6 ms·

Apple announced RCS with a whimper when it should have been a bang

21 points by instagib 2y ago

instagib 2y ago
[flagged]
MBCook 2y ago
Didn’t Apple announce they were doing this last year? I thought the only thing that was new this week was confirmation it would be in 18 as opposed to 18.1 or 17.6 or at some other time. But even then 18 seemed the most obvious anyway.
exabrial 2y ago
I'm guessing/speculating, so don't take this too seriously... I imagine they announced it with a whimper because: 1. Likely setting expectations. Expect: minimal, annoying, malicious, compliance 2. To relieve some regulatory pressure while actually accomplishing nothing
- colejohnson66 2y ago
  3. They said last year that they were adding RCS, so announcing it again is pointless.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    The WWDC keynote is mostly about new shiny stuff to tell people all the cool stuff coming to their phone and why they may want to buy a better one (Apple Intelligence this year). As you pointed out it’s not new information. And “doesn’t suck as much” is not exactly high marketing copy. They put it on one of their slides of random features coming to the new OS so people would know it’s there but didn’t spend any time on it. I agree with you, they weren’t trying to hide it. It just wasn’t that interesting compared to everything else they were doing that no one knew about (outside of perhaps the rumor mill).
    - servus45678981 2y ago
      The WWDC is a public developer conference, but I hope you get well soon.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
I liked how they said this change is for "people who don't use iMessage" without naming Android.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  I think it implies a Linux desktop client could also be created.
  - zshrc 2y ago
    How the heck does the statement imply that?
    - jjtheblunt 2y ago
      The parent comment guesses they were avoiding saying Android, but, in analogy with imessage availability on both macos/ios, there's linux/android. But, yes, when I wrote "I think" i can't claim that's what they meant, just that's my reading of it.
  - bastawhiz 2y ago
    How many Linux desktops send text messages?
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Depends on how broadly you define "text message". But if we treat iMessage as such, why not e.g. Signal?
      - bastawhiz 2y ago
        "Text message" meaning "sends sms". RCS is (for all intents and purposes) an upgrade to SMS. How many Linux desktops have a phone number and a SIM card (or equivalent)? Signal made the design choice to require a phone number to operate. Just as with Google Messages, Whatsapp, telegram, and most others, the desktop application for Signal requires you to auth via the app on your phone, which is authed to the network via your phone number. iMessage is tied to an Apple ID and doesn't require you to have a phone at all.
mrweasel 2y ago
Regardless that is a feature I been wanting for a long time. I don't really see myself switching to Android anytime soon, because I think the iPhone is the least bad option and I trust Apple ever so slightly more than Google. Still I do want to be able to send my dad photos larger than what MMS supports, and try as I might, he's not installing Signal.
oellegaard 2y ago
As a long time Apple customer I couldn’t care less. This is mainly to satisfy governments who are looking into Apples dominant position in the market. I doubt this was a big request from the apple community. It’s like the new possibility to use non apple app stores. It’s mainly coming from people who don’t like Apple and use Android anyway.
- int_19h 2y ago
  It matters for anyone who has an iPhone but regularly texts people with Androids. That is a very common use case.
- junga 2y ago
  > I doubt this was a big request from the apple community. As a German I'm looking forward to this since iPhone market share isn't as big as it might be in America. In the end I might delete Signal and WhatsApp since media sharing is the only reason for me to use these apps.
- MBCook 2y ago
  I’m an Apple person and it’s not huge to me. The people I tend to trade pictures/etc with are also iPhone owners. That said I personally know multiple people in my family who have run into “problems” sending pictures or especially video back-and-forth to Android phones because you get stuck with ancient MMS sizes that look like garbage. Images are bad but video is just atrocious. It’s a good upgrade for iPhone users. I don’t think it’s the number one feature for anyone in my group, but I can easily be imagine being an iPhone person with a mostly Android family/friends network where this is going to be a big quality of life thing.
- watermelon0 2y ago
  Messaging app fragmentation is a real issue, and I currently have to use ~4 different apps, because different people have different subset of these apps installed. Situation gets even more complicated when you need to message a group of people, because you have to find an app that everyone in the group has it installed (usually, FB Messenger is the best candidate here). RCS could finally (mostly) solve this in the near future, because practically everyone will have a phone with first-class support for it.
yieldcrv 2y ago
On the green bubbles, I’m hearing that RCS is just a wrapper and an encrypted protocol could function within RCS will the bubbles go blue then? I really just want another way to know the level of interaction I can have with someone at that point in time. I think SMS is different enough than RCS to support a different way of realizing it. Whether message bubble color or something else
- MBCook 2y ago
  I’m not sure they actually told us but you can bet they’re green. Blue = iMessage, not encrypted. Everything else is green. You’re right that RCS is not encrypted by default. Encryption can be added on top, that’s what Google has done on Android. But since it’s not part of the standard and it’s just something Google runs I wouldn’t expect Apple to do that. We’ll find out soon.
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    yeah, Apple has previously said that green means not encrypted, implying that blue is encrypted. Where the SMS aspect of green is just happenstance, and again only implying that the blue of imessage is just happenstance too. I think this phrasing is just a CYA thing. But I’m definitely curious.
    - MBCook 2y ago
      But I think that’s just because SMS wasn’t encrypted. If it was they would just explain things differently. I think the number one thing for them is features. Blue equals all the features, green equals whatever works. So even if RCS were to be done encrypted, which I doubt, it wouldn’t support the message effects or text formatting or iMessage apps. So they would still use blue to differentiate. As things exist today, encryption is simply what they think is most important so that’s what they lead with.
- frizlab 2y ago
  You can be sure if one thing: if it’s not iMessage, the bubbles won’t go blue.
TechRemarker 2y ago
Presumably because Apple is all about privacy and this RCS won’t be encrypted and so any law enforcement or hackers may get access I like with SMS, I imagine they don’t want to boast about it.
- simfree 2y ago
  The only RCS clients that are in use support axlotol ratchet encryption. Apple could literally take the MIT licensed implementation that Matrix wrote and got audited and slap that into their RCS implementation if they cared to support this interoperable feature.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    I'm very curious what the state of specifications has been. Saying clients can do whatever encryption they want doesn't help anything, in my view. Something based around group communication standards like Message Layer Security would be good. But even that leaves a ton of implementation details & exchanges up to implementers. It's really a pity GSMA has such a strong hold on this industry. It seems like there just aren't a lot of other forums for this kind of work. Or perhaps the forums are all, like GSMA pretty slow big business plodding institutions. Reading up on RSC Business Messaging (RBM) and why GSMA started doing this stuff; it quickly sours any illusion this was some noble effort. This is a way to start charging businesses more, it seems like, with fancy expensive differentiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#RCS_Business_Messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#RC... On the web it's so amazing how many enthusiasts & craftsfolk are empowered have such great forums to propose & get help trying to create standards. W3c and whatwg and wicg and tc39 and ietf are models we don't see repeated often, nor do there seem to be that many other empowered agents of progress helping championing & pioneering. Google has an end-to-end encryption capability, no? Did they try to specify or standardize that anywhere? What are the efforts in the field here?
  - acdha 2y ago
    Android restricts RCS to Google’s proprietary Messages app. That supports encryption with what appears to be a reasonably open protocol BUT they restrict it to their key servers: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf Apple could implement their own but unless Google is willing to open up their proprietary messaging system, nobody on Android would be able to use it. Oddly, they left they out of their deceptive PR campaign which tried hard to portray E2EE as an RCS feature.
multimoon 2y ago
People complain when Apple doesn’t do a thing, and then when they do do it (even if it was for regulatory pressure) people complain that Apple didn’t hype up something they didn’t want to do in the first place (for the right or wrong reasons). They’re a multi-trillion dollar company - of course they’re going to do whatever they believe will ensure their continued growth, this is how public companies work. I don’t get why people take it as such a personal insult.
- appplication 2y ago
  TFA is sort of amazing. They seem stunned at the repercussions, but in reality, the repercussions are basically negligible. Every iPhone user has gotten along just fine (for the most part) communicating with android users so far, and they’ll continue to do so. Maybe on the other side Android users get some nice benefits from iPhones playing along? But iPhone isn’t in the business of placating non-iPhone users. Why would it? The feature set brought by RCS support is also, for the most part, not particularly interesting or consequential to most users, even those regularly conversing between android and iPhone. > These are all great changes, but iPhone users won’t be able to use these features when chatting with someone on Android. And we don’t even know how the emoji created with Genmoji, Apple’s new AI emoji creation tool, will appear in texts sent to users on Android, either. And why would they care? I’m not interested in Genmoji in the least, but it’s a boring world if Apple needs to check in with Google, Meta, Verizon, etc on every experimental feature they want to add to messaging.
dc3k 2y ago
i’d guess that a very very very large majority of people don’t know or care what RCS is. i certainly don’t. i can’t even remember the last time i used an sms or mms. most likely people use whatsapp or telegram or signal or whatever if they’re not using imessage

21 points by instagib 2y ago

[flagged]

Didn’t Apple announce they were doing this last year? I thought the only thing that was new this week was confirmation it would be in 18 as opposed to 18.1 or 17.6 or at some other time. But even then 18 seemed the most obvious anyway.

exabrial 2y ago

I'm guessing/speculating, so don't take this too seriously... I imagine they announced it with a whimper because: 1. Likely setting expectations. Expect: minimal, annoying, malicious, compliance 2. To relieve some regulatory pressure while actually accomplishing nothing

colejohnson66 2y ago
3. They said last year that they were adding RCS, so announcing it again is pointless.
- MBCook 2y ago
  The WWDC keynote is mostly about new shiny stuff to tell people all the cool stuff coming to their phone and why they may want to buy a better one (Apple Intelligence this year). As you pointed out it’s not new information. And “doesn’t suck as much” is not exactly high marketing copy. They put it on one of their slides of random features coming to the new OS so people would know it’s there but didn’t spend any time on it. I agree with you, they weren’t trying to hide it. It just wasn’t that interesting compared to everything else they were doing that no one knew about (outside of perhaps the rumor mill).
  - servus45678981 2y ago
    The WWDC is a public developer conference, but I hope you get well soon.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

I liked how they said this change is for "people who don't use iMessage" without naming Android.

jjtheblunt 2y ago
I think it implies a Linux desktop client could also be created.
- zshrc 2y ago
  How the heck does the statement imply that?
  - jjtheblunt 2y ago
    The parent comment guesses they were avoiding saying Android, but, in analogy with imessage availability on both macos/ios, there's linux/android. But, yes, when I wrote "I think" i can't claim that's what they meant, just that's my reading of it.
- bastawhiz 2y ago
  How many Linux desktops send text messages?
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Depends on how broadly you define "text message". But if we treat iMessage as such, why not e.g. Signal?
    - bastawhiz 2y ago
      "Text message" meaning "sends sms". RCS is (for all intents and purposes) an upgrade to SMS. How many Linux desktops have a phone number and a SIM card (or equivalent)? Signal made the design choice to require a phone number to operate. Just as with Google Messages, Whatsapp, telegram, and most others, the desktop application for Signal requires you to auth via the app on your phone, which is authed to the network via your phone number. iMessage is tied to an Apple ID and doesn't require you to have a phone at all.

mrweasel 2y ago

Regardless that is a feature I been wanting for a long time. I don't really see myself switching to Android anytime soon, because I think the iPhone is the least bad option and I trust Apple ever so slightly more than Google. Still I do want to be able to send my dad photos larger than what MMS supports, and try as I might, he's not installing Signal.

oellegaard 2y ago

As a long time Apple customer I couldn’t care less. This is mainly to satisfy governments who are looking into Apples dominant position in the market. I doubt this was a big request from the apple community. It’s like the new possibility to use non apple app stores. It’s mainly coming from people who don’t like Apple and use Android anyway.

int_19h 2y ago
It matters for anyone who has an iPhone but regularly texts people with Androids. That is a very common use case.
junga 2y ago
> I doubt this was a big request from the apple community. As a German I'm looking forward to this since iPhone market share isn't as big as it might be in America. In the end I might delete Signal and WhatsApp since media sharing is the only reason for me to use these apps.
MBCook 2y ago
I’m an Apple person and it’s not huge to me. The people I tend to trade pictures/etc with are also iPhone owners. That said I personally know multiple people in my family who have run into “problems” sending pictures or especially video back-and-forth to Android phones because you get stuck with ancient MMS sizes that look like garbage. Images are bad but video is just atrocious. It’s a good upgrade for iPhone users. I don’t think it’s the number one feature for anyone in my group, but I can easily be imagine being an iPhone person with a mostly Android family/friends network where this is going to be a big quality of life thing.
watermelon0 2y ago
Messaging app fragmentation is a real issue, and I currently have to use ~4 different apps, because different people have different subset of these apps installed. Situation gets even more complicated when you need to message a group of people, because you have to find an app that everyone in the group has it installed (usually, FB Messenger is the best candidate here). RCS could finally (mostly) solve this in the near future, because practically everyone will have a phone with first-class support for it.

yieldcrv 2y ago

On the green bubbles, I’m hearing that RCS is just a wrapper and an encrypted protocol could function within RCS will the bubbles go blue then? I really just want another way to know the level of interaction I can have with someone at that point in time. I think SMS is different enough than RCS to support a different way of realizing it. Whether message bubble color or something else

MBCook 2y ago
I’m not sure they actually told us but you can bet they’re green. Blue = iMessage, not encrypted. Everything else is green. You’re right that RCS is not encrypted by default. Encryption can be added on top, that’s what Google has done on Android. But since it’s not part of the standard and it’s just something Google runs I wouldn’t expect Apple to do that. We’ll find out soon.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  yeah, Apple has previously said that green means not encrypted, implying that blue is encrypted. Where the SMS aspect of green is just happenstance, and again only implying that the blue of imessage is just happenstance too. I think this phrasing is just a CYA thing. But I’m definitely curious.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    But I think that’s just because SMS wasn’t encrypted. If it was they would just explain things differently. I think the number one thing for them is features. Blue equals all the features, green equals whatever works. So even if RCS were to be done encrypted, which I doubt, it wouldn’t support the message effects or text formatting or iMessage apps. So they would still use blue to differentiate. As things exist today, encryption is simply what they think is most important so that’s what they lead with.
frizlab 2y ago
You can be sure if one thing: if it’s not iMessage, the bubbles won’t go blue.

TechRemarker 2y ago

Presumably because Apple is all about privacy and this RCS won’t be encrypted and so any law enforcement or hackers may get access I like with SMS, I imagine they don’t want to boast about it.

simfree 2y ago
The only RCS clients that are in use support axlotol ratchet encryption. Apple could literally take the MIT licensed implementation that Matrix wrote and got audited and slap that into their RCS implementation if they cared to support this interoperable feature.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I'm very curious what the state of specifications has been. Saying clients can do whatever encryption they want doesn't help anything, in my view. Something based around group communication standards like Message Layer Security would be good. But even that leaves a ton of implementation details & exchanges up to implementers. It's really a pity GSMA has such a strong hold on this industry. It seems like there just aren't a lot of other forums for this kind of work. Or perhaps the forums are all, like GSMA pretty slow big business plodding institutions. Reading up on RSC Business Messaging (RBM) and why GSMA started doing this stuff; it quickly sours any illusion this was some noble effort. This is a way to start charging businesses more, it seems like, with fancy expensive differentiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#RCS_Business_Messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#RC... On the web it's so amazing how many enthusiasts & craftsfolk are empowered have such great forums to propose & get help trying to create standards. W3c and whatwg and wicg and tc39 and ietf are models we don't see repeated often, nor do there seem to be that many other empowered agents of progress helping championing & pioneering. Google has an end-to-end encryption capability, no? Did they try to specify or standardize that anywhere? What are the efforts in the field here?
- acdha 2y ago
  Android restricts RCS to Google’s proprietary Messages app. That supports encryption with what appears to be a reasonably open protocol BUT they restrict it to their key servers: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf Apple could implement their own but unless Google is willing to open up their proprietary messaging system, nobody on Android would be able to use it. Oddly, they left they out of their deceptive PR campaign which tried hard to portray E2EE as an RCS feature.

multimoon 2y ago

People complain when Apple doesn’t do a thing, and then when they do do it (even if it was for regulatory pressure) people complain that Apple didn’t hype up something they didn’t want to do in the first place (for the right or wrong reasons). They’re a multi-trillion dollar company - of course they’re going to do whatever they believe will ensure their continued growth, this is how public companies work. I don’t get why people take it as such a personal insult.

appplication 2y ago
TFA is sort of amazing. They seem stunned at the repercussions, but in reality, the repercussions are basically negligible. Every iPhone user has gotten along just fine (for the most part) communicating with android users so far, and they’ll continue to do so. Maybe on the other side Android users get some nice benefits from iPhones playing along? But iPhone isn’t in the business of placating non-iPhone users. Why would it? The feature set brought by RCS support is also, for the most part, not particularly interesting or consequential to most users, even those regularly conversing between android and iPhone. > These are all great changes, but iPhone users won’t be able to use these features when chatting with someone on Android. And we don’t even know how the emoji created with Genmoji, Apple’s new AI emoji creation tool, will appear in texts sent to users on Android, either. And why would they care? I’m not interested in Genmoji in the least, but it’s a boring world if Apple needs to check in with Google, Meta, Verizon, etc on every experimental feature they want to add to messaging.

dc3k 2y ago

i’d guess that a very very very large majority of people don’t know or care what RCS is. i certainly don’t. i can’t even remember the last time i used an sms or mms. most likely people use whatsapp or telegram or signal or whatever if they’re not using imessage