Apple announced (via 9to5Mac) today that it's adding RCS support to the iPhone in a great boost to Android-iOS messaging...

It’s happening!!!

      • JohnWorks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        Man that would be nice. Could finally have it be all in one again like Google Hangouts before it was killed.

      • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        Oh that’d be nice but since no more SMS in Signal I can’t see it going back in (unless they reversed course?)

        • Madis@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          IIRC their point was that SMS is insecure, so they don’t want people using SMS in Signal to think that this is Signal. With RCS, they could do what Apple will - be interoperable while providing extras with own platform (iMessage).

          Admittedly, that doesn’t sound like enough reason to reimplement SMS and RCS alone would still be kind of inconvenient.

          • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            I don’t understand. I don’t do that. But I have Whatsapp, telegram, signal and discord installed, and those are all quite separate apps.

            The point being, why would I want my Whatsapp install to come integrated with a whole discord client? I can already just install both, which is much easier and keeps things separate.

            • butter@midwest.socialEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              The point is getting adoption. Especially in the US, where people actually use iPhone, no one wants to download a second app because iMessage is ‘good enough’ 99% of the time.

      • Dandroid@dandroid.appEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Technically anyone who makes an android device could have their own. The API is a system-level API, so any app signed with system certificates (aka, any app packaged with your phone) can use it. Any app you download from the play store can’t.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      56·
      1 year ago

      What do you think Apple will do? 😁

      Cue several years of Google and Apple pointing at each other and shouting “see, they don’t want to be compatible with us!”

      RCS was an idiotic take from the start. It should’ve been a layer of encryption over SMS and remain otherwise stateless and platform agnostic.

      But of course companies and governments don’t really want encryption. So it became something that’s trivially easy to subvert by each company that implements it, because it needs to pass through servers, and who controls the servers gets to be an ass about it.

      • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        RCS was an idiotic take from the start.

        It’s origin came from a good place. The wireless industry, not Google, started driving the standard to retire/replace SMS/MMS. However, then the wireless industry was reduced to a duo-culture and Google decided to drive RCS after many years of carriers/manufacturers trying to do their own thing to little success.

        Another route: MMS could be enhanced to have some modern features while still being backwards-compatible. The datagrams are just XML and the syntax is akin to E-Mail. Larger message sizes could be supported, while the gateways still handle resize/reformat for older device backwards compatibility. There was even a format for a few minutes in the early aughts called EMS that had some promise but it died from disuse. Message delivery confirmation has existed since GSM and CDMA.

        There’s even a standard for IMS video calls that has been in the 3GPP stack since the 1999 release that would’ve allowed universal standard video calls. Since carriers hated building data networks and consumers weren’t ready for video calls, it just sat stagnant until iChat AV/FaceTime came along and popularized video calls. It’s still there, it could still be used.

        Somewhere along the way, standards-based universal calls, video, and messaging took a back seat to tech bros and their proprietary stacks, and governments (at least the US) were too stupid and incompetent to understand what regulation was necessary to correct this path we are now on. Hopefully the EU can continue to help fix this.

      • 𝕽𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        It should’ve been a layer of encryption over SMS and remain otherwise stateless and platform agnostic.

        Umm what?

        SMS has a very short size limit. Implementing RCS as an encryption layer on top of it would require devices to send several messages just to cover a short one-word reply. They also often come out of order so they would need to include a numbering system so the client could piece them back together.

        Granted that is already how SMS works on modern devices, but the underlying protocol is woefully inept at modern messaging and completely unviable for what you’re proposing.

        How should media attachments work? I assume you expect that to just use encryption built on MMS? So media can come through even more compressed than basic MMS? None of the actual benefits of RCS would be possible if it was built on top of the existing ancient standards.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Encrypting doesn’t necessarily boost the size of the message. You can also use compression very effectively since it’s mostly text.

          You don’t need to also solve media hosting, you can just leave it be links like it is now. Just adding encryption would be an amazing improvement.

          There are no additional changes needed to the transport layer, it would be transparent for telcos. It can be an OTG encryption layer.

          Initial key exchange would be the only part that would require a couple of additional one-time messages but it would be automated. And not all messages need to be encrypted, nobody cares that my package has been shipped. And it would be an improvement anyway from having zero encryption to being able to have encryption

          The whole thing is so simple that it could be implemented today by all the SMS apps without missing a beat. The only thing missing is the willingness to do so.

          In fact it could be added as an option in any SMS app very easily — only for people who are both on the same app of course.

  • aiman@lemdro.idEnglish
    33·
    1 year ago

    I have faith in Apple, it’ll be difficult but they’ll find a way to do this that still maintains all the toxicity towards green bubbles that they’ve worked so hard to cultivate.

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    346·
    1 year ago

    It’s going to be irrelevant. It will still be separate from iMessage. Different bubbles will still exist. People who aren’t using SMS now (Europe) will continue to not use RCS either. And Apple’s implementation of RCS will be independent from Goggle’s and not 100% compatible.

    In fact I suspect the whole thing is an attempt to skirt the upcoming EU interconnection regulations. Apple thinks that if they say “look we’ve implemented RCS and it’s technically interoperable with other RCS implementations” they’ll get a pass — or be able to assign blame on other vendors for not interconnecting with them and drag the whole thing for a few more years.

    • NoDoy@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      161·
      1 year ago

      Glad that you emphasized Europe. Here in the states where iMessage is dominant, it’ll make a difference.

      At the end of the day it’s not a bad thing. I’m also waiting for details with compatibility to be ironed out, but it’s a start.

      Just surprised at the whole negative energy with this announcement considering this was a “when pigs fly” or “when hell freezes over” sorta thing. Again, it’s a start and hopefully Google opens it up (even if forcibly by the EU) down the road.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        32·
        1 year ago

        I’m just extremely skeptical of anything that looks too good to be true coming from any of the incumbent tech giants. Call me cynical.

    • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      I care. Switched to iPhone and RCS is the one thing I miss.

      • NoDoy@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Exactly. It’s in no way a bad thing for anyone. We’ll see the way that it’s implemented. It’s the first step. r/Android is rearing its head here. Let’s enjoy this for the moment

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      People who aren’t using SMS now (Europe) will continue to not use RCS either.

      We’re all already on RCS in Europe. And you know what? Nobody cares. Or truly knows. Nobody opens their Messages, iMessage, whateveritbemessage.

  • Swarfega@lemm.eeEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    I have no doubts it will be implemented in a way that still benefits Apple and its ecosystem. Also to help their cause to keep iMessage locked into Apple devices with that EU ruling. Still, this is great news.

    • rikonium@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think Apple will need (or want) to do anything “malicious” since Apple is implementing RCS the standard which between the carriers and Google mismanaging and fragmenting messaging for years - see: X carrier phones can only send RCS messages to X carrier phones, Google’s implementation is not the RCS standard and is partially proprietary - it’ll take a while to get S.S. RCS, The Standard steered right.

      I hope Apple’s involvement is ironically a kick in the butt to get everyone on the same page and get a standard rather than the current “Google iMessage” solution.

      Edit: Typo

    • ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pubEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      RCS is like sms2.0, it supports better group chats, larger higher quality file transfers, read receipts… That sorta thing

    • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      For carriers it is a way to extend the (in my opinion outdated) idea of carrier-based chat system.

      For Google it is a way to switch messaging on Android to their proprietary app, at least for some time, as other of their projects falied.

      For users it is a way for people using Android certified by Google to normally message people using iPhone and it’s preinstalled chat app.

    • butter@midwest.socialEnglish
      512·
      1 year ago

      Google got jealous of iMessage and remade iMessage, but Android with the promise of making it more open.

      They haven’t followed through on ‘more open’ until just now.

      Rcs officially works on 2 apps. iMessage still has just 1.

      But hopefully Rcs will actually become open in the future. Allowing anyone to make an Rcs app, like they can with SMS

  • vamp07@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I bet they do some thing like make it optional on the iPhone and the user needs to turn that setting on to get RCS. Obviously most users don’t care and will never look.