This sounds like a nice step towards modernizing texting, but it’s a shame that Messages doesn’t have an open RCS API to encourage broad adoption across messaging apps.
The way Google is tacking features onto RCS will only hurt their attempts to make Apple interoperate in the end. iPhones won’t support any of this once their RCS implementation goes live, and there’s nothing as user-hostile as features that work for some accounts but not for others.
Good for the people using Google’s RCS stuff, I guess, but this will only hurt adoption on the long run.
will only hurt their attempts to make Apple interoperate…this will only hurt adoption on the long run.
Any interoperating from Apple will be minimal and begrudging, at best. Google should not hold themselves/their tech and their users back for the distant hope that Apple will be cooperative (because Apple won’t regardless).
That said, Google really should open up the API.
Apple implements the normal standards in this case, which is very reasonable. There are plenty of cases where Apple is being a bunch of douchebags, but I don’t see why Apple should be expected to implement Google’s proprietary protocols.
Ans yet Apple expects all others to to just accept what they want or Apple walls off everything. It goes both ways, Apple doesn’t get to control everything.
They’re in control of their own services. They could probably disable SMS if they want. Their customers don’t seem to care and those are the only people Apple have something to prove to. I suppose it’d be an unpopular enough measure to make them actually lose sales, but I don’t see what Apple and their users stand to gain from any of this.
RCS is an international telecommunications standard, used by both Google and mobile carriers. iMessage is more of a WhatsApp-but-built-into-iPhones. One was designed to be implemented by as many devices as possible (which took ages, because carriers and phone makers really didn’t care about RCS, and Google had Hangouts), the other is something Apple invented and provides their users for free.
Hell, Google could’ve easily brought their Messages app to iOS and bring RCS to Apple’s platform, but they don’t want that.
The EU has a law that could’ve made Apple open up iMessage, but it turns out iMessage is such a failure over in Europe that they’re not relevant enough to be branded gatekeepers (lol).
On the American side, at least one important member of the FCC has called for an antitrust investigation following the Beeper Mini story, but as far as I know there’s nothing explicitly illegal about what Apple is doing under current American laws.
I hope the investigation forces Apple to open up, but Apple doesn’t control anything they haven’t built themselves.
The right way forward is for Google to stop being like Google, and take the necessary steps to standardise their encryption extensions and any other features they may or may not have planned. Right now, Google is turning Google Messages into just another iMessage, and that’s solves absolutely nothing. They don’t open source the messenger app on their open source operating system anymore!
Have you looked into running your own RCS server or connecting to existing RCS servers? As far as I can tell, it’s proprietary infrastructure built on top of an open standard.
RCS just lets the servers talk to each other, and there is no reference implementation for a server. On the off chance that you do manage to write your own implementation, it’s unlikely that Google or Samsung’s servers would be willing to talk to yours unless you’re a telecom.
The better solution is to move away from proprietary messaging apps altogether. Simplex Chat, Jami, Session and signal all support both Android and iOS.
Perhaps, but iMessage is a pretty good protocol all together. You shouldn’t need to install an app to be able to use secure messaging.
I don’t know anyone who users either Simplex, Jami, or Session. Signal is nice, but it’s closed-off network isn’t great. I’d much rather see XMPP or Matrix take off, but those lack good apps.
Signal has third party apps like Molly. iMessage only works on Iphones and is utterly proprietary and locked down which makes it a bad option for most people.
How far back are they gonna allow? Like, I need to edit the evidence level or oops I misspelled that last message level?
Thirty minutes. So mostly misspelled words. Most implementations of this type of feature also have a small “Edited” flag.
Nah babe, I never said that, you must be tripping.
I don’t really care for Matrix but at least Matrix is a open standard.
So… Just like every other modern messaging app?
As far as I can tell, Facebook Messenger has lost that feature.
You could say the same for email.
Pushing out them wild ideas
Well there goes another reliable source of evidence. I’m hoping that we don’t end up making everything into discord where people can flat out brag about how they’re abusing kids in their basement and then delete when law enforcement comes around (Yes I actually saw that happen)
How about a proper backup system? I literally lost access to a group chat just because I changed phones. None of the RCS group chats migrated. Until, they fix the usability and reliability issues it will remain inferior with low usage.
Plus, whose stupid idea was it to remove the auto sort groups in message organisation? I had tabs for OTP, banking, personal, promotion, chats separated; Which was much better than the default clusterfuck you call now.
Or the fact that even enabled, the rcs does not switch to SMS when rcs is magically unavailable. They just don’t send until legitimately 16 hrs later.
