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.
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??
And Samsung’s only got approved because it’s Google’s under the skin. A bit like how every browser on iOS is actually Safari.
RCS is purported to be open, but in practice it really isn’t.
That’s just stupid. Kinda like how they never made FaceTime open-source when it was promised to us when it was first announced.
Wait, I already said this in my initial comment. Damn.