The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
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What if they kept the green color just to troll…
They probably will. They’re aware of and actively foster the “in-group” psychology that plays out in youth social circles. Anyone with a non-Apple phone is excluded as lower class, weird, or less-than. You don’t get included in the group chats that are often the center of your peers’ social lives because no one wants the annoyance of dealing with the limitations of conversing with a green bubble. You must conform, purchase the correct products, and sign over your life to the correct social media platforms if you want to participate in society.
Yea, but the real question is will the youth see through the BS or not? Before it wasn’t just a color, green bubbles actively broke things in blue bubble group chats
But once that’s gone with (hopefully) the rollout of RCS (which should fix most, if not all, the things that broke gcs) it really would be “just a color”
Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn’t put it past them to artificially “break” things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage
Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn’t put it past them to artificially “break” things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage
That’s where my money is
Ofc, Apple being Apple, I wouldn’t put it past them to artificially “break” things or arbitrarily introduce limits between RCS and iMessage
I’m guessing RCS support will be as barebones as possible while still technically functioning. All of the fancy bells and whistles will remain exclusive to iMessage.
Some iMessage features might not be possible to implement with RCS I suppose. Maybe RCS messages will get a different colour. All Apple said in the WWDC keynote was RCS would be supported, they didn’t elaborate any further.
Apple is bringing RCS because China is requiring it, not because of what google has done. So I don’t expect it to be bare bones in that case since a huge market of theirs will be phasing out sms in the foreseeable future.
One of two things can happen…
Either Apple does the bare minimum to implement RCS, continuing to make interoperability a pain in the ass. Meanwhile, keep making improvements to iMessage.
Or Apple does it right, fully implements RCS, contributes back to the standard, and abandons iMessage as maintaining two separate platforms for the same function is a waste of resources.
I’ll take a guess as to which it’ll be.
Alternatively Americans just accept using 3rd party messengers. But that field is huge with big and small names competing, and ultimately anything that displaces FB messenger or WhatsApp will just get bought by Meta (or some other FAANG) and we’re back at square-one.
Everybody just remember that Apple is the stubborn ones here, reluctantly adopting the standard that every other OEM has been using for a decade, and the reason they’ve been doing this was as a means to keep people in Apple’s walled garden by “othering” people who don’t have iMessage.
They knew exactly what they were doing. I got rid of my iPhone to go back to Android literally a week after the original announcement. Exchanging multimedia with my wife was literally the only thing holding me to iOS. The alternative, using third party messengers, is just plain cumbersome for one user (and likely means selling your soul to Meta nowadays, anyway).
I doubt I’m alone.
And RCS is a neutral standard, belonging to GSMA. Even though Google is a key player, they aren’t the only ones. Any phone OS or OEM could always have implemented RCS. Apple has historically chosen not to, while also not reciprocating the openness with iMessage.
I guess there is one other possibility…Apple embraces RCS and, being keenly aware of its limitations and with Apple and Android cooperating, they collaborate to develop a new open standard that fully replaces both. That’s probably the best outcome but also least likely to happen.
Next up, ios20 will let you change the color of your fried chat bubble in groups. And it’ll be the most innovative inclusion “evarrrhh”.
It’s super useful to know instantly if the messages are encrypted or not.
Exactly. Encryption is coming later.
Also, there are iMessage specific features that are not part of RCS, so knowing what platform someone is on is still useful for cross platform communication.
There’s a few things that are iOS device specific (like FaceTime) so I can see legit reasons to keep the different colors, if that’s what everyone is used to. Not that video calling should be a random proprietary tech, but that’s another battle…
Apple wanted to open source FaceTime and destroy Skype. They got sued and were not allowed to open source their protocols. It’s real dumb that Apple didn’t get to drive the standards there.
That doesn’t make sense.
Steve Jobs loudly announced FaceTime would be made open source. Then they lost a patent lawsuit against https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114
Apple paid up and could keep using the patent, but could not just let anyone else use the tech they developed as it now needed a non-open license.
It’s not just to troll. There are actual differences between the RCS and iMessage protocols and their capabilities.
Sure, but we all know what the real reason is…
It would be inappropriate to not make it clear what messaging protocol is being used.
Most RCS chats will be going through googles servers. A user might want to know that.
I absolutely agree on that. It should be clear to the user what protocol is being used, but that isn’t Apple’s goal. If that was the case, the bubble for RCS messages would be something other than green since green currently indicates SMS. The way they’re doing it, making RCS bubbles green too won’t do anything to tell you what protocol you’re using, but it will specifically reveal you aren’t using iMessage, and continuing that in-group mentality is the goal.
No, apple is not using Google’s proprietary RCS they are using Open Source GSM RCS which doesn’t go through Google’s servers and it doesn’t include end-to-end encryption.
What if you speak to someone on android, then it’ll most likely go through googles servers. Most carriers are using googles servers to service rcs. When you texting iPhone users you’ll be using iMessage so most of the time your going through googles servers.
ABSOLUTELY. I have way more trust in iMessage’s privacy than RCS. I am ELATED for this change, but I want the colors different. I wouldn’t be upset if it changed from green to something else like peach or something, though, to reflect at least there might be SOME encryption or something going on.
If you’re relying on iMessage for privacy, ensure you and everyone you’re messaging have gone to iCloud settings and enabled “Advanced Data Protection”
Absolutely, and excellent advice. Most of my folks I talk about
pirated
Uhh
movies
…we’ll just say THC cuz it’s legal here
with, whether it enabled or not, we go through Signal iPhone or Android
edit: I read this again and it’s a terribly worded post but I think ya get it
On the iOS 18 preview page, they show RCS with green bubbles
Image for the lazy (and yes, of course, Apple’s breaking their own accessibility guideline of having text at least 3:1 contrast ratio for text to be readable and instead making it 2:1 by picking the lightest shade of green possible).
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The bubbles will remain green. At the very least, it’s handy a hand way to tell if chat is unencrypted.
But rcs can be e2ee right?
Encryption was never part of the RCS standard, and Google has been gatekeeping the encryption solution that they’ve been using… which is why there aren’t a lot of E2EE RCS clients floating around.
Google finally conceded several months ago, and now encryption will be part of RCS and managed by an independent working group that Google, Apple, and others can contribute to.
Phase 1 of RCS is about implementing the unencrypted foundation of the protocol. Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.
Encryption is supposed to come when the working group has aligned.
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
The whole RCS thing is a Bad Idea™ . It’s a standard by the GSM Association, which consists of over 1150 members (750 operators and 400 other companies). Getting all these companies to align will take forever.
To illustrate: the RCS initiative was started in 2007 and the steering committee was formed in early 2008. The first version of the Universal Profile, that would enable interoperability between different operators and networks was released in 2016. It took 8 f-ing years to come up with an interoperable messaging standard to replace SMS. It was intended to be implemented by operators, but since hardly any operator did Google had to run their own service, bypassing the network operators, just to get it off the ground. Operators are now slowly beginning to support it.
If Apple decides to add a feature to iMessage, they implement the feature, roll out an update to their servers and release it to a billion users in the next iOS update. If they want to add a feature to RCS, they first have to discuss it in the committee until they agree on a solution, this alone takes forever. Then every player needs to update their software to add support. This means potentially 750 operators who need to update their shit, and that is after their software suppliers add support for it. In the mean time, the new feature will work for some users when they communicate with some other users, depending on which phone and operator each party has. Rinse and repeat for every new feature you want to add.
This means RCS will at best only ever be a very basic messaging service. It’ll be an improvement over SMS and MMS, but that’s not saying much. It will be in no way a threat to Apple’s dominance in messaging.
Thank you for detailing what’s wrong with RCS.
It’s too little, too late, with major issues.
I was running XMPP on my phone in 2009…
That’s what I’m curious abt, as well. Will RCS to iMessage be e2ee?? 🧐
Not across vendors it can’t. Or at least isn’t.
Well that sucks
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100% they will do this.
But I wonder if the effect will be different to now. I know Apple wants to retain the idea that their users are in an exclusive blue bubble group. But currently, green bubbles are associated with shitty looking images, video, etc, due to MMS. Especially for people that don’t know why files come through that way, green bubbles are always presented as inferior by virtue of actually being inferior.
But now, if they do keep the green bubs, they’ll just be green. Green at feature parity is different from green with clear differences.
They won’t be including encryption so it’s not quite feature parity but yeah
I’m guessing orange.
They almost certainly will. That blue is a prestige feature for a lot of people.
I don’t really care, so long as I can easily send texts and pictures back and forth, I’ll be happy.
Apple could easily do the bare minimum to keep regulators at bay while still keeping the experience as shitty as possible so that Android will continue to look bad. For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators, or they could even deliberately compress videos. I’m expecting the worst until we see otherwise.
This is exactly what I’m expecting. The company of “buy your mom an iPhone” isn’t going to be aiming for maximum interoperability.
Yeah but the company of “wants to remain in the EU market” might
No, they’ll aim for minimum interoperability that the EU will let them get away with, and they’ll push that line every chance they get
For example they could refuse to implement reactions or typing indicators
Reactions already work in MMS groups, use them every day.
or they could even deliberately compress videos
Except they’re already advertising improved quality of photos and video in non-iMessage chats. Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.
Disliked a message.
Doubt they would advertise a specific feature only to make it worse.
Not like companies have never done that…
Apple will probably use white bubbles with yellow font.
Not to criticise apple too badly here, but that’s what will happen, as the version of RCS they use won’t have E2EE.
And… It’ll still be tied to your phone number. Why would I want another shitty messaging system that’s tied to my phone number?
It’s the replacement for SMS… Are you upset that WiFi phone calls are tied to your phone number?
I know people want this. I do to. But SMS going away will suck. Even in 2024, there’s still that moment you have every now and then that you can’t get a call out but a sms will make it out just fine. SMS rides along with the carriers ping signal. It’s not part of the data signal.
Right now my phone gives me the option if RCS fails for some reason, to send the message again with SMS. I assume that will be the case here as well.
I don’t think sms will go away, that ping is fundamental to GSM & LTE so far as I can tell.
You may need an app that explicitly taps into the sms feature though
Google Messages app already falls back to SMS automatically if RCS fails. SMS is not going anywhere.
Here me out, iMessage on any OS, wait, no, not just that, how about no hardware vendor is allowed to produce software that only runs on their hardware and for any given core function the hardware must prompt the end user with a competitive selection of capable apps to accomplish said function (to be downloaded and installed upon selection) instead of coming with a default option enabled. Let’s get crazy and say that any hardware vendor must allow software they produce for their own hardware to be uninstalled and replaced by software of the end user’s choosing.
I’m talking some “treating United States v. Microsoft” as legally binding precedent" shit.
Meanwhile, regulators be like…
.(Side note: what’s up with the bullshit where Apple makes an Android-native AppleTV app that will install on a phone fine but is blocked from running once it detects it’s not an AndroidTV device? Apple acts like it would be an undue burden to make iMessage for Android (and pretends they didn’t make the decision to not release an Android client with their hardware business in mind) but their Apple Music app somehow runs better on Android than it does on iOS…)
“Why does this microwave oven cost $1500?”
“Two reasons. The first is that it has to have a full network stack to allow it to download software from competing appliance vendors. The second is the cost that the manufacturer had to bear to develop software for every single other microwave sold. There are some pretty weird architectures out there, and they had to hire a whole bunch of programmers.”
Maybe don’t make a network-enabled microwave, then. What an unnecessary IoT appliance.
OP said “no hardware vendor”, not “ no networked hardware vendor”.
The exact quote was
how about no hardware vendor is allowed to produce software that only runs on their hardware
Why would this theoretical microwave vendor be making software for it in the first place to need to make it interoperate with other microwaves that inexplicably have software of their own?
ding ding ding The microwave analogy they were going after makes no sense. I mean, there are semantics at play and I could have explicitly mentioned I wasn’t talking about firmware in order to exclude things that are essentially calculators and clocks but I didn’t anticipate someone going the direction of absurdist bespoke microwave OSes given that firmware alone is enough. Even at that level, you have examples like Seiko Epson inventing precision timed ticket printers for the 1964 Olympics - they’re still dominant in the arena of commercial printers to this day, yet they have allowed other manufacturers to adopt their ESC/POS language as a standard that’s still widely used across brands today, allowing for feature parity on the software functionality side from competing brands while Epson competes on the hardware reliability side. (This isn’t an endorsement of Epson, their consumer printers are trash because they’re not Brother laser printers lol.) Spoiler alert, the price tag of a commercial printer doesn’t have much to do with it being compatible with network standards (???! - standards being the key word here) and has more to do with reliability and general feature sets (in that order once competition exists for a device, see Epson vs feature identical Beiyang (insert other generic clone brand here)) and the same would hold true even if we decided to network our microwaves in some scenario where we’re also automating food going in and out of the microwave.
All of that said, if I were to modify what I was saying while keeping the sentiment the same, I would just simplify it by saying “no hardware vendor is allowed to lock their hardware to running specific software” (doesn’t mean they have to provide technical support for errors in another vendor’s software) since that gets at the root of the issue. But, going back to the original sentiment, open standards that have nothing to do with specific hardware are clearly better. Look at Apple vs x86 vs ARM, specifically Apple during the period between PowerPC (at least there were partners here, so the chips had lives outside of Apple hardware) and their M-Series - they wouldn’t have had an excuse not to offer something like BootCamp during the x86 era given that their OS clearly was able to run on off the shelf PC components and the inverse with Windows and Linux being able to run on their hardware was also clearly true. Is it a good thing that Apple hardware is once again locked in to running only their software?
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RCS is crap, inconsistent, unreliable, lacking, buggy. It doesn’t even handle Dual SIM …
Android needed a native “iMessage” style solution at least 10 years ago.
I can buy a $99 flip phone, basic phone, up to a $1,500 premium device, SMS/MMS will function the same across all 3 devices. RCS however will not. So how is this the answer to advanced messaging on Android? It isn’t…
If Google bought BBM & made it their own when it was still relevant in the consumer space, made it native on all Android 10 devices & later with SMS/MMS fall back, this would be something! Damn I miss BlackBerry…
RCS is not seamless, not native, and it simply is not it. It’s the 1 thing I hate about Android, as creative and customizable as the software is, we need more…I hate what Apple represents in the consumer space and how people often think who use an iPhone which makes me never want one…
The moment Google saw the exclusivity Apple was doing, Android should have followed suite.
RCS sucks…
Crazy thing is Google Hangouts did this back in 2012! They had it! You could text and message digitally to someone’s hangouts acct. then they killed it because of some legacy code or something.
also they kept renaming it
And now I’m irritated by this all over again.
I’m still of the opinion that the basic message app should only be SMS.
Then anything else should be its own thing. Mixing the two is a recipe for disaster, where it’s a consumer product.Counterpoint: SMS shouldn’t exist, and RCS is our best shot at replacing it right now
SMS has one feature nothing else does. It’s not data per se. if you can ping a tower you can get a message out. You can’t do that with anything else.
Makes a difference when you’re out in BFE.
What? SMS is a proven standard that works reliably. Why do we need to replace that? I tried RCS twice, in both cases the other end did not receive my message or at a later time. Even if SMS needed replacement, RCS is not it.
SMS is a proven standard that works reliably.
lol
I tried RCS twice, in both cases the other end did not receive my message or at a later time.
This is not indicative of how well RCS will work as its widespread adoption continues to mature. I do understand your frustration; I just would expect the growing pains to last much longer. Remember how shitty USB C was for the first few years?
Counterpoint: RCS shouldn’t exist either. We should use something that isn’t tied to our mobile service providers.
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And yet Google still hasn’t rolled out RCS for Google Voice, and last I checked there was an issue with it and Google Fi as well. (It works but it precludes some advertised feature of Fi or something.)
Currently Google has bricked RCS for people with rooted phones in such a way that it fails silently for like the 4th time this year, and it’s looking like the modders may not be able to keep getting around it.
Honestly, it’d be a good retort from Apple if they ran a commercial that said, “We’ll support RCS once all your products do” and then show a screenshot of Google Voice.
But they’re planning to support it
I’ve had no issues with Fi and RCS. Then again, maybe Fi on pixel is different.
Fi has two different, incompatible options for how to sync your messages to a computer or other device that isn’t your primary phone with your SIM (or e-SIM): the so-called “option 1” is RCS compatible, but treats your phone as the canonical device that has the primary copy of all messages, voicemails, etc. “Option 2” is device agnostic, where all messages and voicemails live on the cloud, and your phone (and all other devices) merely syncs with that primary copy in the cloud.
If your phone breaks or dies or is lost/stolen, Option 2 keeps chugging along with all your logged in devices, but the dead phone is the single point of failure for Option 1.
Ideally there would be a device agnostic way to access RCS through your account, but every implementation seems to require a specific SIM.
I think it was something to do with the Fi-specific syncing of messages to the web version.
Yeah, if Voice doesn’t have RCS support by the time iOS 18 launches, I’ll be moving off it for messaging. Have a number of text groups with iPhones that will benefit from everyone on RCS, most important knowing that my group messages were actually received. MMS still randomly drops messages or they get massively delayed or received out of order.
Man it’s a shame that Google RCS doesn’t run on android phones by default if you have a custom rom or rooted your device or have an unlocked bootloader. Guess this won’t really affect me then and it doesn’t really matter.
RCS is proprietary, right?
Finally, I’ll be added to the group chat for work. I’ll know where to report to just as early as everyone else.
So when are they making FaceTime open source too? That’s what Steve Jobs said when he first announced it.
Also, FOSS clients for RCS messaging should exist. My only options so far are Google’s messaging app, Samsung’s weird thing, and if I don’t want either, an iPhone. Eh… I’d like more options. Let’s just have all messaging applications support open source protocols, including Signal because why not??
Has hell frozen over?
I don’t know if it’s a good thing… To use RCS you have to use a compatible OS + device and use the google messages app (maybe also the Samsung one now) and why does the brand implemented this is because google “offered” the servers to run this protocol. I think even today the best way is to get onto secure messaging apps (like Signal, Session, SimpleX…)
I guess, if I’m on Android, this will make no difference to me?
If you’re texting an iPhone user it’ll make a difference
So no difference?
You mean SMS? I rarely use SMS these days. And I don’t know many people with an iPhone. That’s a US, UK thing it seems.
I’m gonna wait to see how this is implemented but it sounds bad on the face of it.
