Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices

Yea, but the real question is will the youth see through the BS or not? Before it wasn't just a color, green bubbles actively broke things in blue bubble group chats

But once that's gone with (hopefully) the rollout of RCS (which should fix most, if not all, the things that broke gcs) it really would be "just a color"

Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn't put it past them to artificially "break" things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage

It’s super useful to know instantly if the messages are encrypted or not.

They are we got confirmation months ago

There’s a few things that are iOS device specific (like FaceTime) so I can see legit reasons to keep the different colors, if that’s what everyone is used to. Not that video calling should be a random proprietary tech, but that’s another battle…

Sure, but we all know what the real reason is...

Image for the lazy (and yes, of course, Apple's breaking their own accessibility guideline of having text at least 3:1 contrast ratio for text to be readable and instead making it 2:1 by picking the lightest shade of green possible).

But rcs can be e2ee right?

They won't be including encryption so it's not quite feature parity but yeah

I'm guessing orange.

Yeah but the company of “wants to remain in the EU market” might

Disliked a message.

Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.

Not like companies have never done that...

It's the replacement for SMS... Are you upset that WiFi phone calls are tied to your phone number?

It’s a terrible move, especially to make it default.

Subjective, but lets see what you bring to the table.

It’s just as bad a protocol as SMS in its own way: It’s still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can’t just login to the service via a browser or an app.

That's how text (SMS/RCS) messaging works. Did you expect something different? Did you expect the SMS replacement to not require a phone number?

It has lots of failures, worst of all, SILENT FAILURES, where you don’t even know your messages aren’t being sent - just look at the communities around here discussing it.

I've been using it without issue for quite a while now, but that's just one data point. If you have stats to back up your claim, I would love to see that.

There’s no common protocol here really, ...

"The GSMA’s Universal Profile is a single, industry-agreed set of features and technical enablers developed to simplify the product development and global operator deployment of RCS" Source: https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/networks/rcs/universal-profile/

lots of parts work only by decree of each host (e.g. iOS won’t have E2EE with anyone not on iOS, because that requires every cell provider to agree to the config they’re going to use.

This is how distributed/federated systems work and this is one of their cons. They won't always be 100% compatible as each component is independent but the goal is to eventually reach feature parity. See Matrix chat clients that didn't all have encryption (or other features) on day 1 or XMPP which has lots of clients, none of which support all features.

This is the 21st century, and this is the best they can do - a protocol that fails with no notice? Without standardized encryption? That’s tied to hardware?

Please post evidence of this. Again, I've had zero issues and every Android user is using RCS by default now - have heard zero complaints.

I had a better experience in 2009 running Pidgin on my phone and my laptop using XMPP. That didn’t require a phone number - I could login and see my messages in both places simultaneously… 15 years ago.

Correct! XMPP is not an SMS replacement and thus it doesn't need a phone number. In fact, you can't "text" an XMPP user, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about here?

No, RCS is a way to make the plebes think they’ve got a new and better system while still delivering garbage.

RCS vastly improves over SMS with the following features:

• High Quality Multimedia Messaging: Unlike SMS/MMS, which is limited to text and potato sized image/videos, RCS allows sending and receiving photos, videos, and other files at significantly higher quality.
• Rich Content Sharing: RCS supports sharing richer content formats like GIFs, location sharing, and contact cards.
• Improved Group Chatting: RCS provides a more feature-rich group chat experience with features like group chat names, adding/removing participants, and seeing who has read messages (with read receipts).
• Typing Indicators: Similar to many messaging apps, RCS lets you see when someone is typing a message.
• Improved Message Reliability: RCS messages are sent over data networks, so unlike SMS, they shouldn't get lost due to network congestion.
• End-to-End Encryption: RCS can offer end-to-end encryption for chats, providing an extra layer of security for your messages (availability varies by carrier).

But keep spreading FUD and hating on something that actually moves the needle forward.

Love you downvoters that don’t know enough to argue, just drive by and downvote.

I think they're downvoting you because you're wrong - plainly wrong - and in this day and age its much easier to bury (downvote) blatantly wrong information than to reply to it. So I'm replying for everyone else but I will not be downvoting you. FUD should be fought back with evidence, but MAAN is it tiring.

ONE person had the guts to say why he disagreed with me.

It's not about guts, its about wasting time, effort, not giving a shit. I slightly give a shit and want people who are less educated on the subject to see the other side of it.

Nevermind that BorgDrone explained what’s wrong with RCS better than I care to. You drive-by downvoters can’t even be bothered to learn about RCS.

Nothing to comment on here.

RCS is garbage. Plain and simple. I will never allow it on my devices, ...

At the end of the day RCS is objectively better than what exists today in the world of carrier messenger services (SMS/MMS). Is it better than iMessage? I don't think anyone would agree, especially not if you only message other iPhone users. Is it a better out-of-the-box experience for interoperability? Absolutely! And you're being disingenuous if you disagree, but I'm happy to hear you out.

just like with Whatsapp, Facecrap, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

We can agree to these being garbage ✊

All that said, am I actively going to ask people to use RCS? Never! The same way I wouldn't ask someone to use iMessage if I had an iPhone. They're both products developed ultimately to push users into their respective ecosystem to the benefit of Google/Apple/Carriers.

I'll stick to Signal and Matrix until something better comes along.

It's still tied to a phone number/sim, so you can't just login to the service via a browser or an app.

Damn, if only phones had phone numbers and SIM cards... That must really suck for future iPhone users. Apple really dropped the ball.

But SMS still needs an upgrade, because it's not going to be killed of if there isn't a slot-in replacement, and so something has to take its role of being a messaging system where your carrier directly verifies your control of your phone number.

That's why RCS exists.

I'm downvoting you because you whined about downvotes. Letting you know instead of driving by.

Why do we all need to respond when that one user who did respond put you in your place and made it clear that you're just an angry moron yelling at the sky? Downvotes are exactly what's called for here. Piss off idiot. You're getting the exact amount of respect you deserve.

Who even uses sms/mms these days? The only cases I see myself using sms is the poorly implemented 2fa over sms, which is bad since sim hijack is a real threat.

Other than that whatsapp is the norm around here, whether we like it or not. Some also use facebook messanger, but no1 uses mms, it never picked up with the astronomical prices that carriers kept around for no good reason. I wish more people used telegram or signal, but 99% of my contacts don't, so whatsapp it is.

Fi has two different, incompatible options for how to sync your messages to a computer or other device that isn't your primary phone with your SIM (or e-SIM): the so-called "option 1" is RCS compatible, but treats your phone as the canonical device that has the primary copy of all messages, voicemails, etc. "Option 2" is device agnostic, where all messages and voicemails live on the cloud, and your phone (and all other devices) merely syncs with that primary copy in the cloud.

If your phone breaks or dies or is lost/stolen, Option 2 keeps chugging along with all your logged in devices, but the dead phone is the single point of failure for Option 1.

Ideally there would be a device agnostic way to access RCS through your account, but every implementation seems to require a specific SIM.

I think it was something to do with the Fi-specific syncing of messages to the web version.

But they're planning to support it

SMS has one feature nothing else does. It’s not data per se. if you can ping a tower you can get a message out. You can’t do that with anything else.

Makes a difference when you’re out in BFE.

What? SMS is a proven standard that works reliably. Why do we need to replace that? I tried RCS twice, in both cases the other end did not receive my message or at a later time. Even if SMS needed replacement, RCS is not it.

Counterpoint: RCS shouldn't exist either. We should use something that isn't tied to our mobile service providers.

That wasn't what I was saying though. I was talking about what should happen, not what is likely to happen, and criticising the EU for pushing for the wrong thing.

I mean, in the Steve Jobs Apple it might have.

Steve originally pushed for web apps to dominate on the emerging open web standards.

Apple used to care about the customer more than they do now (IMO).

Apple have a surprising amount of open-source software. The OS that MacOS and iOS are built on top of (Darwin) is open-source, as is its kernel (XNU). The engine used by Safari (Webkit, forked from KDE's KHTML) is open-source too.

It's not really traditional open-source, though. It does use an OSS license, but they don't really accept public contributions, nor do they track bugs publicly or have a public roadmap.

Maybe don't make a network-enabled microwave, then. What an unnecessary IoT appliance.

also they kept renaming it

And now I'm irritated by this all over again.

Yeah same here! But I think google is trying to monopolize RCS at the moment and there are really no good alternatives especially here in the United States that people are willing to use because its just attached to a phone number and you don't have to think about it.

😡

🫄 emoji racist

iOS/Android

No iOS version of the app I use. Hopefully rcs is the floodgate. 🤞

She uses generic ass iMessage anyways. She'll come around :)

Doesn't Telegram have E2E encryption disabled by default?

This is kind of true but misses the fact that RCS was intended to be a carrier standard, and carriers weren't going to fucking do it.

So after almost a decade of carriers docking around, Google fires a shot across the bow and just implements their own version, using their jive backend as a "bypass" of sorts. But like any closed platform, it only works with the same clients.

They can't open up their server without some basic agreements so they try to get Samsung inboard. That is a mess of red tape. So they roll out RCS to all messenger clients on newer Android builds and stupidly call it chats or something. When they separately run a product called Google chat.

Anyways, that's how we got here. Each company needs to have a RCS relay server now because carriers couldn't be assed to do their fucking jobs, and now the Apple RCS server will pass your messages to the Google RCS server using a standard... So dumb.

Its still superior to SMS and is now at least baked into every new android device and on by default, but since it is not using actual radio waves SMS is still going to be possible in areas where data isn't. So SMS will continue to limp along and exist, because fuck carriers.

That's just stupid. Kinda like how they never made FaceTime open-source when it was promised to us when it was first announced.

Wait, I already said this in my initial comment. Damn.

So no difference?

You mean SMS? I rarely use SMS these days. And I don't know many people with an iPhone. That's a US, UK thing it seems.