Not surprising considering iMessage is nearly irrelevant outside the US.
US is still stuck on SMS, so much that they even made an upgrade to it with RCS.
It felt like an upgrade to the DVD disk when you have the Internet.
IMHO, I’ll gladly take RCS over the world’s most popular messaging clients - Meta products.
I don't know why people have more faith in cellular providers. They have been selling all of your data before Meta was a thing.
Which is why I said RCS and not SMS or MMS.
Once we get that new open end to end encrypted RCS protocol, that’s the thing to migrate to. Fuck SMS, MMS, Meta products, WeChat, etc. One end to end encrypted standard, that can be used by any messaging client, on any mobile OS.
RCS only increased the meta-data the cellular providers and messaging apps is selling on you.
They don't care about the content in your message, so e2ee is useless in this case.
They're selling who you message, when, and where you are when you do it. They collect data on which cellular tower transmitted your message. And now with RCS they also know when you read the message.
Which means RCS is just as useless in terms of privacy. They only enriched the data. So it's probably worse.
It supports encryption and all they had to do was type “y” when setting it up.
There's better standards than rcs? Over here Google's been taking ads out begging apple to switch over
They finally compromised and Apple agreed to jump over if the parts of RCS that Google was gatekeeping were opened up.
Phase 1 of RCS on iOS will be sans E2EE sometime this year. Likely iOS 18 this fall. Phase 2 will roll in the security once the new open encryption protocol is good to go.
All in all, RCS looks like a lock as the next thing. All the major players are in.
The Nordics are an exception to this - SMS and iMessage are prevalent here.
Sms prevalent? Where? All I see is WhatsApp and people get annoyed if you don't have that.
I may have been speaking too broadly when mentioning Nordics - I've only heard some rumors from Norway from an acquaintance that lives there, but for Sweden it's definitely the case. I have not found WhatsApp-use to be common here.
Where in Sweden have you not found WhatsApp common? Or what age group? In Sthlm and nearby towns (ages 25-45) all I ever hear is WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Since I don't use any of those people roll their eyes, sigh and reluctantly agree to SMS, since they don't use any proper messaging apps.
I'm in Stockholm as well, no one outside 'expat communities' has attempted to communicate with me using WhatsApp.
Who knows though, maybe I'm not in tune with the general public any more. I know that basically all of my extended family run on iMessage, and some friends use Facebook Messenger as their lowest common denominator.
To be fair I'm not really in tune with the general public either, but every time I've had to link up with someone, whether old friends, classmates or co-workers they've always gone for WhatsApp immediately. I think iMessage is very popular, too, but I've never heard people mention it by name. Probably because it's just the default iPhone-only SMS replacement.
Just to provide some perspective on the Nordics claim, since I'm Norwegian and worked in a phone store for six years. In my experience, practically no one here uses Whatsapp, except for communicating with people in other countries. It's either Facebook messenger, Snapchat or SMS/iMessage.
I've neverd heard of anyone using iMessage and SMS is only used to confirm doctor appointments lol. Not sure where in the Nordics you're from
Sweden. As I mentioned, I may have been extrapolating a bit too liberally based on what I know from Sweden and Norway - I should probably have been a bit more specific.
Not surprising considering iMessage is nearly irrelevant outside the US.
US is still stuck on SMS, so much that they even made an upgrade to it with RCS.
It felt like an upgrade to the DVD disk when you have the Internet.
IMHO, I’ll gladly take RCS over the world’s most popular messaging clients - Meta products.
I don't know why people have more faith in cellular providers. They have been selling all of your data before Meta was a thing.
Which is why I said RCS and not SMS or MMS.
Once we get that new open end to end encrypted RCS protocol, that’s the thing to migrate to. Fuck SMS, MMS, Meta products, WeChat, etc. One end to end encrypted standard, that can be used by any messaging client, on any mobile OS.
RCS only increased the meta-data the cellular providers and messaging apps is selling on you.
They don't care about the content in your message, so e2ee is useless in this case.
They're selling who you message, when, and where you are when you do it. They collect data on which cellular tower transmitted your message. And now with RCS they also know when you read the message.
Which means RCS is just as useless in terms of privacy. They only enriched the data. So it's probably worse.
It supports encryption and all they had to do was type “y” when setting it up.
There's better standards than rcs? Over here Google's been taking ads out begging apple to switch over
They finally compromised and Apple agreed to jump over if the parts of RCS that Google was gatekeeping were opened up.
Phase 1 of RCS on iOS will be sans E2EE sometime this year. Likely iOS 18 this fall. Phase 2 will roll in the security once the new open encryption protocol is good to go.
All in all, RCS looks like a lock as the next thing. All the major players are in.
The Nordics are an exception to this - SMS and iMessage are prevalent here.
Sms prevalent? Where? All I see is WhatsApp and people get annoyed if you don't have that.
I may have been speaking too broadly when mentioning Nordics - I've only heard some rumors from Norway from an acquaintance that lives there, but for Sweden it's definitely the case. I have not found WhatsApp-use to be common here.
Where in Sweden have you not found WhatsApp common? Or what age group? In Sthlm and nearby towns (ages 25-45) all I ever hear is WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Since I don't use any of those people roll their eyes, sigh and reluctantly agree to SMS, since they don't use any proper messaging apps.
I'm in Stockholm as well, no one outside 'expat communities' has attempted to communicate with me using WhatsApp.
Who knows though, maybe I'm not in tune with the general public any more. I know that basically all of my extended family run on iMessage, and some friends use Facebook Messenger as their lowest common denominator.
To be fair I'm not really in tune with the general public either, but every time I've had to link up with someone, whether old friends, classmates or co-workers they've always gone for WhatsApp immediately. I think iMessage is very popular, too, but I've never heard people mention it by name. Probably because it's just the default iPhone-only SMS replacement.
Just to provide some perspective on the Nordics claim, since I'm Norwegian and worked in a phone store for six years. In my experience, practically no one here uses Whatsapp, except for communicating with people in other countries. It's either Facebook messenger, Snapchat or SMS/iMessage.
I've neverd heard of anyone using iMessage and SMS is only used to confirm doctor appointments lol. Not sure where in the Nordics you're from
Sweden. As I mentioned, I may have been extrapolating a bit too liberally based on what I know from Sweden and Norway - I should probably have been a bit more specific.