Apple announced RCS with a whimper when it should have been a bang

Of course it's a whimper, Timmy wants you to buy your mom an iPhone to chat.

IIRC, it's controlled by the carrier and not encrypted. If that's the case, it's bad. We've been moving away from carriers and internet providers, and got some privacy back by various means. Why would be roll that back?

What android application supports RCS except Google Messages? So, for me it is not about "allowing iOS users communicate with Android users", but about allowing communications between iMessage users and Google Messages users.

I find it funny how transparent everyone's pro apple bias is in threads like this. I'm proud to say fuck apple every chance I get because they say fuck users every chance they get. And yes I know because I have them probably $8000 over the course of 10 years or so. I was all in until the iPhone came out and they returned to the "proprietary is the business model" Apple roots.

They don't even try to embrace standards except in cases where it makes them money. Their entire mo is to erase the existence of standards if a buck can be made off of it. Apple being such anti consumer monopolistic pieces of shit being uncommonly recognized is pathetic and sad, and the perfect example of corporations being a negative influence on society.

There probably are people who died because they couldn't charge their phone and couldn't call an ambulance. And no I don't care about Apple's security theater or other talking points. All of it is bullshit

Why celebrate a feature that was added for non-customers? Why celebrate a feature they were forced to add rather than chose to? Don’t get me wrong, I think this should have been done long ago, but what’s in it for Apple to waste some of their precious announcement time? The fallback mode of iMessages doesn’t fall back as far? Yay?

Now we need to wait for Android to get support too 🙃.

lol this author. Android users are they ones who need to celebrate.

JFC, I’m old, and this new use of the word throws me for a loop because everyone writes like I’m supposed to already know what it means .

This will always be my RCS: https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/

The arrogance, pettiness, and childishness of how Apple treated this announcement is shocking.

That's the Apple way. Apple hasn't compared the iPhone to another phone since the first phone announcement. They pretend other phones don't exist (this is the fastest iPhone yet!). So it makes sense that a feature to communicate with other phones isn't given much importance.

There always will be a divide between those who use technology as a means to an end and those whose end is technology.

If you think I’m taking a “side” with that statement you’re the latter.

If you think that’s a dig at anyone it’s probably because you think people care what phone you have, or that I’m trying to sneakily insinuate that you’re not doing anything by installing another flavor of Linux so you can get your dock to line up perfectly the way you want it to.

If you think people care what phone you have it’s probably because you know people who do.

If you think you have to be around those people I’m here to tell you I don’t know anyone who cares about what phone I have.

Apple pretending RCS doesn't exist would be like Google acting like RCS isn't a 15 year old protocol without e2e encryption

Oh wait...

I'm glad they're adding support, but I also feel like this is a hard one to sell to the general public. If it creates a better experience, word will get around about it, but going on stage and talking at length about how there's a new messaging protocol would have been a challenge for non-technical viewers

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Apple will finally adopt RCS in iOS 18, effectively ending a yearslong fight for feature parity between iMessage and Android.

Apple didn’t go over how RCS adoption will finally let iPhone and Android users send each other high-resolution pictures and videos.

Apple was largely forced to support RCS in response to the mounting pressure from global regulators and competing companies.

Apple was the only holdout, and regulators, combined with some bad press (remember when Tim Cook told a guy to buy his mom an iPhone?

It’s just too bad that the long-awaited unification of the iPhone and Android’s messaging systems was drowned out by unsettling AI-generated emoji and jiggling iMessage bubbles.

Even without Apple’s acknowledgment, I’m just stoked that I’ll finally be able to exchange photos and videos from the 21st century with my iPhone-wielding friends and family members for once.

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