The Android developer just published an updated landing page for Google Messages, showing off key features ranging from customization, privacy and security, and, of course, AI.
On this landing page, there are different sections for each feature set, including one for RCS. As spotted by 9to5Google, if you expand this list of RCS features and scroll to the bottom, you see a section on “Coming soon on iOS: Better messaging for all.” That’s no surprise: We’ve known Apple was adopting RCS since November. However, it’s the next line that brings the news: “Apple has announced it will be adopting RCS in the fall of 2024.”
Of course, this does not say a lot as it is “in the fall” which is anywhere over a couple of months, and Google has tried to embarrass Apple into making moves before. I suppose, though, there is the looming court case against Apple which is anyway keeping pressure on Apple. If it were not for the US court case, I would have guessed Apple may have pulled out after the EU had ruled Apple was not a dominant player in the market (although the EU case was looking more at interoperability with WhatsApp and others in Apple Messages).
Of course, with Apple actually including RCS now, they can probably argue that there is interoperability via RCS between their platform and Android too. It must be remembered that in many countries, like mine, SMS’s are paid for so are very expensive to use for any form of chatting, and the costs go up exponentially when you text an international number.
I personally have quite a few issues with interoperability with Apple:
- I still have AirTags from when I had an iPhone and I daily get the audio beeps warning me the AirTags are not connected (I use an Android phone and alternate between an iPad and an Android tablet)
- I can’t wait to sell my AirTags and get the new one’s Google was working on that will interoperate with Apple, but supposedly Apple has been delaying building in that support into their devices (which Google already built into Android for AirTags in 2023)
- Because I was on Apple Messages and my iPad still sometimes connects, I find a message on my iPad that arrived a week ago which I had not seen (I had Beeper which was solving this problem)
Apple is not at all dominant outside the USA, but it makes interacting with Apple users quite a pain, as Apple has gone out of their way to try to keep their users inside the walled garden.
See https://lifehacker.com/tech/google-just-revealed-when-apple-will-officially-adopt-rcs
#technology #RCS #Apple #interoperability
True and Matrix is very versatile if you look at what Beeper achieved. Yet it has been around a long time and has never gone big time. The thing though with replacing text SMS, is it has to also comply with what the mobile phone companies use at that level, and I don’t Matrix has ever pitched that to them? This is not about the high level messaging we do at app level.
The mobile companies will not use it. Ideally there’d only be data and emergency line access.
The whole point of RCS was to replace text SMS. The last year or two has seen one mobile provider after the next adopting it. That was the point of RCS, to get beyond a zero encryption text message and text messages that are very expensive in 3rd world countries. So a lot of it was focussed on mobile operators. It has to be enabled actually by mobile operators to work.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s a replacement the way you want it to be. RCS requires Wi-Fi or data. SMS can go over voice channels. Google messages will fail back to SMS if data and Wi-Fi are not available.
Certainly not now as a replacement but I understand that is the longer term intention. There is a lot of older infrastructure carriers need to unload and move on (lime dismantling 2G and 3G etc), and they often pay negotiated Inter-carrier fees. If it is to replace SMS I understand carriers can zero rate whatever data they want to, so it will be cheaper for them to not charge any data charges on RCS than to actually keep providing text SMS. RCS also uses exiting modern network technologies so there is nothing extra, or outdated, that has to be maintained.
RCS, as adopted by GSMA , is zero encryption text messaging. RCS with encryption is a proprietary Google product and relies on Google servers.
It is not zero encryption, like SMS, though? All GSMA-compliant RCS implementations must use TLS to encrypt data transfer between your device and the carrier’s server. While recommended by GSMA, E2EE is an optional feature that carriers can choose to implement or not. So carriers can implement it. I’m pretty sure that as adoption goes mainstream, a “monopoly” on the server side is going to get broken up.