In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
Nothing phone in shambles.
We need to thank the nothing phone for this. They’re only responding like this after severe market pressure. Thank you Nothing
Beeper too. They got a lot of buzz a while back for a similar feature.
Still features like that would be kinda neat for all the devices that RCS don’t support, like Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, ChromeOS, HarmonyOS, Android Open Source Project, Ubuntu Touch, PostmarketOS…
It’s my understanding that they need a bunch of Apple hardware to serve as an intermediary, hence the extra monthly cost for… blue bubbles. Doesn’t seem like something that can be engineered without it.
That means google is going to open the rcs api up to other devs soon too…right? Right??
It says in the artical they plan to use rcs the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. So I assume they won’t be using Google version. Unless I’m misunderstanding it.
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I’m not denying that. Later on in the article it goes into further detail about how apple use the GSM RCS standard and “work to improve it”. Which means they won’t use Google’s version. So now we see what Google will do as Apple will not be working with them on the Google version after all their fuss about rcs.
My wife and I have a pixel while the rest of my family useses iPhone so I am quite interested in how this will turn out. If there is a way the two meet on the GSM standard I think it will be great. But will Google be willing to do that?
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Name literally any technology standard, and it was probably co-developed by competing companies. It’s the rule, not the exception.
Yeah, it will definitely be interesting, if not tumultuous lol.
Samsung Messages is RCS enabled too, fyi.
Only because they have some leverage over Google. It’s also reliant on using Jibe. Which is where Google can get info on your social graph.
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This is great but surprising news. Hopefully the implementation is actually good
I imagine they’ll probably keep the blue bubbles and some features exclusive to iMessage users, but this is still great news.
I wonder if this will encourage Google to allow Fi users to have RCS while texting from PC…
Yep, they’ll definitely stick to the blue green system that already exists, threads with greens will just be improved from what they were/currently are
What do you guys think is going to happen with like an open RCS standard? RCS is only available on Google messages.
RCS has always been an open standard.
Only Google has done the work to implement it for billions of devices, so far.
That has never prevented Apple from also implementing the standard on their devices.
Wonder how it is that smaller community-based chat protocols with many more features can have so many client options: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
While basic text messaging was for years only implemented by Google app.
Alright so who do you think implements it first: Google Voice or Apple?
Please, I’m dying over here. Is there an alternative that does support it?
I’m crossing my fingers textra will get rcs, but I can understand 1) the security concerns and 2) the hoops they’d have to jump through to get it cleared because of said security concerns
Google flat out doesn’t allow it. Not even side loaded.
RCS isn’t the open standard Google claims it to be. They don’t allow anyone to make an RCS app that isn’t Google or an approved manufacturer. They also control the majority of the back end infrastructure with their Jibe service.
You would be hard pressed to find someone using RCS that doesn’t have some of their conversations going through Google’s service.
Google was pressuring Apple to move to RCS as it would give Google more data about iPhone users, as most of their chats would go through Google’s Jibe servers. This would help more conversations from SMS, WhatsApp, telegram and signal to RCS. This open standard is Google getting serious about being the messaging monopoly.
If Apple is series about privacy for their users they will implement their own RCS server infrastructure and compete with Jibe. Giving carriers more options in providing RCS service. While also pushing all iPhone users through their own servers.
If Apple isn’t implementing their own RCS server infrastructure it’ll be because Google is paying them to use RCS and leave it dependent on Google. Essentially making the default messaging service on Android and iPhone Jibe RCS.
This was a big shock but welcome nevertheless. I think the looming EU Digital Rights Commission helped apply the pressure needed to make the change
Waiting for Apple to play it off like they weren’t the problem the whole time.
I wonder if this comes due to the EU
ok so the main hope here as a non google messages user is that this forces google to actually open up rcs more
because the fact that on android its de facto completely controlled by google (yes, i know its an open standard, thats why apple can do it separately, but you can still functionally monopolize an open standard) really sucks
like man i just want apis for rcs in aosp finally is that too much to ask for :(I asked this in another RCS thread but didn’t get a conclusive answer. My understanding is that RCS, although there are claims that it’s an open standard, is essentially controlled by Google. Looking this is up doesn’t lead me far. Most articles just say that SMS sends blurry videos and that RCS is better at that. They don’t discuss who develops RCS or how it works. Am I wrong, is it really open? SMS has serious flaws, but a corporporate controlled “standard” is even worse in my mind.
RCS is an open standard that states to be formalized over ten years ago, and was planned to replace SMS. However, SMS is a service offered by the cell network providers, so these were addressed to get together and implement it in all networks, so everyone can reliably use it, just like SMS works everywhere. it’s not a feature of phone or OS manufacturers. They simply use the SMS protocol that is already available in the network implementation.
Sadly, the big network providers have failed to reach a consensus on if and when and how to implement RCS. Some say they simply had nothing to gain from it, and I believe they might be right. So they dragged their feet so long that Apple implemented iMessage to offer more features. Google held out longer waiting for the providers, but ultimately gave up as well and implemented their own messaging solution. And while the implementation is proprietary, it’s still based on the open RCS standard, unlike the fully closed iMessage protocol and implementation. This means that as long Apple supports the RCS standard, it matters little to the end user if they build their own proprietary implementation. Google and Apple will be able to talk to each other via RCS. So why is it still not great, even if everyone will be able to use RCS this way?
Well, look a bit further. Any non-Android and non-Apple phone will not be able to participate unless they submit to Google it Apple. No more indie phones with truly independent RCS. The services are also owned and controlled by Google and Apple, two companies that are notoriously resistant to regulations. Unlike cell network providers, which are under comparatively strict federal regulatory control, and even international treaties on minimal requirements for consumer protection. They are well supervised and have to adhere to high security and privacy standards. It’s definitely not perfect, but the current development is much worse. With RCS, it’s now two global supranational companies that will handle your private communications, and history has shown that they are much less worried about adhering to local national laws.
Ok, so the gist of this that I’m getting is that there is an genuinely open RCS standard, but no one has implemented it. Instead, Google has their thing that’s been modified for their benefit at the expense of consumer privacy, and that Apple seems to be making their own similar version. So RCS itself isn’t bad, but it’s being ruined by bad actors, and as of yet there are no good actors.
Pretty much. RCS just defines the protocol. That is basically how messages are formatted, how recipients and senders are labeled, how timestamps are formatted, how messages are compressed, transferred and possibly stored and resent in case of inability to deliver (e.g. recipients phone is off) and a lot more technical stuff.
To use this, you need a network of servers that can actually receive messages from phones/ cell network, then possibly transfer them to a server/ cell tower near the recipient(s) to have it broadcast there, making sure only the intended recipient can decrypt it, and possibly storing it for an unknown duration and a number of attempts to deliver it if the recipient is unreachable. And possibly sending a receipt or failure-to-deliver message back to the sender as well. And all of this has to work reliably 24/7, because people will not accept downtimes.
And then you also need client software on the phones to send/receive messages using the RCS protocol as well, hopefully handling true e2e encryption as well.
It’s a lot of hardware and software engineering to actuallyimplement such a seemingly fundamental standard.
So what will the color of the bubbles be this time? Red?
(Assuming that SMS and RCS aren’t merged)
I read somewhere that they will still be green. It’s confirmed by Apple as well.
Oh.
So I guess this won’t really fix the blue bubble problem.
If they seamlessly integrate iMessage features with rcs then I would call it solved
ie if iPhone users can react to messages, include rcs users in group chats with iMessage users and all share HQ photos, send voice memos, and whatever else without missing any of the features because the other person is rcs or because one rcs person in a group chat causes the entire group chat to be downgraded, then the only remaining difference is the color of the bubble so the only people hating on green bubbles will be those who do it solely because of the color and not because of any loss of functionality, which I think would be so few people that it would be a non issue
I’d call that a fix
Still better than WhatsApp, but i would bet this will haunt us for many more years. I couldn’t convince others to use any alternative messenger to WhatsApp, unfortunately. It is easy too pupillary here
I finally deleted my WhatsApp account and it feels good to not have any Meta tentacles on my device.
There’s always going to be a group of plebs sucking on corporate balls. Think of this as the digital version of people buying some slave trade Nikes because they are super cool.
As an iPhone convert this is a good thing.
Until we get an API for RCS on Android as well as FOSS implementations of RCS, I will happily continue using Signal. Even after RCS gets rolled out, Signal will probably still be a better option, because it shares as little metadata as possible and as much of it as possible is end-to-end encrypted.
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What are you talking about? Google doesn’t have a proprietary chat app that they force on everyone. The Messages app is for SMS, MMS, and RCS, just like every phone that’s ever gone out has had a messaging app for SMS.
And Apple purposely hamstringing their messaging features in favor of iMessage for so long has been anti-cooperative and anti-consumer.
Allowing for better interoperability between Android and iPhone is a good thing and it’s asinine to think otherwise.
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RCS is a universal standard.
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