Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc.
EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't have one right now, and all three (SMS, RCS, iMessage) are poor stop-gaps. People need to send their texts, images, videos, and files to people without pain; that's all the average layperson cares about. What does fill this need are said 3rd-party apps, which claim to have E2EE messaging. Whether this is really true remains to be seen.
I'm in the UK and my work uses Slack and also wants me to use WhatsApp for OOH contact. My friends are mostly on Discord. My family is mostly only available via iMessage. A few of the more privacy conscious use Telegram or Signal. A few of the more OSS conscious use Matrix. Some chat is still on IRC (actually I like that...).
Users relying on third party apps over the top has strong network effects for keeping people using services from Facebook et al, and I'm not too fond of that.
I'm vaguely optimistic about the EU's idea of forcing these apps to be able to federate in at least a basic sense, but we'll see.
I predict it'll 'work' so that the companies aren't fined by the EU, but the service will be atrocious.
You'll probably have to jump through a lot of hoops to make it work, and even then you'll probably have to wait 5 minutes for messages to be delivered, have to deal with bugs galore, and have most of the features not work.
"Warning: Sending an animated emoji will eject all non-iMessage users out of this group conversation".
Here in Germany, almost everyone I know is on Signal. That is not privacy conscious people or even tech-affine ones, almost everyone uses it in addition to WhatsApp. WA is mainly used when it works better (in bad connection situations, something that is embarrassingly relevant in Germany, Signal messages sometimes don’t work without an indication of it happening, WA messages just work) or a special feature is needed (live location sharing).
Agreed, although where I live, most people have consolidated on Telegram. WhatsApp was popular about 5 years ago, but its popularity has quickly waned because of how difficult inter-device use is.
You can also use iMessage with an Apple ID, including to contact those who only have a phone number (and the reverse also works). This works on non-cellular devices as well such as iPod/iPad/Mac.
The real hesitation by Apple is obvious, RCS is half baked: it's not a true E2EE solution and in some scenarios encryption is simply not available at all. It is demonstrably worse than other chat technologies, doesn't solve the problems it sets out to fix and the only benefit to its existence is that it gives Google a way to control a competitor's platform.
Apple have already made the right kinds of concessions for chat apps on their platforms. All apps are able to hook into the native video/voice call, Contacts and instant-notification reply interfaces. Not only does this make each 3rd party app have the same feeling and level footing as Messages. It has the run on benefit of extending support for these services into devices where there isn't even an app available. E.g. one can reply to chat messages from their car or apple watch, even if there is no app on those platforms - this really goes a long way to helping 3rd parties establish themselves without having to build an app for every single one of Apple's hardware endeavours. Google could go this route with an RCS app, but it's clear that there is no end-user benefit here, especially when Whatsapp and others did the hard work in carving out the critical mass needed to exist as a standalone chat app.
From a privacy perspective, I hate this - Apple did this only to access more of our data. E.g. if anyone voice or video calls me on one of these apps, Apple has access to that metadata because it will now be listed in the recent call list that is under Apple's control. If I am using (for e.g.) WhatsApp or Signal, it's partly because I want to avoid iMessage and ensure Apple doesn't have access to more of my personal data.
The proportion of people with phone-only plans is very small and getting smaller by the year.
Let's just have an interoperability standard that is data based, encrypted and independent of carriers.
Nowhere near true. As soon as you cross a geo boundary (ie travel) SMS is Russian roulette. It often doesn't go through at all. In the US, I've also seen carriers remove non-ascii characters.
I agree, and this is unfortunate. However, they're not going away at all, and the free alternatives (IRC?) are relegated to niche developer groups. For work communications, we have Slack, Discord, Teams, Zoom; for normal messaging, the apps I mentioned above (and more; Instagram/TikTok/etc have their own DM platforms).
It will take real concerted effort to fix this, and somehow I don't see it happening.
My own personal view (Denmark based, age: mid thirties): In my group of extended friends and family almost everyone uses SMS/iMessage. SMS has been (basically) free to use here for many many years (or so many included in your basic plan you would never reach the limit). I believe this has slowed the adoption of the various chat apps here significantly - at least for people my age. Most of my friends share the same habit of calling each other if you want to know something that is time sensitive. If you don't need an answer right away you can text.
New acquaintances are first added on Facebook/Messenger since you can find people by their name and then if you actually communicate with them on a regular basis you eventually get their phone number to make it easier if you for example need to call them. Almost nobody I know use Messenger's voice calls. My family (and some friends) has resorted to sending SnapChat images instead. Sharing something without it ending up in a "permanent" chat history seems to be getting more common as it is somewhat informal. I never watch people's "stories/reels" in whatever format they might take as they are not sent directly to me and they seem to expire after a short while. I hate that pressure to constantly check in not to miss anything so now I ignore it completely and I'm happier for it. If anything I have a lot more to talk about with people when I finally meet them than if I already knew everything they had been doing.
I have a few WhatsApp groups going with my international friends and various local volunteer-based organizations.
The only people I use SMS to talk to are my parents, who are too non-technical to install any apps that didn't come with their phones.
edit: people seems to miss that I said that this is only part of the reason not the reason. I also said many places outside the US (not all). So do people down vote because they think that there are only US and EU in the world? I am missing that point.
Even the cheapest of plans from the main networks (3, vodafone, EE, o2) - as low as £4/mo have unlimited calls & SMS now.
edit: this has been the case for quite a few years now, too.
Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
I don't think I've ever intentionally/deliberately chosen to use RCS, but (on my (Android) phone at least) it does seem to transparently turn itself on the very rare occasion when I send SMS messages (usually in reply to a received SMS), if supported by both phones.
I'm not aware of anyone making that argument, it would replace and/or compliment SMS (since even if Apple adopts RCS, SMS is going to around for a long time).
> Surely RCS raises the lowest common denominator up a bit from SMS, and people are still free to use whatever 3rd party data-based messaging service they want to, be it iMessage, WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or whatever else, even ICQ if that still exists.
Is it better than SMS? Yes but that's a low bar to clear and as a chat protocol it has many failings, not least of which are it's weak E2E when it supports it at all. Also RCS is practically owned by Google, operated by carriers, I literally cannot think of a worse combo of 2 companies/industries that I do not trust.
Bottom line is SMS is going to be around for the foreseeable future (so much is built on it, similar to email for better or worse) and we will have to support a SMS fallback even with RCS support in iOS. Because of that and the lack of compelling reasons to move to RCS, I feel like it's best just to leave SMS as-is and work on pushing people to your preferred third-party chat app.
So why throw it a lifeline with RCS when there can be a better standard.
I’m under the impression you need Apple hardware to use iMessage, and that even third-party solutions rely upon proxying via real Apple hardware which has to be turned on (I get the impression some basically offer the hardware as a paid service, and others require you to own the hardware?). This tips the balance completely the other direction, as a lot more people have phone numbers than can use iMessage without further expenditure.
[0] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/i...
If you’re already in the Apple ecosystem, fine, and that is kinda the target of the article; but it’s worded in a way that I don’t like and find extremely misleading, since it’s also about interactions with others, who have a fair chance of not possessing the required hardware.
What is the main argument(s?) against implementing RCS? That it doesn't have E2EE? Neither does SMS, so RCS is no worse in that regard, but seems to have some extra nice things.
RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.
There is no point moving to RCS which just prolongs this death and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
Each of which is a wall gardened onto itself. So instead of having one app where I can chat, I have App A to talk with Group-of-Friends 1, App B to talk with Group-of-Family/Friends 2, App C…
Thanks, but I'll happily give up E2EE to not have to deal with the above hassle.
At that point I might as well give up on SMS/RCS and go back to only sending e-mails which is an open, federated standard.
> […] and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client. I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.
MMS has been a dumpster fire since the beginning. They haven't improved it in all these years, but still price it as if they hand deliver the messages on a golden plate (my operator's cheapest MMS price is 20x more expensive than the same bandwidth on their data plan, and the regular price is closer to 300x markup).
These are the operators that put uninstallable crapware on phones they're able to touch (Apple has won a hard battle here; phones used to be sold on operators' terms before the iPhone). These are the operators that are unwilling to secure caller ID. These are the operators that sell their user's traffic. These are the operators charge fuck-you prices for roaming. I don't want them to be in control of anything.
RCS will be just an extra item to upsell, and the technology — which is already worse than every competitor — will be left to languish forever.
I see that as a huge positive - I'd rather that my personal communication never be under the control and mercy of foreign BigTechs, and would prefer that it be under the telecom companies who are obliged to follow certain laws and regulations on pricing and QoS. I don't see it as having anything to do with net neutrality.
In the beginning of this year we had another look at the situation, and somewhat surprisingly there has been very little progress in terms of operator support. As we would say in Sweden: it appears to be moving slower than a snail on vacation.
(Google acquired jibe, a major company developing RCS clients/servers, and started rolling their own RCS-server and moving almost all vendors to the same client)
My expectation would be that by 2022 the majority of Europe carriers support RCS, not as an in-house service but by using either Google's cloud-based RCS or Samsung's RCS and their respective device-clients (with Samsung on steady decline).
The situation is a bit opaque, but if you look deeper on the device-side, RCS is no longer a carrier-controlled service. Google and Samsung combined control >90% of the client/server development and operations. They surely both align via the GSMA, but I doubt that the GSMA has actual control over the roadmap of RCS any more today than it had control over it ~2 years ago (which was close to zero)
This is a chicken and egg argument.
> Security > Prerequisites
Both of these arguments rest on the assumption that RCS replaces iMessage. That's not the point. The data is already unencrypted. You already need a paid phone number. The benefit is that two large groups of users' devices that interact poorly today interact better with RCS. Google isn't asking Whatsapp or Signal to implement RCS, it doesn't make sense that they'd expect Apple to shut down their proprietary service to use a less-featurefull option instead.
But also there is a real experience difference between iMessages and SMS and especially mixed group chats. Social people -even adults- who have lots of group chats via default messaging inadvertently punish android users for using SMS and that worse experience is represented in green. It’s just a symbol for that worse experience.
In fact, it’s getting worse not better. I have every messaging app imaginable on my iPhone (because it’s just an app why not). If I group chat mixed iPhone and android - I get the expected bad experience. But a lot of android users have now set up Signal to be their SMS app. So my iPhone will mix SMS iMessage going out, only for an android user to mix SMS signal messages coming back. So now the conversation is smeared across three apps and ruined.
Hence why I just install every app. So i can increase the odds of finding an alternative common ground.
PS. Everyone blames the android guy not the iPhone guy. “Stop being poor” or whatever. People are cruel.
Everyone else simply uses WhatsApp if everyone does not have iMessage.
I don't know if this is merely immaturity, or sheer vapidness.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... (paywalled)
I don't know child psychology, but if I were to guess it's a manifestation of "survival of the fittest".
iMessage is device centered - your messages are just relayed to desktop by the mobile messaging app. Android messages can do this too [1], So can Samsung [2]
Until 2015 the direction of RCS was for every carrier to setup infrastructure to operate a own RCS server. A few companies offered such RCS infra, but a key player in the center of the whole standardization and interoperability matter was a company called jibe. Jibe was selling RCS servers (and clients) to network operators, and got a few of the key-carriers as customers from the start.
As each device-manufacturer was expected to develop/source his own client, and network carriers needed servers to interoperate as well, alot of interoperability discussions, testing and refinement was needed. As a key server-vendor, jibe was at the heart of all those topics and a strong participant in GSMA RCS.
In 2015 Google made a move to enter the RCS space and acquired jibe. It started the trajectory which transformed RCS into the mostly Google-operated service that it is today. Google integrated RCS-client capabilities into their Android Messages application and offer RCS as a unified cloud-based service to operators.
Within just a few years:
- All network operators who planned to invest into RCS infrastructure scrapped those plans, entered an agreement with Google to use their cloud-based RCS-service instead and mandated towards device-vendors to adopt Android Messages.
- Network operators who had no concrete plans for RCS made the same agreement with Google as it promised revenue-share but required zero investment from them.
What remains is a handful of network carriers who #1: already have RCS-infra and #2: Didn't shut it down yet.
I'd say that 99% of all Android Smartphones today either use a Google Messages client or a Samsung Message client, with the majority of them connecting either to a Google RCS-server or a Samsung RCS-server.
The companies surely still align via GSMA, and the carriers / network operators are still involved in discussions about the specification, but given the direction of the past 5 years I don't see that they have actual control over the roadmap of RCS.
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All that said, RCS is the best candidate we have to replace SMS, with a majority of carriers chipping in, so it would be reasonable for Apple to adopt RCS as a replacement for SMS and align with the industry on how this standard should be shaped.
I reckon RCS tried to circumvent that to a point (but still saying 'screw you' to desktop users) but alas it seems this horrible too-many-IM-apps won't be ever solved.
It is still an issue for desktop but that’s a minority of IM users these days.
Nope. As RCS is better than SMS, adopting it would be a step forward. The whole article can be summed up to "RCS is not perfect, so it should not be used". Which is of course silly as RCS is better than the current option it replaces, SMS.
At least SMS is a standard where as Google has their own proprietary version.
AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's RCS client implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client.
I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.
If a centralized messaging app became dominant in America, it would likely attract antitrust attention too. These apps have to make money somehow, usually by selling emoticons, charging business users, or adding features like payments. I doubt the current FTC would be pleased if Meta realized their old ambition of creating America's WeChat.
RCS may not be perfect but I would rather see Apple adopt it if the alternative is nothing. The messaging experience for America would be a lot better for it. Google's rhetoric around this seems to indicate there's no current interest in collaborating to build a better standard, so it seems to be a far off ambition.
Of course Google's app isn't straight RCS, but it _is_ what everybody actually uses, because RCS failed to gain cross-platform, carrier, and manufacturer acceptance. So Google basically followed Apple's lead and created their own centralized messaging.
So this isn't about "Apple should support the open-standard known as RCS", it's "Apple should natively integrate Google's messaging app".
And worst of all Google implemented encryption by layering it on top i.e. creating their own proprietary version.
The backdoor is that you cannot exclude iMessage from your enabled by default iCloud backup.
Google is not in it for the long haul. Companies whose entire modus operandi is providing value to paying customers (e.g. Apple) will do well to steer clear.
Except that you can already get spam "in iMessage" because the iMessage app is also the (default) SMS app on iPhones, and so anyone can send an SMS to your phone number and you'll receive it.
> RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant
You already have no protection against SMS on your iMessage app, so not having protection against RCS spam is no worse than the current situation in that regard, but at least RCS has extra things like group chat which would be nice for cross-platform interoperability.
The app is Messages, the protocol is iMessage. Don't confuse the two, it's an important distinction. There is practically zero iMessage spam.
