The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
Apple could easily do the bare minimum to keep regulators at bay while still keeping the experience as shitty as possible so that Android will continue to look bad. For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators, or they could even deliberately compress videos. I’m expecting the worst until we see otherwise.
This is exactly what I’m expecting. The company of “buy your mom an iPhone” isn’t going to be aiming for maximum interoperability.
Yeah but the company of “wants to remain in the EU market” might
The EU is fine with iMessage shenanigans, because they’re not a significant enough part of the market to matter. Nobody uses SMS either.
It’s WhatsApp all the way here.
No, they’ll aim for minimum interoperability that the EU will let them get away with, and they’ll push that line every chance they get
Reactions already work in MMS groups, use them every day.
Except they’re already advertising improved quality of photos and video in non-iMessage chats. Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.
Disliked a message.
Not like companies have never done that…
Apple will probably use white bubbles with yellow font.
Not to criticise apple too badly here, but that’s what will happen, as the version of RCS they use won’t have E2EE.
And… It’ll still be tied to your phone number. Why would I want another shitty messaging system that’s tied to my phone number?
It’s the replacement for SMS… Are you upset that WiFi phone calls are tied to your phone number?