Google Takes a Snarky Shot at Apple Over RCS in Its Latest Ad (engadget.com) 173
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has been trying to publicly pressure Apple into adopting the GSMA's RCS (Rich Communications Service) messaging protocol for a long time now, with nothing to show for it. As a matter of fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook seemed to completely dismiss the idea when he answered a question on the subject by saying that consumers should buy their moms an iPhone. Google and its Android platform aren't giving up that easily and they've just released a snarky ad to continue criticizing Apple's preferred messaging platform.
The ad's called "iPager" and mimics Apple's marketing language to reveal a retro-styled beeper, indicating that Apple's behind the curve with its chosen messaging platform. The spot states that the iPager uses "outdated messaging tech" to "text with Android," citing many of the perceived disadvantages of sticking with SMS technology when communicating with Android phones. Google didn't invent this comparison whole-cloth, as the 30-year-old SMS tech actually dates back to old-school pagers.
The ad's called "iPager" and mimics Apple's marketing language to reveal a retro-styled beeper, indicating that Apple's behind the curve with its chosen messaging platform. The spot states that the iPager uses "outdated messaging tech" to "text with Android," citing many of the perceived disadvantages of sticking with SMS technology when communicating with Android phones. Google didn't invent this comparison whole-cloth, as the 30-year-old SMS tech actually dates back to old-school pagers.
it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic than.. (Score:3, Interesting)
it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic than a $1,650,000,000,000 internet search and advertising company, which is literally redefining web protocols to suit its own interests (which are also your interests! don't worry!), portraying itself as the underdog in an incredibly petty conflict-of-interest against a $2,720,000,000,000 lifestyle brand and computer company.
but someone got paid for this ad nonetheless. never stop dreaming.
Re:it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic tha (Score:5, Insightful)
I found something more pathetic!
It's some random nobody going to bat for a $2,700,000,000,000 lifestyle brand and computer company as they cling to absurdly outdated messaging technology instead of joining the industry standard that literally every phone operator on the planet has switched to.
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uh, okay. i'm glad apple is standing against this globalist alliance!!
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Apple is standing against competition, not against globalization.
Prove it.
Re: it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic th (Score:2)
Yeah. Prove it, you fucking SOROS-funded America-hating globalist shill!
Re:it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic tha (Score:4, Insightful)
I found something more pathetic!
It's some random nobody going to bat for a $2,700,000,000,000 lifestyle brand and computer company as they cling to absurdly outdated messaging technology instead of joining the industry standard that literally every phone operator on the planet has switched to.
Hey, what flavor is that Kool-Aid anyway?
As you note, literally every operator has switched to RCS. Because RCS is a standard (licensed from the GSMA) that carriers implement. Makes it easier for them to charge you for it, just like they did with SMS. But plain RCS isn't very exciting, and after Google bought Jibe back around 2015 and started adding proprietary features on top of it, we're now seeing operators start ditching plain carrier-hosted RCS and switching to Jibe. The second largest mobile carrier in the world, Vodafone - which has 315 million mobile users worldwide - did so six months ago.
And Jibe + Google proprietary extensions (aka Google Chat) is no more an open standard and no less proprietary, than what Apple's doing. Or other over-the-top messengers like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, etc. Google is just butthurt because Apple correctly recognized that SMS sucked and built a far better OTT messaging app a dozen years ago, and users actually like it. As a user of Google's myriad messaging apps over the last couple decades, I wonder if Google would've kept up better if it had maintained and upgraded any of those apps rather than just killing them and launching new ones every few years.
Re:it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic tha (Score:4, Interesting)
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The claims about exploits seem to be from people who don't understand what RCS is.
Start by realizing that Apple has had a few different SMS exploits over the years, some of them zero-click (i.e. someone sends you an SMS and your phone is compromised/bricked without you even opening it). It's also had similar issues in iMessage, so just using a different protocol or E2E encryption is not enough to mitigate them.
RCS is mostly about changing the way carriers handle messages. The device end is the same for ever
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I hate google and apple as well. But apple could open up their standard (without fees) which would cut off google's ability to complain. Or they could keep it propietary but add imessger to the google store.
Re: it's hard to imagine anything more pathetic th (Score:2)
ah yes, the cornerstone of business: charity toward one's competitors.
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Isn't that the pattern of life? Google and Apple both gaslight the public, it's called salesmanship and politics.
Here's the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Google has billions and billions and billions of dollars... but, even with all that cash, they can't pay enough to get people to start caring about this.
Fortunately they have at least one employee who "anonymously" submits each new attempt to Slashdot, so at least we're aware they're still trying.
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they can't pay enough to get people to start caring about this.
People do care, they are just largely powerless. People put up with endless shit and frustrations constantly all to get a few of the things they do like. No one will dump Apple over RCS, that doesn't mean they don't care.
Marketing is largely about capturing the opinions of those who have not made up their minds.
Re: Here's the problem (Score:2)
Nobody on an iPhone gives a shit.
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Have you taken a survey? What's your source?
People with iPhones, who have friends or family with Android, do care. It's annoying to them, but what can they do? Apple is in such a habit of jerking its customers around that customers have given up trying to get Apple to listen.
Exhibit A is the recent change to USB-C. Apple should have done this years ago, but it took an EU mandate to force the issue.
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Have you taken a survey? What's your source?
People with iPhones, who have friends or family with Android, do care. It's annoying to them, but what can they do? Apple is in such a habit of jerking its customers around that customers have given up trying to get Apple to listen.
Exhibit A is the recent change to USB-C. Apple should have done this years ago, but it took an EU mandate to force the issue.
WTF is this even about?
I use iMessage exclusively.
About 50% of the conversations have Blue Bubbles. The rest have Green Bubbles. That is the only real difference.
I chat with both; I send and receive videos, sound snippets and pictures with both; I exchange web links with both.
Except for the "Greenies" not supporting some advanced (mostly cutesy) iMessage features (the most useful of which is the "Delivered/Read" Status Line), I rarely notice any difference Messaging with anyone. At. All.
So I repeat: WTF is
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When you send a video or photo to a non-iMessage user, it uses MMS. MMS is often a paid service, and the quality is terrible. Non-Apple users are seeing blurry, pixelated crap when you send them videos and images.
Assuming they even open them, because if they are paying for MMS they might not bother. I certainly wouldn't.
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When you send a video or photo to a non-iMessage user, it uses MMS. MMS is often a paid service, and the quality is terrible. Non-Apple users are seeing blurry, pixelated crap when you send them videos and images.
Assuming they even open them, because if they are paying for MMS they might not bother. I certainly wouldn't.
That may be true in other countries; but in the U.S., I have never had a problem or a complaint from any of my Android-saddled texters. Nor have I had any problems with any "media" they have sent me.
Plus, I don't think MMS has been "paid" separately for quite a while.
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I, here in the US, have on numerous occasions just not bother to look at videos or pictures in multiples sent to my from apple phones. THe videos are so terribly reduced in quality that I don't bother any more. If someone sends me multiple pictures from apple phones in one text they are reduced to postage stamp sizes and any attempt to zoom them up will result in a blurry pixelated mess. If you honestly would like to investigate this further try sending a video that's longer than a few seconds to an android phone and look at the quality.. say 10 seconds or longer then look at the result. Also try sending 6 or more photos in one text and look at the end result.
I haven't heard of any issues in either direction, even from my Android-entrapped friend that is a natural-born complainer, nor with either of my Android-encumbered friends that are quite tech-savvy; one is even a photography aficionado. I am sure one of them would have mentioned that we should exchange those types of files as email attachments instead of through SMS/MMS.
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Media sent from Android to Apple works fine. It's the ones you send *them* that are tiny and grainy. If they aren't complaining, it's because they don't care enough to complain, or they just assume something went wrong and don't worry about it.
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Media sent from Android to Apple works fine. It's the ones you send *them* that are tiny and grainy. If they aren't complaining, it's because they don't care enough to complain, or they just assume something went wrong and don't worry about it.
Bullshit.
I know which friends to ask. One is an electronics engineer and the other a professional photographer.
So, Citation, or STFU.
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Citations...
In addition to the article that is the subject of this Slashdot thread...
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Or check this list of search results: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Lots of articles covering the difficulties of sending images and videos from iPhone to Android, but none for Android to iPhone.
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Citations...
In addition to the article that is the subject of this Slashdot thread...
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Or check this list of search results: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Lots of articles covering the difficulties of sending images and videos from iPhone to Android, but none for Android to iPhone.
So, if this isn't just Google Propaganda, this sure sounds like the alleged problem is at the Android and/or the Carrier end; rather than the iOS or iMessage end.
Why should Apple fix somebody else's problem?
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LOL it does make sense that a Apple user wouldn't understand the fuss. It's your green bubble friends that see grainy, tiny pictures and videos that you send, that look fine to you.
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LOL it does make sense that a Apple user wouldn't understand the fuss. It's your green bubble friends that see grainy, tiny pictures and videos that you send, that look fine to you.
Sorry; not buyin' it, at least not universally.
I spot checked two of my Android-Inflicted friends. Neither one had ever experienced small or low resolution images.
BTW, one friend is an electronic engineer, and the other a professional photographer; so they understood what I was asking.
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Perhaps the author of the main story on this thread was making things up? Or all these other articles describing the problem?
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Have you taken a survey? What's your source?
People with iPhones, who have friends or family with Android, do care. It's annoying to them, but what can they do? Apple is in such a habit of jerking its customers around that customers have given up trying to get Apple to listen.
Exhibit A is the recent change to USB-C. Apple should have done this years ago, but it took an EU mandate to force the issue.
WTF is this even about?
I use iMessage exclusively.
About 50% of the conversations have Blue Bubbles. The rest have Green Bubbles. That is the only real difference.
I chat with both; I send and receive videos, sound snippets and pictures with both; I exchange web links with both.
Except for the "Greenies" not supporting some advanced (mostly cutesy) iMessage features (the most useful of which is the "Delivered/Read" Status Line), I rarely notice any difference Messaging with anyone. At. All.
So I repeat: WTF is this even about?
Both pictures and videos sent from an iPhone to Android look like complete dog excrement with pixelation and artifacts all over. Sending those same pictures/videos using the same phones on another application such as WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Signal, etc shows just what the issue is with Apple sticking with SMS.
Add the fact that SMS is less secure, does not give read receipts and the myriad other features of RCS has and you're only starting to see the picture.
The actual reason Apple won't bring RCS to iPhone has nothing to do with "sticking it to the man" but instead has to do with iMessage. Switching to RCS gives users much less reason to use iMessage as there's very little difference with one being proprietary and the other being compatible with all. Switch to RCS and there's close to zero reason to ever get an iPhone
Funny: Neither friend I checked with (and have extensive text/media conversations with pretty much on a daily basis) had any idea what I was talking about.
One person I asked is waaaay tech-savvy, and the other is a professional photographer. They would definitely have said something.
And if you think iMessage figures prominently in anyone over 20 years old's decision to choose iPhone, you need to get out more.
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People on Android use WhatApp, and so do the iPhone users. Why do we need another communication system? Seriously, nobody is looking for RCS because they don't have a problem. Even if Apple implemented it, it's not going to be used. Maybe in the US? There are more users overseas.
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Perhaps in your country, "everybody" uses WhatsApp. In the US, it's relatively rare, so the RCS thing is a bigger deal.
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iPhone user here. The purpose of SMS is to tell you to install signal.
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Yeah fat chance. Most of us aren't paranoid enough to jump through those hoops. Privacy is an illusion, even if you use Signal. Every (literal) move you make is tracked, every website you visit, every email you send. Using Signal may actually reduce your security, because it may lull you into feeling like you are free to say or do things you wouldn't say or do in the open.
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Nobody on an iPhone gives a shit.
They do they just misdirect the blame.
Ask any iPhone user how happy they are with a group text that includes 1 android user (usually me).
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I'll never understand why the Slashdot crowd can't process this.
This is the website that dismissed the first iPod with eight words. [slashdot.org]. Apple went on to sell nearly half a billion of the things.
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they know long term being the red headed step child with green text bubbles is hurting their brand
Let's assume Apple implements RCS, I wouldn't expect Apple to drop iMessage or the iMessage protocol and just use RCS. And I wouldn't expect Apple to change the color of RCS messages to match iMessage messages. So even if Apple switched RCS message would still have green bubbles and the judgement would continue.
As for the Android users I know and love. About 10% are super nerds that want to "have full control", they used to hack their phones but now they just brag that they could. The other 90% ended up wit
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Funny that you'd say Google sucks at making messaging clients, when they're the ones that actually *do* support interoperability with RCS.
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Hmmm...seems simple enough to me.
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That gets tough and starts to go outside the scope of text messages.
That said, I do wish text supports threading. (I wish Jabber supported that at my job. It really sucks on group chats when people respond and you aren't sure who or what they are respondinig to.)
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OK, so that may be a feature you'd like to have, but I wouldn't call that a UI failing. Complex features also require complex UIs, and that is certainly not desirable for a large portion of users.
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My in-laws, in their 80s, would disagree. Those features *you* want would be confusing to them. It's all they can do to figure out how to send and receive texts. But the simple UI of Google Messages is just the right level of complexity for them, they can do what they need to do, without being confused by such things as threads. So simple is neither "good" nor "bad" it's just a different user type.
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You're not wrong. But Google Messages has been on Android since the beginning, and it's not going anywhere.
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Old skool standards like this are irrelevant now, although I get the impression a lot of people in the USA still use such things. Around here, nobody gives a shit about RCS or iMessage. WhatsApp is ubiquitous (ugh, I know, Facebook) and it offers plenty of functionality. I still use iMessage with my wife and certain friends, and SMS with my mother - she says she's too old for a smart phone, and what she has wouldn't benefit from RCS either. I can't actually see the point of RCS, nobody I know has any ne
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Google has billions and billions and billions of dollars... but, even with all that cash, they can't pay enough to get people to start caring about this.
To most people, the RCS vs iMessage conflict is beyond their understanding, which makes it really hard to make them care. Slashdotters, of course, are capable of of understanding the value of open standards that can operate across platforms, as compared to tightly walled gardens controlled entirely by a single corporation, available only on a single platform. Or at least they used to be.
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Tell me why I should care about RCS when SMS works just fine for my use case and doesn’t have any asterisks attached to it. Doesn’t matter if I’m roaming, or which carrier the other person has, it just works. iMessage doesn’t require any thought on my part either, it just works, so, again, why should I care?
Google fucked themselves relying on the cellular carriers. Apple treated them like the dumb pipe they are and rolled their own solution. iMessage would probably be a kludgy m
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Is RCS a good standard though? Just because it's open doesn't make it good. SOAP was meant to be the web service RPC interface to end them all, and just like everything that was built on XML, it was awful in practice. Way too complicated for the use cases people needed and far too easy to screw up. Ask anyone who has ever had to implement something based on SOAP and I can guarantee you they've had to massage XML because the remote end is using a broken Java library that doesn't follow the standard. Then RES
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Google has billions and billions and billions of dollars... but, even with all that cash, they can't pay enough to get people to start caring about this.
This,
And I am in no way defending Apple's refusal to accept a common standard to deliberately keep it's customers under it's thrall.
But RCS is a solution looking for a problem. We've had MMS for years but it was ultimately the telco's that killed it by charging £0.75 per message when it's effectively zero cost.
SMS is still useful as it's simple and used by every phone out there. However I rarely text anyone these days for the most part the texts I get are from no-reply addresses (I.E. my doc
Google? (Score:2)
Never heard of it.
Who Is This Ad For? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is for people like me:
I want to upgrade phone. I have been seriously considering buying an iPhone 15, however, all my family is using Android and we text all the time. With this ad, they are pointing out a reason for me to stay with Android.
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It is for people like me:
I want to upgrade my phone. I have been seriously considering buying an iPhone 15, however, all my family is using Android and we text all the time. With this ad, they are pointing out a reason for me to stay with Android.
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The SMS/iMessage/RCS client should basically be IE. You just open IE to install a real browser. You just text people to tell them you use signal/whatsap/telegram/etc.
Stereo MC's (Score:3)
How hard is it to support both types? (Score:3)
seriously, both should have been supported by both a long time ago
at this point they both sound like little kid... mine is better than yours, no mine is better than yours
but mine supports colors and rainbows.. WTF guys, grow up it's a format, look up the word interoperability
RCS needs specific provider support (Score:2)
And it needs to be enabled for your specific plan. It's literally the only "messenger" I couldn't test, it works with my main plan but it doesn't work with any other SIMs I have around, and for any of the close relatives. I couldn't find a second person with a setup that would support it.
They probably dream about replacing WhatsApp but end up just replacing the default SMS app on some Androids with something that might be richer if used in the right ecosystem, if the stars align. But nobody even knows about
Google continues to whine about iMessage (Score:2)
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There, fixed the headline for you
Exactly!
What even is RCS? (Score:3)
RCS has always seemed a mess to me, and at this point Google is already working on Step 3 from the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish playbook that Microsoft wrote decades ago.
RCS was originally supposed to be a decentralized, carrier-based alternative to SMS (which is also carrier-based, lest someone misunderstand), but an inconsistent rollout, failure by many to adopt the so-called “Universal Profile”, and lack of accreditation for devices meant it was pretty much DOA. Mind you, Samsung rolled out their first RCS app in 2012, and there was an attempt at a bigger re-launch in 2015/16. It was clear RCS was going nowhere.
It wasn’t until 2019 that Google finally co-opted RCS for their own uses, bypassed the carriers and manufacturers altogether by standing up their own RCS infrastructure...and then proceeded to launch it in the middle of their chat application product branding befuddlement: initially rolled out as part of Google Messages (which was only on Android), the work was done by the (cross-platform) Allo team whose work was by that point being branded as Chat because Allo was being sunset. No one could make heads or tails of it, users saw few immediate and significant benefits over SMS/MMS (no E2EE at that point), and it was limited to Google Messages users because of the shoddy RCS rollout.
And the confusion didn’t end there.
End-to-end encryption? Not out of the box. RCS itself doesn’t enforce it as a standard. There are still dozens of carriers, OEMs, and others who provide RCS services that aren’t yet E2EE. It wasn’t even until this year that Google itself (was supposed to have, but I haven’t confirmed) finally added E2EE for group chats, after enabling it as the default in one-on-one chats in 2021. And, of course, that E2EE is limited to Google Messages: Google acts as the key escrow for Messages’ E2EE, so you won’t have any luck communicating via E2EE to a “fellow RCS user” unless they’re also using Google Messages or their carrier inked a deal with Google (which I’m sure Google would love Apple to do).
At this point, Google has already Embraced and Extended RCS to the point that RCS more or less exists in name only as a shallow cover. And good riddance, it was never a good idea. All that’s left is Google’s take on iMessages, built on the dead husk of RCS.
The EU (Score:2)
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Nonissue: Blue = iMessage / Green = SMS standard. (Score:2)
It is about if the message is sent over data via iMessage och via SMS(/MMS) standard. (try a old non android phone and it is the same)
Some operators charge high prices for SMS, so it good to know if the message goes over SMS or the data plan.
Why are Google not asking to be included in the WhatsApp protocol/ Skype/ SnapChat/ Signal ??
The question is stupid and people are misinformed.
Am I missing something (Score:2)
I think there is an app that can be installed to get multimedia goodies e.g. pics, video. Works in either ecosystem.
I prefer email, but I do use my phone once in a while. I'm in the minority, especially because I do want a pager that runs on 1 AAA battery for a month, thanks to this ad.
But what about Android? (Score:2)
Or will they keep blaming T-Mobile/AT&T/whatever, even though Apple could totally make it work on iOS without anyone else's help?
RCS enables rich text ads (Score:3)
RCS enables rich-text ads OTA, which is why Google wants Apple to enable it.
Everyone in the industry knows Apple users are worth more, and Google can charge more for ads via RCS if it could deliver them. Without Apple's support that'll never happen.
Thank you Apple, for holding the line on this.
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Nothing says "special" more than someone freaking out about the idea of giving someone a number to communicate with, when that number was designed designed exclusively for communication and has been used by humans for 144 years.
Re:Both options are bad (Score:5, Informative)
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Which was fine all the way up until about 20 years ago, however now that number gets leaked to all the telemarketing and spam lists and then we get inundated with crap. So I totally agree with this guy, you have to be someone I know well to actually get my real number, I guard that thing. Any website or service or company that requires a number to sign up gets my spam google voice number, never the real one.
100% this.
Vendors wonder why I won't give them my personal number (work from home, no work phone either), it's because I don't trust them to keep it secure. Not just from cyber attacks but one "enterprising" marketing intern in Elbonia could download every number off their CRM and sell it.
And I live in the UK where telemarketers aren't tacitly permitted to run roughshod over telcos (who are no doubt in on it).
This is to say nothing of the raffle/lottery tickets that get sold that require a phone nu
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Any website or service or company that requires a number to sign up gets my spam google voice number, never the real one.
Unfortunately, many services detect that you're using a google voice number somehow, and don't let you do that. I've been using GV for a bunch of years now and this has been a fairly consistent problem.
Re:Both options are bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Not even my employer has my cell number. They have the number for a land line I had in 1998. My co-workers give out their personal cell numbers. They get support calls and text messages 24/7. And you can't un-fuck that chicken. They've lost all personal boundary between work and home life.
I have SMS shut off that the carrier level (my work phone line can be texted authentication codes). My voicemail box is full. I don't even use my phone as a camera. I have cameras for that. My phone is at this point a 5G email terminal/system monitor and occasionally the tool I use to capture video while I'm shooting with my (real) cameras.
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I worked at a MSP a number of years ago where HR didn't like IT, and actually would give out the personal cell number of IT people to internal and external customers saying, "IT are a bunch of lazy bums... here, might as well use a line they might respond on." Ironically, IT was all but lazy, but due to the ticket volume and lack of headcount, the MSP always had fires going, to the point of "A sev 1 is now a sev 3". The best fix was quitting and going elsewhere, but even then, I still had clients screamin
Re: Both options are bad (Score:2)
"Resigning is no excuse not to fix my tickets"
You tell those people to go fuck themselves a time or two and they won't call back.
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Nothing says "special" more than someone freaking out about the idea of giving someone a number to communicate with, when that number was designed designed exclusively for communication and has been used by humans for 144 years.
144 years?! That's gross!
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The closest to this is Threema, which you can generate private keys at will. The app costs money, but once paid for, you can generate keys as you see fit and use them. Once done with a transaction, purge the keys and create others.
The problem is that something like this will be a clarion call for criminals, so to keep the local country law enforcement from shutting things down, some form of ID has to be used, and with Threema, it is the ticket one pays to generate an ID. The data is secure, but not sure
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I'd rather use a different messaging platform that doesn't require a phone number, or even a phone.
You already can do that, and that's not what this is about. This is about that people who do have phone numbers frequently want to text each other and that interoperability when texting between Android and iOS is presently a dumpster fire due to a standards pissing match between the members of the aforementioned duopoly.
Re: Both options are bad (Score:3)
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I think this one is more an issue on iOS. Google is the one trying for interoperability and apple refuses.
Most of my family uses apple phones. When they send pictures via "text" to the group mail, everyone is punished if I am on it as apple then reduces to quality to match whatever standard actual is out there. You would think it would at least give their users the original quality,
Re:the funny thing (Score:4, Informative)
No, your ISP did something wrong. RCS is perfectly fine and even has a fully functioning fallback mechanism. If it isn't 100% reliable for you then you should summarily dump your mobile phone provider and switch to one who are actually capable of running a mobile network.
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A P-to-P messaging protocol should have nothing to do with the carrier or ISP. If it does, then there's a huge design problem that needs to be remedied before its adopted as a standard.
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No, your ISP did something wrong. RCS is perfectly fine and even has a fully functioning fallback mechanism. If it isn't 100% reliable for you then you should summarily dump your mobile phone provider and switch to one who are actually capable of running a mobile network.
iMessage people do not have these problems because iMessage doesn’t rely on the mobile network for anything other than Internet connectivity. One of my lines is on Verizon, the other on T-Mobile. Verizon’s RCS FAQ implies all manner of caveats but they’re the only carrier that works in my office. I should fire them and have no service 40 hours a week because of a niche messaging service nobody but techies cares about? One that offers nothing for my use case not already covered by SMS?
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Yeah, I'm on Verizon. And I'm not changing carriers to make a messaging system I don't need work. SMS is the business. Sending a text requires just one packet. That's what I need, not support for unicode.
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iMessage people do not have these problems
Nope. They just have all the other problems that you choose to ignore. I'm not going to argue about this. You said it, you do you. The fact you're batting for iMessage means you're an iPhone user and have actively chosen a proprietary locked in lifestyle.
Some of us don't want that.
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Nope. You sound like you are using the same stupid incompetent ISP as the OP was. The standard literally defines SMS fallback on undeliverable messages and it functions perfectly fine.
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The funny thing about RCS is that I had to turn it off because people weren't getting my messages, AND I wasn't getting theirs, except OCCASIONALLY.
Once I turned it off, messaging began working 100%.
Apple may be lame, but RCS is poop.
I had that happen to me because I was using the beta version of the default Messages app on my Android phone. I uninstalled the beta and installed the regular version and haven't had a problem since.
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AFAIK mine isn't beta, but I do see there seems to be an update that didn't install itself, which is weird because the whole point of this phone was I was keeping it googled up and everything. And in fact I have auto-updates set to wi-fi only, and I use wi-fi all the time. This is in fact quite disappointing. This is why I usually run Lineage, but then I do it without gapps and I was missing google maps. OSMand is surprisingly good, but also not near as good.
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AFAIK mine isn't beta, but I do see there seems to be an update that didn't install itself, which is weird because the whole point of this phone was I was keeping it googled up and everything. And in fact I have auto-updates set to wi-fi only, and I use wi-fi all the time. This is in fact quite disappointing. This is why I usually run Lineage, but then I do it without gapps and I was missing google maps. OSMand is surprisingly good, but also not near as good.
Hmmm. My iPhone never misses Updates. Nor does iMessage so far fail to communicate with anyone. Blue vs. Green Bubbles. That's it.
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Nor does iMessage so far fail to communicate with anyone.
It fails to send usefully-sized images and videos to non-iMessage users.
I have an iPhone at work now and thankfully I barely have to use it, because I hate everything about it including the laughable ergonomics (buttons on both sides so I have to shift my hand to be able to press them all? Good plan there from the self-proclaimed geniuses of UI) and the terrible interface. Android is far more discoverable.
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Nor does iMessage so far fail to communicate with anyone.
It fails to send usefully-sized images and videos to non-iMessage users.
I have an iPhone at work now and thankfully I barely have to use it, because I hate everything about it including the laughable ergonomics (buttons on both sides so I have to shift my hand to be able to press them all? Good plan there from the self-proclaimed geniuses of UI) and the terrible interface. Android is far more discoverable.
Why have none of my Android-trapped friends ever mentioned the "sizing" problem?
Well, a quick check of two friends (one of which is a techie, and the other a professional photographer) have no feeling that the scaling or resolution will my "texted" pictures is suboptimal.
Must be at your end.
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I have to use an iPhone at work. Every iPhone user I know says that iPhones are easier to use then Android. I try to explain that they aren't they just already learned how to use an iPhone and no longer have to think about it.
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I think we're agreeing but yes, the inverse of what I said is equally true. :)
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As far as I know, there isn't any real point to RCS.
Does it offer end to end encryption? Like real end to end? AFAIK, no.
Does it offer guaranteed transport of stuff, be it via SMS, or an Internet connection? Not really.
Since it doesn't help with ensuring stuff gets from one place to another, and it doesn't provide E2EE, then why bother. Might as well use Telegram or Signal, or if you don't want your number out, use Threema.
Re:the funny thing (Score:4, Informative)
Sure there is. It enables Google to push ads to you via RCS. Imagine walking down the street the possibilities - you get close to a McD's and you get pummeled with video and audio ads "I'm Lovin' It" as you walk by. Walk by a Burger King and get the Whopper song playing on your phone.
Google wants it because they're selling ads.
Apple won't bother because their users don't want to be pummeled by ads.
Even better, the ads can be embedded in your conversations, so you can be texting your friend and the ad pops up in the middle of the chat.
Here's the benefits of RCS:
https://www.cm.com/blog/intro-... [cm.com]
(you can have content up to 105MB pushed to people!)
https://www.mailjet.com/blog/m... [mailjet.com]
Increase engagement by having users do stuff for stuff!
Oh, it's also Google controlled.
Google needs Apple to adopt it so marketers will bother with using it. I'm better Apple looked at it and couldn't figure out a way to block the ads from coming in so it's easier to deny using it than to have people inundated with spam.
It got so bad in India Google had to turn off advertising because they were getting spammed constantly.
I mean, if Google really wanted Apple to do it, they could toss Apple a few million dollars to develop one just like they pay Apple a few million dollars to put Google at the top of the search list.
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It isn't like Google and Apple partnered before. For example, the COVID contact system which would alert you that you have been exposed to COVID, provided you had a local government which supported the app. It was simple, soundly made, had a solid privacy system... but governments just didn't bother.
Maybe Google and Apple need to set differences aside and make something interoperable that isn't just an ad machine for Google.
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Both States I called home during the pandemic supported exposure notifications. I opted in. Most of the people I know opted in. Not one of us got value from it. I got exactly one exposure notification, at an outdoor Renaissance Festival, where the odds of transmission were virtually nil, not that the mechanism could tell that. We basically went back to a normal life after July 2020, as our risk factors were pretty low, and that was the only notification. I have to assume uptake sucked and/or people we
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Sure there is. It enables Google to push ads to you via RCS.
Your phone is already Google controlled. The idea that this is some kind of an ad pushing service rather than just an upgrade on the shit capabilities of what came before is absurd. Google don't even push you those ads on their own service.
Oh, it's also Google controlled.
No it's not. It's controlled by the 3GPP alliance, of which Google isn't even a member (since it's an alliance of actual standards organisations not of corporations).
Please stop speaking out of your arse.
It got so bad in India Google had to turn off advertising because they were getting spammed constantly.
You said Google was pushing ads, and yet here we are, Google did no