[throw0101a]

So those of us who happen to own iPhones, and have friend who have Android devices, and would like to have (e.g.) group chats can go pound sand? Or try to get all of our friends/family to install yet another app?

What is the main argument(s?) against implementing RCS? That it doesn't have E2EE? Neither does SMS, so RCS is no worse in that regard, but seems to have some extra nice things.

[izacus]

I keep being surprised how utterly selfish can brand fans be when it comes to their electronics toys. This doesn't affect pure Apple fanboys at all and yet they still want to mess it up.

[jaywalk]

So we (Apple brand fans) must adopt a garbage standard (RCS) just because the brand you're a fan of (Google/Android) created and adopted it?

RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.

[throw0101a]

> RCS is crap and needs to die. Apple and Google should work together on a better standard.

And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."

RCS may not be perfect, but it seems to have nice things over and above SMS. I have no objections to adding more nice things to RCS (or whatever comes after it), but why shouldn't we implement the nice things of RCS?

[jaywalk]

What's stopping you from having group chats with your Android-using friends? I have plenty of them on my iPhone.

[woojoo666]

I believe GP was talking about sms group chats. And if you have sms group chats with android users, it sucks for them, especially how reactions and replies show up on their side. iMessage group chats degrade the experience of your android friends for the convenience of iPhone users. It's not a great way to treat friends imo. 3rd party apps are the same amount of convenience for everybody.

[danaris]

> And in the meantime, I—an iPhone owner—should not be able to have group chats with my Android-using friends?

There are how many different cross-platform messaging apps?

[vidanay]

If Apple were really interested in a standard, they would be promoting iMessage as a standard. Instead, when Google proposes RCS, they just sit and shake their head and say "no, not good enough."

[jaywalk]

That's a totally separate issue, and I generally agree with you. Apple should put in some work on this as well, and they have not.

But that still doesn't mean RCS is good.

[threeseed]

The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.

There is no point moving to RCS which just prolongs this death and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.

[throw0101a]

> The reason is that SMS is dying and being replaced by better encrypted clients.

Each of which is a wall gardened onto itself. So instead of having one app where I can chat, I have App A to talk with Group-of-Friends 1, App B to talk with Group-of-Family/Friends 2, App C…

Thanks, but I'll happily give up E2EE to not have to deal with the above hassle.

At that point I might as well give up on SMS/RCS and go back to only sending e-mails which is an open, federated standard.

> […] and makes the current situation worse since Google has their own proprietary version of RCS.

AFAICT, the only thing "proprietary" about Google's implementation is E2EE: otherwise it's a fairly standard RCS client that can talk to any other RCS client. I'd be happy if Apple did the same thing with iMessage (app): standard SMS/RCS client when sending to non-iMessage people, and 'fancy' client (blue bubbles) between iMesssage users.

[Jleagle]

Except SMS isn't being replaced, the new protocols work along side SMS. That's like saying WhatsApp is replacing iMessage.

RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.

[joshstrange]

> RCS Only has advantages over regular SMS.

Only if you don't count building/support/maintenance of RCS. SMS works well enough for it's main jobs: fallback for people that won't install a 3rd party app, an insecure channel for TOTP (something RCS doesn't improve on), and the one near-guaranteed messaging channel for a whole range of services that can't or won't write an app with push notifications.

Adding RCS is not free/easy and it continues to make us dependent on the carriers and Google, two groups I trust about as far as I can throw them. RCS is a crap "standard", this isn't a case of good being the enemy of great, it's a case of Google trying to force their latest messaging platform on everyone.

[pornel]

It gives power back to mobile operators, and that's a step back for net neutrality. My experience with mobile operators is that they are universally horrible, both on technical and business level.

MMS has been a dumpster fire since the beginning. They haven't improved it in all these years, but still price it as if they hand deliver the messages on a golden plate (my operator's cheapest MMS price is 20x more expensive than the same bandwidth on their data plan, and the regular price is closer to 300x markup).

These are the operators that put uninstallable crapware on phones they're able to touch (Apple has won a hard battle here; phones used to be sold on operators' terms before the iPhone). These are the operators that are unwilling to secure caller ID. These are the operators that sell their user's traffic. These are the operators charge fuck-you prices for roaming. I don't want them to be in control of anything.

RCS will be just an extra item to upsell, and the technology — which is already worse than every competitor — will be left to languish forever.

[webmobdev]

> It gives power back to mobile operators, and that's a step back for net neutrality.

I see that as a huge positive - I'd rather that my personal communication never be under the control and mercy of foreign BigTechs, and would prefer that it be under the telecom companies who are obliged to follow certain laws and regulations on pricing and QoS. I don't see it as having anything to do with net neutrality.

[pornel]

Looking at pricing of MMS, roaming charges, and lack of security in interchange that allows spam and fake caller IDs, these laws are insufficient. A technical solution that makes operators "dumb pipes" solves it better. It's a Net Neutrality issue, because it allows operators to charge for bytes of RCS messages differently than bytes of Signal messages or Matrix messages or any other packet.

Ideally messaging shouldn't be controlled by either BigTech or BigTelecom, but RCS being a Google-telecom cooperation fails on both counts at the same time.

[webmobdev]

> It's a Net Neutrality issue, because it allows operators to charge for bytes of RCS messages differently than bytes of Signal messages or Matrix messages or any other packet.

That's a disingenuous argument as voice and data (sms, video calls, mms etc.) on any telecom network has never been considered a part of the internet. Even though RCS uses parts of internet technologies (only because 4g / 5g are IP based and have replaced switch based technology), it's still a stretch to call it part of the "internet" as it is part of the telecom infrastructure and can connect to other telecom networks without necessarily needing the "internet" to do so.

And this legally mandated "inter-connectivity" remains the key point and advantage of telecom networks. The internet is also supposed to be like that, and many early internet technology were built with this feature of distributed inter-connectivity too. But WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, Skype etc. are all disconnected islands that are actually an aberration of this core value of the internet, and devalues the internet as a whole.

[pornel]

The distinction of what belongs to telecoms and what belongs to the Internet is only due to how the technologies have evolved. It's a legacy quirk of the "it's always been like that" type. I'm all for reducing telecoms entirely to "dumb pipe" ISPs and moving everything to IP, calls too. Mandated inter-connectivity only exists to fix a problem that telecoms have created by having access to unencrypted insecure special-purpose comms traffic and being able to abuse this privilege. This should have been encrypted IP data they can't touch or discriminate.

Phone numbers are an outdated idea, and shouldn't exist any more (and Signal is terrible for using them). You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows. For example in most countries in Europe you can't get a phone number without a government ID tying it to your legal identity, and telecoms may be obliged to log your call metadata. Would you prefer e-mail as an open IP protocol, or a setup of traditional licensed postal operators that require government's permission to make an e-mail account for you?

[webmobdev]

> The distinction of what belongs to telecoms and what belongs to the Internet is only due to how the technologies have evolved.

True. But it is also a fact that telecom networks inside a country offer better privacy and better protect democratic rights (in a democratic country) than some foreign powered network like the internet - if Google or Facebook misuse my data, I have less recourse to complain about them with the law than against a telecom company who have to follow stricter laws and regulations.

> You should have more privacy and have more control over your identity than what the legacy telecom setup allows.

This is again a disingenuous argument when it is a fact that telecom companies in democratic countries better protect your privacy because they are legally mandated to. In a democratic setup, the government requiring identity documents or logging 6 months of CDR are completely acceptable (and necessary) compromises as your rights are safeguarded in a democracy. Foreign BigTechs have no such obligations to us and even misuse the trust some people place in them to be truly abusive in violating a users data by invasively collecting vast amounts of data that they feel they are free to exploit in any manner. (E.g. WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy Shares Sensitive Data With Facebook, Forces Users Into Agreement By Providing Mirage Of Choice: Delhi HC - https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/delhi-high-court-whatsap... ).

Offering "free" services to hijack communication in a country is both anti-democratic and anti-competitive that needs to be curbed strongly by all democratic nations.