messaging standard without E2EE built into the spec.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Well it was submitted five years ago, that's the speed of
| standardization sometimes.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| TLS and SSH are Proposed Standards also. The next step is
| Internet Standard. HTTP was promoted to Internet Standard
| last year.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Basically N/A
| throw0101a wrote:
| Is there E2EE in the actual RCS specification? Can there be,
| given that telcos are usually subject to lawful intercept laws?
|
| AIUI, what Google/Android does is have their own extension, with
| the Content-Type of the message being
| "application/vnd.google.rcs.encrypted":
|
| * https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
|
| This is kind of like, with (E)SMTP/IMAP, having your own
| capability of "X-GOOG-ENCRYPT" if the standards-based "STARTTLS"
| was not around.
|
| So while RCS gives many other improvement over SMS/MMS,
| encryption is not one of them.
|
| (Personally I have an iPhone, but don't conect 'iMessage', and
| generally stick with SMS/MMS.)
| Andrex wrote:
| The MLS protocol proposed by Google provides a cross platform
| path to E2EE.
|
| https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/google-messages-getting-cr...
| a2dam wrote:
| There isn't E2EE in the RCS spec, but there's in-transit TLS
| encryption
| jvolkman wrote:
| STARTTLS is client-to-server (or at least node-to-node). RCS
| node-to-node is already always encrypted.
|
| E2EE is like both sending and receiving parties agreeing to use
| PGP. The servers aren't involved with the details; they just
| move the opaque bytes.
| jmull wrote:
| > the green bubble shame set to end
|
| I'm betting the non-Apple bubbles will remain green... and remain
| a bit stigmatized.
|
| It was never about the resolution of pictures and even technical
| limitations around group chat was just part of it. It's a social
| thing and the technical protocol is incidental.
|
| Dr. Seuss probably explained it best in The Sneetches.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| > It was never about the resolution of pictures and even
| technical limitations around group chat was just part of it.
|
| It can be about both. It's really nice to know when the images
| you sent are gonna be potato-quality and you need to find some
| other channel to send them, or that message reliability and
| capabilities in general are being limited to SMS (or RCS!)
| levels. I don't give a shit about the social aspects, it's
| valuable as a UI affordance.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I love when people comment on the color of a text message. It
| makes it real easy to know who to block, because they worry
| about entirely the wrong things.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| There's no one to block, you just won't be included when the
| groupchat is setup. Big problem for teens.
| ryandvm wrote:
| I dunno. Sounds like being left out of those groups is a
| net positive.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah it kinda makes me want to get my kids Android
| phones.
| toast0 wrote:
| Personally, I'm happy to be left out of those, groupchat
| via MMS is awful. But then I'm not a teen, and when I was a
| teen, I was happy to be left out of a lot of things too.
| filoleg wrote:
| > I'm happy to be left out of those, groupchat via MMS is
| awful
|
| So are most people who prefer iMessage over MMS (aka
| "green bubbles"), which is kind of the point.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| That may be the difference. I'm far removed from my teenage
| years.
| jmull wrote:
| If you socially exclude someone because they care about the
| color of text message bubbles, don't you care at least as
| much as they do?
|
| More, probably, because if they just mention it and you block
| them, that's disproportionate.
| filoleg wrote:
| > If you socially exclude someone because they care about
| the color of text message bubbles, don't you care at least
| as much as they do?
|
| The grandparent comment is talking about excluding people
| for wasting their time going on rants about message bubble
| colors, not about excluding those with a "wrong" message
| bubble color.
|
| And no, caring about not having to waste time on listening
| to someone who cares entirely too much about message bubble
| colors doesn't mean that you care as much as they do about
| it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I hate racists and hating racists doesnt make me a bad
| person.
|
| I hate people who judge others based on $1000 dollar Veblen
| goods. Also I make more money than them, so I'm very aware
| that the person who cares about bubbles is being exploited
| by Apple's psychology and marketing department. So... maybe
| I don't hate them, maybe we should feel sorry for them.
|
| Or maybe we need to hate them because its a deterrent
| against corporations exploiting insecurities.
| jmull wrote:
| First, just an aside: you don't have to hate anyone. It
| doesn't make you a bad person to hate others, but you
| could be living better, that's for sure. The thing is, it
| usually mainly impacts the hater, making them unhappy and
| angry.
|
| But your analogy doesn't fit here... the issue with blue
| and green bubbles is the social pressure to have the
| "better" bubble color, to show you're part of the
| "better" group. That is, the negative social pressure
| comes from the threat of social exclusion via lower
| social standing. But the previous poster is also
| threatening social exclusion, but a more complete
| exclusion, and based on nearly the same thing. So it
| would be more like showing your objection to racism by
| expressing racist ideas or taking racist actions. Doesn't
| make sense, of course. That's my point.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I have a hard time understanding if this actually
| matters.
|
| Maybe because I'm good looking and make a lot of money, I
| don't have to care about green bubbles?
|
| Maybe this is important if you are a poor person.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| The previous poster made a decision to exclude based on
| the other party's actions, namely giving someone shit
| about the color of a text box.. lol
|
| Why would I want to burden myself with clowns like that?
|
| I wear clothes because they are comfortable and look
| nice. I don't wear clothes because of the branding and
| those that are overly concerned about the branding, would
| be the same.
|
| Edit: also, I'm now apparently the same ilk as racists,
| since I choose not to deal with idiots that worry about
| the color of text boxes. That's cool.
| jmull wrote:
| > also, I'm now apparently the same ilk as racists
|
| Where is that claim made?
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Right here:
|
| "So it would be more like showing your objection to
| racism by expressing racist ideas or taking racist
| actions"
|
| This is stating that, for example, if you dislike racists
| and choose not to associate with them, you're acting like
| a racist. lol
|
| That's not racism...at all. It's not even bigotry. The
| choice is based on actions, not class, religion, color,
| etc.
| jmull wrote:
| I don't think you're following the thread correctly. I
| guess re-read it, if you want to understand what is being
| said (probably a waste of time though).
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| I love the non-rebuttal, followed by immediate dismissal.
| lol
|
| ok..
| jmull wrote:
| Your response doesn't address the content of the thread
| coherently. What else can I say? We need to actually be
| talking about the same things to have a discussion.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| No, because my action is based on their behavior, and
| shitty attitude, not the color of their text messages.
|
| I do not care what color the message is. If I could read
| it, mission accomplished. People who worry about the color
| of an SMS are not folks I care to deal with. They are
| overly concerned about the wrong shit.
| 0x0 wrote:
| The moment you have a contact from any other country than your
| own, you'll quickly learn that green = huge carrier fees and
| blue = free texting that even works on wifi with data roaming
| off. Quadruply so for group chats.
| nerdix wrote:
| Yes, there is no way they give up Green vs Blue. I'm sure
| they'll make up some excuse why it makes sense to keep the
| distinction.
|
| But the reality is that the Millennial and Gen Z bubble culture
| has been a big driver behind their market share increase in the
| US. And if Gen Alpha adopts the same culture (and doesn't rebel
| against norms created by prior generations like young people
| tend to do) then Apple will have a near monopoly in in the US
| in 15 years.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| "Nah, green bubble is a point of pride. You didn't fall for
| Apple's marketing tricks, you are the edgy person who Thinks
| Different." This concept alone will make it so it never
| reaches 100%.
|
| Not to mention, Apple's security is so terrible, I imagine
| corporations are going to be banning iphones. Its never going
| to be a monopoly or a near monopoly.
|
| Apple's positioning is targeted to people who buy Veblen
| goods. As long as there is a market for phones that are high
| quality, Apple will never get a 'near' monopoly.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| >>It was never about the resolution of pictures and even
| technical limitations
|
| Sure, to some degree, but I'm not convinced all or most of the
| shame is only the iphone cachet -- the quality is incredibly
| bad, like shockingly bad. It's unusable, particularly for
| videos. As those things change, I can't help but feel like the
| shame moderates.
|
| But I don't have a teenager, so I don't have that perspective
| first hand.
| 8note wrote:
| I could see apple still downscaling and compressing videos
| and pictures that don't come from apple devices
| MBCook wrote:
| They're not doing it to be evil. They're following the MMS
| standard that was designed for phones released in like
| 2004.
|
| That's just the quality of pictures/video MMS carries.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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...
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| > but I don't see them mandating bubble color
|
| I personally see no limit to what arbitrary nonsense regulation
| the EU is willing to push.
| bloppe wrote:
| The EU is interested in fair competition. Apple has managed
| to provide a terrible cross-platform messaging experience to
| their own customers for years while successfully convincing
| everyone that the problem is due to every other phone besides
| theirs. I agree it's almost comical, but it certainly affects
| competition in a negative way.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| I don't buy this. Customers needed no convincing from
| Apple. Even where iOS isn't dominant they saw their dropped
| and expensive SMS/RCS messages and picked up whatsapp.
| bloppe wrote:
| I'm mostly just talking about the noxious white-on-green
| color they chose for cross-platform chat bubbles. It's a
| great example of hostile architecture. RCS fixes the cost
| / reliability problems of SMS, so that annoying color
| choice will be the only thing they have left to make
| imessage users feel superior.
| sbuk wrote:
| Historically, SMS messages have had green bubbles since
| the iPhone was introduced in 2007. When Apple introduced
| iMessage in 2011, the showed iMessages in blue, and
| maintained the green for SMS messages. They are not
| "cross-platform" messages, Messages only does SMS and
| iMessage. If you did some reading, instead of getting
| upset over the longstanding colour of a chat message,
| you'd know this and not be so angry. Or, like th rest of
| the world, you would already be using an alternative.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| https://css-tricks.com/apple-messages-color-contrast/
| Anechoic wrote:
| > RCS fixes the cost / reliability problems of SMS,
|
| It doesn't fix the end to end encryption problem unless
| google opens up their system.
| bloppe wrote:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/16/apples-flavor-
| of-...
|
| Huh, pleasantly surprised Apple is taking up the mantle
| on something cross-platform. Nice.
| cubefox wrote:
| You are misunderstanding the function of RCS as making
| different message services compatible. iMessage doesn't
| exist on Android, hence the necessity of an open
| protocol.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The problem is that RCS has completely failed at making
| even different RCS servers compatible.
|
| Carriers like AT&T and Vodafone that were early to adopt
| RCS never even managed to interoperate with other RCS
| carriers - you could only send RCS to other AT&T
| subscribers, or other Vodafone subscribers. Then they all
| gave up and just adopted Google's servers. So now RCS
| just means "Google Jibe".
|
| It's a failed standard. It never worked.
| etchalon wrote:
| I think the system should delineate between messages sent
| through different services. Maybe we'll end up with three
| colors (green == sms/mms, blue = iMessage, purple == rcs)
| wombat-man wrote:
| Sms will be green, RCS a different shade of puke green.
| MBCook wrote:
| I don't know, that seems overly complicated and I don't think
| Apple would want to do that.
|
| I think they're quite happy with "iMessage" and "everything
| else".
|
| RCS will stay in the second bucket with the same green color.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Agreed. They wouldn't give RCS the attention by making it a
| special color. They want people to use iMessage.
| lxgr wrote:
| They don't need to. Almost nobody uses iMessage in the EU,
| since everybody is on WhatsApp.
| smartbit wrote:
| More than 10% of europeans use iMessage, enough for EU
| Digital Market Act to force Apple to adopt RCS and thereby
| trying to circumvent opening iMessage itself
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| If iMessage gets declared a gatekeeper, RCS wouldn't be
| enough. Not all iMessage users can send/receive RCS or SMS.
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| > Not all iMessage users can send/receive RCS or SMS.
|
| What do you mean? If Apple includes RCS like they did SMS
| then it would operate as follows:
|
| Is target an iPhone with iMessage enabled? Yes? Use
| iMessage. No? Fallback to RCS. RCS doesn't work? Fallback
| to SMS.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| I'm not sure it would follow. as part of the act is to
| allow other apps to request interop in these services
| like iMessage or WhatsApp.
|
| But I guess it was worth to try this instead of directly
| opening iMessage for interop, for business reasons.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Your carrier would have to support RCS, right? Do any EU
| carriers do that?
|
| Even carriers that supported RCS, like Vodafone, have
| shut it down https://9to5google.com/2023/03/27/vodafone-
| rcs-messages-andr...
|
| Apple won't make the iPhone fall back to sending RCS
| though Google servers (like Android does) if there isn't
| carrier support for it, they'll just say "there is no RCS
| support on your carrier" and go for SMS.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| iPads can do iMessage. iPhones with no phone plan can do
| iMessage. iPod Touches, used to be the cheap messaging
| devices for kids before phone plans became more
| widespread. Macbooks. Those cannot send or recieve
| SMS/RCS.
| criddell wrote:
| It will be interesting to see what color they choose for RCS.
| Right now, blue indicates an end-to-end encrypted message and
| green indicates not encrypted. Even when messaging between two
| Apple devices you can get a green bubble if, for some reason,
| the message is routed over SMS.
|
| If it were up to me, encrypted RCS would be blue and not-
| encrypted RCS would be green.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Why do you think that blue represents E2EE and not simply
| iMessage? If data isn't available and the iPhone sends an
| SMS, like you mentioned, the bubble is green, but this
| doesn't necessarily have anything to do with encryption. For
| example, the satellite SOS messages are represented as gray.
| It seems more like the color represents the transport.
| X-Istence wrote:
| Because blue means iMessage and iMessage means E2EE.
|
| Grey and Green means not encrypted. Simple.
| criddell wrote:
| Gray is encrypted to Apple, and then the information is
| (of course) shared with third parties. Would you consider
| that to be a private communication? Kind of. It's a gray
| area...
| nielsbot wrote:
| C'mon...
| danaris wrote:
| That's your own interpretation of it.
|
| You could say "blue means it supports link embedding;
| green means it doesn't" and it would be just as true.
|
| Personally, I strongly suspect that Apple views it as
| "blue means Apple; green means NIH."
| kbf wrote:
| Green means cellular, blue means internet. This same
| color distinction is used in other places in the UI, such
| as control center and settings.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Nope, it means SMS vs iMessage specifically.
|
| > If you see a green message bubble instead of a blue
| one, then that message was sent using MMS/SMS instead of
| iMessage.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/105087
|
| > iMessages are texts, photos, or videos that you send to
| another iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac over Wi-Fi or
| cellular-data networks. These messages are always
| encrypted and appear in blue text bubbles.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207006
| mappu wrote:
| MMS is email-style MIME messages retrieved over HTTP on a
| data connection. Push notifications for MMS are delivered
| as a special SMS, but otherwise it's far far closer to
| internet than cellular, and it's green.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Years ago iMessage was not E2EE and it was already
| blue...
| willseth wrote:
| Does E2EE RCS even exist, or is that just Google bolting E2EE
| over RCS for users of their specific Messages app?
| criddell wrote:
| Google added it.
|
| I can't imagine all of the carriers cooperating on key
| management. That's probably why some carriers have opted to
| use Google's solution instead of their own. I would guess
| encryption isn't an option if your carrier isn't in this
| group.
|
| FWIW, the 350+ page standard is here:
| https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/...
| willseth wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| 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.
| willseth wrote:
| 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!
| code_duck wrote:
| I've had a couple girlfriends in their 40s mildly judge me
| negatively for having an Android phone, but someone who would
| take that seriously enough for it to affect their relationship
| decisions is someone I'd rather not be involved with. Maybe it
| would be better to text people with a "beater" Android phone as
| a test for how shallow they may be, like the semi-cliche of a
| financially well-off person driving an old truck to a first
| date vs their fancy car.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| It has nothing to do with finances. You can buy a perfectly
| good used iPhone for less than $100. It has to do with taste.
| Not wanting to date a guy with an Android phone is like not
| wanting to date a guy because he's a Weaboo.
| code_duck wrote:
| Based on what I've read on reddit/lemmy lately, some people
| still have the impression iPhones have an air of
| exclusivity from being more expensive. I agree that of
| course this isn't true, though perhaps it was 12 years ago.
|
| As far as your second point, well... I guess that's
| precisely the attitude I was addressing. I definitely don't
| agree that a phone brand is as strong an indicator of
| personality traits as the example you offer. If I was say,
| hiring a UI designer, I'd perhaps care about their choice
| of OS. For relationships, I don't really care if they're
| passionate about mobile phones. I understand that most of
| us on HN are keyed in to tech and UI. The average person,
| though, sees a phone as a utilitarian item, and owns one as
| a means to accomplish specific tasks. That way of thinking
| is like, if someone was a mechanic and thought poorly of a
| someone they met because they drove a Ford instead of a
| Mazda and the mechanic believed Mazda had more elegant
| engine designs.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| I think you should read the Steve Jobs biography by
| Walter Isaacson
| code_duck wrote:
| What would that change my mind about? Would you mind
| explaining why you think I need to read it or what that's
| related to?
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Steve Jobs invented the iPhone
| Tommstein wrote:
| > . . . some people still have the impression iPhones
| have an air of exclusivity from being more expensive.
|
| iPhones: so exclusive that hordes of unemployed teenagers
| have them.
| mig39 wrote:
| Honestly, if I were a girl, and a guy was mansplaining to
| me why Android was better than iOS, I wouldn't want to date
| them either.
| throw0101b wrote:
| >> _The EU may mandate interoperability, but I don 't see
| them mandating bubble color..._
|
| > _I've had a couple girlfriends in their 40s mildly judge me
| negatively for having an Android phone_ [...]
|
| I have an iPhone but don't tie it into Apple services so
| every fellow iPhone users have green-bubble interactions with
| me. :)
|
| Over the years/decades I've lived through ICQ, MSN Messenger,
| BBM, and probably some other proprietary systems. I've
| managed to avoid tying into any of them so far.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| > I've had a couple girlfriends in their 40s mildly judge me
| negatively for having an Android phone
|
| That's ridiculous!
| westmeal wrote:
| I thought this bubble color thing was a joke but is it
| seriously something women look at? Why?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| photos/videos get highly compressed, you can't share live
| location, don't share the typing status, don't have
| reactions, stickers, the list goes on
| cubefox wrote:
| Clearly Apple intentionally resisted RCS for ten years for
| exactly this reason. Anticompetitive behavior.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's not something anyone worth your time looks at, nor
| something most people look at.
| redox99 wrote:
| In the EU people use WhatsApp (not SMS) anyways.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Is there a sunset timeline for SMS? No service lasts forever and
| if Apple knows carriers will want to turn it off sometime they'd
| have to get on board with the RCS sooner rather than too late.
| freedomben wrote:
| Apple is big enough that they could make the carriers keep SMS.
| If a carrier tried to remove it and break "compatibility" with
| the iPhone, Apple would block that carrier from having iPhones
| altogether, which would decimate that carriers business. So
| through a causative chain, Apple could force carriers to keep
| SMS.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) Apple doesn't decide whether carriers keep SMS.
| Governments do.
|
| b) Apple won't stop users from using a particular carrier
| because of commercial considerations. It would be a clear
| breach of anti-competition laws.
|
| c) Many carriers don't have relationships with Apple to sell
| the iPhone. And in many places internationally the iPhone is
| not even that popular. What matters is whether you can buy a
| SIM and install it into your phone.
| lxgr wrote:
| Probably never. At the very least, RCS itself needs SMS for
| account provisioning on a new device.
|
| I also don't see every business relying on SMS for B2C
| messaging (and in particular for SMS-OTP) switching to RCS
| anytime soon.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Who would be in charge of sunsetting such a thing?
| Symbiote wrote:
| The GSM Association.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSMA
| dagmx wrote:
| Can SMS ever be sunsetted? There's a lot of infrastructure that
| depends on it at the edges of networks.
|
| Maybe for consumer facing use but I think it's here to stay for
| our lifetime
| qingcharles wrote:
| They can't sunset it until the networks include unlimited data
| for free in your plan, otherwise you would never be able to
| receive any messages.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Oddly related from yesterday:
|
| _Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue
| bubbles to Android_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38271775
| commoner wrote:
| 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 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.
|
| (Notes: There is a proprietary RCS API which Google only allows
| Samsung apps to use to communicate with Messages by Google.[2]
| Verizon has an app called Verizon Messages or Message+ that uses
| RCS to some extent, but this is an incomplete implementation that
| only works on Samsung devices on the Verizon network with no
| cross-carrier compatibility.[3])
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-enables-
| end-t...
|
| [2] https://www.xda-developers.com/google-messages-rcs-api-
| third...
|
| [3] https://www.verizon.com/support/knowledge-base-222792/
| hbn wrote:
| 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 from
| an iPhone that doesn't go through iMessage, it will instead go
| through Google's servers? Sure the service will hopefully be
| better than SMS but at the cost of giving Google the keys to
| pretending they're a "standard."
| lxgr wrote:
| > 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/
| hbn wrote:
| 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.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'm afraid that the only incentive for carriers to invest
| anything into RCS would be being able to charge for it or
| use it as a way to lock in their customers.
|
| As antiquated as SMS is, at least all carriers support
| it, and people largely don't need to worry about their
| existing conversation threads being interrupted when they
| switch carriers.
|
| I believe that that's not true for RCS at least for group
| conversations.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| izacus wrote:
| It's kind of bizarre that people here would rather have
| shitty experience talking to their friends just to defend
| the honor megacorporations.
|
| Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE. They do NOT HAVE
| FEELINGS you need to defend. Jesus.
|
| Being able to send a rich message from iPhone to Android
| and back (including location, pictures, videos) is really
| not something that will cause you pain and Apple won't
| lash out and punish you for it.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Apple and Google ARE NOT PEOPLE._
|
| That's incorrect. Apple here refers to a group of people,
| not the fruit. Google here too refers to a group of
| people, not the software that provides search features.
|
| _> They do NOT HAVE FEELINGS you need to defend._
|
| Their feelings need to be defended as much as any other
| person. Which, logically, is not at all, but as you are
| defending your own feelings here what is logical is
| already violated, so...
| izacus wrote:
| Let's use the term "corporate entity" instead of "group
| of people". Because corporate entities do not have human
| emotions or human properties and actively work on
| suppressing them to generate (or extract) value.
| randomdata wrote:
| A 'corporate entity' is just a group of people. Those
| people absolutely have emotions.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, but the corporate entity does not; the (possibly
| contradictory) emotions of the people who have some role
| in a corporation are not features of the corporate
| entity.
| randomdata wrote:
| Yes, but the corporate entity is not a thing in and of
| itself. It is just a language device used in
| communication to identify the actual thing: People.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Yes, but the corporate entity is just another way to
| say group of people
|
| No, its not.
|
| Its more like a grouping of a subset of the actions of a
| group of people in some contexts, and a shared subset of
| the interests of a different (narrower, but overlapping)
| group of people in others.
|
| But its not generally simply a way of referencing a group
| of people.
| randomdata wrote:
| Right. Like you say, a group of people. Now, why do you
| think those people are void of feelings?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Like you say, a group of people.
|
| No, that's exactly what I said it was not.
|
| A subset of the actions of a group of people, or a subset
| of the shared interests of a group of people, is not a
| group of people.
| randomdata wrote:
| You suggested that is what it is not, but then went on to
| say that is what it is. You just did it again.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, I didn't, but if you can't understand language enough
| to recognize that there is no point in further
| discussion.
| randomdata wrote:
| You mentioned there is a subset, but the subsets
| described is still a way to identify the group of people.
| You can try and twist language all you want, but there is
| no avoiding the fact that a corporation is just people.
| If people somehow magically disappeared, the corporate
| entity would disappear at the exact same time - it's the
| same thing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You mentioned there is a subset, but the subsets
| described is still a way to identify the group of people.
|
| A subset of the _actions_ or _interests_ , not a subset
| of the group of people (the latter would, indeed, be just
| a different group of people, but isn't what I said.)
|
| > If people somehow magically disappeared, the corporate
| entity would disappear at the exact same time - it's the
| same thing.
|
| No, its not the same thing.
|
| If North America disappeared, all the piles of dog feces
| in North America would also disappear, but the piles of
| dog feces are not the same thing as North America.
| eitally wrote:
| To be fair to Google, though, they did not intend to
| operate this as a SaaS. They fully expected carriers to run
| their own RCS servers but almost none did, so stepping in
| to fill the void was a follow-on decision from Google
| (which was honestly a very smart move - Messages w/RCS is
| hugely improved over vanilla SMS) only after realizing
| carriers didn't have the appetite to abandon SMS.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Nice website. Let's see if we can edit it for another
| Google product...
|
| # Chrome
|
| ## Better Browsing for Everyone
|
| Web browsing changed the way we communicate, but it's out
| of date. Today we want a web browser that lets us do things
| like watch videos, edit documents in real time, notify us
| of breaking news, or make video calls.
|
| Google Chromium and V8 makes all this possible, and now the
| browser industry is coming together to bring it to users
| everywhere.
|
| ## The universal Web application
|
| While Web applications were designed to move Web browsing
| beyond reading documents, different approaches made it
| difficult and costly for websites to bring it to users.
|
| By aligning on the W3C's universal Web standards - with the
| Google Chrome client app - websites can now provide Web
| applications across the browser ecosystem.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| 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-client with open API's
| for other apps (than Google Messages) to use.
|
| To be fair, maintaining interoperability of those apps with
| the underlying client would then be a huge endeavour, Google
| Messages itself is already updating quite frequently...
| turquoisevar wrote:
| The problem is that Google has a de facto monopoly on RCS.
|
| The carriers (full members of GSMA) came up with RCS as a
| replacement for SMS/MMS at a network level and then didn't
| have the appetite to implement it.
|
| Instead, they either A) adopted Google's Messages as is, B)
| adopted Google's Messages in white label form, slapping
| their logo on it, or C) made "their own thing" running on
| Google's Jibe servers.
|
| With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google. And
| Google uses this to pretend that their proprietary iMessage
| competitor is "the" RCS standard.
|
| The _actual_ RCS standard is dead for all intents and
| purposes because nobody uses it like that, except for Apple
| in the short term.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| 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
| WhatsApp)-
|
| > With very few exceptions, it all goes through Google.
|
| Yeah, because the mobile end-device for RCS is currently
| always an Android device. If there would be support from
| Apple, an RCS-server of Apple could handle the
| communication to Apple-Devices.
|
| The idea of every carrier owning his own RCS-server was
| anyway already dead before the first client was released.
| The number of carriers never increased after the initial
| rollout of the major working-group members, simply
| because there is no way to charge for the service and
| monetization of such a small userbase with other services
| was not sustainable.
|
| It's worth to put this into time-context here: When work
| on RCS (or "RCS-e") was initiated, WhatsApp was already
| well-established and leading the European market.
| dwaite wrote:
| > 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 contents) going through Google-hosted chat
| servers every time they message an Android user.
|
| > If there would be support from Apple, an RCS-server of
| Apple could handle the communication to Apple-Devices.
|
| The issue there is you need something that
| authoritatively resolves a phone number as being routable
| via a particular server, and (ideally) to a public key
| for encryption.
|
| This is the hard problem for chat services - knowing how
| to route and how to protect data. If there is a problem,
| then you have some other party monitoring your
| communications or even manipulating them.
|
| If the same phone number could be authoritative to either
| Google or Apple RCS servers, then some other component
| has to make that call.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >The actual RCS standard is dead for all intents and
| purposes because nobody uses it like that, except for
| Apple in the short term.
|
| Maybe that will change now that Apple is adding support.
| Angostura wrote:
| I wonder if Apple might run its own RCS servers
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| 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...
| rickdeckard wrote:
| 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.
| doggydog123 wrote:
| The way it works is ugly for the privacy oriented folks.
| Turning it off and block by the firewall is a must. Just
| like "Private" DNS. Both are unfortunately forced.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| 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.
| eek2121 wrote:
| I am okay with this.
| matwood wrote:
| Apple also stated they would work to add encryption to the
| RCS spec, poking Google in the eye with their proprietary
| model. Of course this might not ever happen, but it's still
| fun to see big companies taking jabs at each other.
| Smoosh wrote:
| When elephants fight, the grass suffers.
| parineum wrote:
| When companies compete, consumers win.
| donny2018 wrote:
| Unless they conspire in $20B/year search agreements.
| paholg wrote:
| That's not competition.
| bigfudge wrote:
| And there's no true Scotsman. This sort of thing is - in
| practice - what capitalism looks like in the 21st
| century.
| achenet wrote:
| I believe Peter Thiel would say that capitalism and
| competition are opposites, and the goal of capitalism is
| monopoly.
|
| https://morfene.com/021.pdf
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'm not sure why people always attribute this observation
| to Thiel, as if it was something fringe, given how
| obvious and apparent it is.
|
| The goal of a profit-seeking entity is to maximize
| profit. That is achieved by becoming a monopoly.
| Competition is just the consequence of multiple entities
| trying to become a monopoly - there can be only one.
| _This is the motive part of market economy_. The energy
| source.
|
| Now, monopolies are obviously bad for _society_.
| Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies.
| This turns the market into an engine. You have constant
| inflow of upstarts dreaming of riches, fighting each
| other out to reach the throne of a monopolist, only to be
| denied it by regulation, and eventually become broken and
| /or pushed out by the younger followers.
|
| Or, via another analogy: the market economy is designed
| like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick attached to the
| animal, while standing on a treadmill. Being surprised
| that monopoly is the goal of companies is like being
| surprised the donkey would chase the carrot.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent
| monopolies._
|
| Markets are regulated to _enable_ monopolies. Bell would
| have never become a monopoly if there wasn 't the
| regulation involved in laying copper and Microsoft would
| have never become a monopoly if there wasn't intellectual
| property regulation.
| bigfudge wrote:
| For Bell, presumably the goal was to provide a monopoly
| to achieve an otherwise difficult goal: universal
| service. That's certainly the case with the post office
| in the UK (although now being eroded).
|
| For Microsoft: I think that's a weird argument. Plus I
| think there would have been lots of things pushing
| towards a single big player for desktop computing in the
| early-middle days (network effects).
| randomdata wrote:
| No matter what the goal was, it remains that other
| players would have jumped in if there wasn't the legal
| impediments. But such regulation provided a moat in which
| they were able to build their monopoly.
|
| Same goes for Microsoft. Everyone and their brother would
| have released their own 'Windows' if regulation weren't
| there to disallow it. Again, that regulation offered a
| moat which allowed them to establish their monopoly.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I'm not sure why people always attribute this
| observation to Thiel, as if it was something fringe,
| given how obvious and apparent it is.
|
| Indeed. It's so obvious and apparent that even Adam Smith
| himself made this exact point.
| altairTF wrote:
| If you think capitalism like whe have today, using the
| government as regulation platforms, sure. If you think
| capitalism as a system where you free to pursue your
| capital, not so sure its sustainable to keep a monopoly.
| matwood wrote:
| I agree. The goal of capitalism is to crush all
| competition and become a monopoly - and that's ok. The
| problem is, we should treat the monopoly as the winning
| end state and then restart the game.
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| Or conspire to cap engineer pay and get a slap on the
| wrist not equivalent to the money they saved, and then
| continued the collusion.
| randomdata wrote:
| In that case Apple and Google are the consumer, though.
| It is the workers offering the service, who are competing
| for those capped positions, even while being aware of the
| situation. The consumer wins.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Why did consumer loose here? This would have definitely
| had effect on iPhone's cost.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Not in the race to the bottom, they don't
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Up to a point. Afterwards, consumers suffer from garbage
| products, enshittified services, and under-reported
| inflation, while companies compete themselves to
| oblivion.
| randomdata wrote:
| You really only see that in tech, and do so because of
| lack of meaningful competition. You get some sideline
| competition, yes, but never direct competition. The law
| doesn't allow you to directly compete. As soon as you try
| you will be slapped with a patent/copyright/whatever
| lawsuit that will kill you off before you ever had a
| chance.
|
| Industries where direct competition is allowable do not
| suffer from these problems.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Industries where direct competition is allowable do
| not suffer from these problems._
|
| No, they suffer _much worse_. Haven 't you noticed how
| all goods and services go to shit over the years? This is
| not an accident, this is competition optimizing out any
| quality it can get away with removing.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Haven 't you noticed how all goods and services go to
| shit over the years?_
|
| No. I can't think of anything I buy that I would want to
| go back in time with. The quality in my experience has
| only improved, often dramatically. Those who try to skimp
| on quality get destroyed by the competition. What are you
| referring to?
|
| The only thing I can think of that you might be referring
| to - based on what I hear other say, not based on my own
| buying habits - is things like appliances where
| manufacturers have really dug deep into computerization
| so that they can enjoy the same legal moats other tech
| companies do. But what you are experiencing there is the
| _lack_ of competition we spoke of earlier.
| sundvor wrote:
| As an Android user with a healthy distaste of Google
| things, this + parent makes me smile.
|
| (Discontinuing their old magazine features, with nary a
| month to back up my purchased collection, as a one by one
| download was the latest thing).
| Alifatisk wrote:
| This is such an interesting thread to follow, I didn't
| think about the traps Google had!
| stouset wrote:
| If RCS doesn't get E2E encryption added to the public spec,
| they should highlight unencrypted messages with an even
| more offensive yellow bubble.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| or vomit green moving gradient with the vomit emoji tap
| backed on it
|
| will RCS still break most imessage group chat
| capabilities?
|
| I dont really think "at least my videos will send at full
| resolution to android users" is really that much of a
| difference
|
| multiple generations of people use phone chats for all
| the capabilities they offer, which is way more than
| higher resolution picture and video attachments alongside
| text
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| RCS supports read status, emoji reactions, etc. I use
| Beeper on Android to have support Messages group chats,
| and in my experience it's functionally the same as group
| chats over rcs.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Unencrypted RCS messages will be rendered in Comic Sans.
| stouset wrote:
| I like this suggestion better!
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| RCS messages outside of Google's Jibe uses HTTPS/TLS so
| there is encryption. What Google has done is add E2E on
| top.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > 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...
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| Not sure why people thinks it's a fork. RCS is only a
| standard, there is no open source implementation. Even to
| use it commercially you need to license it from GSMA. So
| every implementation of RCS is proprietary for the server
| side. On client side, Google has published the code in
| Android 12 sources. But most clients are all proprietary
| too.
| meyum33 wrote:
| So all Apple has to do is to change bubble color to
| indicate your messages, though no longer through SMS, is
| insecure.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > No one can make their own app
|
| Google did, Apple will, what stops other companies from doing
| it aside from effort and money ?
|
| > and there's barely any carrier adoption
|
| Expecting carriers to do adopt new technologies is usually a
| losing bet.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| See the parent comment.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Parent comments is positing that only Google can do it
| with no specific argument on why it would be so. For
| instance, why would Samsung be barred from doing it ?
| What about Nothing ? Xiaomi ?
|
| The "monopoly" argument feels like vague hand waiving to
| me. It's probably a complex and costly situation, but
| nothing close to why we don't have different browser
| engines on iOS for instance.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > This is why I don't buy Google's bad faith shaming of Apple
| for not adopting RCS.
|
| But the point to me is that I don't care whether it's "bad
| faith" or not, just that (again, to me) it's actually the
| correct point of view. Messaging integration between iOS and
| Android, in the US at least, is not just fundamentally
| broken, but the presence of a single Android user in an
| iMessage group chat can break the experience for everyone
| (e.g. potato quality video), and if you are the "odd man out"
| on the Android people start resenting your presence in the
| chat (and, to be clear, I'm middle aged, not in middle
| school). For an example, see
| https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLKeGRLieb/
|
| There is no reason for there to be such messaging
| incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that
| Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much
| against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage
| incompatibility was just looking like the blatant
| protectionism that it is.
| gigatexal wrote:
| > There is no reason for there to be such messaging
| incompatibility between iOS and Android. My feeling is that
| Apple knows the regulatory winds are shifting very much
| against anticompetitive behavior, and their iMessage
| incompatibility was just looking like the blatant
| protectionism that it is.
|
| iMessage is and always was for iPhone users to communicate
| with other iPhone users. It will send messages over SMS as
| a fallback but it was only ever for use in communicating
| with other iOS devices in the same way iOS is only for
| Apple devices.
|
| I see all arguments to force Apple to open up iMessage as
| punishing them for building a platform that people want
| that the majority of the US has bought into.
|
| And android is bigger everywhere outside the US.
|
| Also Europe has already solved this. If you want to talk to
| iPhone and android users in Europe you just use WhatsApp or
| another third-party service.
|
| Why must Apple dilute the experience to communicate with
| folks not on its platform?
|
| In electric car charging Tesla built out the super charger
| network investing billions in service of making their cars
| more useful. (iMessage is this to iPhone users.) there's
| another standard out there or handfuls of other methods of
| charging cars but the market leader is the super charger
| network. And wouldn't you know? Folks are adopting it
| because Tesla is licensing it but it was their choice.
|
| To force Apple to open up iMessage as a protocol to other
| devices by fiat seems wholly totalitarian and invasive.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >I see all arguments to force Apple to open up iMessage
| as punishing them for building a platform that people
| want that the majority of the US has bought into.
|
| I see all arguments that Apple shouldn't be forced to
| open up iMessage (or implement RCS) as forcing me to have
| a worse phone experience because I didn't buy an iPhone
| from the company that said "if you want to sideload apps,
| buy an Android".
|
| "Just use a third-party app" is not a solution for people
| who text with the normal messaging app, and I sure as
| hell would never beg them to _migrate to Whatsapp_ of all
| things.
|
| >To force Apple to open up iMessage as a protocol to
| other devices by fiat seems wholly totalitarian and
| invasive.
|
| You have this backwards. The totalitarian and invasive
| part is when I have to beg _Apple_ for permission to use
| software they wrote, to sell apps to people using devices
| they sold, etc. This bootlicker mentality of "it's
| Apple's devices and software" needs to die. _Apple_ is
| the totalitarian, the EU is trying to stop tyranny.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| > 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.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > 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.
| bigfudge wrote:
| 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.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Absolutely hilarious to see the willingness for folks on
| this platform to advocate the opening up of something a
| company built by fiat.
|
| Because YOU don't want to adapt you're asking nay
| advocating the forceful opening up of another platform to
| do it for you. That's just lazy.
|
| Think about it like this:
|
| You create a super successful bit of software -- let's
| call it an operating system -- that runs on a very
| popular and well designed piece of hardware referred to
| as an internet phone -- let's call it an iPhone. :-)
|
| It takes off. Market share is just above 50% in the
| country of it's birth. w00t.
|
| Now folks that haven't licensed your software by buying
| the hardware you built it for are out with pitch forks to
| force you to support other internet connected phones when
| you already do support them just not in the same way.
| Messages are still able to be sent to these devices but
| they don't share the same richness.
|
| Why would anyone advocate that something a person with
| autonomy or a company for that matter be forced by fiat
| to open up a messaging system or any other bit of kit
| because the mob wants them to?
|
| People are just frustrated and entitled. This isn't open
| source software. You can't just go and fork it. There are
| entire companies that have cropped up that are trying to
| bridge this blue bubble green bubble divide and that's
| the solution to take. Until, and unless Apple caves and
| opens up iMessage it seems wholly un-American to force
| them to do so when there are alternatives be it something
| like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, normal SMS and the green
| bubbles that come with it or moving to an iPhone. I'll
| never buy the "waaa because I use the built-in app on my
| Android phone and I want to have blue bubbles when I talk
| to my friends on iPhones ... waaaaaa!"
|
| There are solutions, I've already outlined them. Pick
| one.
|
| > Apple is the totalitarian, the EU is trying to stop
| tyranny.
|
| The EU tends to do this. A successful platform is created
| and to give shortcuts to other companies to build on that
| success they force that platform to open to competitors.
| This is exactly why the EU doesn't have companies that
| innovate like the US does.
| izacus wrote:
| > Absolutely hilarious to see the willingness for folks
| on this platform to advocate the opening up of something
| a company built by fiat.
|
| Yes, it's called creating standards and fostering free
| market competition. This has happened REPETEDLY and time
| and time again.
|
| Pretty much every standard, cable and tech you're using
| that works on multiple manufacturers was "something a
| company built by fiat".
|
| If I'm facetious as you - I'm surprised just how deep
| corporate bootlicking goes here that outright hurts your
| ability to vote with the wallet and make modern market
| capitalism work for you as a user.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Standards come out of standards bodies. There's nothing
| other than a law or a lawsuit or the threat thereof that
| would compel to open iMessage as a standard. It's a
| competitive value-add to adopting the platform.
|
| Free markets are I create something awesome and profit
| from it not am then forced to allow you and everyone else
| to build off of my hard work unless I choose to or am
| forced to.
|
| If Apple was approached by governments or other
| institutions to use iMessage as the basis of some
| standard which iirc hasn't been done that'd be one thing.
| What we do know is that RCS is inferior to iMessage in
| many ways.
|
| So Apple will adopt standards compliant RCS but it likely
| won't be the same and lazy Android users who want to
| stick to the stock app will get to enjoy the spoils of a
| half-baked solution.
|
| My issue is with this mob mentality of forcing the hand
| by fiat, lawsuit, or otherwise to coerce a company to
| open up a tech/product/platform when they built it with
| no intentions of opening it -- it's proprietary by
| design.
|
| The free-market works when someone else builds something
| -- in this case a better phone experience -- that would
| cause folks to move to that and abandon iMessage. But no
| -- let's keep our pitchforks and keep insisting some
| wierd collective ownership bias that means you or I or
| anyone else has some say over the property and tech of
| another person or company. Because, sure that makes
| sense.
| MikeRichardson wrote:
| > The free-market works when someone else builds
| something -- in this case a better phone experience --
| that would cause folks to move to that and abandon
| iMessage
|
| The free market fails when the cost for anyone else to
| enter the market is completely out of reach to anyone
| else.
| gigatexal wrote:
| > "Just use a third-party app" is not a solution for
| people who text with the normal messaging app, and I sure
| as hell would never beg them to migrate to Whatsapp of
| all things.
|
| But there's no reason to move. Your messages still get to
| iPhone users via SMS with a different color. What's the
| beef with the blue v. green anyway? The messages get
| there. Don't like it? There's plenty of iPhones or other
| iOS devices that can be had for cheap. They'll last a
| long time, they'll get tons of updates, they're secure.
| What's not to love?
|
| Or there are third-party services that you can pay for
| like Beeper that will act as a bridge.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Try texting an iPhone user a picture or video and look at
| the garbage they receive from you.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _In electric car charging Tesla built out the super
| charger network investing billions in service of making
| their cars more useful._
|
| And if they hadn't done so by choice, they should
| absolutely have been required to open up that network to
| all cars.
|
| Can you imagine a world (for ICE cars) where you'd have
| to find a car-manufacturer-specific gas station to
| refuel? That's ridiculous.
| gigatexal wrote:
| No. A market winner for gas stations would have emerged
| and cars would adopt that. Just like is happening with
| Tesla and their chargers and connectors.
| acdha wrote:
| > My feeling is that Apple knows the regulatory winds are
| shifting very much against anticompetitive behavior, and
| their iMessage incompatibility was just looking like the
| blatant protectionism that it is.
|
| I think that point would be stronger if anyone else was
| open. Google used to run an open messaging service but shut
| it down as part of their failed attempt to compete with
| Facebook, and their current professed love of open RCS
| hasn't extended to allowing anyone else to use their
| implementation. Android developers aren't given access the
| way they were to SMS, and nobody except Samsung is allowed
| to use their proprietary E2EE servers.
|
| I think this is basically Apple calling their bluff and
| telling them that they need to actually release their
| proprietary work as open standards. I'm sure that will be
| their argument to regulators.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _and their current professed love of open RCS hasn't
| extended to allowing anyone else to use their
| implementation_
|
| Google wanted the carriers to all host their own servers.
| They refused, so Google took it on. Agreed that there are
| going to be interop issues with Google's RCS
| implementation, but let's not place all the blame at
| Google's feet, here.
|
| > _I think this is basically Apple calling their bluff
| and telling them that they need to actually release their
| proprietary work as open standards. I'm sure that will be
| their argument to regulators._
|
| Which would be a great outcome!
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Correction: The CARRIERS intended to all host a own RCS
| server, before Google was even part of the picture.
|
| The idea was for every carrier to be the gatekeeper of
| his subscribers, so no one was giving up anything and
| everyone wins. The strongest carriers in the working
| group rolled out their own servers in the initial stage
| of development, a total of five only IIRC. No one else
| followed because there was no visibility on return of
| investment.
|
| At that time, major device vendors maintained their own
| SMS-app to navigate all the custom requirements of the
| carriers in the world. Google aimed to standardise the
| client and include all these carrier-specific
| customizations, but RCS was about to fragment this space
| even further, as every vendor was expected to integrate
| his own client.
|
| Google then stepped in in 2015 by acquiring Jibe, a main
| supplier of RCS servers and the developer of a vendor-
| agnostic RCS-client. At this point only ONE carrier still
| considered to buy a own server.
|
| Google continues maintaining the existing servers and
| also offers to host RCS as a service for carriers.
| Overall goal was to defragment both the server and the
| client area, as this was the only way to scale.
|
| It's time for others to step in and balance the playing
| field again, Apple is the best candidate for that.
| acdha wrote:
| > Agreed that there are going to be interop issues with
| Google's RCS implementation, but let's not place all the
| blame at Google's feet, here.
|
| I have no love for the carriers but to me open would
| sound like things Google could do unilaterally:
|
| * Android developers can now use the RCS APIs, not just
| our own app
|
| * Our extensions are released as an open standard waiving
| any IP litigation except in self-defense
|
| * Our E2EE key server is open to users of other apps
| and/or supports this federation protocol
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Google used to run an open messaging service but shut
| it down as part of their failed attempt to compete with
| Facebook, and their current professed love of open RCS
| hasn't extended to allowing anyone else to use their
| implementation.
|
| It's funny to read this criticism, when comments in
| another thread are criticizing Google for running an RCS
| implementation as a service for carriers.
|
| RCS _is_ an open standard, and Google does let others use
| it. However, other carriers didn 't adopt it themselves,
| so Google set up a service that carriers can use and is
| running it themselves to ensure compatibility. There is
| no API for Android apps to use, yes, and that is a
| problem they should fix, but it's not exactly a self-
| serving decision, especially because it hampers Google's
| own products as well. The reason for the lack of the app
| API is likely because RCS hasn't been widely adopted
| enough to warrant it.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Fully agree.
|
| Android also has APIs to register another RCS client to
| the OS.
|
| What's missing are open APIs for apps to control _Google
| 's_ RCS-client. Indeed this would be convenient, but
| considering the potential for misuse there, Google would
| probably need a separate certification process for each
| app, which is quite a scale for something that didn't
| scale yet...
|
| A own RCS-client still requires accreditation to ensure
| interoperability with the RCS-service. API-access to
| Google's client would either require accreditation of the
| app using the client, or would need to be limited so
| dramatically that it's probably of no use...
| acdha wrote:
| I was mostly referring to the way their E2EE key server
| is client locked. RCS is open but you'll have a poor
| experience unless you only use Google's own app.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > I think that point would be stronger if anyone else was
| open.
|
| Nah gov doesn't give a shit they just see the incapable
| outcome and the rest of Apple's behavior.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > but the presence of a single Android user in an iMessage
| group chat can break the experience for everyone
|
| It is still such a laughable issue from the POV of any
| other country.. SMS is there for text-only, it's a legacy
| tech that didn't ever get popular in different places due
| to it having shit support for non-ascii letters (writing a
| single u would almost halve the remaining chars I can
| write), and not having unlimited SMS sends, so internet-
| based messaging spread like wide-fire. iMessage is the
| latter, the normal SMS is not. But there are also Telegram,
| Whatsapp, Facebook, a million other solutions.
|
| It's a made-up issue.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > It's a made-up issue.
|
| My biggest pet peeve is when people have an issue _that
| doesn 't affect them_ so they need to declare it as
| "fake". Just because you don't feel the problem doesn't
| mean "it's a made up issue".
|
| The following are simply facts:
|
| 1. In the US, among iPhone users, iMessage is by far the
| dominant messaging service.
|
| 2. Among certain socioeconomic groups in the US, iPhone
| is by far the dominant mobile phone. I have been in
| several friend groups where there was at most 1 other
| Android user.
|
| 3. In group chats, not only does the limited
| functionality for Android users make it harder to
| converse, but the presence of a single Android user can
| break the experience for everyone (I've had messages
| randomly not show up, abysmal video quality, etc.)
|
| So while I would absolutely _love_ it if other people
| would switch to Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever, you try
| telling a group of 10 people "Hey, can you all switch
| the messaging app you are familiar with and use all the
| time so I don't feel left out?" If you think that's
| viable you just don't understand human nature.
|
| The other option is for Apple to simply make an Android
| version of iMessage (like all the other messaging apps
| you mentioned), but they don't seem too keen on that.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Feel free to replace made-up with self-inflicted, that
| might be more correct, fair enough.
|
| I do experience the human aspect, and have 4-5 different
| chat programs installed, which is not ideal, but it is
| just simply can't be expected that everyone uses the same
| stuff. I just remember to use Telegram with friends X, Y
| and Signal with W.
| MikeRichardson wrote:
| We can certainly expect the 4-5 different programs to
| work with each other though. It's even happened before.
| For a brief period of time, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo all had
| some kind of interoperability with each other.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The sad thing for me is that even though almost all my
| contacts have iPhones, the lowest common denominator
| effect means everyone ends up using WhatsApp to allow
| everyone to join. That's definitely a worse outcome
| nradov wrote:
| Why is that worse? Isn't WhatsApp a better alternative?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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.
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| This is the one thing that makes me comfortable about
| continuing to use Google Voice for voice-mail and as a
| spare phone number for less important services. Otherwise,
| I'd expect Google to discontinue this service and tell me
| to fuck off by now.
| plastic_bag wrote:
| Google Messages app sends a lot of spam here in India if RCS
| is enabled. I confirmed this with some of friends who
| experienced the same thing.
|
| Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has an app called DND
| which lets you register your phone number to opt out of
| marketing and promotional SMSes. It works really well and in
| case someone sends you a promotional SMS despite opting out,
| you can report them to your SIM provider (or carrier) and
| they are legally required to take an action.
|
| But as soon as RCS is enabled, you will magically start
| receiving a lot of spam messages with rich text and link
| previews. Unfortunately, the DND app cannot see or detect
| those messages which means you cannot report them.
| gertrunde wrote:
| > there's barely any carrier adoption
|
| That might be country dependent, in the UK the four largest
| networks do officially support RCS I believe (combined market
| share of around 85-90%).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS is
| Messages by Google
|
| Plus, unless they fixed it, if you enable RCS and then regret
| it and disable it again, anybody who texted with you via RCS
| will no longer be able to text you at all. Things won't revert
| to SMS.
|
| This bit me pretty hard, but I finally fixed it by changing my
| phone number.
| xethos wrote:
| I'm sure the next person that gets your number's gonna just
| laugh and laugh when they figure out why someone can't text
| them but everyone else can.
|
| Frankly, I expect Google to fix their mistake before the
| telecom support people figure it out. It'll be a nightmarish
| headache for all involved.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Plus, unless they fixed it, if you enable RCS and then
| regret it and disable it again, anybody who texted with you
| via RCS will no longer be able to text you at all.
|
| On a relative's phone, the messages app simply enabled RCS
| automatically without asking (and displayed a screen proudly
| saying it did so). Does that means that this phone will never
| receive SMS again from RCS users, even though we have
| carefully always answered "no" when it asked whether it
| should enable RCS (and quickly disabled it again once it
| enabled automatically)?
| JohnFen wrote:
| For me, it only affected phone numbers that I had exchanged
| texts with that also had RCS enabled. Phones that didn't
| have it enabled, or numbers I had not exchanged texts with,
| were unaffected.
|
| This was quite a while ago. They may very well have fixed
| the issue since then.
|
| And yes, I noticed they enable RCS by default. Since then,
| the first thing I have done with new phones is to disable
| RCS. If you do that before sending/receiving any texts,
| then there is no issue.
| commoner wrote:
| You can deregister your phone number from Messages by Google
| here:
|
| https://messages.google.com/disable-chat
|
| This is similar to Apple's iMessage deregistration page.[1]
|
| Google has been funneling RCS messages through its own
| servers to bypass wireless carriers, which were slow or
| unwilling to directly support RCS.[2] Unfortunately, this has
| centralized RCS communications through Google and allowed
| Google to make end-to-end encryption available to RCS users
| as a proprietary extension that Google never contributed back
| to the RCS Universal Profile specification.[3]
|
| For RCS on Android to be decentralized again, your wireless
| carrier would need to support RCS on the network level and
| Android would also need to implement RCS in a way that does
| not require interaction with Google servers. This would make
| deregistration unnecessary.
|
| [1] https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
|
| [2] https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/302020-google-will-
| bypass...
|
| [3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/16/apples-flavor-
| of-...
| JohnFen wrote:
| That's interesting! I wonder why the phone didn't
| automatically deregister when I disabled RCS, or why there
| wasn't at least an informative popup telling me this was
| necessary.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's the dumb thing. When you disable RCS on your
| phone, why doesn't the phone just send that same API call
| that gets called when you visit that web page and
| deregister?
|
| (Ditto for Apple, if that's still an issue over there
| with iMessage as well.)
| mikelward wrote:
| The web page says it does?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It only happens for Apple if the phone is destroyed or
| similar.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| whoa really ? i did NOT know that. deregistering immediately.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Plus, unless they fixed it, if you enable RCS and then
| regret it and disable it again, anybody who texted with you
| via RCS will no longer be able to text you at all. Things
| won't revert to SMS.
|
| That same "bug" existed for years with iMessage, for anyone
| switching from an iPhone to a non-iPhone.
|
| It still exists in some form, albeit less severely, because
| Apple finally implemented a timeout and a way to manually
| deregister a number, but it took years.
| ender7 wrote:
| 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".
| hedora wrote:
| A corollary to that lesson is to not support RCS.
|
| I'd have much rather iMessage only open up interoperability
| with E2EE platforms like signal or even Whatsapp (because
| Facebook is somehow the lesser evil in this corner of the
| privacy world).
| madeofpalk wrote:
| iPhone messages app - where iMessage appears - is already
| interoperable with every other phone. SMS!
| f33d5173 wrote:
| Sms is not end to end encrypted
| madeofpalk wrote:
| And?
| dwaite wrote:
| RCS isn't either - it is a proprietary feature when using
| Google's client with Google's server.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, but in practice, everyone's RCS is currently E2EE
| since everyone uses Google's client and Google's server.
|
| This should change, certainly! Hopefully Apple will force
| Google to open up their implementation and protocol for
| E2EE so they can build a compatible implementation.
| dwaite wrote:
| Maybe. The challenge with E2EE is how to resolve an email
| address or phone number to the authoritative public key
| and networking route, securely. If we wind up with
| multiple authoritative sources of that mapping, each one
| has the potential to lie and become an avenue for
| surveillance. Thats ignoring for the moment lesser
| issues, such as privacy issues with leaked metadata in
| querying these sources.
|
| Things like Key Transparency in the IETF are tackling
| some of this, in the sense that they'll provide public
| evidence of tampering.
|
| I don't suspect what Google has implemented for their own
| client/server setup gets us close to a multi-party
| solution within RCS Universal profile.
| zchrykng wrote:
| Neither is RCS without Google's proprietary additions.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| In theory, E2EE is good until someone you are messaging
| turns on iCloud backup of messages you sent and now law
| enforcement can force Apple to give them your iCloud backup
| - with iMessage
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Also solvable: encrypt messages (and everything else) in
| iCloud backups (by default and not as a hidden special
| mode with scary warnings).
| dwaite wrote:
| They are encrypted, but (by default) the key is escrowed
| for recovery by Apple support, which LE can request just
| as well as the account owner (or other parties with judge
| decree, such as surviving relatives)
| kemayo wrote:
| And this is, honestly, a pretty reasonable default. For
| the average person, the failure mode is "I lost my phone,
| and I can't remember my iCloud password", not "I really
| need the cops to not be able to get into my backup", and
| they'd be _super_ pissed off if Apple couldn 't get them
| their data back. Having good security be available, but
| not the default, and requiring you to acknowledge the
| risks is a sensible trade-off for the customer service
| problems it might cause.
| kelnos wrote:
| I kinda agree with you, but I think there's also a
| reasonable argument to be made around the idea that a
| user might be super pissed off that Apple made the
| default be not secure against state actors.
|
| Also, how many people actually care all that much about
| their message history? I know I do (and I have 1GB of
| SMS/MMS/RCS message history dating back to 2010 that I
| back up to GDrive nightly), but it seems to me that most
| people don't care about their message history that much?
| kemayo wrote:
| I'll grant that what people _really_ care about is their
| backed up photos, and there 's nothing stopping Apple
| from having separate security strategies there.
|
| That said, I suspect that there's more people out there
| who're going to lose their text history with their dead
| parent and be distraught over that, than who're going to
| be actively upset that the state can subpoena their
| messages.
| dwaite wrote:
| The nice thing is that there is now an advertised set of
| features to protect against state actors in the form of
| Advanced Data Protection, Lockdown mode and (soon)
| iMessage Contact Key Verification.
|
| These all have significant usability impacts; I think
| Apple still has the correct defaults.
|
| Finally, my understanding is that recovery keys are
| escrowed in a HSM separate from cloud hosting, and
| releasing an escrowed key is an audited event. My concern
| is mostly about actors accessing my data or surveilling
| me without transparency, as that gives no chance for
| accountability.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| So e2ee is good until there's a situation where it won't
| work and then it's no worse than the status quo? What's
| the problem?
| acdha wrote:
| Unless they enable E2EE there:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212520
|
| There's always a risk that someone you're sending a
| message to has been compromised but most of us are never
| at risk from that, as opposed to things like dragnet data
| collection or server breaches. E2EE is solving the
| problems it's designed to solve, so it's not a problem
| that things out of scope are more complicated.
| kaba0 wrote:
| As opposed to the same someone just going to the police
| and showing them your messaging? Or getting caught and
| forced to open it? Or being an idiot and sending a
| screenshot to it to Facebook?
|
| The issue you describe is just not an attack vector that
| is in anyway relevant, if you can't trust the other side,
| every hope is already lost.
| Lio wrote:
| This is just me but I'm less bothered by Big Brother than
| I am by little brother.
|
| I don't worry (very much) that law enforcement will read
| my messages but I do worry that advertisers, insurance
| cartels, spam marketeers, bookmakers or price gougers
| will.
| porkbeer wrote:
| more and more, both drink from the same tap.
| peyton wrote:
| It's not the high road. They sell more expensive ads into it.
| I hope there's a way to turn it off on my iPhone.
| Zak wrote:
| Google had the opportunity to own this space a decade ago
| when they made Hangouts the default SMS client on Android.
| It's exactly what Apple did with iMessage, but Hangouts was
| cross-platform.
|
| It's absolutely bizarre to me they didn't iterate on that.
| I'm kind of glad they didn't.
| starttoaster wrote:
| On the flipside, Hangouts being sunset is the main reason I
| eventually left the Android ecosystem. Hangouts on a Pixel
| phone on Google Fi service was excellent for an SMS app.
| Feeling snubbed by the life getting choked out of Hangouts,
| I'm no longer a user of all 3.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > [...] _to prevent carriers from trying to either (a)
| undermine e2ee in some weasely way_ [...]
|
| Reminder that carriers have lawful intercept mandates through
| legal statutes: it may actually be illegal for them to
| implement E2EE.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yeah, they can read what you send. If what you send is
| encrypted, they can read that too, just not in decrypted
| form.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| So. What exactly is the "RCS" that Apple is supposedly going to
| support? RSC for Android? RCS for Pixel? RCS for Samsung? RCS
| for Verion?
|
| What's the point of a standard that has 5 different ways it's
| fragmented on the same base platform?
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| RCS for iOS. 6 different ways it's fragmented. :p
|
| Or maybe Apple will just implement it exactly as the spec
| says with no frills.
| neilalexander wrote:
| That is exactly what Apple will do: implement it by the
| spec. Then they can turn around to regulators and say they
| have done what they needed to do to be interoperable and,
| if compatibility problems arise, can point the finger right
| back at their competitors.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| From the article: "Later next year, we will be adding support
| for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently
| published by the GSM Association."
| kelnos wrote:
| So in other words, RCS without E2EE.
| kcb wrote:
| The point is that they interoperate.
| 616c wrote:
| I wish RCS could somehow be merged with IETF MLS specs but I
| know that is apples and oranges and not so possible.
|
| The RCS proprietary encryption bit is very sad. Oh well.
| FactolSarin wrote:
| Google's RCS encryption scheme isn't really proprietary, it's
| the Signal e2ee scheme. Granted, it's bolted into RCS and not
| part of the standard, but it's not 100% closed either. It's
| like a standard added to another standard in a nonstandard
| way.
| kelnos wrote:
| The key management is proprietary, for some reason. Can't
| build an interoperable impl without that.
| jvolkman wrote:
| Google already announced that Messages will support MLS. One
| can only hope that Apple does as well with whatever this
| announcement brings, and that MLS becomes the defacto E2EE
| standard for RCS.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| > 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?
| stonogo wrote:
| Yes, generally. Especially if those randos are, for instance,
| me. RCS needs server coordination, and I don't want to use it
| if I can't bring that on-prem.
| wtallis wrote:
| Ironically but unsurprisingly, Google Voice doesn't even
| support RCS.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| 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...
| alberth wrote:
| Spam
|
| The reason why 3rd party native SMS/RCS don't exist is mobile
| platform wanting to prevent spam.
|
| Imagine a rogue 3rd party SMS app blasting all your friends
| unauthorized texts, from your device.
| commoner wrote:
| Third-party SMS and MMS messaging apps already exist on
| Android, such as the free and open source QKSMS[1] and Simple
| SMS Messenger.[2] Signal also used to support SMS and MMS on
| Android until last year.[3] There isn't a shred of evidence
| that these non-default SMS/MMS apps increase spam to any
| measurable extent compared to SMS/MMS apps that are
| preinstalled on Android phones.
|
| [1] QKSMS: https://github.com/moezbhatti/qksms
|
| [2] Simple SMS Messenger:
| https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-SMS-Messenger
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33179047
| hankchinaski wrote:
| I personally trust more Google and apple than a spider web of
| random developers and potential malwares that might cause just
| security issues in the long run and reduce the overall security
| of the platform and ecosystem
| commoner wrote:
| Nothing is stopping you from using Messages by Google or
| Apple's Messages app if you prefer. Fear, uncertainty, and
| doubt over unnamed "security issues" is not a good reason to
| prevent other developers from creating clients for RCS, which
| is intended to be an open protocol to replace SMS and MMS,
| and not a closed "ecosystem" consisting of 2 apps from 2 of
| the largest tech companies.
| nicce wrote:
| >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.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| OJFord wrote:
| > 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.
|
| And which prompts you every bloody time you open it to enable
| RCS, ignoring the last thousand times you clicked the tiny
| 'skip for now' font.
| netmare wrote:
| I also skipped that, but we won't have to worry about it
| anymore. They started enabling it by default. Recently got a
| toast notification that I barely got to read. Soon they'll
| probably make it mandatory. :o)
| factormeta wrote:
| IMHO RCS should have not being adopted unless it has encryption
| built in, or else it is just Google's iMessenger.
|
| At this point, anything messaging platform or financial
| transaction platform that doesn't implement post-quantum
| encryption + classic computer encryption ECC (such as
| superdilithium) should NOT be consider as a standard for
| messaging for the public. All that ought to be part of the
| messaging protocol, so we don't end up with GSM 64 bit
| encryption mess.
| jabart wrote:
| Don't use the Verizon Messages app. The privacy policy was
| terrible three years ago.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| The lede is quite cleverly buried here. Key sentence is "We will
| be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as
| currently published by the GSM Association"
|
| So no end to end encryption and the bubbles will most still
| likely be green.
|
| Even with the mutterings about improving security etc it's
| unlikely that the GSM Association will ever sign off on any
| encryption scheme that isn't weak or backdoored.
| danaris wrote:
| To be clear, based on what I've read: "no end-to-end
| encryption" simply means that Apple is not going to either a)
| develop their own, proprietary E2EE system for RCS, or b) pay
| Google for theirs.
|
| And good grief, get over the bubble color thing. Of course RCS
| isn't going to have blue bubbles; those _specifically_ indicate
| an iMessage message. Maybe they 'll be green, or maybe they'll
| be purple, orange, or red, to differentiate them from SMS.
| That's all the different colors are for: a useful indication of
| _what messaging system that user is currently using_.
|
| If Apple didn't color the bubbles differently, you'd see people
| moaning and complaining that there's no way to tell who you can
| and can't make a group chat with, or whether you can send them
| stickers and reactions.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| > And good grief, get over the bubble color thing
|
| I agree it is stupid, but there most definitely is a "status
| thing" going on with the whole green vs. blue as well.
| cubefox wrote:
| This will probably go away over time as everyone supports
| most the same features.
| danaris wrote:
| Personally, I have no experience with it--but I don't doubt
| that it exists for some people.
|
| What I object to is people insisting that the "status
| thing" some people have going on with it is Apple's
| responsibility to fix by _removing useful indicators_ of
| who 's using what messaging services, or that Apple is
| deliberately and maliciously making people not using
| iMessage somehow look worse.
|
| (On the other hand, I think there's a perfectly legitimate
| argument that Apple could and should open iMessage, and is
| choosing not to do so for relatively selfish reasons. I
| don't have a strong opinion on that one either way.)
| daft_pink wrote:
| I really hope Apple allows us to disable many of RCS's features
| like read receipts and previews.
|
| I really don't want spammy users to start seeing read receipts,
| etc.
| curt15 wrote:
| You can disable read receipts in RCS just like you can with
| iMessage: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-disable-read-
| receipts-rcs-a...
| kiwijamo wrote:
| Previews are an app feature, not in the RCS protocol itself. I
| see message previews for SMS/MMS messages on Apple/Android
| devices despite the SMS/MMS protocol having no concept of
| previews. Most likely true for RCS as well.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm worried about the spam. I hope they provide the ability to
| turn RCS off altogether if that's going to be a problem.
| marwis wrote:
| I wonder when Google will add proper RCS to their own Google Fi?
|
| Currently one has to disable Fi cloud sync losing a lot of
| features.
| hot_gril wrote:
| So what was the deal with Android users complaining about
| iPhones not supporting RCS all this time, when it's not so
| universal among carriers to begin with? Not to mention how many
| people just use WhatsApp instead.
| dagmx wrote:
| Most people aren't technically savvy enough to understand the
| nuance, especially when team sports takes over
| crop_rotation wrote:
| I have only used Android phones and I strongly dislike RCS. RCS
| in theory is a standard but in practice it is == "Google
| Messages" the app. I don't know of a single telco that supports
| it (hosting their own infra of it), nor does any other SMS app
| (maybe 1 or 2 being exception that proves the rule). RCS(Google
| Messages) is just another messaging app like Whatsapp/Signal just
| that it pretends being a standard. AFAIK AOSP has no RCS APIs
| like it has for SMS. Not to mention the amount of SPAM one gets
| on RCS is comparable only to traditional SMS, and blocking has no
| effect unlike Whatsapp. It exists mainly because Google got tired
| of making messaging apps that weren't dominating the world
| (Hangouts/Allo) and thought that forcing a standard might be the
| only option available to them. E2E is optional and there is no
| switch that says only do E2E.
|
| There might be some solution needed to let iMessage interoperate
| with Android, but pretending RCS is a standard just like SMS that
| Apple was not supporting is wishful thinking.
| adrr wrote:
| Please let users be able to disable RCS support. One nice thing
| about iMessage is that lacks spam. It is the only platform where
| i don't get spammed by bots.
| eiiot wrote:
| I still get plenty of iMessage spam. From _this morning_ :
|
| "Your USPS package could not be delivered. please check this
| link for more information: https://...."
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Interestingly enough the person who wrote the white paper for the
| signal protocol implementation in Googles RCS, Emad Omara, now
| works for Apple
|
| https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
| mcculley wrote:
| Should we expect that delivery status notification will work and
| be surfaced in the UI? I end up encouraging those who are on SMS
| to go to WhatsApp just because I can never be sure that the
| message was delivered. Working across many countries and
| providers, SMS is still very unreliable. There is no way in iOS
| to know if a green bubble got the message or not.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Interestingly enough the person who wrote the white paper for the
| signal protocol implementation in Googles RCS, Emad Omara, now
| works for Apple
| https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
| viktorcode wrote:
| I'm willing to bet the RCS bubble will still be green to indicate
| loss of p2p encryption.
| sircastor wrote:
| The RCS bubble will at best be a color other than blue. The
| whole "blue bubble" class stratification is a competitive
| advantage for Apple, even if it's not truly earned. RCS
| provides a lot of the features that have made iMessage a
| preferable experience. And over time the collective
| consciousness may drift towards inclusiveness or indifference
| towards whatever bubble color RCS turns out to be, but I feel
| confident that unless it's mandated by some government body,
| Apple will keep blue bubbles to exclusively indicated iMessage.
| albert180 wrote:
| Why? There is E2E available with RCS
| Racing0461 wrote:
| 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?
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| 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_.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| > 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.
| suddenexample wrote:
| Anyone have an idea what features the "RCS Universal Profile, the
| standard as currently published by the GSM Association" actually
| entails for users in terms of feature support?
|
| I know E2E encryption isn't a part of it, but was having trouble
| finding information about whether the Universal Profile includes
| other features like replies, read receipts, typing indicators,
| reactions, voice messages, etc.
|
| As an aside, this is huge but the media is really milking the
| clickbait when reporting "the end of green bubble shame" - even
| if Apple were to support all of the above features in their RCS
| implementation, I'm sure they'll keep the bubbles green. They've
| always been adept at designing for user psychology.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Will Google drop their request for iMessage to be opened? Will
| that request become obsolete?
| ralferoo wrote:
| As an Android user, it'd be nice if replying "No" to "Do you want
| RCS?" meant "Never ask me again" and wasn't just interpreted as
| "ask me again in next week and every week thereafter".
| solardev wrote:
| Pssst... you sure you don't want RCS? All your cool blue bubble
| friends are using it now!
| atonse wrote:
| What? Are you saying this in jest? Then I'm missing the humor
| because this is completely false...
| solardev wrote:
| Yes :/ Like Android might soon use ios compatibility as a
| reason to further annoy you about changing protocols
| cesarb wrote:
| > and wasn't just interpreted as "ask me again in next week and
| every week thereafter".
|
| It gets even worse; last week, on a relative's phone, after
| weeks of clicking "not now" it just force-enabled RCS, and
| displayed something like a "we automatically enabled RCS for
| you, here's what you should do if you want to disable it again"
| (completely confusing said non-technical relative). Needless to
| say, I quickly went into the settings and disabled it again; I
| just hope that it having been enabled for a few minutes doesn't
| mean it will no longer be able to receive messages from RCS
| users (like the rumors I heard many years ago of people who
| enabled iMessage and later changed back to Android no longer
| receiving any SMS from iMessage users).
| dcgudeman wrote:
| why don't you want RCS?
| qingcharles wrote:
| A lot of people I know can't afford a data plan for their
| phones, so when RCS becomes enabled it just bounces all their
| incoming/outgoing messages and it is sometimes days or weeks
| before they realize.
| cesarb wrote:
| And even for those who can afford a data plan for their
| phones, they might have gone over their data allowance for
| the current month, so the data won't work until it
| refreshes at the start of the next monthly cycle. And
| obviously, having one more thing using data makes it even
| easier to go over the limit.
| ralferoo wrote:
| For me, SMS is solely for receiving 2FA codes and sending
| message to my provider to check how much data allowance I
| have left for the month. I use Whatsapp for messages to
| people.
| zacte wrote:
| Companies have already begun using RCS as an opportunity to
| flood my phone with ads that take up way too much space in
| the notification shade. Also not from the US, so I can just
| use a 3rd party app
| tredre3 wrote:
| Yup it's completely disingenuous on Google's part.
|
| Some people don't have data but Google doesn't care, they force
| clueless users to enable RCS anyway and then they're on their
| own to figure out why they don't receive messages anymore!
| runlevel1 wrote:
| There's no feedback that a message was undeliverable?
| northisup wrote:
| What is the over/under on RCS messages still being green?
| solardev wrote:
| Someone please roll poor Steve back over.
| viraptor wrote:
| I wonder what's the play here. They seem to make noise about RCS
| recently and give it attention, even though it seems they'll be
| forced by the EU to open up the iMessage system soon. Apple is
| not known for Google's "let's have 5 different communication apps
| at the same time", so... what's happening here?
| SllX wrote:
| Probably the angle is to find some way to tell the EU to get
| stuffed as far as opening iMessage up goes.
|
| Apple only has to comply with the law. The issue is that the EC
| is on a high right now trying to see how far they can enforce
| control over US tech companies, so they might just go back and
| double down with more legislation if Apple finds a way to
| comply with the law without complying with the outcome the EC
| actually wanted.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| There's probably a few things at play.
|
| First, not every iPhone user can be iMessage-only and SMS is a
| shitty experience. In most non-US countries, they're not
| winning the iMessage shame battle, they're driving people to
| WhatsApp. They'd probably rather people use the built in
| messaging app, which will incentivize you to use iMessage.
|
| Secondly, getting more involved gives them opportunities to
| embrace/extinguish rcs (they said they won't extend it). If
| they can use their market to force encryption on everyone, for
| example, that makes them look like the good guys against
| android makers. I could also see them trying to genuinely push
| UX improvements (eg stickers) on RCS and exiting iMessage from
| European Markets entirely.
|
| Finally, If the EU forces open iMessage, it'll probably force
| open other messaging services, which gives RCS an opportunity
| to grow. See point 1 about them losing already in Europe. Or
| gives Apple a horse in the race even if they simply withdraw
| iMessage instead of opening it up.
| TerrifiedMouse wrote:
| Frankly, the color distinction was never about shame. iOS
| needs a way to let the user know that they are talking to
| someone without iMessage and that they are using SMS to do so
| because many carriers charge for SMS use.
| albert180 wrote:
| RCS is already End to End decrypted by default on Pixel
| Phones
| vineyardmike wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Finally, Apple says it will work with the GSMA members on
| ways to further improve the RCS protocol. This particularly
| includes improving the security and encryption of RCS
| messages. Apple also told 9to5Mac that it will not use any
| sort of proprietary end-to-end encryption on top of RCS.
| Its focus is on improving the RCS standard itself.
|
| > For comparison's sake, Google's implementation of end-to-
| end encryption is part of the Messages app on Android
| rather than the RCS spec itself.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| So now Apple users can finally receive video?
|
| Yay! I can send gym memes to my iphone friend!
|
| Oh wait they still cant open .webm without a half dozen steps. Oh
| well. Lols for us Androids only. Maybe iphones can open webms by
| 2028.
| ars wrote:
| It would be nice if Google would support RCS first!
|
| Specifically in Google Voice which for some perplexing reason
| does not support it.
| sva_ wrote:
| I doubt they'll give the messages the same background color
| though.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's funny that everyone says "green bubble shame". Green bubble
| never meant "Android". It just meant SMS. I get green bubbles
| with iPhones sometimes when my data isn't working but SMS is. The
| whole point was to tell you that you may be charged for the
| message because some carries charge per SMS.
| ephimetheus wrote:
| Is RCS a thing in Europe? I don't think I've ever seen this
| mentioned anywhere. Does the carrier sell you an RCS package?
| Does it apply to messages to other countries? If that's the case,
| I don't see how it could compete with any internet message
| service that exists today in any capacity.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| > Is RCS a thing in Europe? I don't think I've ever seen this
| mentioned anywhere.
|
| Yes. Most Android users with either the Google or Samsung
| Messages app are already using RCS without noticing when they
| message each other.
|
| > Does the carrier sell you an RCS package?
|
| No, it's yet another OTT service, even if your messaging app is
| provisioned by your carrier to use its own RCS infrastructure
| (which is Google Jibe in all cases).
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Using a compatible standard like this should be a requirement to
| be allowed to sell your phones anywhere or use any radio spectrum
| or be compatible with any carrier.
| omnibrain wrote:
| From a german perspective that looks strange.
|
| 3 of at the time 4 carriers tried to adopt RCS and push it into
| the market a few years ago. They called it "joyn" but nobody ever
| used it. Everybody is using WhatsApp, except for some privacy
| conscious folks.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Sweet! Now Google can stop complaining.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Probably related to https://www.engadget.com/nothing-phone-2-is-
| getting-imessage... Or at least they may have moved the
| announcement forward
| MBCook wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| Also I don't know how they're doing that, but I'm more than
| willing to bet Apple will make sure it doesn't work very long
| at all.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Google has been trying thusfar unsuccessfully to get
| legislative forces involved. Really doubt Apple would decide
| to add any fuel to that fire by going after a small company
| trying to be compatible with their products. Would look
| terrible in court and they know it.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think it depends on how they do it. If it's some sort of
| utility that runs on your Mac, that exists and would likely
| be ok.
|
| If they "broke in" somehow Apple will fix it and cut them
| off again.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Thanks, I'm sticking to iMessage.
| edandersen wrote:
| I wonder if Apple will let you disable iMessage and use just RCS
| instead?
| asadm wrote:
| You can disable iMessage already and just use SMS/MMS... So
| should be possible.
| hot_gril wrote:
| You can also disable MMS.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Now if only they would open iMessage or at least release
| Windows/Linux/Web/Android clients so I can give up BlueBubbles.
| One can dream...
| shmerl wrote:
| lol, Apple is so "innovative". It only takes them to be last to
| implement something like that. And USB-C too.
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| cubefox wrote:
| iOS though is still very much a walled garden when it comes to
| installing apps.
| aalimov_ wrote:
| 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)?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Users are allowed to criticize devices they use. Do you think
| your phone is perfect and nothing can be improved? I think
| being able to install other app stores is an improvement on
| my device. "If you don't like it, leave" doesn't actually
| address the criticism. It's an informal fallacy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo . "If Apple don't
| like the EU's laws, they can just leave, but they don't so
| therefore they must be okay with the laws". You see how the
| "therefore" isn't true?
|
| That's why it being actual free market competition where
| consumers have a choice is the real test. If 100% of people
| on iOS want to stick exclusively with the Apple App Store,
| then it being forced open won't matter because all other
| stores will fail when no user installs them.
|
| On the other hand, if users _are_ willing to use those other
| stores, maybe iOS users don 't actually care about using
| exclusively Apple's App Store. Then the only one who benefits
| from blocking that is Apple to charge their extra fees. Look
| at their reasoning for removing Fortnite from the store:
| because Epic added an additional payment processor that
| wasn't Apple. It's not like they removed Apple payment as an
| option either. So users had the benefit of more choices!
| bilsbie wrote:
| Would this allow texting without a phone?
|
| My kid doesn't want a phone but wants to text his friends. Are
| there any options or will there be after this?
| onlyhumans wrote:
| So a phone without it being a phone?
| bilsbie wrote:
| It would be cool if They could add features to group chats like
| adding or removing participants.
| aldousd666 wrote:
| I don't think Google would have even cared about RCS if Apple
| would just make the bubbles the same color. Kids these days.
| dboreham wrote:
| Bit late. They should at least support svn.
| alams wrote:
| Did Nothing Phones chat app announcement influence Apple's
| surprise announcement?
| qwertox wrote:
| PSA: While Google's Messages app previously always asked if you
| want to enable RCS (which I always declined), their latest
| October update enabled it without asking.
|
| It also enabled read messages notification to the sender as well
| as realtime typing notification to the peer.
| alberth wrote:
| Thumbs up (and other reaction responses)?
|
| Does this mean giving an RCS message a "thumbs up" (or heart, or
| "haha") will now be supported from iOS and vice versa?
| throwaway128128 wrote:
| Hooray for regulation.
| classified wrote:
| And there I was thinking that Apple would finally introduce a
| Revision Control System.
| willhackett wrote:
| I love that this was but moments after Nothing was announcing
| iMessage support.
| physicsguy wrote:
| 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.
| car wrote:
| So does this mean we can run our own RCS servers, just like
| email?
|
| Probably a pain to set up, but should be possible. Since it's
| based on IMS which in turn is based on SIP, Open Source SIP
| servers could be the used, e.g.
| https://www.opensips.org/Documentation/Tutorials-RCS-Managin....
|
| Also, will they allow using URI's instead of phone numbers for
| contacts?
| issafram wrote:
| Now give us the FaceTime app...
| avipars wrote:
| Still will have a green bubble though
| hahamaster wrote:
| Time for another color, blue for iMessages, green for SMS, light
| brown for RCS.
| swagempire wrote:
| Im not sure this is much of a surprise-- as shocking as it may
| seem to Americans -- iMessages is not widely used outside of
| North America.
|
| So Apple is just trying to bridge the technology gap here.
| iMessages is pretty dated.
| lencastre wrote:
| Can't they fix the 0-day no-open message exploits first?
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