Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple
theverge.com
Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps... like Apple’s own iMessage.
AFAIK there is no open source messaging app that support RCS yet. It's not even included in android AOSP (or is it? I can't find any reference). It would help with adoption if google actually open-sourced the RCS client app.
They won't let any third party apps use it so they are basically as bad as imessage.
The simple fact that iMessage has 0 interoperability makes it much worse than everything else.
So I doubt RCS could be as bad except if they remove the ability to operate with other RCS clients. And even for Google and Samsung that would be extremely stupid.
At least it sends standard SMS to everyone without an iPhone. Wouldn't call that 0 interoperability
I've just been googling a bit because I haven't read about RCS in a while, but I remember thinking then that the show stopping thing is that it's not E2E, and Apple would be dumb to move to since iMessage is. It seems now that E2E is supported but requires clients to support it, which tbh seems the worst of all worlds. At least today I know blue = encrypted, green = not encrypted. If it's optional and we end up in a "is this encrypted? we'll see ¯\(ツ)/¯" type of world that is honestly terrible. I also don't know how great it would be if you have to rely on the client vendor to accurately report encryption status because there are some I trust, and especially when it comes to "just download whatever RCS client you want" I absolutely would not trust that.
iMessage is only E2E encrypted if both users have iCloud disabled or have gone into their iCloud settings and enabled “Advanced Data Protection”
Wow, thanks. Always assumed E2E was enabled by default. That sucks.
The message transit encryption is on but backups are unencrypted by default, which makes it quite pointless
The RCS e2e extension is client controlled, the client app knows if it's active
RCS is only interoperable with apps and carriers that adopt the Jibe protocol, so not much has changed.
Okay, Samsung is the party with some credibility here. It's a lot harder to hear Google whine about messaging standards when their churn in messaging has been hilarious and embarrassing.
I've lost track of all the messaging apps they had:
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
Allo
Duo
begging they bring back whisperSHOUT from Allo to Google Messages :(
that was awesome
Google Talk
There's also Duo, which turned into Meet. it's basically Google Facetime.
Google Talk was the name before it became Gmail Chat
Hangouts was so close to perfect before they blew it all up.
Now I'm using a mix of Chat and Voice and it's terrible for everyone. Voice doesn't even support RCS from what I can tell, and all my messages with iPhone users are full of reactions. It's so annoying. I've had the same Google Voice number for over a decade, why is this so frustrating?
Voice is soooo frustrating. It had so much promise! But they haven't added anything to it in what 5 years? Maybe longer
Duo (videocalling app)
They also killed YouTube DMs
Samsung has 0 credibility here because they just use Google messages and Google’s Jibe implementation of RCS.
If Google drops Jibe for something else, it means Samsung is as well.
RCS isn’t really a standard anymore either. Once Google put out their own proprietary Jibe implementation, everyone just adopted that instead of putting in the work to implement it themselves. All the carriers in the US use Jibe as their RCS backend, and Samsung moved to using Google Messages as their default messenger. And all RCS messages go through Google servers.
If Google decides to do something else and drop Jibe, like they have with every other messaging service they have had, that’s it for RCS.
Samsung's record on RCS isn't great. Their Samsung Messages app didn't work across networks for most of last year. Like RCS only worked on t-mobile, but only for t-mobile branded phones, and for some time they couldn't send to AT&T. Not sure if Google Messages was much better during that time period.
they also removed messages from aosp i believe
Unless the EU makes them, they're not adopting rcs. I could see them putting out an imessage app for Android though. Probably ad supported to make the experience extra shitty for us. They'd quickly own the messaging market, at least in the US.
Internal memos explicitly stated execs were worried that if they brought iMessage to android, poor families might buy their kids cheap android phones instead of iPhones.
You can't make this stuff up
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition
The audacity of parents trying to buy something less expensive in these crazy inflated times
Ok I'll ask, how is iMessage fundamentally any different from texting (other than this RCS stuff)? You can still text. Or is it that weird color thing or checkmark that kids are social pressured into?
The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up
Liked "The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up"
Gave thumbs up to "Liked "The color is one part, the other is that it breaks functions in iMessage. So the elitism doubles up""
Can you tell me what functions? Emojis?
Images are a lot lower resolution (and no “live” photos which are cute if your mom takes a pic of their pet bunny), you can’t add people to group chats or rename them, you can’t see if someone’s read or typed your message, you can’t “like” texts without them appearing like the above post, I think there are even sound bites, little games but I haven’t played with them.
Are "custom stickers" (or whatever they're called) a thing on Android? My dad's been having a blast taking a bunch of goofy pictures of himself and making stickers out of them. We get a good laugh out of them whenever he sends us a pic of himself leaning into the screen giving us the finger.
Yeah, they are built into Gboard and work even animated over MMS.
Iphone users keep sending me long horribly compressed videos i can't see at all because it's not a problem between iPhones. And something about group chats?
That's all I know of based on my experience.
And Android users send me postage-stamp sized videos I can't see at all. Not gunning, just saying it's a problem in both directions (and apple's fault). Also, Android doesn't have the same easter eggs, like automatic confetti filling my screen when someone writes the word "congratulations!" in iMessage. Oh, right - iMessage gives me in-line replies and the ability to give a thumbs up/down/heart etc. response to a single message. Don't know if android has this feature, but android users just get a blank text if I "thumbs up" a comment, for example.
Yes, we literally have all of that including normal quality images if Apple would just play fucking ball outside of their own ecosystem.
Reactions are a thing in most messengers. It's just apple using proprietary code.
Some android messaging apps have the ability to interpret emoji reactions and display them correctly. The issue with photo and video quality is infuriating, though.
Google Messages (RCS app) does that. It even works from iMessage to Android but that is just because Google parses the SMS text that says they reacted that iMessage passive-aggressively sends and makes it appear correctly. It's not following RCS protocol, it's basic text parsing is all.
Incidentally, Google also started sending the same pass-aggressive reacted SMS messages to iPhone users for those using those RCS features, so now Apple gets the messages Android users had to deal with for years (and still do, if they aren't using Messages). I don't know is Apple is doing the same parsing or not as Google, if they aren't then somewhat ironically to Apple's intention Android now has the better react experience.
It's a lot of things, and Apple kinda backed into the lock-in aspect I think by mistake. At the time it debuted, you mainly used SMS when mobile texting, and SMS is garbage. It's not encrypted, was limited to a small number of characters, etc. Picture/video messaging also isn't part of the standard, so MMS was tacked on with massive limits, because the thing about SMS is that it wasn't really designed with it's own bandwidth in mind and instead piggybacked on the carrier signal in idle time (I'm real fuzzy on the details because it's been so long, if someone knows exactly that would be helpful context.) Most importantly, in the US at least, SMS was a fee carriers absolutely scalped you for. When iMessage came out, carriers were still charging absolutely stupid prices for a package of like 200 texts and per text after, and receiving also counted towards that.
Apple says "hey we have the internet on this thing, let's make it a feature that when you send to other iPhone users it doesn't count against your text package" and then built a "modern" text platform. E2E, rich image/video support, the stuff you mention, etc. They made it so that you didn't have to worry about whether your friend was on iPhone, you could send a message to their number and Apple would figure it out. The green bubble thing initially was just "btw you're paying for this one." The reason I say they kinda backed into the lock-in thing is because obviously the idea here was "buy an iPhone and stop paying stupid carrier fees" which is obviously a lock-in strategy, but that aspect of the carrier plans basically collapsed as Facebook released Messenger that same year, so it quickly became "unlimited for $20" and then just "it's all in your plan (which we're just being less obvious bout gouging you on.)"
The green bubble thing sticks around though in the US largely because the US is one of the few places where iMessage becomes a major player in the messaging space, probably because the US market sees a larger share of iPhone sales due to economics and Apple not really having a low-end strategy except "buy an older iPhone." Other places go to WhatsApp or WeChat or whatever, but Apple continues to grow (I think around 55% in the US?) and now it's an annoyance for everyone. I don't think I've ever really seen anyone care about the green bubble other than "shit now I have to figure out how to send them this video of the whatever." At least for younger generations, this just means that the primary text method becomes Snap (me and my wife are about the only people my kids open the Messages app instead of Snap for) while the olds all use Facebook Messenger, and those who refuse just spend more of their day annoyed.
Anyway, it was a nice convenience when it launched. Personally, I think Apple has little reason to develop and process messaging for free for Android and businesses don't do things to be nice, but they're all about service revenue, so I think they should release an Android app, and make it easy to buy stickers and shit like that, send money via Apple Pay, etc. iMessage has already subtly shifted that direction on iPhone and I know at least in my friend/family group we pass money around like that all the time, and this becomes another thing that's sort of annoying when we hang out with someone who isn't on iOS. also, probably obviously, but it's not even like "oh we're hanging out with the poor friend on Android" or anything, he is also holding a $900-$1200 phone, so the lack of interop on these types of things that should probably just be a protocol is annoying af.
Wikipedia sais WhatsApp was released 2009, two years before iMessage. So the idea wasn't new and they most likely didn't lock out Android users by accident.
Yes, having to figure out how to send a video is super annoying. The easiest default is FB messenger because everyone has it, but fuck I don't like giving my private messages to meta.
My go-to is just to send an iCloud link. I technically have a Facebook account, but for various social reasons I don't tell anyone and basically only use it for occasionally browsing marketplace. Even that is more data than I like to give Facebook.
It goes both ways. Both videos and photos from Galaxy phones end up at like 128x80 on my iphone.
It would be fixed both ways if Apple adopted rcs
iMessage is basically proprietary RCS. SMS doesn’t support images, for example. When you send an image via “sms” you’re really probably using “mms” behind the scenes, which has severe limits to quality. If you send an image with imessage, RCS, or any of a variety of custom messaging protocols, you can get the full-quality image.
They also support gimmicks like “reacting” to messages which get overlaid in-line with a heart icon. On SMS it is sent as “MooseBoys loved ‘be right there’”.
Technically, yes SMS doesn't support reactions. But you can do what Google does and just parse that text and "turn" it into a reaction for viewing purposes.
If an iPhone user sends me a reaction it looks fine to me, but funnily enough now when I send one back it looks the exact way Apple sends it to non Apple devices.
Not entirely sure what you're asking but
iOS does not allow you to use any other messaging app for SMS. This is surely intentional to lock you into iMessage.
If you're messaging iOS --> iOS your "text" messages (SMS) are automatically upgraded to the iMessage protocol, and there are a wide variety of features that are enabled without the user downloading any other apps or switching the protocol. It just happens.
Since not even iPhone users in Europe use iMessage I highly doubt anyone would use it outside the US.
I feel Europe is a lot more diverse than you think. In Norway, which have a fairly high percentage of iPhone users, iMessage is the most used - or at least I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use it by default.
A few friends chat are on Messenger or Snapchat. Signal / Telegram / WhatsApp etc are extremely rare.
And also as a Norwegian I don't know a single person that uses iMessage.
Everyone I know are using Facebook messenger, Snapchat or WhatsApp.
I tried using the Apple app on Android for tracking the tracking thingies. Horrible, horrible app. I will not be trusting anything put out by Apple for Android unless they do a Microsoft and go all in. Otherwise, they will always have a reason to make the Android experience worse than the iPhone experience.
There is a FOSS app for that https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard
Under new EU laws, Apple will be forced to allow interoperability with iMessage in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean them adopting RCS or bringing iMessage to non-Apple platforms, but it does mean they'll need to at the very least publish an API allowing external software or services to use iMessage.
I just expect them to make the interoperability as shitty as possible
RCS isn't a good solution. As long as all RCS implementations are proprietary and Google doesn't even include an RCS client in AOSP and doesn't let you use a third-party client it's just as shitty as iMessage. Just use Signal, it's FOSS, cross-plattform and stores as little data about you as possible. It's also not run by some garbage big tech corporation.
Is there any precedent to ads in Apple products (apart from their store)? Although they'll surely find other ways to annoy non-Apple users, I don't think ads are "in style" for them.
Friendly reminder that none of these asswipes are your friend :)
Just like actors, musicians, athletes, & authors. None of them are your friend.
I don't know, George Orwell was a solid dude.
If he's not there to help you when it's time to move then he's not your friend. So you can read Eric Arthur Blair but he's not your friend.
Exactly. The software is being kept closed source. You have no idea if Google is up to its shitty stunts to data track or anything along those lines. If it was open source then that argument is gone, till then.....
Gotta love how Google has spent the last, what, 10 years?, fighting iMessage and losing due to their own short-sightedness/lack of focus and incompetence. The company that dethroned MSN Messenger couldn't win a fight against an opponent that, on a global scale, represents ~25% of the mobile market. Meanwhile, Whatsapp dominates the instant messaging world.
I really thought Facebook overspent when they bought Whatsapp for $1B but I was wrong. It took Google too long to finally get behind a single messaging strategy. That's just poor leadership.
Messaging with Google is a funny story thought. They had something that worked and destroyed it by defederating it
After that they had like what 10 more apps, and multiple one not link together from their own services
Google photo has its own, google Drive too, probably other as well, and then there's Google Meet...,
Wasn't it a crazier number—like $15 billion or something?
Edit: Siri says $19 billion [pinkie to corner of lips]
My memory was waaaaay off
Thatz ok, little buddy :) U just leave all the thinking to me [mind tap]
In order to grow a chat app you need a consistent and stable interface over a long period of time. It can't have too much bullshit in it either.
In order to grow your career at Google you need to build ridiculous shit and then leave once you get your promo. Entire departments get reorged so someone can hit their people manager quota.
Product groups, business units, "orgs", VPs, SVPs, it's all just a game and "everyone's playing except you." This is why Google kills shit. Because Google rewards behavior that results in killing shit.
Facebook bought Instagram for a billion. WhatsApp was 16 billion (and additional 3 billion in restricted stock units).
Ahh yes my memory isn't great anyways. Thanks
iMessage will have to open up bridges to other messaging services soon regardless thanks to being a Gatekeeper under the EU Digital Markets App.
bad news, imassage was not classified a gatekeeper because in europe they have to few users
But for the same reason nobody cares about iMessage. I don't know anyone who uses it.
Even Apple users in my country are using WhatsApp.
While Apple should adopt RCS, I cannot help but feel that Google is being extremely hypocritical. They complain about iMessage being proprietary, but their implementation of RCS isn’t open source, and I believe they even mentioned they have no plans to open it up for 3rd party devs to implement it into their own sms apps. This just feels like an iMessage equivalent for Android. It has rich features that are exclusive to Android as a platform (more specifically exclusive to Google Messages or whatever the app is called now)… just like iMessage within iOS/MacOS/iPadOS..
Yeah, the only issue is that RCS is actually better and the counter argument is that Apple is breaking the messaging platform by not implementing it in some way.
The other point to make here is that iMessage wouldn't have to just disappear. They could continue to support iMessage while just allowing text messages to be better for those who just don't want an iPhone. The whole thing is hypocritical on both sides. Apple has convinced it's users, very successfully might I add, that it is an Android problem and instead of having choice over your phone, you should just buy an iPhone.
As someone who works in IT this is really not the answer users should get. To me, this is equivalent to, "your computer quit working? Just buy a new one." But imagine you only had one choice and it's because that company refuses to just improve standard text messaging for all users across the board but iPhone users don't understand that Google has a method to fix this problem Apple just refuses to make it a better experience for everyone.
Additionally, I think RCS is an open platform. Google's fork of it carries encryption and group messaging integration. Point being Google genuinely has a viable iMessage solution to non iMessage texts. Apple wouldn't even have to stop using iMesaage.
While I agree, Apple is being obnoxiously stubborn and it truly only does benefit Apple users as well, it just feels disingenuous from Google. It more feels like they want to get their product onto Apple devices. If Apple could implement RCS the way they wanted to and interoperate with Google, then I think it would be a more valid argument (and I suppose they can, but Apple would be caught dead investing money into something like that). But Google clearly wants Apple to use their own version and is putting up this annoying ad campaign to mask it. (As far as I know, the standard RCS implementation doesn’t even include E2EE, rather it’s something unique to googles implementation, correct me if I’m wrong). Google uses encryption as a talking point in their ad campaigns and is honestly for me the biggest reason for it to be used in iOS. Otherwise the experience is only marginally better than sms, and I wouldn’t expect Apple to even bother with it. At least with encryption one can challenge Apple‘s stance on being a privacy focused company..
Im also a software engineer and it’s annoying as hell that Apple is stubborn, but from a business perspective, it’s a gold mine for Apple - ecosystem lock-in is just too valuable to them as a company.
Has apple tried to work with Google on the RCS version? If not, I see everything you've written here as an invalid false equivalency
They haven't really. What they really should do is run their own RCS server and federate and support the e2e extension, but they don't want to.
The most annoying part is that the imessage encryption protocol is so far behind state of art (same underlying encryption protocol with small RSA keys and no deniability since ~2011 when Signal has been around since 2010 with a better protocol). Meanwhile Google based their encryption extension on the Signal production. It would be a solid security improvement if Apple adopted it.
Google's encryption extension is published so anybody could implement it (if you already have enough access to create your own client, like Samsung)
Google Voice still doesn't support it!
Its just trillion dollar companies doing trillion dollar things.
Haha fair enough 😂
MKBHD closed this topic for me forever. Apple is never going to open up. It provides them tremendous value. They don’t give a shit if Samsung taunts them lol. They want your teenage kids taunting their friends over their green bubbles. And it’s working.
Only happens in Muricaland. In every other countries I visited, WhatsApp rules.
WhatsApp is also addressed in that video.
It’s great in countries where it is so dominant that it is everyone’s default. (That’s not everywhere except America, BTW)
Anywhere it’s not 80%+ dominant already, you are stuck trying to convince everyone and their grandma to switch their message app and that just doesn’t work.
Plus… more Facebook on my phone? No thanks. I’m not saying any other company is an angel but Facebook is known to be the devil.
Even when WhatsApp is dominant it's not a solution.
Everyone being forced to use a walled garden messaging app owned by a Big Tech so the can communicate with friends and family is not a solution.
And this is unfortunate. People chose proprietary garbage like WhatsApp over FOSS apps with a proven track record like Signal.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
closed this topic for me forever
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Why should anyone care about RCS? The trend has been to get everything into data instead of carrier owned services for two decades now, we don't need another SMS (it will likely always be a fallback). What we should move onto is a carrier and device type angnostic universal standard protocol over TCP / QUIC like XMPP or Matrix, with SMS as the backup.
When you get a phone you can get an phone system account and a telephone number already. Modern apps in the Google ecosystem should already recognize you are already signed in with Google and sync your contacts. Since almost everyone is already in the Google ecosystem, if Google supported it they could have extended their XMPP implementation in Hangouts to allow messaging directly via XMPP to those contacts and SMS for anyone not yet in the system (similar to how Signal did, Apple does, and Google does now with RCS). Unlike Apple, since its just XMPP, users can still add friends and be added by friends on other XMPP servers (ex. their ISPs, their own, or a third party). They could have supported or jumpstarted a new very simple open source alternative app for that portion for AOSP if the EU complained. Eventually Carriers could have supported passthroughs for those still on feature phones and other users of SMS to use the number@carrier accounts to hit XMPP users with generated SMS numbers for non-SMS users (pushed either by business necessity or part of a government / teleco org like GSMA staged removal of SMS and telephone numbers). It's all data at the end of the day.
Instead, they developed a whole new protocol to fluff the telecos and keep the now badly managed telephone number system even more necessary allowing spammers and allow the problems of legacy SMS to continue.
Apple, Google, and Samsung should all be shamed for not supporting fully open protocols and necessitating dependency on user harming stacks.
This sounds nice at a superficial level, but there's a lot of reliability and backwards compatibility issues being ignored. During natural disasters and emergency situations, internet and cellular data are the first to fail. It's not casual. For the phone and SMS (GSMA) protocols are sturdy enough that they can operate with very simple, low energy consuming and highly reliable machines. Internet data services on the other hand consume way more electricity (more expensive to have them operate with backup generators, for example) and are more delicate and prone to failure. They also need to be replaced more often. 100% of national emergencies systems run on phone and SMS tech, that could reliably operate for several decades with little maintenance that would cost billions to replace them with internet based system that were as reliable and durable. And then on top of it all, wired phones can even operate without electricity and connect with cellular terminals to contact other phones and cellphones. Only the tower needs to have power. There's just a lot banked of that reliability that most modern conveniences don't have.
Imagine a world where we can adopt a scalable, secure, open communication protocol where users can use whatever app they want. Imagine humanity moving past the diaspora of special-snowflake chat apps and on to better things.
Move on? Hell you could just move back to xmpp when people were using aim, gtalk, trillian clients, digsby, nimbuzz...
Some of us are old enough to remember the golden era.
Capitalism: “No.”
But then we wouldn’t have the subtle culture warfare over blue and green messages.
But I wouldn't earn money, as we are currently forcing people to use our services/products.
Future generations will never know our pain
Breaking news: Apple and majority of its users still don’t care.
I’d love to have RCS, but it’s not a make or break feature for me, and I’m tech savvy enough to know what it is and what it does. Good luck trying to convince the average consumer to give a fuck about invisible tech that doesn’t meaningfully change their experience.
Well, it would change their experience. They would see improved photo quality to/from Android users via text messages. But Apple has managed to train people to think that Apple's refusal to put iMessage on other devices is somehow a shortcoming of Android.
Considering how much time Apple users spend bitching about green text bubbles and "shitty android photos" it would meaningfully impact their experience when talking to anyone that's not on iPhone.
They blame Android for that for some reason. Makes no sense.
Apple deliberately makes it appear that way so the competition looks bad.
They don't really advertise the fact that they're quietly intercepting all of their customers messages to other customers and routing them through a proprietary network.
And if you dare leave, messages from your old iPhone friends mysteriously won't arrive unless you proactively deregister your number from iMessage or it eventually expires out.
...or when you are given a new number from the provider and dont find out it doesn't recieve messages from iPhones.
Happened to my fiance a few months back. She got a new number, and her dad received no messages from her. (He had an iPhone) It was fathers day weekend. All plans fell through.
Cause they don't realize it's a protocol issue, they just imagine that only iPhone has progressed past 2007 photo technology I guess.
yeah, people are use to having 10 different chat apps, and it seams to be normal, which is sad (somebody should make a standard! *insert that xkcd comic about making a better standard)
With RCS there seams to be less chance that they destroy it like they did with XMPP (google / Facebook and cie)
As you wish
Yes, until now we've accepted to be governed by what Big Tech can convince "average users" to use and here we are.
Internet is controlled by a handful of company who decide what you read, what you watch, how you communicate with friends and family.
Apple don't want it because it removes part of their marketing strategy. (Being, if your friends have Apple, you also need apple)
Apple Users don't know what it is.
You say you don't know what it is or does. Yet you say you'd love to have it. That's quite contradictory don't you think?And it WOULD impact their experience.
It amazes me that people like you, who don't actually know or understand the topic, can be so vocal about your opinions and conclusions. About something you don't know.It's the USB-C standard all over... "Apple and majority of their users don't care". And that's still not what it's about. It's about setting a standard so we don't need 9 different cables and 7 different apps, just to send a God damn picture or video.
Edit: I misread the comment. I take back what I said that's striked over. My bad. Sorry.
They said in the comment that they are tech savvy enough to understand what RCS is and does.
My bad. I completely read that wrong. Could have sworn I saw a "not" in there.
This isn't about making iPhone users care per se, I really think it's just a public perception thing.
Apple is not going to change this unless legally forced to because it is quite possibly the biggest driver of iPhone sales.
A whopping 87% of American teens use an iPhone, and the green text from Android SMS is the biggest reason. At that age people will do almost anything to fit in and get a date, and the green text was chosen specifically to elicit an "eww" response. Most of those teens will likely will continue to use iPhones as adults because it's what they know.
Meanwhile outside of the United States basically no one uses iMessage. Precisely because it's so terrible it interfacing with non-apple devices. Everyone just uses WhatsApp which will work with anything.
Of course WhatsApp's quite a crap program as well missing basic functionality but at least it's not device specific.
I can still send text messages to anyone from my Samsung phone, it's all just dumb.
As someone from the EU, I'm so confused about why this would matter to people. At that age, people will just find any excuse to bully regardless of what it is, it's why uniforms don't work either for those purposes. Hell, if someone were to try and shame me for the fucking color of my messages I'd be thankful, they've shown me another cunt to avoid associating with. In that sense it might actually be useful. (also, who even uses sms anymore?)
The green text peer pressure means nothing to me, but you are 100% spot on about the ecosystem driving sales. My whole family uses apple and I get left out of so many group chats and face times that I've actually considered switching to Apple even though I'm a die hard Note fan. Apples hardware may be nothing special, but they have a killer feature in their seamless, closed ecosystem, and they know it. At the end of the day, a phones job is to communicate, and Apple does that seemlessly- with other Apple devices
Be the change. You're doing it.
Very true and very ridiculous. A great deal of people will commonly do almost anything to be apart of a desirable group.
I'd be ok with everybody adopting Signal protocol but I can safetly say no government anywhere would "allow" that
I am beyond bummed that Signal abandoned SMS support. It worked, it isn't a constantly evolving standard. Just leave it alone, Signal!!
I used it too. I miss it, but i get why they removed it: it just kinda breaks the Signal user experience and trust model. This app lives and dies by the users trust their conversations will be private. By having an option to message someone in a completely unencrypted, easy to intercept mode like SMS it risks this trust for little gain (some power users like us liked it). By removing it, the app concentrates on what is expected from it and removes a big possibility for user error while fleshing out its marketing image even more. It makes perfect sense but its a tad annoying.
Unfortunately, in doing so, Signal became Yet Another Messaging App. It really damaged their value proposition in my eyes.
If I need a separate app for SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal, etc, it just becomes a chore to find enough friends willing to move to it exclusively.
The IM ecosystem really needs to be harmonized on the user end. I remember Trillian was this great app back in the day that brokered all your MSM, Google Chat, etc IM accounts into a single app that let you just focus on messaging people and not worrying about what platform was being used. We badly need this again.
Matrix can kinda emulate this kind of "all messages in one app" experience with bridges but you introduce a single server who decrypts all your end to end encryption so you pretty much have to self host. Also the bridges arent perfect so your msgs will sometimes look weird or not support some features.
A shared frontend would be a little more convenient, but is having multiple apps that big a deal? I think I have eight right now.
Android's default Contacts app has buttons for each option a given contact has so there's not even much cognitive load to pick the app you need if you start from there.
I understand what you're saying, but I feel it was pretty transparent the way they handled SMS vs. Signal Messages. I suppose it's a bit like the D.W. meme, though.
Yeah, I don't follow the details on this much and my first thought was "Signal had SMS support? WTF?"
You'll notice Signal backtracked on supporting SMS as soon as they got an ex-Googler as their new leadership.
I always thought having SMS support in Signal created a significant risk of confusion about what kind of message the user was sending. Of course sophisticated users always knew the difference, but it's for software that emphasizes security it's better not to have to tell people who don't understand the technical details "it's secure unless...".
It's a valid point that it could potentially create some confusion when a user assumes that everything in Signal is secure. Unencrypted SMS threads could contain an open padlock icon and even an ominous red window border, but someone inevitably will not understand the difference.
However, my frustration has been how both convenience and security is reduced by removing SMS from Signal.
Many people will continue to use SMS for a variety of reasons, necessitating the use of an additional app. So now we have people continuing to communicate over this insecure protocol, but with the additional target vector of potential vulnerabilities in the supplemental app.
lol you can say that again
No one should be using SMS in 2023, and I'm really sorry for you Americans who are still using this ancient garbage technology.
Signal protocol is mainly an encryption protocol, not messaging.
Even if Apple adopt it, you won't be able to talk with Apple users from Signal.
First privacy, then USB, now RCS.
Only thing I know about RCS is that it has caused a few of my texts to never be sent, because the "send as normal text if RCS doesn't work" also didn't work. Other than that it has done nothing for me.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps... like Apple’s own iMessage.
The video, titled “Green bubbles and blue bubbles want to be together,” shows a Romeo and Juliet-style conversation between two users who want to be together, but who are kept apart by one of their “parents.”
The “bubbles,” of course, are a reference to Apple’s iMessage interface which shows feature-rich blue bubbles for messages sent between Apple users, and discordant green SMS bubbles with reduced functionality when Android users participate in the chat.
This two-class system is especially frustrating in countries like the US where about half the population is using an iPhone and the other half is running Android on a Samsung device.
Apple, of course, has every incentive keep the status quo as a form of ecosystem lock-in, but it might be forced to open up its messaging service as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Regulators are currently investigating whether iMessage meets the bar to be considered a “core platform service” under the rules, which would compel Apple to offer interoperability with other messaging services.
The original article contains 232 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 6%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Apple will never listen, but maybe the EU could decide it's important enough issue for them to force it. It's starting to feel like we should just go to them, first. I'd like to imagine we have another candidate problem for regulation enforced fixing, with Mac laptops' long-standing displayport multistream problem. Macs will only mirror and never extend to an nth monitor over displayport splitting ... but the availability of thunderbolt adapters as a workaround takes some of the "oomph" out of that argument. That one's been around like ten or more years.
The other issue alluded to by another commenter, though, is that rcs is not low-level in Android os quite like SMS is. Like the API to get the information into other competing apps is not there, so it seems a little bit hypocritical.
The EU could have had an effect on it via the DMA, but it seems that not many people use iMessage in the EU. People use Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger way more here, so those are forced into opening up.
iMessage message bubble colors seem to be an US problem.
Signal is the way to go. No need to expose metadata to your mobile carrier via RCS. Also, currently you need Google's proprietary garbage message app to make use of RCS. There's litterally no reason to do this.
I have had Signal installed for 6months, I still have 0 contacts because nobody I know uses it and they all use messenger or whatsapp...
Need to befriend more drug dealers.
You have to convince people to use Signal.
Not the same guy but this is basically impossible. I was able to get maybe two of the dozens of people I have to contact regularly to use it, then they dropped SMS support and it's been dead ever since for me.
Create fake tinder profiles of hot women, match with thousands of men, and tell them "message me on signal". Dont scam them, that would be rude.
Up to you if you have sex with them or not.
Yes, that's the issue
I personally had a very bad experience with signal and I don't think I'll be using it again. Also now that they cut SMS support I think they only way I'd use it again is if an overwhelming amount of people start using it.
Why was your experience bad? Did you sign up for it when Elon Musk encouraged people to use it? Back then, so many people signed up that their servers were just overloaded. That's to be expected with a user growth rate of 400% in one week. I've been relying on Signal for all of my communications for a year and a half now and I haven't ever experienced any issues.
I signed up very early and it was based on an episode of All About Android on TWiT. Messages just weren't going through. Mine out and others in to me. There was an emergency and someone really needed to get ahold of me and I didn't get the message. After that I dropped signal.
Oh, that's unfortunate. I understand why you dropped it after that experience. I can only tell you that they have massively improved and the experience is great now.
I wish we live in an ideal world where we could have a messaging application which is like email. Anyone can run their server and can have whatever messaging client they want. And everything is interoperable.
There's Matrix and XMPP
This public shaming bullshit reminds me of Epic's Fortnite debacle and it's not a good look, especially from Samsung who usually mocks Apple on Monday and is copying them by Friday (see "no CD drives in laptops" or "no headphone jack" or "no removable batteries in the phone"). I know they're completely different issues but whining is whining.
There's truth in this, but in the meantime, these small moments are huge and the alternative is that they are gone entirely in our monopolistic, fixed slice of capitalism. Enjoy the small bit of competition we still actually see. Agree that Google/ Samsung are ultimately disappointing but on balance, better than the walled garden, hyper inflated pricing and big-buttoned toddler interfaces of iOS
Satan and the Devil call Lucifier.
I haven't sent an SMS since like 2013 or something like that. Couldn't care less about this blue green controversy, my use of SMS is receiving 2fa codes and spam.
Yeah, this is very much a weird USA issue.
I often only have internet access - no sms (receive only), no calls. Don't want to pay for it, don't need it.
iMessage is probably a USA issue, however everyone using WhatsApp is not a solution either.
It's a proprietary application controlled by Meta, we need an open standard so no Big Tech controls everyone's messages.
It's hard to get phone service without unlimited SMS in the USA. Using it is still worse than most alternatives so I do find it weird that people aren't adopting chat apps more eagerly.
You'd have to convince everyone to switch to it and most Americans are going to have the reaction of: "Why would I want another fucking app that I have to make another damn account for when I have something that does pretty much what I want built in"
Activity groups will usually use some other service for member messaging (ex: my D&D group uses Discord for campaign discussion even though we all have eachothers phone numbers, a outdoor activity groups like a hiking group may use a facebook page, etc.)
Just download Signal. Cross platform, verifably E2E, and verifiably no data collected by Open Whisper (as per their submission in a lawsuit). Also, one of the authors/architects of Signal occasionally trolls the companies that provide mobile spyware.
How does Signal communicate with non signal users?
99% of the people I txt with would never use Signal...
It doesn't.
I tried using signal but I had a lot of problems with it. I wouldn't get my messages. The people I messaged didn't get my messages. There was an emergency and someone couldn't get ahold of me when they really needed to. After that I deleted signal and moved on. That's just my experience. Yours could be different.
Signal servers do not allow federation. Use Matrix instead.
RCS needs to happen, I'm so sick of Whatsapp.
Why not switch to something not owned by Facebook like Signal (or something on an open protocol like Element)?
No one I know uses Signal or is skilled enough to switch away from Whatsapp. 100% have WhatsApp.
Trying to switch, would be like talking people into using Linux. Not going to happen unless the current option got much worse.
Wat? If they managed to register with WhatsApp, they can do so with literally any other messaging service.
Yeah that's a big problem that I'm trying to research solutions for myself too. It was way better when I could tell people to just install Signal and it'd replace their SMS app but be secure when others use it, but unfortunately Signal dropped SMS. Currently I just have all the apps, but since Signal does contact discovery (like Whatsapp) I follow a Signal, Whatsapp, FB Messenger, RCS (via Google Messenger), then SMS pattern and stopping when I can contact someone. Obviously, this has the issue that all these apps are getting far more data than they need and I'd like to look into a multiplatform app that does e2e. From what I've researched so far, Matrix bridges (servers that connect your Matrix account to a third party messaging service) might be the answer.
I haven't tried it yet but there is a Matrix bridge that you can host if you are selfhosting a Matrix server (or use a commercial Matrix provider that already hosts it) that will allow you to connect to your Whatsapp friends without needing the Whatsapp app yourself that could be interesting for at least that use case https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/setup.html?bridge=whatsapp .
Using Signal is incredibly easy. Unless your friends are too incompetent to even install an app, they can be set up in a couple of minutes.
Notice I said using and not switching, because there's no need to pick just one.
They are incompetent enough. They also see no reason to switch. They will tell you that other apps will also use your data and that Whatsapp is working fine for what they do with it. Doesn't matter if it's true.
Some even use the status to share stuff like Instagram and are addicted to it.
They'll tell you that there's no point in installing two apps. I've had that topic often enough.
You originally said nobody was skilled enough. It seems what you really meant is nobody cares enough.
Unfortunately, that's the actual reason in my experience. I got most friends and family to run Signal next to WhatsApp though.
You underestimate how tech-dumb the majority of people are
Google's RCS is as proprietary as iMessage
But it is at least available for Apple to implement if they do choose, unlike iMessage.
The only way something replaces WhatsApp is if WhatsApp stops existing.
Besides, RCS is not in any shape or form ready to the general public, considering all the blatant inconsistencies and instabilities, let alone replace one of the most used, tried and tested messaging platforms out there.
I switched my parents group chat to RCS from whatsapp after pestering them for ages.
Over the span of 2 months we had 4-5 inconsistencies where I would recieve a message from my mum or dad in the group that would be in another language or clearly not be written by them. It wouldn't show up on her phone but my brother and dad would see it.
Here's the proof of the last occassion it happened. They're never going to switch now...
I think this issue is mostly a USA one, considering that most communications there have caps (data, phone time, SMS etc.) Paradoxically, the market there doesn't work very well and prices are relatively high. Big corporations take advantage of it to lock people to their ecosystems. There is a high probability that this issue, will be regulated by the EU, since US policy makers are unable to solve much more important problems. For them this is not an issue. The market has solved it.
I'd argue the SMS/MMS reliance in the US is entirely because there have been no caps on it for years now. Nearly all plans you can get here have unlimited SMS/MMS included, even cheap prepaid ones.
Having a fixed allotment of texts or minutes hasn't been a thing for over a decade at this point, and the only thing that's expensive now is data.
That was my understanding. I was told one of the reason for growth in apps like Whatsapp outside the US was that data was cheaper than texting (probably just per message cost).
It's entirely a US issue. Everywhere else just uses platform agnostic apps like WhatsApp, telegram, signal, etc to get round the issue. Americans hitch their wagons to a corporate manufacturer like an identity and then moan about people who buy the other brand having different coloured text message bubbles.
Way to miss every single aspect of it
What did I miss there?
RCS dates to 2008 and Appul didn't support it. Now we know that Appul is stuck in 2007 or earlier.
Edit: it seems RCS is another centralized hellscape
Centralized or not, it's a massive improvement over basic SMS/MMS.
Edit: at least the concept is. Implementation aside, it's crazy that there isn't a cross-platform texting option that has more modern capabilities than what we've been using for the past couple decades.
I'm not sure anyone uses SMS to chat anyway.
*Cough*, *cough*. Man, it's freezing outside.
Everyone (in America) wants them to be together
Rest of the world already moved on to better services.
My understanding with RCS is that similar to SMS it uses the infrastructure of your phone carrier. First question: Do all carriers support this? Second question: Is there anything that prevents carriers from eventually monetizing this? At least with some sort of roaming trap when you are abroad...
Most carriers support it. When they don't, the protocol can use a bridge. Google hosts a bridge. I guess you could also use the bridge if the carrier is trying to charge for it.
"What did the EU ever do for us?" in the monthy python mood. After usb c, apple is getting its proprietary model challenged again. When will Apple understand that in the long run it hinders innovation? And that openness and standardisation is a catalyst for it. RCS might not be the interoperable solution the EU pushes though. Anyway that's the future of not using standards : https://lemmy.nz/post/2316522
My big question is: Why does Apple need to adopt it in the first place?
Answer is: closed nature of system they created and closed (yes) nature of RCS ecosystem.
We should adopt user-friendly democratic operating systems and chat protocols instead.
Apple should support RCS as a cross-platform texting option. It is meant to be implemented by cellular providers, not device manufacturers, and meant to be a more capable replacement for existing texting. It is not under the control of any single software or cloud provider. Think of it as improving “the lowest common denominator”. I don’t see why I would choose to use it but I do want the option.
Why doesn't a third party just come up with a standard
https://xkcd.com/927/
Signal
Great until they got rid of sms fall back for people that don't have signal
That pretty much only affected the small percentage of American users that used Signal for the SMS integration. For everyone else it literally made no difference whatsoever. Besides, it is completely in line with their vision to not include SMS since it is an insecure protocol.
I'd argue the percentage wasn't small. The available population was Android users with SMS contacts.
Either way, it was an unforced error for the Signal leadership that gave away their competitive advantage in their home field to mainly Google and Facebook apps.
There is no way to convince me to go back to supporting Signal after that blunder. They destroyed my secure contacts network in less than two months after the announcement.
@Virkkunen @0421008445828ceb46f496700a5fa6
Nobody outside the US uses SMS anymore.
Matrix. It’s far more open than signal.
True, however it's not as polished as Signal and not as noob friendly. I've been using Matrix daily for a couple years using Fluffychat and Element and not much has changed.
Because the technical part has been solved for a while and this has moved into being a social problem. My kids only use iMessage/SMS for people over thirty, and use Snap with all of their friends. In family groups, you standardize on on whatever. Most of my extended family decided on FB Messenger a while ago (I don't participate, but my wife does and can fill me in.) My immediate family just uses iMessage. Friend groups I've seen generally do the same. They pick Telegram or WhatsApp or whatever, and then the quilting club just uses that. This also seems a very US centric issue - basically everywhere else is either on whatsapp or Line or WeChat or whatever.
Whole situation reminds me of another one. When Google created their services to be unavailabe to install without root access, while Huawei locked their devices so device owner have no root access that Huawei has remotely.
Then people started blaming regulators for inability to have Play Store on Huawei branded phone, not questioning why blessing from device vendor to install an app is required in the first place.
I use SMS mostly. From time to time Google asks if I want to activate RCS and presents a policy along with it, which I decline. Does it pass through their servers? If it does, that's gonna be a big no.
I'm not quite sure why you're against a message going through a particular company's servers. If it's privacy then as far as I know SMS & MMS are like sending postcards in that everyone can see them.
Matrix with bridges and bots all the way.
As an iPhone user, I agree with this message. Group chat's with Android users currently just ran in Telegram or Discord.