This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They're also adding a lot more incompatible text formatting and shit to keep Android incomplete with their real chat protocol. Gotta keep those teens bullying Android users. Also E2E encryption would be nice, but the EU didn't force them to do that.
Still great because MMS is garbage and ruins photo and video quality.
They won't do E2EE until it's part of the standard. That is being worked on.
Google only has it because they have an extremely proprietary, non-standard RCS implementation. Tbh, Google should've open sourced this and had it as part of the RCS standard, but they didn't.
And yeah the EU isn't going to force anything on iMessage because it's literally irrelevant outside of the US. I don't know anybody who seriously uses iMessage tbh, despite like 40% of people here using iPhones.
Funny how many people wanted RCS on iOS in order to be compatible with Android, while large parts of Google's implementation of RCS in Android is proprietary as well.
While Google should open source it, it's important to note that Google never actually wanted to run or implement RCS. It was supposed to be the carriers, but they never did and even Google spent years pushing them to get off their ass and they still didn't. It was years before Google finally went "Fine, I'll just fucking do it myself"
Is it not proprietary due to carriers being extremely fussy?
Yeah everyone uses WhatsApp when I travel to other countries.
WhatsApp (EU/LatAm), WeChat (China), Kakao Talk (Korea), Line (Japan/Taiwan) are the main ones I’ve encountered. I think Telegram is used more in Russosphere and Signal has a footing in some niche circles as well.
India is a huge market for WhatsApp
Sweden’s mostly on Meta Messenger. WhatsApp is the foreign exchange student protocol.
I use Beeper because I can’t stand all these fucking apps. Preferably everyone would switch to Signal but that won’t happen.
In Taiwan, nobody uses iMessage. It's an app called Line and it's basically the WeChat of Taiwan.
So we can basically hop from Apple to Android without issues with our messages. So that's why the % of Apple users are not inflated because of the dark patterns they are doing in the US.
In Europe everyone uses WhatsApp and I‘d rather use iMessage than sell my soul to meta… (Which I am. And Signal and Telegram. Only using WhatsApp for work)
Unfortunately, I don't trust Apple either. I think Telegram or Signal might be a good option, but then again. They are just a CEO away from it being shitty.
I wish there was a better solution that is OSS but it won't catch on.
I trust them a bit more than meta or google. Meta‘s main business model is selling data/ads. Apple’s main business model is selling hardware.
I think they sell the perception of privacy. They might not sell your data, but they certainly use that data to sell to you. They only care about profits and any privacy that you think you might have is just a byproduct of that greed.
Apple is an optics company and damn good at it too.
I know Apple aren’t perfect but they are the only major tech company that even try to seem like they take privacy seriously. Obviously, we don’t know how much data they actually harvest but at least they say it’s all private and on device. They make a believable case for their product actually being their hardware. You even pay extra for that. Meta, Google, Microsoft & Co. are pretty open, that all they want is your data and that you are the product. So, unless you want to go the extra mile and actively pursue privacy (get ungoogled android or a Linux phone, and only use open source software, etc.), Apple seems to be your best bet, imo
I live in Poland, and most people use Meta's Messenger here, although some people use WhatsApp and some also Telegram (but mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians).
Personally I use regular old plain SMS, Messenger, Telegram or Discord depending on situation.
Ah yes, Facebook Messenger. The only chat app I'd hate using even more than WhatsApp...
The advantage of iMessage is SMS fallback when you don't have internet access.
Usually when you don't have internet access, it's because you don't have any signal at all.
Yeah, this text messaging is very different the all over the world. Different phones, different carrier policies and different apps have resulted in different nations being invested in different platforms.
SMS, and things that piggy back on it, dominate north America. So this will mean more to those users than people in Europe, Asia, etc.
Well, having an app that isn't tried down by an OS would be great. You could install Google meet on an iphone. Apple is just trying to take more market share.
Alternative SMS / RCS apps in iOS would be very nice to have.
That said, people who are buying iPhones are usually buying iPhones because they like Apple’s experiences. People that want more options for default apps tend to be going to Android.
At least with SMS / RCS, people can buy a different phone and explore different clients. When I talk to my friends and family in countries dominated by Line, WeChat, or WhatsApp, I’m kind of stuck dealing with those crappy user experiences. Those companies want to trap me in their user experiences and there are even fewer alternatives if I want to interact on their platforms.
Just in time for Google to kill RCS and move on to something else.
They will still keep them green. You know how teens react to those bubbles.
I do, and I couldn't care less. I think a visual indicator that tells me "hey, this is an iMessage" or "hey, this is an SMS/RCS message" is a very good thing to have.
You don't care, because you're an adult, what you or I see as a simple visual indicator is yet another thing that HS teens will use to bully and peer pressure with.
But you should care in the sense that Apple is exploiting teens still developing brains and maturity with dark patterns to get them "hooked for life" in a way.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The problem isn't the fact that the indicator exists. A lot of it is because it's an ugly green bubble, and Apple refuses to change it because bullying kids is great marketing for Apple.
I doubt the bullying would be any different if it was a beautiful red (or whatever is considered a pretty chat bubble) instead.
And even if it was a blue bubble, the bullies would find another reason to bully someone.
I get the peer pressure part and sure Apple might be exploiting that in America, but in the past it was clothing brands or whatever it is now. Making the bubbles the same color (or even bringing iMessage over to Android completely) would get rid of a single symptom, not of the root cause.
Clothing gets you negative comments. iMessage gets people to exclude you from group chats or even text messaging completely. It's become far more socially acceptable to isolate someone because of what they don't own.
Even if this were the same level of bullying, the amount of resources that Apple needs to fix this is negligible compared to clothing companies or whathaveyou. You can't update a shirt. You can easily update the color of a bubble or implement an industry standard. Apple refuses to even try to fix this issue, and in my eyes, they're 100% complicit in enabling bullying.
Clothing (or other things, clothing was just an example) does get you excluded from a group. The only reason a bully would want to "include" the bullied person in their group is so they can bully them more.
I agree that they could open up iMessage to competitors with relative ease and that this would be a good move. Not because it would seriously stop bullying, but because it would make it a little bit easier to find a common messenger to use (we don't really have that problem in my home country, as most people use WhatsApp, which is multi platform).
What I'd hate is if Apple removed all indicators that what I'm sending or what I already sent is an SMS/RCS message instead of an iMessage. It shows me what features work for that particular conversation, and if I'm roaming in a region where sending SMS is not free, I want to know when I'm about to send one.
I agree, for both send and receive since ios can send messages differently (text vs imessage)
That's how I react to those bubbles. It means any image I send is going to be compressed to shit and be utterly unrecognizable. Messages will sent out of order or not at all. Group chats are completely fucked.
I'm sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn't have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform
Hope rcs pans out and soon
Apple doesn't "share a lot of the blame." The blame belongs solely to Apple and their insistence on a closed ecosystem. They intentionally hamstring any cross functionality with competing devices, even features as simple as text messaging. It's important for Apple to foster a cult-like mentality among their consumers.
RCS was a dumpster fire for years. Only in the past couple of years has Google stepped up to be the centralized force in making it work as envisioned.
quick edit to say I agree this could’ve been avoided if Apple had made iMessage for Android, but I just wanted to point out the blame is shared by poor implementation across the board.
Apple has no obligation for users outside of their ecosystem. Apple saw the landscape of carrier messaging being terrible, and they made iMessage to help their customers communicate with one another better, while continue to maintain support for basic carrier communication. They have now updated to offer RCS, the current modern carrier messaging standard, which as demonstrated is still fragmented and outright garbage.
There is a Google proprietary protocol that’s based off of RCS, but as demonstrated by the Android market, even Android devices doesn’t do that — so Apple isn’t likely to (and frankly shouldn’t) do it to give more information to Google (even on the alleged promise of E2EE, it allows Google to know who is communicating with who at what time, and potentially roughly where via cell tower origination).
Apple is not a charity and has no need to open up their proprietary protocol designed to better their clients’ communications to non-clients. Want to make a phone call? Pay your carrier. Want to have electricity? Pay your power provider. Want to use iMessage? “Buy your mom an iPhone”.
Apple management has explicitly stated they do not want to support better compatibility between Android and iPhone, their response when asked what parents who buy cheap Androids for their kids should do it was to buy them iPhones. Many of the problems are very easy to fix on Apple's side and keeping them problematic is intentional.
See the last sentence of my original comment.
It's about the social phenomenon around the imessage chat colors, which is intentional on Apple's part. You must have a social in-group and an out-group. To be in the in-group, you must purchase the correct products, subscribe to the correct services.
CONSUME
For one, Google never wanted to implement or run RCS, the carriers were supposed to do that specifically to prevent the fragmentation issue. But they couldn't get off their ass, even after Google spent years pushing them to do so.
For two, even after Google said fuck the carriers I'll do it myself, Apple was invited to participate in its implementation and Apple refused. They could have worked with Google to implement RCS across all devices. They didn't because they want to keep people locked into their ecosystem. They had a great opportunity to ensure all the privacy and encryption features were implemented how they liked.
I’m sure Apple shares a lot of the blame, but holy shit how is this not solved in 2024. I shouldn’t have to resort to spam filled shitware from Meta to get remotely modern messaging cross platform
There's no shortage of options; the problem is getting the people you're talking to to agree on one you like. I find Signal strikes a good balance between goodness and ease of use, and many people I know who aren't tech or privacy nerds use it.
Google had the chance to make its Hangouts messaging app dominant when it was, briefly the default SMS client on Android devices. They threw that away following pushback from carriers.
I'm glad Google doesn't have the dominant messaging service, but I find it bizarre anybody still uses SMS when there are so many internet-based options. I have six, and if somebody really wants to use another, I'll probably add it.
While users can see the toggle if they have installed the iOS 18 developer beta
Anyone know what toggle they are talking about? I’m not seeing anything in Messages settings nor Cellular settings. Or do they mean the toggle is US-exclusive?
edit: Ah, I found a screenshot. It’s supposed to be under the MMS messaging toggle in Messages settings but doesn’t show up for everyone yet (including me).
The toggle showed up on Monday but RCS didn’t start working until yesterday. I have T-Mobile.
