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”
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.
There is no E2EE in RCS, so no amount of EU push would’ve enabled that. Also RCS was not a EU play, it’s a China play. RCS features are dependent on carrier implementation against GSM consortium’s spec.
So no, everything there is basically wrong… but hey, it goes well with the echo chamber vibes so upvotes to you!
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)
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.
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.
European here, this is just wrong, I don’t use WhatsApp, nor does my friends or family
The advantage of iMessage is SMS fallback when you don’t have internet access.
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.
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”.
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.
It’s hard to read the text against a green background too. I’m so tired of Apple.
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).
