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.
That’s the point. It’s not Apples problem. Apple supports basic carrier messaging. If someone buys an Android, Apple users can message them just as anyone who buys a Windows Phone or BlackBerry.
It’s either an Android problem — getting fragmented service and no E2EE — at which point don’t buy an Android; or a user preference problem — “Inprefer iMessage” — at which point buy an iPhone.
Vendors on both sides have gone up and down the market to cover the spectrum, it’s not even a “can’t afford the premium feature” problem anymore as it were decade ago.
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
People trying to claim capitalism / consumerism is missing the point — no one is getting a magical piece of PCB for free; vendors on both sides have gone up and down market that they’ve basically all covers the spectrum, and people make their own choice as to which platform they’re on.
People trying to assign blame on Apple is missing the point — it’s the android users having sub par fragmented (depending on carrier) service that doesn’t have E2EE by default, whom desperately needs something better.
If people chose Android are finally realizing they don’t have proper service, then they need to petition their platform vendor to put in something better (arguably Google has, but their reputation precedes them in these circles), or vote with their wallet when it comes time for their next device.
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.
Again, Android problem, not Apple problem.
Apple stated clearly they’re keen on working with GSM Consortium (who owns RCS and has more sway on carriers than Google does) on bringing E2EE to the masses.
If Google’s reputation of finding new and exciting ways to sell targeted ads doesn’t precede them, then they might have a better chance of getting a first party solution like Apple does with iMessage. But alas, Apple is not responsible for Google’s business plan or public image, and that problem is Google’s to solve.
