Comment on Apple finally adds support for RCS in latest iOS 18 beta | TechCrunch
Fake4000@lemmy.world 6 days ago
They will still keep them green. You know how teens react to those bubbles.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
There is no alternative that they could choose.
RCS is absolute horseshit unless you send it to Google, which is absolutely unacceptable.
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 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.
Fun fact: It doesn’t even meet Apple’s own standard for text contrast!
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 5 days ago
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.
cm0002@lemmy.world 5 days ago
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.
TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 5 days ago
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.
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I doubt the bullying would be any different if it was a beautiful red (or whatever is considered a pretty chat bubble) instead.
And even if it was a blue bubble, the bullies would find another reason to bully someone.
I get the peer pressure part and sure Apple might be exploiting that in America, but in the past it was clothing brands or whatever it is now. Making the bubbles the same color (or even bringing iMessage over to Android completely) would get rid of a single symptom, not of the root cause.
Fades@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I agree, for both send and receive since ios can send messages differently (text vs imessage)