Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is:
Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. This makes it prohibitively expensive to send spam over iMessage. They have been doing so since iMessage was launched.
Android offers no such attestation that I’m aware of. Windows, on Pluton, could offer this attestation securely — and that is a key deliverable of Pluton.
It’s easy, then, to predict what Apple’s first non-Apple platform will be: Microsoft Windows 12, only if secure-booted, with Pluton-signed attestation that the kernel is unmodified. And it’s easy to predict how Apple will implement anti-spam: by applying “console” bans to specific Pluton chips by their serial number.
If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot. Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
(I recognize that this is extremely unpalatable to device hackers, but the same freedom to modify an OS kernel that hackers desire is also the freedom to spam all users, as we have seen repeatedly with all messaging software platforms operated without hardware-backed attestation for the past thirty years — including email, Jabber, and HN itself.)
I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
I'm not unsympathetic to Apple's difficulties and goals here (assuming this spam problem is actually the reason, though I'm skeptical that there aren't also self-serving reasons that would be sufficient for Apple), but I'm so tired of society's slide toward "security at any cost, and to hell with freedom" since the 9/11 attacks over 20 years ago.
(It's possible and likely that slide has been going on much longer, but I was a teenager in the 90s and not really aware of such things. But I think it's undeniable that the aftermath of 9/11 was a big turning point for the surveillance state and for average citizens being so scared of everything that they'd be willing to give up essential freedoms just to quell that fright.)
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
It’s really oppressive that Apple doesn’t let you install WhatsApp, Secret, Telegram, FB Messenger or any other communications app beyond their own.
While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
The points you want to raise are crucial, but this is far from the hill to die on.
Defaults matter. I too have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat and a few others on my phone, but the fragmentation is annoying to deal with, and getting social groups (or even individuals) to move to a single consolidating messaging platform turns out to be much more difficult than I expected.
If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless they offer meaningful benefits. Sure, this ship has in many ways already sailed, since those alternative apps have a lot of mindshare and network effects.
But if Apple added RCS to its default messaging app (or if Google were permitted to add iMessage support to its default messaging app), I would ditch everything else and just message everyone (including groups) using the default Android Messages app, relying on it to select the best non-SMS/non-MMS contact method for everyone, regardless of platform.
Sure, it would take a little more work to move messaging groups over, but the cool thing is that I could just do it myself, and not wait for my friends to download yet another messaging app. This is the problem I ran into when I wanted to get friends off of WhatsApp; I had to convince people to install something else, and not everyone felt like doing it. But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
> While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Just wanted to call this out as FUD. RCS existed as a standard long before Google was involved (nearly a decade?). I too don't love that it's tied to a phone number, but options for doing this well are limited, and building a second, parallel identity system has its own issues. RCS at least can be federated, and it'd be possible to allow phone users to choose their own provider. And in practice, phone number portability means you aren't stuck with the crappy choice of ditching your "identity", or sticking with a phone provider you hate.
Not sure how iMessage or WhatsApp or Google Chat or Signal is any better, though, as they're all controlled by a single company that requires you to use their identity system.
Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch.
Bottom line is iMessage works really well and people like it. Same with FB messenger and Whatsapp. You want to move friends to something else? There needs to be a selling point much larger than just security.
> Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch.
Right, I mean, that's exactly the point. I can't force someone else to install a messaging app I'd prefer to use. But if we had an actually-good, cross-platform messaging standard that was implemented in the default, stock messaging app of both Android and iOS, I would not have to depend on my friends caring or not. I could just use it, and know that they will receive the messages.
The problem with moving groups over to iMessage is that you'll always leave some Android users out. Here in Spain Apple has a minority marketshare so that makes iMessage a total non-starter. But even in the US not everyone has an iPhone.
And really iMessage is not so much better than the cross-platform alternatives that it's worth leaving some friends out.
iMessage is kinda both its own messenger and SMS client. So when you text a number, I don't think you have a choice of how to send it. If the user is "Apple" it sends as an imessage, if not message, it turns the bubble green (so you know its SMS). Though in the epic trial Apple sees messaging as a "lock in feature"
"
In another exchange, Apple executives discussed in 2013 whether releasing a version of iMessage for Android would make it easier to switch phone brands. iMessage is still exclusive to Apple products.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
> 1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.
Threading (using "Reply") is not supported in mixed iMessage/SMS/MMS text chains. (I'm using iOS 16, so this may have been (unwisely) supported in earlier Message versions.)
> 2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”
The other things you list are limitations and side-effects of the standards used. They're valid, but I consider the experience "fine" without them. If the groups I text with cared about these we would probably use WhatsApp since everyone has that. Signal would be my preference, but it's hard to change people's habits.
Didn’t know about Tapback support on Android. Wish iOS had that support for non-iMessage chats!
I think the point I want to stress is that when everyone uses iMessage, it’s as easy as texting, but just about as good as WhatsApp/etc. from a feature/user experience point of view.
Agree that we can be friends. Hopefully my comment wasn’t seen as adversarial. I just get annoyed when I see the green text bubbles, because people try to use iMessage features and it’s just bad. Non-techies don’t realize it’s different because it’s the same app, but then wonder why photos aren’t high resolution, or things don’t work as expected.
But that uses MMS which many networks here (Europe) don't support anymore, or they charge a hefty fee (even though big SMS bundles are still a thing here). Especially for international use.
I didn't realise it was still used in the US though.
MMS definitely doesn't work on my phone, though I'm not sure if this is a provisioning/settings thing or that the provider has abandoned it. I never really looked into it as I've never needed it. I just tested it once to see if it worked.
I send international MMSes from my phone(android) to my mum's iphone, from UK to Poland, and it seems to work fine. Hasn't bankrupted me yet either(I just checked and it's apparently 30 pence per text).
> But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
Okay, so let's say Apple implements RCS support. Should they support the version of RCS that the carriers want? The version Google implemented? Are they now going to be required to implement support for proprietary Google extensions? Will they have to run their own RCS servers because carriers don't support this version of RCS?
RCS is a fragmented mess. It's dead in the water. This noise is just Google flailing about after having binned yet another one of their messaging platforms. Personally I don't care what Apple does here. I still want SMS support for when I'm in an area with little/no data coverage and I'm still going to treat RCS with the same disdain I'd treat any unencrypted messaging platform.
They should implement the version (and extensions) that gives them interoperability with the most users. Which, yes, would probably be whatever Google implemented, including the E2EE extensions. This... isn't really hard?
> They should implement the version (and extensions) that gives them interoperability with the most users
They already have that, with SMS. Perhaps you only exchange messages with people in rich countries so don’t notice what is most commonly implemented by carriers?
Why should Apple (or anyone) be on the hook for implementing proprietary extensions? Once you peel back the marketing schtick this is just demanding that Google be able to determine which proprietary services are included on an Apple product. That's ridiculous on its face.
If the issue is interoperability with Android users, fine. Google had successful messaging apps on iOS (I used a few) and they destroyed them through their own mismanagement. RCS doesn't solve that in the slightest.
> This... isn't really hard?
If you want E2EE the demand is now that Apple spin up its own Google-RCS servers and/or rely on Google's infrastructure. If you want Apple to rely on the carriers you don't get E2EE. Rather than work with the carriers Google fragmented RCS making implementation that much more difficult.
At the end of the day, what we need is interop, so Apple should be forced to either open the protocol, or adopt something that is already open. But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.
But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.
Disagree. We have interoperability, just not with advanced features within the default messaging apps. To me that's not a big deal at all as there are other, popular, options. We should get out of the habit of relying on carriers to provide much more than dumb pipes. To that end SMS (not MMS) works just fine and RCS is just going to continue to get bogged down.
It's easy to say that if Apple bent to the will of the carriers the iPhone would never have been as good as it is. But look at RCS, Google had to stand up their own infrastructure because the carriers weren't cutting it.
It's not that RCS is not the right product it's that RCS is the wrong approach entirely. Even in the United States Android is wildly popular. They've had every opportunity to create a wildly popular messaging platform and have failed. Google killed their own products as a result of their internal culture. This isn't Netscape vs IE again, it's more like Mosaic vs Gopher (or AOL vs Netscape if you like).
I was going to write "as much as I'd like to see non-Apple devices brought into the iMessage fold" but then I realized that's not true. I don't care because I'd just use Signal. In fact I still use Signal with some friends that have iPhones. RCS wouldn't change that, it'd either be one more shitty carrier product to avoid or one more shitty Google product that's going to get killed in a few months.
Turn that on its head. What does RCS bring to the table? RCS brings two types of features: those that carriers will try to monetize (file transfer, VoIP, visual voice mail) and those that seek to drive "customer engagement" (chatbots, carousels, branding, quick-reply suggestions, "rich" cards).
From the Wikipedia page:
RCS Business Messaging (RBM) is the B2C (A2P in telecoms terminology) version of RCS.
*This is supposed to be an answer to third-party messaging apps (or OTTs) absorbing
mobile operators' messaging traffic and associated revenues*. While RCS is designed to
win back Person-to-Person (P2P) traffic, RBM is intended to retain and grow this A2P
traffic. … RBM is expected to attract marketing and customer service spend from
enterprises, thanks to improved customer engagement and interactive features that
facilitate new use cases. *This was the primary reason for the development of RCS by
the GSMA*.
No. Thanks. As I said, I don't really care if Apple implements RCS support in their Message app. If they do it's just one more thing I'll disable.
My take is that carriers should be dumb pipes. Voice, SMS, and data routing and that's it. Part of the reason RCS is already fragmented is because the carriers are trying to monetize it, you can bet your ass they're going to continue to drag their feet with E2EE – which is why Google's stood up their own separate RCS infrastructure.
Didn't Google Talk, Google Chat, Google Hangouts, and Google Meet all support group chats? Didn't Google Talk even allow for federation?
The problem with RCS as a solution is that you're either going to rely on the carriers or Google and Apple to host infrastructure. Requiring Apple to implement support for Google (hosted) products is ridiculous as Apple already lists Google chat apps in their app store. Requiring Apple to host their own servers to interoperate with Google's services is also ridiculous because again Apple already provides software to interoperate with Google's chat services.
Requiring Apple to support RCS so their users can leverage carrier hosted RCS is also ridiculous because that's a fancy way of saying Apple should be required to monetize their users for the carriers' benefit. Per the Wired article linked to MMS was created solely to extract money from their users (or as Wired put it to "collect a fee every time anyone snaps a photo"). I'm sure most folks who are old enough remember when SMS (which literally consumes no additional bandwidth) was a paid feature, does everyone remember when MMS cost even more than a plain SMS?
RCS may not be a cash grab by Google, but they certainly haven't had any luck in getting the carriers to implement customer friendly features. Another lowest common denominator "standard" like RCS isn't an improvement at all, especially not in the face of the freely available, cross platform messaging apps.
What does RCS theoretically bring to the group chat table?
File transfers? Google's gonna mine them or carriers will charge exorbitant storage/transfer/viewing fees.
The default chat app and the technical merit dosn't matter. What matters is what people we want to chat with. Most of my friends and groups are on WhatsApp. Some prefer to use Telegram, me too. A very few living outside the country use FB Messenger. Nobody use SMS unless for emergencies, if they think the recipient has no data connection. RCS is totally unknown. If I say RCS somebody will ask me "the newspaper company?"
Making people switch is possible (use Telegram to chat with me), making a group switch is impossible as there is always at least one person that doesn't want to install a new app or can't (phones with tiny storage.) Anything else is irrilevant in my country. There are probably some friends of mine using iMessage when chatting with somebody they know to have an iPhone. They still to have to use WhatsApp to chat with everybody else.
Is Matrix built into the default, stock messaging apps of Android and iOS? No, it's not, so it does not solve the problem I've posed in any useful way.
(Beyond that, I've found the usability of Matrix on both desktop and mobile to be atrocious.)
> It however turned out that although the content of the message is encrypted, there is still a lot of user identifiable data that is not encrypted and can be seen by potential attackers.[0]
The amount of required metadata to maintain federation is very small. Some matrix instances operate in this minimalist or near minimalist domain, but in my experience, getting folks to share their custom forks of matrix requires some social schmoozing.
For better or worse, much of the fediverse is made up of small enclaves of hyper-paranoid tech weirdos who have often reinvented the wheel over and over, each in their own little group, which is a big problem for the casual person who wants to toss a server on a home server for friends and family.
And I say this as one of these hyper-paranoid tech weirdos. The network's growth is immensely stifled by the fact that people aren't keen on sharing, or building user friendly tools for the normies.
Message content can be fully end-to-end encrypted. Federation needs some unencrypted metadata. Some of it can be reduced, but some will be needed for federation to work. Signal probably needs less unencrypted metadata, but you lose federation.
> “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Is there a way to make an account with Apple that isn't tied to a mobile phone number? If so, I've never been able to find it.
Nope, you can just click skip. If the device had previously been enrolled in Find My iPhone you have to log back in to turn it off, but if it’s fresh out of the box you don’t have to hook it to iCloud/iTunes at all (and that’s not uncommon to block in corporate environments).
Not sure what device you’re on but every iphone I’ve set up I’ve (at least initially) skipped signing in. It’s not hidden or subtle or anything (especially compared to latest windows OS), it’s a big Skip link. The main downside is you can’t install any apps, and in my experience iMessage does NOT work until you log in with apple ID, just SMS/MMS.
Using iMessage requires an Apple ID. The Messages app on iPhones supports both SMS/MMS and iMessage because it’s a phone and needs to support SMS. But without being signed into an Apple ID on the device the Messages app only handles SMS/MMS, i.e., green chat bubbles.
Yes, but if you don't have an Apple ID, the iMessage app will use SMS/MMS, not the proprietary encrypted Apple messaging protocol. This can be tested easily: send a message to another Apple user: it will arrive as a green SMS message, not a blue Apple messaging message.
Promise all you want, but in the US you can’t activate an iPhone without an Apple ID. Yes, you can set iMessage to only send/receive iMessages using your phone number. However, you cannot set it up in the first place without an Apple ID.
> You don't need an Apple ID to use iMessage. Just an Apple device.
Has Apple fixed the bug where it wasn't relinquishing your phone number and blackholing all iMessages which were supposed to be downgraded to SMS instead?
In the past, AppleIDs could be created with only email address, and not phone numbers. I see that the current account creation step requires a phone number for verification via SMS/phone call.
That said, I don't believe you need to use that phone number for messaging – an email address is used as the contact information when messaging with iMessage. This is especially important for iPads/iPod Touches and Macs, which most don't have a cell phone number.
You say this like it is a bad thing. I used Signal, which is an open-source messaging app. If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that.
There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and security. Google, thus far, takes neither seriously. Google routinely sells your data (including location data, active timestamps for all apps, what you search for, the list goes on), and it routinely has malware show up on the play store. If Google could fix those issues and stop also murdering their various applications every year, maybe they'd be able to compete.
While it may sound like I have a hard-on for Apple products, I really do love Android, I just hate Google.
> There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and security.
I've been downvoted to hell for it before, but I'll add mine to this list because I don't _think_ it's all that uncommon either: I don't want another PC to administer and support.
I've had a lot of Android phones over the years (started with the ADP1!). Taking my last one as an example--it stopped receiving updates way too soon. Once apps started breaking, I ended up updating it by putting LineageOS on it. But then my camera never worked right again because apparently there's a driver issue. One time I updated and my microphone stopped working in phone calls so I had to wipe the thing and install an older OS on it...
You know what that sounds like to me these days? _Work_. That's literally the same sort of stuff I'm doing all friggin' day. Between work and my kid I'm lucky if I've got a couple hours a day to portion out to chores around the acreage and maybe whatever I could do ostensibly for fun. The last thing I want is to be obligated to work more because my damn phone is being a PC and doing PC things.
The fact that it's not customizable, not open, and just generally an appliance _is a feature to me_. My five year old phone is still receiving regular updates. I install them, it keeps working. I can't mess with it (and and up breaking things) even if I want to. I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone. If anything ever does go wrong, I don't need to fix it because I _can't_, reimage the phone if that doesn't work then well you're screwed.
Basically, I treat it the same way I do a toaster. It does what it does, there's a single big knob that makes my options clear. If that knob can't make it do what I want then I either learn to live with it or find another toaster. It's never gonna cook a steak for me, and that's fine. I'd rather not have steak or use another device to cook my steak than shun the toaster and try and pan-fry myself toast every morning.
I pay a premium to get an appliance instead of a PC because I _want_ an appliance. I'm happy I can outsource all the decisions and work and keep the brain space free. Sorry if I'm contributing to the downfall of society and freedom or whatever, but I just don't have the time to do anything else anymore.
The big difference between a toaster and your phone is that the phone gets updates. Which, aside from fixing things, also do stuff like change UI. On Android, when Google comes up with some new inane idea for the launcher, I can at least install a different one. On iOS, when Apple does the same, I don't really have a choice other than to go along with it.
> On iOS, when Apple does the same, I don't really have a choice other than to go along with it.
Part of my original comment:
> I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone.
That's a feature to me. I don't spend any brainspace when I'm using my phone on thinking about things that annoy me or things that could be better. Launcher sucks? Does it suck bad enough to make me switch platforms? No? Then it's not worth worrying about any further and so I won't.
When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.
You're perfectly welcome to have good defaults, but how do those conflict with allowing people to use third-party messaging apps and letting people customize their phone? Your comment isn't a refutation of the argument you're replying to.
> When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.
The more important difference between my phone and my (non-existent) toaster is, that the toaster won't be connected to any networks (beside the wall-power outlet). While the phone is connected to various outside networks and has a generic computer inside.
> If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that.
Perhaps not in your country, but they've certainly done it before - censoring Telegram in both Russia[0] and Iran[1], for example.
The fact that more secure alternatives are freely available, and by sabotaging SMS/iMessage they would be losing their wiretap on the nation's text messages?
Are you really suggesting governments requiring those apps be banned from distribution in their jurisdictions shares the context of the post you're replying to?
Yes. As for some other mobile OSs I'm not required to comply with whatever is on their official store, and can just install an app from a different source.
It has been a bad thing for me because iOS decided to get me off Whtasapp and forced me using the much worse Apple message system without me having any say in it.
I have a SE and a relatively older iOS version on it, can't remember exactly which one. I don't have internet banking and don't have very much of a financial presence online, and, as such, I don't care that much about security on my phone (hence the older iOS version).
Some time ago I had checked the "offload apps"in case of full disk" option or something like that, with the implicit understanding, from my part, that I could "reload" any of those apps once I would have made enough space available (usually by deleting some older videos and photos). One of those offloaded apps was Whatsapp.
It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore. Whatsapp doesn't support my iOS version anymore, hence I cannot "reload" it, hence I cannot use it anymore. Trying to install the exact Whatsapp "version" that used to worked perfectly fine on my phone is, of course, impossible. This is very unsatisfactory for me.
And back to the subject at hand, of course that Apple can't hold a candle when it comes to more mature messaging systems like Whatsapp (I haven't used Telegram and Signal). The "upload photos" experience in iMessage is day and night worse and less intuitive compared to Whatsapp. I also don't know if iMessage has any builtin groups and, even if it were to have, it would be of no use to me because more than half of my friends and acquaintances don't own an iPhone so they can't use iMessage.
I’ve been able to download apps that require newer OSes on iPhone. If I have downloaded it before, it lets me download the last compatible version. Is this not the case with WhatsApp or somethinh
Yes, I have the “cloud”-y thingie close to the WhatsApp icon, meaning is offloaded. When clicking on the item to “load” it again it tries to do just that, only to give me a “Unable to download” message (or something similar) a few seconds later. I’ve tried searching for the app directly in the AppStore, I cannot find it anymore, presumably because of that older iOS I have running. Forgot to mention, the same happened to me with the Google Maps (?!) app also last year or so.
> It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore.
You can – unless the application publisher decides to disable this. It sounds like Facebook disabled your ability to install an older version of WhatsApp that supports the version of iOS you are running. All it would take for this to work for you is for somebody at Facebook to tick a single box that allows their users to do this.
Got it. So it’s a shared blame between Apple de facto uninstalling one of the few installed apps I was using on a regular basis and FB not allowing their app to run on iOS versions that are approaching their estimated end-of-life.
Not sure how that helps users like me, but had you told me 20+ years ago that this was going to be “the state of the art” when it comes to app management (by two of the biggest tech companies in the world) I would have called you crazy. And I was a Windows 2000 user back in those days.
It’s also funny that, in a way, the WhatsApp app was the one that nuked itself. The “full storage” issue had been caused by some of my friends sending constant photos and videos of their cats (and one guinea pig) via WhatsApp, storage gets full, iOS decides to offload the WhatsApp app, I get left out of the app once I’m not allowed to “reload” it anymore. Again, crazy to think that this is the state of the art in app management.
Apple (like Google) gets to decide what the pain points are in their ecosystem, so likewise they also get to peddle the solution.
"Want to sideload apps? No problem, just pay us $99/year for temporary installation privileges!"
"Want to sell your app? Here, just give us 30% of your proceeds."
"Running out of storage? Here's a red-dot notification in your Settings app begging you to pay for iCloud."
I don't think any of these companies will (or should) get out of this antitrust litigation unscathed. The amount of control all of these platform-holders exert is unreasonable, and unless the government steps in we're helpless to stop it.
Apple also collects timestamps for app usage (iOS and MacOS), tracks Spotlight usage and tracks your iPhone with Find My by default. This insidious behavior is widespread, and saying it's only Google's issue is comically hypocritical. Malware is a rampant issue on both operating systems, both iOS 16 and Android 12 have zero-click exploits that allow completely rooted control of the device.
I'd argue Google competes just fine. If you hate Google, then use AOSP or an AOSP-derived OS; there's not a drop of Google, Apple or anyone code out of the box. Of course, I'd wager that 'privacy and security' don't matter as much to IT folks as brand-loyalty or ease-of-use, so it's all a bit of a moot point in the end. Arguing that either of these OSes is more secure than the other is a bad comedy routine; they're both being spied on by PRISM, they're both vulnerable to NSO Pegasus.
> Apple also collects timestamps for app usage (iOS and MacOS), tracks Spotlight usage and tracks your iPhone with Find My by default
Hmm, as I understand it:
"Timestamps for app usage": notarization checks happen the first time you start a new app, basically like OCSP to enable certificate revocation:
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/gatekeeper-and-runt...
I dislike online validation and would prefer a revocation list. I also dislike syspolicyd's perpetual, repeated, and CPU-hungry anti-malware scanning. Installing Xcode or enabling developer mode allows pointless online checks to be turned off for scripts in Terminal at least.
"Find My": a feature that allows you to go to icloud.com and locate your iPhone if it is lost, and also creates its own ad hoc network for finding iPhones. Probably that involves location information. I usually turn this off.
What I'd like to know is: Is there any evidence that Apple is retaining this information and using it for other purposes, for example to build user-specific profiles for advertising the way Google or Facebook might?
> What I'd like to know is: Is there any evidence that Apple is retaining this information and using it for other purposes
Sure; all sorts of data leaves your iPhone in the form of encrypted channels to Apple servers, whether you have telemetry/analytics enabled or not. When you fully power-down your iPhone with Find My disabled, your Baseband modem is still sending and receiving information from nearby cell towers. Apple has created conduits specifically for harvesting and retaining this data, they wouldn't collect it all if this wasn't the case.
Oh, and if you still don't believe me, you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them. There is nothing besides marketing that suggests Apple has a commitment to privacy or security.
> There is nothing besides marketing that suggests Apple has a commitment to privacy or security
That is not what I hear from people who work there.
> you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them
I'd be interested in references/citations if you have them.
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
Egads, no. The abuse heaped on me by Apple pales in comparison to the spam phone calls and emails I get. If I start getting spam via iMessage, I'll be an extremely unhappy camper. It already happens with text messages and that's bad enough.
Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam, so I guess you've just been lucky? And it shows that this attestation junk doesn't actually curb the spam problem, so it's just an analogue of security theater.
Anyhow, sure, if you want to give away your freedom to actually own your devices, just so you don't get spam... I guess that's your choice. I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Regardless, iPhones also receive SMSes. If it's impossible to spam over iMessage, they'll just use SMS. If it becomes impossible to spam over SMS, then presumably Apple can implement similar measures for iMessage that don't require us all to have hermetically-sealed, locked-down devices.
> Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam
Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send. They're getting SMS spam.
> I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. My contacts are sync'd between them, calendar, mail, all of it just works either way. Only reason I'm back on iPhone right now is because the churn (and by extension, TCO) is significantly lower. If the calculus changes on that, I'll jump ship again, no big deal.
Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.
> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.
The spammers mass send an sms spoofing a number that has iMessage. When you reply, it goes to an iPhone in the spammers hand. That way they don’t have to navigate millions of messages on the phone. Using things like blue bubbles, they can even interact via api and use a cms
iMessage users don't get spam from other iMessage users. Also, iMessage lets you filter out 'known' and 'unknown' senders. Apple also will automatically flag/block certain messages if they are clearly spam.
Even knowingly using child labor wasn't enough [0] - or people just don' know about it, so spread the word please. This is how Apple actually care about children unlike what their PR says [1].
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices,
Why do you present this as a binary choice?
Why do I need to suffer at the whims of your wants and needs? Why are you so hellbent on advertising your opinion in this binary manner? Don’t like iMessage? Use something else. Nobody is stopping you. Why do you feel compelled to bring the conversation back to this weirdly obsessed and diluted dilemma where you see a first party solution and start kicking and screaming incessantly
This thread is about a hypothetical situation where Apple allows iMessage on other platforms (such as Android), but only on platforms that can securely attest that they have not been modified.
Yes, I use Android, but would like to also be able to interoperate with iMessage. But I don't want to be stuck in a (for now hypothetical) state where I have to choose between using iMessage and being able to do what I want with my phone.
> We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!
SMS has ordering, latency, and delivery issues. You also cannot send media over SMS, and MMS has size limits for media that were set decades ago. Any video you send over MMS will be recompressed to the point where it'll be unwatchable. SMS also does not support group chats. MMS does, but delivery and message ordering issues are even worse there, and group chats are inflexible; for example you can't add new people to an existing group chat, or remove existing people.
I do use WhatsApp, grudgingly, for some people who refuse to switch to something else, but I'd like to reduce my reliance on things owned by Meta/Facebook.
That is a personal choice, and I choose to not have spam on my phone. Several months ago I was subjected to a floodgate of good ol' fashioned SMS spam that lasted several weeks. There was no way to stop the spam because the phone was receiving it through the legacy SMS channel coming specifically from Android devices infected with Flubot; the bulk of spam now comes from unpatched Android devices because hardware vendors stop releasing security updates after a short cycle, or due to loose default app permissions set on the device. I ended up creating a support ticket with my mobile telco and soon I received the following reply from a human being:
What you have encountered is, as you may have guessed, not a legitimate SMS notification.
This particular message is designed to entice you to click on a link, and doing so would potentially expose your device to malicious software.
This malicious software is trying to target Android devices, so, if you are an Android user, you should take particular care with such messages.
Note that you may receive this message even if you do not use Android devices - the website link is simply being sent to a number of random telephone numbers in the hopes that an Android user will receive it, and manually bypass the built-in security protections and install the malicious software presented by the website.
In other words, if you use an iPhone, you can still receive these SMS messages (often claiming to be relating to a voicemail or parcel delivery), but there is no direct risk to your iPhone by simply receiving the SMS. Nor is there currently any risk to your iPhone if you happen to click on the link that is in these SMS messages.
If you use Android, you should avoid permitting your device to install any software that did not come from the official Google Play store.
> … where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices …
Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users. If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
The corporations, good or bad or anything in between, must be bound by the code of conduct they ought not to be allowed to get out from: must request the explicit user consent first.
> That is a personal choice, and I choose to not have spam on my phone.
The problem here is that we are talking about a (possible, hypothetical) measure that blocks spam, but requires phones to be 100% locked down and unmodified from the factory. I categorically refuse to accept that sort of thing. If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state. Your shitty telco is actually fully capable of blocking spam like what you've received, but they have chosen not to.
> Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users.
Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone.
I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable. If I want to use Google Docs or whatever, they will make decisions about how my data is used, and what features are present in the product, etc. I accept that, and am ok with that. But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
> If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
> The problem here is […] I categorically refuse to accept that sort of thing.
It is a perceived problem specifically for you (and, based on the arguments presented so far, it appears to solely based on the personal dislike rather than on objective grounds). If you refuse to accept it, that is solely your personal choice, and I, for one, have no objections to you being able to exercise freedoms to make your own choice(s).
> If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
You have neither moral nor any other right to inflict the sense of collective guilt upon anyone, including myself, who has an opinion distinct from that of yours. What is an adjudged problem for you, is a feature (and not a bug) for some, and is a conscious compromise for some others. I am in the latter category as I have consciously consented to the trade-off after weighing up pros and cons of alternatives existing at the time – it became my personal informed choice.
> In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones …
Combating text message spam requires a non-trackable, universal digital identity which is a non-solved problem. SMS and RCS do not solve this problem as they both allow a digital identity to assume one persona exactly: the device owner's phone number. iMessage, o the other hand, offers a stop-gap solution and allows iMessage users to assume one of the many personas (either a default phone number or one of the email addresses registered with iMessage), and it allows the user to select the specific persona on their own volition. Countering spam is a bonus and optional feature that comes as a byproduct of the iMessage way of tackling the identity management, and is not a requirement. Allowing multiple personas in iMessage also allows the user to disassociate themselves from their phone number, change it however frequently they want yet allow their friends circle and relatives to stay in touch via another persona (email address(es) registered with iMessage) – a useful feature when the iMessage user moves to live overseas.
A successful and a badly needed replacement for SMS (the protocol) will have to solve the identity management problem (as well as a morass of present SMS and RCS security vulnerabilities) first before it can become a viable option. And only then, it will have to be pushed out in a centralised manner (e.g. become a mandatory requirement for all 6G or 7G networks) so that no mobile telco would have a chance to opt out from the text messaging protocol upgrade. The adopotion of such a standard will take years, though, as users won't instantly upgrade their devices overnight, so the interoperability between GSM and new style text messages for some time will look exactly like it does today between SMS and iMessage.
As for Google crying foul on not being to interoperate with iMessage, in reality they are shedding crocodile tears and are not telling you what they actually mean by that. Google wants to track every text message to a user across both major mobile platforms (Android and iOS) AND beyond, which is something they can't do today. SMS does not offer a unique transferrable digital ID (other than IMSI which gets incised out once a message hits the SMSC), therefore Google can't link the user to activities on their smartphone to wider activities across all of their devices and the web as mobile phone numbers are not typically used for web browsing and in general app use.
Apple controls the passage of the Rubikon (iMessage) that, once crossed, would instantaly allow Google to find a creative way to track users, so Google wants that (in the same vein as Facebook does). Yet, Google is being coy about their true intentions.
> I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable … and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state.
I vehemently and vociferously object to corporations encroaching on our larger freedoms, and, regretfully, strict regulation and even stricter enforcement of the regulation appears to be the only way to accomplish it.
> Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone […] But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
To the best of my knowledge, nearly no-one (apart from Librem) sells general-purpose smartphones today. Each offering comes with a host of pros and cons, yet none of them are neither marketed nor sold as the general-purpose computing hardware.
Also, the option of wiping an OS is not ubiquitous on Android platforms and some handsets have the hardware that stock and alternative Android distribution may or may not support. Therefore, there is no such a thing as a generic Android phone which is what the majority of Android users have. And no, since you are part of the HN congregation, you are not a representative selection of the Android user base.
Apple, on the other hand, sells a package that happens to have a smartphone (or a smartwatch, or a tablet) and an OS (as a conduit into the package), and the nicely wrapped package has well stipulated constraints that one either takes or leaves. Purchasing an iPhone is not mandatory in any jurisdictions that I am aware of, either, therefore an the act of puchasing one is also a personal and conscientious choice.
> Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
Ha, the classic «it does not happen on my laptop!» remark.
Sarcasm aside, it is more insidious than that. I had to log into Google using my work Google account in Safari on my laptop, but because Safari syncs the browser cookies and local storage across devices via iCloud (it is another feature I have consciously consented to), the Google account cookies have made it into my phone via an iCloud sync. Next time when I opened Google Maps on my phone, it pulled the Google cookie + stuff out of the Safari local storage, and I was then instantly and silently logged into Google using my work Google account (I degoogled myself years ago in favour of paid 3rd party services and no longer personal Google accounts). Such a practice, apart from being blatantly deceitful, is borderline nefarious, so, with all due respect, I do not buy into Google's crocodile tears about iMessage.
I think the thing you're missing is that the spam countermeasure we're talking about relies on the sender's phone being locked down, not the recipient's. If spammers can get around this by just using non-locked-down phones, the whole thing is pointless. It only works if you require everyone's phone to be locked down.
That is why I mentioned the universal/global, non-trackable digital identity as a solution and a posion pill for the locked down device. Such a digital identity has to be decentralised, resistant to ID theft attacks and a wide range of other attack vectors and, most importantly, be independent of hardware vendors so they could never wield influence over their users.
If an identity can be verified via a presented assumed persona (supplied as a proxy for the identity in question) as a third party identity verification service call, locking down a device becomes redundant (although the hardware vendor will likely continue to do so for other reasons). It does not seem likely that the identity management is going to be solved any time soon though.
> I choose to not have spam on my phone. Several months ago I was subjected to a floodgate of good ol' fashioned SMS spam that lasted several weeks.
If Apple provides an anti-spam SMS filtering service it is completely orthogonal to how much they decide to handcuff their own users.
SMS is not a platform specific protocol and cell phone numbers have their own independent authority (however dysfunctional it may be). So unless you decide to block yourself from the entire world outside of Apple devices, it has nothing to do with being locked down. Locking down a platform from it's own users does not intrinsically benefit security or spam prevention, saying so is a false dichotomy, no matter how much Apple spins it.
I never had spam on my Android phone for that matter, but the reliance on manufacturers to supply security updates is a side effect that is primarily induced because the platforms are as locked down as they are.
But in the past five years, I have received so much call spam that I just don't answer my phone anymore. Imagine that, the primary use of a phone and it's all cocked up.
Imagine what happens to imessages if they leave it open.
Sounds like iMessage spam is already a problem (if another poster in this thread is to be believed).
Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones. I do get some SMS spam, but not a ton, and most of it is auto-flagged and I never see it.
> Blame the cretins that spam people.
SMS and voice call spam is actually a solved problem, but carriers have been dragging their feet implementing the solutions (and have lobbied the US government to give them more time). Killing spam does not require our devices to be locked down. Carriers deserve some blame here too.
But I don't really care about blame, I care about outcomes. Blaming spammers isn't going to fix anything. Forcing carriers to implement the required technical measures to stamp out spam... that could actually work.
> Forcing carriers to implement the required technical measures to stamp out spam... that could actually work.
Another desperately needed measure is enabling law enforcement to actually fight spam at the root: follow the money. When the spammers can't monetize their spam, they won't have any incentive to spam and scam.
Uncooperative countries (e.g. India, just look Mark Rober's Youtube series where he and a bunch of associates track down and prank scam call centers or Turkey which is the German equivalent) should be sanctioned until they are compliant. Letting spammers, scammers and hackers operate in a foreign country unimpeded should be considered an act of war.
Forcing carriers or anyone to implement technological measures (remember the idea to charge people .5 cents to send out emails?) is a worthwhile effort but it's at the core a band-aid at best and the only thing it achieves is to marginally drive up the cost and complexity of service for everyone else while the scammers simply find workarounds.
I've not had a single SMS/messaging spam message in the last decade. In the UK if that makes a difference, maybe we have effective laws around it? Not looked into it.
I’m also in the UK and received two SMS spam messages last month, which wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary. Both were low effort fishing attempts along the lines of “You have been sent a package that requires the payment of customs fees. Please provide your account information at http://customs.uk.gov.scam.example.xn--horse-sw3b
I probably get more of those now than the “we’ve heard that you’ve been in an auto accident that wasn’t your fault” robocalls.
I'm in Singapore and when I read this I realised that it's been a long time since I received an SMS spam message. It must be at least 2 years. And even then they were quite rare (one ever few months maybe?).
I wonder what different telcos does differently, because I have heard about some countries where you're getting flooder by these things.
In the last 6 months SMS spam has increased a lot for me. A lot of it are random messages like "I'm sorry but please don't message me again!" or "Hey, I really had a great time last night, let's make plans for next weekend!" that basically is reply-bait.
It’s not going to be uniform for everyone. The primary number I’ve used for ages doesn’t get SMS spam at all. A secondary number which probably got recycled from someone else receives multiple spam messages every single day.
I've had maybe one or two spammy text messages in the last decade. My phone number's already in many spammer's databases based on the number of spam calls I get.
I’m not sure this is either/or though. I have a secure/locked down device with iMessage and an open not-as-nice device for my playground as a programmer and hardware hacker.
But to be honest you don’t really need to live in the whole world of spam, if that’s your preference then you can just avoid Apple stuff? You live in the best world of choice
True, but we're talking single digits if not less than 1% of the Android population there, regardless of the ability. And if you add Google services you're right back where you started.
Sure, but I'm talking about simply having the capability. If Google started getting ridiculous, regularly censoring apps, deleting data off people's phones, stuff like that, I can easily believe that there'd be a push to make installing an alternative ROM or OS a simple thing to do. Regardless, the option is there. I think there's a ton of value in that, even if the vast majority of users don't avail themselves of it.
With iOS, you live with what Apple lets you do, and that's that.
It isn't about opening up iMessage. The article is about using RCS instead of SMS/MMS as the fallback. It's a pretty reasonable ask that will raise the quality of service when texting with the majority of the market. They can continue to lock down iMessage however they want.
It's not a "reasonable" ask if you're Apple, selfish, and therefore want iMessage to remain superior to SMS at all costs, because it's part of your luxury appeal.
There are literally multiple internal Apple emails released through court testimony where Apple executives clearly explain how important iMessage is to lock-in to iPhone and how if parents can just buy an Android and install an iMessage app it would mean disaster.
In none of these emails is spam or privacy or security even mentioned.
The primary reason Apple is doing it for platform lock-in, plain and simple. They literally said so themselves internally. Any other explanation is fanboyism.
> There are literally multiple internal Apple emails released through court testimony where Apple executives clearly explain how important iMessage is to lock-in to iPhone and how if parents can just buy an Android and install an iMessage app it would mean disaster.
You misunderstand. I don’t care about Apple’s desire for lock-in at all. I want Google RCS to implement, and make mandatory, secured device identifier attestation. I want to be able to block the actual hardware devices that spam me through carrier messaging. RCS could have offered that, and doesn’t. What a shame.
> If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot. Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
This exists and has existed for years, via the SafetyNet Attestation API [1].
As indicated elsethread, that API doc expressly declares near the top that it is not usable for device identifiers. Without device identifiers, there is no way to stop spammers.
It feels like you've concocted some narrative to support your incredibly speculative original comment about how Apple does this because spam. You're clearly wrong. You can do attested compute on Android as others have been trying to point out.
Okay, I’ll assume you’re right, which considerably worsens the case for RCS:
Google could have given us device-signed messaging with RCS, so that users and carriers could block devices for spamming regardless of the source address.
Google didn’t. They had the power to do so in RCS using their own APIs, and yet they chose not to offer an effective protection.
How is this failure by Google a selling point for RCS? Why would anyone consider RCS at all without device attestation? We don’t need yet another abuse-laden, unidentifiable-source chat protocol. We need a material improvement in quality of life for users, not a veneer of fancy bells and whistles on top of the same plague of spam as today.
Maybe your hypothesis that device attestation is the answer to spam is just… wrong?
Maybe Google doesn't think you need device attestation to manage spam on a messaging platform. There are numerous examples of apps today that don’t suffer from spam and don’t use device attestation. And there are examples of spam on iMessage.
Furthermore, I can already receive messages on my iPhone from non-iMessage users so I don’t even understand how any of what you’re saying makes sense in the first place. RCS is a protocol (not a platform) that would make the experience of receiving those messages better. It does not add some new attack vector for spammers.
Have you tried using a device with an RCS messenger app and been plagued with spam more-so than on iPhone? I switch between devices all the time and have not noticed any difference.
It’s not about spam. It’s about Apple playing lazy/dirty. Hence the OP.
> If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot.
There are literally emails leaked, that say iMessage is closed, because Apple wants monopoly in this area.
Yet in every thread recently someone spreads FUD how without uncle's Apple protection, bad world will hurt you, when reality shows that's nonexistent problem on other platforms.
I’m celebrating the antispam properties of device attestation, not asking anyone to trust Apple. I’m quite upset that Google RCS doesn’t include device attestation. It would have helped us get rid of text spam in carrier messaging, and made a convincing case for adoption by telcos. Imagine being able to block text spam by the equipment sending it. Imagine being able to block phone spam by the equipment calling you. It’s a missed opportunity for Google and for all of us.
> Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam.
This doesn’t work though. I receive enough iMessage spam specifically through Apple ids that I wish I could disable the ability to message me unless you use a phone number.
That's weird -- my phone number is definitely in some spammer lists (I get so many calls) but I have never once received an SMS or iMessage spam. What kind of things do they send?
They’ll ban the entire device used to send it, not just the one account. But see also elsethread “wait, how do I know this was delivered over iMessage”, since MMS allows the From field to be an email address.
On the top of the first message it'll either say Text Message or iMessage. If it's an iMessage and you delete the thread without replying, it'll ask if you want to report the message as spam.
How would you prove the account is sending spam? By sending them screenshots? Will they believe you? This could be used to ban a neighbor I don't like. Or does Apple spy all conversations so they can check themselves? :P
You only see the colors on messages you send. OP is implying that you wouldn’t know what “color” the conversation is unless you’re actively replying to the spammer.
You can still tell whether it is an iMessage or text message without replying and observing the color. Long-press on the incoming message. If the menu shows: Reply, Copy, Translate, More… then it is an iMessage. If the menu shows: Copy, Translate, More… then it is a text.
That's cool, didn't know that Apple didn't try to somehow shoehorn threads into SMS (like they currently do extremely poorly with tapbacks and stickers)
Messages you receive are always black text on a grey bubble. What part of this was confusing?
As other have mentioned, you can tell if it's iMessage or not in a few different ways, the send button color, the "Text Message" or "iMessage" label interspersed in the conversation, etc, but if you want to talk about the color of the bubbles, that only applies to outgoing messages.
The gist of the article has been a soapbox of mine for years. We wouldn't stand for "you can only send Gmail email to other Gmail users" (Fidonet people know), and shouldn't settle for similar with messaging. That said, this spam angle is an aspect I hadn't fully considered.
Google closed down their Jabber gateway because they couldn’t stop the endless flood of spam into their userbase. If they had instead required device identifier attestations to accompany all Jabber messages, they could have left that API open for everyone to use, and simply banned device identifiers used for spamming. I wish they’d done so, instead of just giving up and closing their doors to Jabber.
This idea that we need to rely on big Google to protect us is insane. Just make it so that messages from unknown contacts are not as annoying or even hidden entirely unless you go explicitly looking for them.
You don't need to stop federation. You don't need device attestation. These don't benefit the user. They are only there to give the platforms more control.
I've seen SMS spam maybe 3 or 4 times ever. Before Signal started permanently storing sensitive user data in the cloud (and refusing to update their privacy policy) I was using Signal for both secure communication and SMS/MMS and since I've moved away from them I still don't see any more spam now than I did then. I think the solution for the spam problem has a lot more to do with not giving your cell phone number out to every company who asks for it than it does what client you're using to read/store messages.
Of course the real solution should be on the network's end, but not giving out your number to any businesses is probably the best thing you can do while still accepting random texts from anybody.
What's the advantage of iMessage spam? Group chat spam? Higher quality video spam? Is that worth all the effort to do your spamming only on Apple devices?
You can build a hackintosh, generate a serial number, and get on iMessage without any fully-authenticated hardware or even a legitimate secondary Apple device. Spammers use these setups to iMessage spam to great effect.
I think the onus is on Apple to open the platform.
And yet I get plenty of spam via text on my iPhone. What is more, I cannot block numbers from texting me (unless there's an option I haven't found). What is more, a clearly spam text will stay as an alert number grabbing at my attention until I open up and see whatever spam image text was sent my way to dismiss it which is surely a security risk.
I used to work at Apple but this messaging stuff is really damning.
How does unmodified software relate in any way to the ability to console-ban bad actors? It's apple's servers, apple's accounts, and apple's devices. They are perfectly capable of burning a private key into the fuses of every device they sell, keeping a revocation list, and requiring a valid signature from an unrevoked key to log in and send messages. You can't get around that with any quantity of homebrew or custom software. Same reason that you don't see spam on Nintendo Switch games - if Nintendo bans your hardware you're not getting back online unless you buy a new Switch, and that's enough of a cost to make spam uneconomical. You can't do that with Android because maintaining a single revocation list across many manufacturers would be impossible - or because Google would have to host it and they'd get mobbed by angry HNers frothing at the mouth about their privacy - but Apple is totally capable of it and already gets a free pass on whatever walled garden shenanigans they can imagine.
SafetyNet does not specifically give you a device ID, but keystore attestation does. SafetyNet is a higher-level API used to verify you're in a trusted compute environment (which is also sufficient for anti-spam, btw). The keystore attestation API provides everything you need to acquire signed data directly from the HSM with things like device IDs and security trust level baked in.
That can be built trivially using this API. The app stores an identifier, which it knows has not been tampered with because of attestation. Giving apps access to a unique device identifier shared across apps is a privacy leak but can be obtained with the proper scary permission.
> Giving apps access to a unique device identifier shared across apps is a privacy leak
Correct: 'Non-heuristic antispam' and 'Private device identifiers' are incompatible requirements, unless you introduce another expensive obstacle to overcome. Spamming depends on cheap/free sock puppet accounts. The cost per account is inversely proportional to the value it holds to spammers. That cost can be in Apple's iMessage terms: $100+ per serial number, all devices must include burned-in serial number attestation in their server communications. Or that cost can be in bureaucracy: $10 per notarized "account signup request with verified citizenship", but now all communications can be associated with the notary's logs of your citizenship ID number.
There is no way to stop spam without incurring one or another cost to each user. Apple's method doesn't care who you are, so long as you possess Apple hardware. The Pluton method wouldn't either. What other methods exist that are unconcerned with the exact identity of the user, but still make spamming unprofitable?
I mean, maybe expensive dongles should be a thing of the past and Apple should invest in machine learning a bit more. My Pixel does a great job filtering out SMS spam, with 2 false positives (both automated messages) and zero false negatives in the last month.
I have received a single iMessage spam message in ten years, total. You would have, statistically, received at least 240 false positives in that time assuming current heuristics technology. I don’t think heuristics are the answer if your goal is Project Zero Spam.
I just showed how Apple could implement exactly its method on Android. I'm not sure why you're looking for other methods.
As far as private antispam, you can imagine a hashcash-like system that takes into account how many messages you've accepted from the sender, but this is a completely different discussion.
You can disable Secure Boot on a Mac and still use iMessage.
In this state, it would still be theoretically possible to attest to some kind of unique hardware ID, as the Secure Enclave is still locked down. But even if it weren't, it would be good enough to just distribute a unique key with each device. Sure you could take it off the device, but who cares? If it got banned, you'd still need to buy a new device for a new key.
…But given the sibling comment (by pxeboot) about using iMessage in a VM, I'm not sure whether any of this is actually done.
Spamming doesn’t, however, as it requires a lot of serial number lookups and creates a very identifiable trail of behavior just to get a single device working. Scaling that process up to spamming would be unprofitable and risk being caught.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
They'll find another reason not to implement it on other platforms.
Consider whether Apple has changed their position about shipping key functionalities of their platform to non-Apple devices in the decade since then, in light of (for example) their purchase of and continued offerings of Android-friendly Beats products, their beta of Apple Music as a webpage in any browser, and their TV services app spreading to every smart television platform that competes with Apple TVs.
Any limitations/restrictions that Apple imposes on their devices that usually provides them some competitive advantage is ALWAYS explained away as 'protecting' the user. It's a joke how often this corporate spin is used as an excuse.
This is a great point which I haven't heard before in this age-old debate.
But until Apple's dominance starts to wane, there's no chance in hell they will provide iMessage for other platforms unless forced by regulation.
If push comes to shove, they can implement heuristics which run texts from non-Apple devices through a harder spam filter. Spam isn't non-existent on the iMessage network, and there already seems to be a rudimentary spam filter in place.
Apple could easily charge $1/mo or $10/year for iMessage on secured devices, with automatic refund and prorated cancellation if no secured device is signed in within a given billing period; and then discount $1/mo if one or more Apple devices are signed in and active during a given billing period. They'd make a billion dollars a month off of secured Android users, without exposing themselves to any new spam whatsoever, and showing Android users that Apple users have a better experience. Win-win for platform marketing and cloud services revenue.
iMessage spam isn't non-existent because sometimes someone tries to spam, gets a few messages out, and then their device gets console-banned. The iMessage "unsend" feature doesn't yet exist in any released iOS or macOS, so it can't be used to hide the spam after the fact.
Hell, they could charge a token amount for un-secured devices, which I imagine could make things prohibitively expensive for spammers.
I would (grudgingly, because the whole thing is just stupid) pay 3 bucks a month or so to be able to message iPhone users from Android without dealing with unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell. I have a ton of barely-recognizable videos of my niece and nephews from my sister because she always forgets that sending me video over MMS is a boatload of fail.
Jailbreaking iOS doesn’t affect the OS on the Secure Encoave chip. Crypto attestations of device identity can be protected from alteration by jsilbreakers.
> unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell.
Unless I've been an edge case, SMS/MMS has been nothing BUT super reliable on my phones in Australia. Can you provide a demo ? I'd like to see what you're talking about since maybe I do have the photos and videos pixelated, I just don't see this.
There's such a thing as overregulation, but when industry fails to act in an upstanding manner they are playing chicken with regulators. Here's the result. The way to avoid this is create an industry body to develop a standard and 'regulate' themselves. It looks bad when you do that, then also flaunt the standard for greater profit/market position.
As much as I agree with this in principle, there is absolutely no denying that Apple is abusing their power when it comes to consumer lock-in.
I find it very hard to argue against regulation which is only meant to make devices more interoperable. USB-C for charging is mature enough at this point that it seems reasonable to declare it THE charging port.
An interesting - partially ironic - observation here, is that Apple actually designed the reversible USB-C connector and submitted it to the USB-IF - a team of bureaucrats. Bureaucrats, who of course previously were responsible for blunders such as micro-USB-B 3.0, and more recently, the ambiguous shitshow that is the current state of the USB spec.
I wholeheartedly believe that Apple is such a design-driven company that they would actually engage with regulators again (gasp, even the EU), if they were to come up with a better connector design down the road. Everybody wins.
> but having bureaucrats decide is the worst idea ever
I agree wholeheartedly, but what's the alternative? The so-called "free market" (not that such a thing actually exists) clearly has not solved this problem for us.
I couldn’t agree more. I like the walled garden. I don’t care if some messages are green. If I wanted to have granular control over everything, I’d buy an Android phone. I really struggle to see why some regulatory body should be able to force a company to alter their products unless it’s something that impacts customer safety. There are plenty of alternatives in the market.
I suspect most iPhone users are of a similar opinion or no opinion at all. Sure, here on HN you can find plenty of strong opinions, but the average iPhone user doesn’t care and is happy with the ecosystem and hardware.
Apple is already not even close to dominant in a lot of EU countries. As a result nobody uses iMessage here (I never get any, nor SMS). That never swayed them to open it up.
> Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification.
This can't be true. It is trivial to get iMessage working in a macOS VM with randomly generated hardware IDs.
That attitude is what gets people phished. They are generally very clever, but will take the path of least resistance. If you accuse them of anything, it’s laziness.
> the same freedom to modify an OS kernel that hackers desire is also the freedom to spam all users
Yes, and that is absolutely fine. Computer freedom is more important than the ability to prevent spam. It should be illegal to prevent the rooting of devices or even put up any roadblocks for the user. It doesn't really matter how much this freedom impacts their networks. The freedom to run whatever software we want and interoperate with everything without being discriminated against should be our inviolable right.
If that is the main reason, then why not use RCS when communicating with Android devices, and their own proprietary system when communicating with other iPhones. And or push to add an optional attestation to RCS that apple can use.
I have two cell phone, android and iOS. On Android I install my own spam filter message app and see no spam at all.
On contrary, I still get plenty of spam from iMessage.
This is just wrong because as others have pointed out, you can have a fully virtualized macOS environment with no secure boot or any kind and iMessage will run just fine.
Also, since basically every device that receives message also receives sms, isn’t this irrelevant?
What do you mean Android doesn't have an analog? It has both secure boot and device attestation. It has multiple APIs that can be used to design applications requiring varying levels of trusted computing context.
There's the high-level SafeyNet API which essentially lets you assert that you're running on a non-modified device running non-modified software in the context of a verified boot:
It also has the lower-level Keymaster 3 API (since 2017) which provides HSM-signed certificates with the device attestiation extension, including the system trust level and verified device identifiers:
Microsoft is the one that's late to party... And your hypothesis seems pretty dependent on an argument that Apple can't build iMessaging on other platforms because they're the only platform with device attestation. That's simply not true.
If Apple wanted iMessage on other platforms, they've had at least 5 years to build it in the way you theorize must be required.
There are multiple public bypasses for SafetyNet. Many 3rd party roms provide them out-of-the-box. Granted, Apple's attestation is bypassable as well.
Furthermore, others mentioned that a large portion of SMS-spam originates from the FluBot infected Android devices. Well, the only reason FluBot does not infect iPhones is laziness - it is perfectly doable at scale using custom configuration profiles.
> Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
This seems to be a strawman - no one is asking for cross-platfrom iMessage, just for Apple to upgrade it's officially-supported cross-platform messaging stack (SMS) from the 90s.
I do get random spam on Matrix/Element, a couple of times a month. I am in some big public channels though, which may make me a lower hanging target to find my matrix ID to send spam to
But seriously, we all know spam and abuse from bad actors is a huge problem for any sort or platform. Email, phone calls, physical mail. Sometimes people will put fliers on your car window to spam it.
Same with VPS providers. Even my router gets random pings and port scans. Forums have to fight bots. It goes on.
I have even gotten iMessage spam, which can easily be reported.
I get spam on Matrix. And Matrix is hardly used so these are just people trolling rather than having some kind of organized entity behind it. As far as I know there is really no anti spam measures on the network.
Matrix userbase is much larger than IRC. In my experience IRC spam is still worse, but matrix spam will grow more common as the platform grows. But matrix.org devs are aware and have some plans for spam. Distributed/federated reputation...
iMessage spam has been through the roof for me the last couple of months. 1 or 2 messages a day with no obvious reporting mechanism. Whatever Apple is doing, it’s not working and it’s disingenuous to claim this is the reason iMessage isn’t on Android.
So the reason to track and identify every app on every device and have a switch to remotely brick it is to reduce spam ?
My BS detectors just tripped.
Would you be ok if your home had the same "security" features? Say BigCo home builders install a front door, sensors, cameras and scanners in your home that allow them to monitor track and remotely lock you out of your home, your water and power supply ? Their reason? ... so that they can shutdown "bad neighbors" and keep the neighborhood "clean". And remember there's no fkin way you can get rid of those scanners, cameras and other control mechanisms.
But ya'know they gave you a piece of paper that says "we respect your privacy" with BigCo logo on it ?
I don't get why Apple, MS or anyone should be able to get away with this.
I never get spam on any other networks either. Be it WhatsApp, telegram, signal or even matrix.
It's not that big a problem apparently, and doesn't require giving up that much control.
On the other hand I social never use iMessage. It's not very popular here in Spain at all because of the Apple-only thing. Android is far bigger in marketshare here.
A good enough and low hanging fruit solution to spam is an allowed list. Generally allow contacts (initially at least). Track spam feedback by age against contacts.
If someone does end up in a spam list (and they don't rack up a high score across multiple targets), let them know they're in such a list and where to start looking to resolve that issue. A good enough solution for this is to have number carriers attest to have verified the government issued ID of the individual in question; and if spam happens shortly after that to yield the government ID number of that individual.
An alternate form I've considered, for email, is to pay a postage (transfer + storage) micro-transaction fee, and possibly an attention fee for prompt review. The custom might be to refund these in cases of legitimate messages.
I have received zero spam messages over iMessage in maybe ten years, without using an allow list. Why, as a consumer, would I tolerate the degree of effort you describe when I have a perfect zero-effort solution available today?
But... this is ridiculous on its face. SMS and iMessage both live in the Messages app. The only thing you achieve by locking down iMessage is that spam messages appear as green bubbles in Messages instead of as blue bubbles in Messages. It does literally nothing to prevent spam.
I'm having trouble understanding how this is a good solution... If a customer purchases a used iPhone from another person, and that person had used it for spam, is the customer now screwed and unable to message their friends without buying a new phone?
This post is about Google pushing RCS to other platforms. I’m pointing out why their competitor, Apple, has not done the same with RCS’s competitor, iMessage. It’s an apples-to-apples comparison, and I consider it relevant to be mindful of this particular difference when considering RCS.
Google could have implemented crypto-signed device identifier attestation as a mandatory requirement for RCS, which would have given them considerable leverage against iMessage. Why wouldn’t they? What was more important to them than stopping texting spam?
But there are very important key disadvantages that come with that. And I don't believe fighting spam is Microsofts MO. Just open Edge and look at the ads. This is very close to selling penis enlargement pills.
"device hackers" - seriously? You mean people that like to have control about what their devices do. Installing software you want should never be hacking.
That aside I am very skeptical of forcing Apple to open their messaging. The responsibility to choose a different medium is on the user.
Apple apologists always find some wacky reason to justify things, but this is the first I’m hearing of “iMessage exists to prevent spam”…
Have you used WhatsApp or Telegram? Neither need hardware attestation. No spam, in the decade I’ve used them. I have an iPhone and a Pixel, neither have spam.
Unless the gov allows free-for-all SMS, which is not the case in the continents I’ve lived in. Sounds like a uniquely US problem, which iMessage can’t stop? You still get them, and Apple just hides them in a folder.
Or this is because more iTunes users means more potential customers to their iTunes store, i.e. more revenue when it is cross platform. While opening up iMessage will not incease their revenue but makes people easier to switch to other platform such as Android.
It is not like other platforms cannot deal with spam...
Are we really at the point where letting a corporation decide what we can/cannot do on our own hardware is a good thing now?
Though the more I think about it the more I realize that we are indeed already at that point, and people really think that's a good thing. That's really sad to me.
You're talking as if spam via text messages is a common occurence? I've had maybe one spammy text message on Android in the last 10 years, even though most websites I use have my phone number. Spammy phone calls are constant, but Apple doesn't do anything to prevent that.
Since iMessage is restricted to those with an Apple ID, what's stopping them from releasing cross-platform apps that function only if the user has a valid Apple device? I think it's a business choice, not a spam one.
> Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modificatio
Ah, perfect tracking. Let's add that to Pluton list of promises.
I literally never receive spam on telegram. And I have been using it for years. And by never I really mean never. I'm very doubtful spam is the crux of the issue here.
The device still receives SMS messages, which makes all that wonderful iMessage security completely useless when receiving spam SMS messages with fake headers.
Thank you. I have tried explaining this to people but the “freedom” people overwhelmingly flood the discussion and prevent any meaningful debate about it. Of course for them that point is not debatable but still for majority of people no spam is a huge deal.
I can understand Google's frustration but they have no one to blame but themselves.
Everyone is familiar with their graveyard of failed messaging applications (along with their graveyard of products generally).
When I had an android phone, I tried RCS with someone else on Android. It never worked. I'm sure it's improved, but as the common theme of this story goes, Google blew their chance.
I also don't trust google to abide by the "standard" they've created. Their track record is abysmal. I don't want to use yet another messaging service that they've built. I don't trust it to exist in the future, receive support and updates, and for it to be maintained. If google abandons it that means the telecoms are stuck holding the bag and when we demand even more from the next iteration of messaging apps, RCS will go the way SMS has today.
This is nothing more than Google reaping the results of their own failures. It's a shame they squandered the opportunity over the last 15 years to develop a cohesive messaging app strategy across their products, but its their shame and now they have to pay the price.
In a last ditch effort they're trying to throw all the blame on Apple who was able to innovate and launch a successful messaging service years ago. Apple recognized that SMS could be improved, and they improved it. They didn't wait for anyone and they recognize the importance of continued support - a quality Google does not seem to foster.
Google had their chance over and over again but they blew it over and over again. I don't care about the little things RCS adds, message bubbles, delivery confirmation etc. These may be nice additions but they truly don't make a large difference. If an Android phone wants to send a high quality image, video etc they can share a link. That's good enough for me.
Google failed, miserably and publicly. This latest campaign is just embarrassing for them.
> I don't want to use yet another messaging service that they've built.
You literally wouldn't be. You would keep using iMessage. All that would be different is that you could now send images and videos to Android users. Right now you have to switch to another app to do that.
This is not a '"standard" they've created', this is a GSM Association standard, and it would be Apple, not Google, implementing it.
Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone.
At some point we should require people to tell us whether they have read the link or not so we can know if it's worth taking their opinions into account.
> Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s.
Your first paragraph is copied verbatim from Google's marketing material[0] without attribution. I just wanted to point out for anyone out there if you google that phrase you will find it verbatim repeated across the internet. I know this isn't an academic environment - who cares about plagiarism - but just to highlight it as part of media literacy. Your comment is part of a media/marketing campaign, it is not an actual back-and-forth dialogue that one would expect on HN.
> But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead.
Ah, yes, the “industry standard” which relies on proprietary extensions made by Google which are only implemented in one of Google’s applications, and whose carrier adoption figures are based on Google hosting the servers.
RCS is better, but don’t oversell this as more than Google’s attempt to pressure Apple into helping them recover from repeated self-inflicted damage. If they hadn’t screwed up their messaging strategy so many times since the 2000s nobody would care about iMessage. We could be using an open cross-platform system if they hadn’t killed that concept trying to force people to use Google+.
Indeed. Ron Amadeo has done a lot of in-depth coverage of Google's RCS push the past few years, and he brings up some very good points I didn't see talked about much. Here's the latest article about Google's new campaign:
I said in another comment that Google continuing to call RCS a "standard" is disingenuous. What they're really pushing for is Apple implementing Google's proprietary fork of RCS, where most messages are routed through their own servers. That doesn't sound like a standard to me and I don't see why Apple would/should go for that.
It’s also telling how they punted on the things people want like support for all of their devices or need, like E2E for all chats rather than just one on one.
Imagine an alternate universe where they backed a dump truck full of cash over to the Signal Foundation and said “hire all of the developers you need to make first-class desktop clients and add federation for people willing to meet CA-level requirements. We’ll ship integration in Messenger and Gmail this year.” Apple would have a lot more pressure from something which is open and better rather than a marketing play for a Google subsidiary.
If you don’t care about the additional RCS features, then aren’t you saying essentially SMS is fine? Do you prefer iMessage just since it is more secure (compared to sms that is)?
I don't love RCS[0], but Apple implementing it (including the E2EE extensions) would strike a huge blow to messaging fragmentation immediately, at least in the US.
Hell, Apple doesn't have to ditch iMessage; they just have to support RCS for messaging with Android users, or group messaging with mixed Android/iOS devices.
I would also (grudgingly) accept an opening of the iMessage protocol so Google could implement it in the Android Messages app. Not ideal by any measure, and I figure Apple would never do this (and I suspect Google would hypocritically not want to do this anyway), but it would at least improve things.
The thing that's sad overall is that the current state of affairs is just a result of an anti-consumer corporate pissing match. The only losers here are the users, both on iOS and Android. And meanwhile both Apple and Google get to tout the benefits of their preferred solution as if they're both the good guys, fighting for their users. When in reality they're merely fighting for their own market dominance.
[0] Tying messaging to your carrier is just a continuation of the crappy SMS "portability" experience. Sure, most RCS backend implementations are currently provided by Google, but one thing I'd like to see would be the ability to select your RCS provider. Maybe others would crop up if this were an option, and if RCS were actually popular.
> the current state of affairs is just a result of an anti-consumer corporate pissing match.
This would be true if Google didn't want to implement the iMessage protocol as you predict; but in the current state of affairs it's just Apple being anticompetitive.
>This would be true if Google didn't want to implement the iMessage protocol as you predict; but in the current state of affairs it's just Apple being anticompetitive.
I do believe, everyone understands how Google is motivated to get hands-on access to iMessage. They have had so many messaging services over the years, that I stopped keeping track already. At the same time iMessage is 11 years old and in good standing.
If you look at the launch date of WhatsApp, you'll see that in fact Apple is competitive. They introduced iMessage two years after WA got it's run.
Has Google said that they'd implement iMessage if Apple were to open up the protocol/service? Given Google's history with messaging, I'd be surprised if they'd be so interested in doing this.
More likely they'd prefer Apple just build a standalone iMessage app for Android. (And I feel like this option would be more palatable to Apple too, if the alternative is opening up the protocol to third parties.)
Even if Google didn't implement it, which I think they would, somebody else would do so and put it on the Play store. That's all it would take to make this issue go away for everyone.
RCS is dead. The Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) has given up. Google is the one still pushing for it. iMessage is simply a big Apple moat. Why would Apple give it up to enhance Google's business position?
Google wants us to pick theirs over Apple's. Also note that to my knowledge, RCS is not available in all countries.
The other funny thing is that Google complains about SMS being insecure -- all while RCS does not support end to end encryption. Google Messages added that feature recently relatively (last year? please correct me below) and I still can't understand if it's on by default or not.
I would love a common solution, but rationally I can not blame Apple for keeping a (to me from experiencing both) superior experience that brings in customers. And Google has just managed to catch up. Google will need to make their messaging an order or two better, to the point that Apple will have to join.
P.S. Also, I am skeptical any time the phrases privacy, end-to-end encryption, and Google cohabitate the same statement.
A lot has happened with RCS since that random article.
* All of the major US carriers announced that they'd ship Google Messages by default on android phones (including RCS). I believe Verizon was the last one [1].
* Google enabled end-to-end encryption by default for 1:1 chats [2]. They've said that e2e for group chats is coming later this year [3].
* Samsung replaced their own messaging client with a tweaked version of Google Messages on the S22 (edit: in the US) [4]. Samsung Messages already supported RCS, but I'm not sure if it supported Google's extensions like e2e.
And as others have mentioned: this isn't about Google wanting Apple to replace iMessage with RCS; it's about Google wanting Apple to support RCS as iMessage fallback in addition to the existing SMS support. Apple to Apple would certainly still be iMessage.
To add to this, Xiaomi and Oppo, which collectively dominate the South Asian markets and has big presence in Europe, also dropped their own messaging app a few years ago in favor of Google Messages app.
And as you can see in my comment "what is Apple's motive for giving up their moat?"
Edit: I am not sure I understand why the downvote. Also disagreement should not be expressed with downvote. I was stressing that my point (and Apple's I guess) is it doesn't make business sense what Google is asking.
SMS isn't their moat, though. They wouldn't give up iMessage.
Supporting RCS (again, in addition to iMessage) would make their product better: it would allow higher quality media to be sent to and received from non-Apple users; it would allow for typing indicators and read receipts with non-Apple users; and (perhaps most importantly) it would allow - if Apple adopted Google's extensions - e2e encryption with non-Apple users. Apple loves privacy, after all.
It results in a better experience for their users, but it would not improve their business. It would lower the barrier to switching from iOS to Android. A lot of people, myself included, only have an iPhone because of iMessage. I would love if my iPhone supported RCS. But that is at least in part because it would pave the way to me being free from Apple (not that I’d necessarily switch). And that hurts Apple directly.
It also hurts them because it decreases their network effect. If people do not encourage each other to move to iMessage because RCS is more available, fewer users switch to iPhones.
I run a phone business in Australia which is, as far as I'm aware, the only product that supports voice, txt and picture messaging on a virtual number outside of North America.
Ever since I built the product, people have been telling me SMS is obsolete and RCS is coming (4 years now). Google bought Jibe Mobile in 2015, if you go to the Jibe website and try to submit their "Get Started" form there is an error.
I have tried to get in touch with carriers to find out how to connect up RCS from my product (because hey, don't want to get behind the 8 ball) and haven't found any way to get it set up, even when asking my upstream providers.
I really don't think RCS is going anywhere, but if it is, it would be good to be able to build it into my product!
That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s a federated system with each carrier supposed to run things for their customers.
Why does it work today? After years of begging Google gave up and put all their users without carrier support (basically everyone) onto a Google RCS instance.
Despite how the article tries to portray things in many ways it’s iMessage but worse. With Google running everything it might as well be proprietary. And it lacks full E2E encryption.
Things probably would’ve been better off if Google had just stuck to their own private protocol and used that instead, perhaps opening it.
It's not just on the telcos, Android fragmentation as a whole makes implementing new network features an uphill battle. VoLTE is an absolute mess (on Android) if your build doesn't have settings for your carrier. Google doesn't sell the Pixel in my country, so the only way to enable VoLTE here is to root your device. This is only going to get worse with carriers sunsetting 3G networks - anyone roaming on a Pixel in such a country won't be able to make calls, even to emergency numbers.
Maybe it's dead in the US, but German providers added support in 2021. Of course everyone here already uses cross platform messengers, so I guess it's dead, here, too.
Haven't received an SMS from a real person (in other words, all SMSes I get are 2FA etc) for, at least 5 years, maybe 10.
Even people who use iPhones don't send SMSes, MMSes or anything as obsolete (including RCS). Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber). Locale: Central Europe.
So, why would anyone stick to the obsolete stuff? Are there regions of the US which have cell phone signals but no Internet access?
This is indeed a US thing (culturally). Most countries seem to have chat culture revolve around Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat or LINE.
On top of that, most people don't really care and read whatever comes in regardless of the format.
MMS was a failed concept, and so is RCS. Not because the technology is fundamentally bad, it's the implementation that is fundamentally flawed by keeping telcos in the loop. The only reason SMS didn't die is purely by accident: it was included as some sort of auxiliary technical channel, not really intended as a means of chatting with other people. Heck, it was almost not even included in the GSM standard and mostly thought of as a useless waste of protocol specification. This made it unattractive to market or monetise at first, and later on with the whole ringtone/bitmap mess around the 00's it only enjoyed a short bubble of commercial exploitation.
The cost, and the limited format then caused the likes of BBM and even MSN for mobile to be used as true chat replacements, except in the USA. That was around the same time as the flop that was MMS. Then WhatsApp (and others) came along and by then the whole telco legacy mindset finally caught up and it was way too late. Then Apple came around and a decade later finally RCS was invented at some sad endeavour to get back in the loop as a telco.
Similar things were tried to 'replace' email etc. in the AOL days, which also turned into a big flop.
MMS wasn't a failed concept. It was successful at what it was designed for at the time - to share a photo or short video on 2G/3G phones. Not bidirectional conversational messaging.
MMS was never designed to be used for group chats. It was a clever implementation by Apple which made it become the standard for cellular group chats once every other platform copied it.
The US market standardized on mobile plans with unlimited texting a long, long time ago, so I think this caused people to mostly stick to SMS/MMS for communication since it was the path of least resistance. I don't know what the situation in Europe is like now, but in the past I remember it being difficult to find plans without very small SMS caps when traveling. That could be why Europeans naturally gravitated towards other messaging platforms.
Unlimited SMS plans have been a thing in western europe for the past 15 years, at least. People switched to whatsapp because you can send pictures, not only text.
MMS was (is?) spectacularly expensive, I recall sending an MMS and it costing in the realm of £1.50 -> £2.00 per message, furthermore there was a maximum size to the attachment you could send with it (100k-200k?). These two alone made it a non-starter.
Sure it was exciting at first when the first 3G colour display phones with cameras were a thing, but the cost and size limits were prohibitive when proper smartphones came on the scene.
When people in America want to send pictures without both ends having iMessage, they either use MMS (aka "text it to me") or share them some other way.
I still don't understand how SMS took off in the US. for a long time you had to pay to receive texts, which is madness.
given that undercurrent of expense, I'm still not sure why the US hasn't moved to whatsapp/signal/other. The only thing I can think of is that mobile data is even more expensive.
When you had to pay to receive SMS, WhatsApp didn't exist. Your only other options were more cumbersome things like email and AIM, which still required paying for a phone internet plan and having a capable phone.
In Argentina WhatsApp became the de-facto standard definitely because it was “free” messaging compared to the expensive SMS. The carriers ruined it for all of us.
Network effect. SMS works everywhere, all phones support it out-of-the-box. WhatsApp is opt-in. Almost nobody I communicate with regularly has a WhatsApp account.
Most Americans have few or zero regular international contacts. The US is geographically huge and there are only two other nations within relatively reach.
Personally I have one person in my contacts who's not in the US. This is someone I communicate with about twice a year, and we do indeed use WhatsApp for that.
For non-North American recipients from a North American phone number, you have to prefix with the country code[0]. So unnecessary if you're in the US and want to call Canada or Jamaica or wherever. But say you want to call someone with a UK phone number, you just send the SMS to +44-<their phone number>.
As a leftover artifact from growing up not allowed to call long-distance, I frequently think of things like "Is long-distance texting charges a thing? Will I get charged for texting my friend with a Mexico number? Does it matter if she's currently in Mexico or the US? Does sending a picture incur a fee even if an sms doesn't?"
But as other comments mentioned, the number of people I "text" with regularly without a U.S. phone number / the ability to send and receive SMS is very small.
Because its better than chat apps. I can send a text all over the place. Cell coverage for nondata service is incredible, you'd have to be really remote at this point to not have it at which point you definitely don't have a data connection. Meanwhile there are places all over my city where I can't get a reliable enough LTE connection to open my chat apps let alone send a message, much less one with any attachments. Inside stores are especially bad with LTE. I can't even get an imessage out inside the grocery store. I have to defer to sms, but then it sends instantly.
> Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber).
To remark that Telegram by default is not E2E encrypted, you need to explicitly start a "secret chat". And group chats are not encrypted as well. And when you start a secret chat it uses Telegrams "probably maybe secure, but possibly not because it's a non-standard in house built" encryption scheme with weird choices.
I absolutely love Telegram, but I will also definitely not use it for anything more confidential than mindless chatter and cat pictures".
basically it's the lowest common denominator. There are so many chat apps out there (signal, sms, fb, ig are popular in my circles) and the default app is the only one everyone has installed.
For people close to me, I insist on the use of signal, but I don't have that kind of social capital with every single acquaintance.
France here. I use SMS every single day, moreso than any specific given messaging app. I also routinely use Whatsapp with North Africans and Live Messenger with old FB contacts.
I have never even considered downloading an app to text people… because I just text them. I’ve never understood or needed something different. I’m only now piecing together that this is an American thing though.
> Are there regions of the US which have cell phone signals but no Internet access?
Yes, there are huge swaths of the U.S. that are lightly covered and don’t support Internet applications. I was in Marin County, CA (just north of San Francisco) last year and regularly saw 0 bars of 4g. At those times only SMS got through to friends and family (Messages app falls back to SMS if there is insufficient bandwidth for iMessage).
It works for every phone and doesn’t require me to have an app installed. It doesn’t change on which contact I have (“oh she uses WhatsApp, he uses some other app, this group chat is on facebook messenger, etc”.
It’s just one tech that works on all phones. I don’t even mind if its missing five million emojis or things like that.
My assumption was always that, from the get-go, iPhone just had that much of a bigger market share in the US compared to e.g. Europe. I remember in Finland in the early 2010s most of the people in my age group (~20-25 years old) had Android phones while I've understood in the US I'd been in the majority. Not suprising that that situation lead to different networking effects in the US vs elsewhere.
Yes. I don't think I know a single person in Germany that seriously uses iMessage or text message. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, ... is the name of the game here.
I think a major factor is that Apple/iOS has a much lower market share vs. Android here, so iMessage was never a viable option unless you wanted to reach only 20% of your contacts.
SMS is convenient because everyone has it. With those other services, I have to find out what they use, install it, register for an account, etc. Simpler just to send a text.
This is the leading surveillance capitalism company trying to lay the groundwork to break the privacy of Apple's messaging system, demanding that Apple give up the privacy that it provides its paying customers, because it is intolerable to Google that there exists data that it doesn't have access to.
The rest is noise from morons who think that you don't deserve privacy unless you sysadmin your phone to an NSA standard, and people who work in adtech.
Supporting RCS doesn't give Google access to iMessage data. Currently SMS is also not encrypted.
Also number of times per week there are posts complaining about current state of capitalism in US, but then if walls of garden built by company with one of the highest valuations in history are endangered, hundreds of cultists will defend them with fire in their eyes and little merit in their words (see recent threads about EU legislation).
Apart from better media, typing indicators, etc., RCS allows richer metadata (like content types) and various side channels (AFAIK) that allow extensions like E2E to be added. SMS is just 160 characters.
I believe Google will share their E2E spec with others. They published an overview a while ago [1], but presumably they'd offer more to someone wanting to actually implement it.
Better media is a valid point, but I feel like mentioning typing indicators right after totally takes away from it. It felt so out of place in the article as well. Sorry, but who gives a fuck? All you need to do is wait a couple more seconds and you will know whether the recipient got your message, because in 99/100 cases, guess what follows the typing indicator? A message. I honestly do not get the benefit. If anything, it stresses me out.
Sorry to pick and choose from your comment. Like I said, the other points are definitely valid. It's just this feature I don't understand bringing up.
I'm all for standards, but this is mainly sour grapes by Google. If they hadn't shot themselves in the foot dozens of times with messaging they could've dominated using the head start they had with Google Talk. Google should put all messages from iPhone users in comic sans.
They had a surefire strategy starting in 2013 when they added SMS integration to Hangouts and made it a default-installed app on all Androids. It was tied to your Google account so most people (and basically all Android users) already had an account. It was pre-installed, meaning you didn't need to pitch people to install another app, which is usually a big ask. Instead you say "hey open this app you already have installed, we can chat here and it's better, and you can text all your other contacts who don't have it too." It had video calling too, basically all you needed.
But then Allo and Duo came along. Remember Allo? Me neither! It was Hangouts' death sentence anyway! And now Duo is being rebranded/merged into Meet for some reason.
Get out of the Google ecosystem wherever you can. They're only getting worse.
I still remember the glory that was Google Talk back in 2005-ish. And you could connect to it from other xmpp networks. It's insane to me that the current google chat app (a neglected box within gmail) is WAYYY worse than it was almost 20 years ago.
This is sour grapes for users. Google doesn't own the RCS standard, fwiw. I still use SMS/MMS and it is really, really nice when another user is using RCS because modern messaging features actually work. I can send long voice memos/song ideas to others, high resolution photos, see if a message was read etc. RCS is a huge upgrade, and really has nothing to do with Google.
First, Apple shaming Microsoft. Then, Microsoft shaming Google. Now, Google shaming Apple.
> missing read receipts and typing indicators
Life is better without both of these.
> no texting over Wi-Fi
This claim was odd. I visited Europe a few months ago and definitely sent/received SMS over wifi using my iPhone.
> When people with iPhones and Android phones text each other, Apple relies on SMS and MMS, outdated systems which do not always support texting over wi-fi. That means if you don’t have a cellular network connection, depending on your carrier and situation, you may not be able to send and receive texts.
Oh, so the claim was deliberately misleading. That's not a good way to build trust.
> definitely sent/received SMS over wifi using my iPhone
Are you certain? From what I understand about how SMS works, I don’t see how that’s possible. Apple’s own docs also appear to suggest that SMS-over-WiFi won’t work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207006
I’m curious about how this works, can you link me someplace where I can read more about it? I tried searching for “cellular over wifi” but wasn’t about to find anything promising.
EDIT: I searched harder and found “VoWiFi”. It looks like this can support SMS and is supported by iOS. TIL.
For someone more curious, I tried to learn more about this tech, and this [1] is the best resource I found about someone explaining how it works.
Essentially VoWifi connects to your ISP via a IPSec VPN using secrets derived using your sim card as a smart card, then connects to a internal SIP server and voila.
I spent a lot of time trying to connect to the IPSec server from a computer, but couldn't figure out how to get the challenge solved by my sim. Gosh I wish I could make normal calls from my computer.
4G is not so bad here because of the 700 / 800 MHz band which has really good penetration.
But 5G is mainly done on 3.5Ghz and that's tough yes. Of course they can use the same frequencies for 5G. Though the bandwidth at such low frequencies is limited, and thus the maximum speeds.
I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway? I've been using WhatsApp for ages now and so does everybody else in my country - and every country I've been in, apart from China and Japan. My friend who's from the US once said "I've paid for those text messages, so I'm going to use them!" But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text. WhatsApp is free! Is there any viable reason why Apple users use SMS so much?
Almost nobody I know uses WhatsApp. On the other hand, a significant number of people I meet do have iMessage. There's no incentive for me to install WhatsApp. Even my friends internationally all have iPhones. I don't install third-party apps unless there is a very good reason. SMS is an inferior but acceptable fallback for edge cases.
This is a subthread about someone not from the US being surprised at the messaging habits of people in the US, so I think quoting a stat about iPhone/iMessage penetration in the US is perfectly relevant. The US "bubble" is the only one that matters in this particular conversation, as it's specifically what this conversation is about.
Nothing in the comment I've replied to quotes a stat or references the US, and nothing in the grandparent comment references stats or talks about the habits of the US specifically either. I'm also not questioning the relevance of any posted stats. I'm really confused by this comment, is it a mis post from another thread?
Not sure what you mean. The originator of this thread[0] is mostly talking about being surprised at US messaging habits.
Agreed that the person you replied to did not specifically mention the US, but their comment is consistent with a US user's experience, which makes sense since the thread is about US messaging.
> I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway?
Someone responds:
> [I use SMS/MMS because] Almost nobody I know uses WhatsApp.
You respond:
> Your bubble is not representative of the whole world though.
Not only did the responder not claim for their bubble to represent the world, but it doesn't matter in any case. The set of people they'll be messaging on their phone is largely constrained to their "bubble." If nobody in their bubble uses WhatsApp, then why would they install WhatsApp?
As for the meta discussion revolving around the US: just because nobody mentioned it doesn't mean that's not obviously the central focus of this comment thread. If someone's bubble contains no WhatsApp users, you can be 99% sure that they are American. The US is the main place where platforms like WhatsApp have not been widely adopted. iPhones are extremely popular there, and iMessage is widely used. It's a country of over 300 million people where the vast majority of residents don't communicate with people outside the country.
This comment comes from a position of privilege and power. Not everyone can afford iPhones and neither is a value-for-money at those prices. If all your international friends are also using iPhones, then you are definitely in a very special bubble.
There are many people in the US who have no international contacts, and so they grew up using only the default messaging app. And they are not sufficiently incentivized to install another app like WhatsApp.
Between NYC/SF, I do not know a single person that does not use both iMessage and WhatsApp. But typically it is people who are not children of immigrants and whose social circles have no one outside the country that tend to not have WhatsApp.
It's weird to me that so many people don't seem to get that. SMS/MMS are terrible in many ways, but they have the benefit of the universal network effect, without even trying.
Sure, if I want to send someone videos, or do regular group chats, I'm going to find an alternative platform. But if it's just a casual contact, or I don't anticipate needing these things, I'll just stick with SMS.
I think this is exclusive to Jibe and Google Messages but a widespread (in terms of installs) proof-of-concept is still pretty cool, and better than nothing.
The bigger problem is adding E2E to SMS is going to attract the FBI's ire, they really really really like reading everybody's texts.
WhatsApp was appealing before it got sucked into the FB vortex. Thanks, but no thanks.
If there were a single 3rd-party messaging platform that I trusted, and my friends started using it, sure. But since 75% use iPhones/iMessage, and the rest SMS, why in the world would I use WhatsApp?
It comes preinstalled, works, is free. Why would I look for a different messaging app? What does WhatsApp do that the preinstalled, free, messaging app doesn't?
SMS doesn't do group chats; I think you're thinking of MMS. I agree that it's not a great experience, though.
> Group messages to anyone regardless of platform.
That's the thing though; that's not true. WhatsApp might be available on both Android and iOS, but it only works if the person you want to talk to has it installed and has set up an account. That requires coordination. If I meet someone new and want to get in touch with them, I'm going to ask for their phone number (or email address). I'm not going to ask them which messaging apps they have installed so we can figure out which one(s) we have in common.
Sure, if later on I want to start a long-running group chat including this person, I'll absolutely go to the effort of finding a common chat platform that is not MMS, because MMS is terrible. But if I'm only doing 1-on-1 conversations, or just short one-off group chats, I won't bother.
(Interestingly, for some people, even though I have group chats with them on an alternate platform, I'll still message them 1-on-1 using SMS. Not sure why that's the case, and it's not universal. I guess it's just whatever we'd gotten used to, and saw no need to change.)
I think this is region specific. In the UK and a lot of western Europe, you'd probably assume that the other person does have Whatsapp installed and just try messaging on that. If that didn't work, then you might try Messenger or SMS.
A lot of people I know use groupme for groupchats, especially because they support a lot of users, but then its texts for everything else because its simpler. Chat apps have shortcomings, especially if you live where data connections are spotty which is everywhere in America with a large indoor space. My grocery store might as well be a faraday cage for anything demanding my 4g connection, but SMS goes through instantly.
I've seen this position a lot throughout this thread and I have a question: all of these apps (whatsapp, signal, etc.) appear to be "free" - how do you suppose they will make money? In the US, the users of sms/mms/imessage paid in some way for this service and can have some reasonable expectation for delivery and availability.
I believe the Signal Foundation runs on donations. So far this appears to have been sustainable, but of course you could make the argument that we don't know if that will always be the case.
But that's the case for any business, even one for which users directly pay for the service.
I use WhatsApp as well, but not many of the people I communicate with have it. SMS/MMS is a common denominator that everyone with a phone number has, and can always be relied upon to work without foreknowledge that the other party has a particular app installed.
> But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text
How the tables have turned! It's no secret that the US has more expensive cellular plans than the rest of the world, but with my carrier, international texting is free.
As counterpoint, I am an Android user in the US, and 90%+ of my contacts are US-based iPhone users. While I do use Signal, WhatsApp, or GChat for nearly all of my group chats, I have 1-on-1 conversations over SMS daily, with quite a few people.
I've managed to move a few of the 1-on-1 chats to Signal, but not many.
Apple users don't use SMS—they use iMessage. It's seamless and automatic. All your contacts are automatically there as long as you have a phone number or email address which is an AppleID. It's so seamless most people don't even realize they are using it.
I setup a BlueBubbles server on a spare Mac and I installed the BlueBubbles App. Boom. iMessages on Android. Done.
Messaging is already extremely fragmented. BB is only the eighth messaging app on my phone. Considering getting on Beeper to consolodate this madness. Matrix/Element was too rough to utilize as is.
Almost everyone I text with is on iMessage in the US. 95% or more of my regular contacts. Many are often outspoken about their cult like allegiance to iMessage. Finally some respect.
The look on their face when I send them an iMessage from my Galaxy is priceless.
Now, nearly all of the SMS messages I get are spam. Google Messages and the phone companies are pathetic at stopping them.
> The look on their face when I send them an iMessage from my Galaxy is priceless.
Well, technically it was relayed through your Mac. Not sure how many Galaxy users have Macs to send message through, so I’m not sure it’s a workable solution for most.
I have not had this experience. Google Messages has been incredible at stopping spam for me. Android is best in class on calls as well. I was seeing memes about car warranties and looked it up. Apparently a big problem with spam calls. Haven't seen a spam call on my pixels in years. All filtered into the ether.
Yeah and there's also mautrix-imessage for those wanting to use element.
I know it's rough setting up but there's a really great ansible playbook that makes it easy to maintain. I really love having all my messaging consolidated and not having all those privacy-invasive apps on my phone. Having my chats all in one big database is another boon.
The playbook doesn't support mautrix-imessage but that's because that needs to be run on macOS.
Yes, tulir works for beeper. But I think they stopped doing that iPhone thing, and if you use iOS there are less features available: https://github.com/mautrix/imessage/blob/master/ROADMAP.md . A Mac with SIP disabled is now the recommended method (apparently this can be a VM too!)
That iPhone thing was something they did in the beginning, before they used the name Beeper, I forget the name they used.
I like the idea of Beeper but self-hosting is important to me, so I use the ansible playbook instead. For hosted services there's also Element One by the way, though that doesn't include the iMessage bridge.
This is so funny because they don't even do a good job themselves with their own service.
I'm a Google phone user on Google Fi, and make heavy use of the web app (message.google.com/web) in addition to texting via the phone. Once you get a long conversation history, the phone experience becomes poor - conversations won't load, messages won't send - and the web will often lose sync and need to be re-paired (which may or may not itself work). On top of that, some days messages just will not send quickly, not over wifi or 5g, to the point that it's too hard to converse via text and we just give up.
Google has an alternative configuration for Fi users, btw: you can do all your calls and texts through Fi, have Fi store your messages and voicemails, etc. Except you have to turn off RCS for this, because Fi doesn't support it. So you get the SMS/MMS experience they are complaining about, and on top of that they convert all your audio and video to 3gpp and downscale the heck out of it such that it's nearly worthless.
Who knows what's realistically possible but I wonder if Google is going about this the right way. Call up Tim Cook and say we'd like to give Android users a better messaging experience, how can we work with you to do that. Don't try to embarrass Apple into helping you - Apple very likely does not care - and certainly if you're going to point out where their choices lead to a worse experience for your users, make sure you're not doing the same thing.
Just to counter your anecdote, I've never had a single performance issue on the Android Messages app on my phone or the web interface. I have had friends with iPhones that fail to render images I've sent them, and they send this obnoxious "so and so responded with a thumbs up" (still do, android phones just do the right thing now and show a thumbs up reaction instead of the text). So YMMV. Apple needs to fix their broken messaging app.
I would agree more if the RCS standard wasn’t also hot garbage…
I would encourage anyone who is curious to read more about it. It’s taken so long to gain traction that it has also become somewhat legacy. Also, it still requires a carrier sponsored phone plan? How is this “modern” in comparison to say every other carrier agnostic messaging app in existence?
Speak for yourself; I LOVE texting my fellow-Android-owners with RCS. My photos don't get squashed a la MMS, sending multimedia Just Works, and typing/receipt indicators are lovely. Maybe the mobile operators are getting far bigger wins, but as an average person texting my friends, it's great.
I'm just annoyed that it's opt-in, and still seems to have some issues. I think I converse with exactly three other people who use Android.
One of them works with RCS! Yay!
The second hasn't enabled RCS for some reason. (Or he has -- I haven't asked him -- but for some reason the machinery in between hasn't figured out that we're both RCS-capable.)
The third has enabled RCS, and the messages I send to him go over RCS, but when he replies, they go over SMS/MMS. No idea why.
Honestly same. And the same thing for getting Wi-Fi calls with people on the same network and how they sound crystal clear but then you call someone who's not on your network and it sounds like a crappy phone call again. When my dad and I were both on Google fi our phone calls sounded great and texting through RCS was great. He switched to the same carrier that his new wife has and the service is just degraded.
Its definitely a compromise, but Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers. We can sit back behind our keyboards and criticize but it is a way to get something going. I don't think carriers have any incentive to improve this area, and probably nothing would happen
> Its definitely a compromise, but Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers.
Are they, though? Google absolutely could have implemented an iMessage competitor, directly in the stock Android Messages app, and then required third-party Android manufacturers to include it as the stock SMS/MMS/"gMessage" app as a part of Android conformance testing.
But no, instead they choose to play games with Allo, Duo, Hangouts, Chat, etc., all of which are an optional download and need not be included in the stock install. And even if/when they are required, it's still an extra app that a user has to find, and understand why they should use it.
Now, I don't want them to do this. I want them to promote and support a federated, open standard; I don't want another iMessage. RCS is not great for many reasons, but at least it's not a walled garden.
> Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers
Yet again I recall the deal with the devil Apple did with AT&T, giving them a year or two of exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in return for having exactly zero control over the device. That was an excellent trade. Before 2007, carriers were intrusively involved with all aspects of a mobile phone.
I understand that there are huge interoperability and legacy requirements on the phone network. But for the sake of solving the biggest problem of Android to iPhone communication I think we can and should demand something which is actually modern (ie platform and carrier agnostic).
The problem with RCS is that the solution has been stuck in GSM consortium hell for over a decade.
> Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers
I mean...are they?
If Google were serious about pushing a new standard, and were willing to actually push it on the carriers, they have plenty of money, reach, and clout to make their point heard loud and clear. That would be triply true if it weren't a "new standard" that was yet another transparent attempt to gather more data from users.
They don't even need to push it on the carriers. They can just implement their own siloed iMessage clone in the stock Android Messages app. They don't need to integrate with any carrier services to do so. Hell, simply moving Google Chat into the stock Android Messages app, and seamlessly switching between SMS/MMS and GChat (like Apple does between SMS/MMS and iMessage) would do the trick. (To be clear, I don't want them to do this, but they could.)
And even if Google pushed a new, better standard (than RCS) on the carriers, Apple could (and probably would) still refuse to implement it.
>There are zero benefits to phone identity over email
I can think of one: most people’s email identity is subject to termination under Google’s ToS. Same thing with identity tied to Facebook or other social networks. In the US, your ability to take your phone number to a different carrier is protected by federal regulations.
It is actually light years better than SMS/RCS and has a huge value to end users. I can see if a message was read, I can send legit voice memos without size limits, I can send large high resolution photos.
It may not be perfect but it is better than what Apple is doing now.
I don’t love phone based identity but it’s wrong to say it has no benefits.
While it does lock you out if you don’t pay, at least you won’t be locked out by accident since you can generally prove your identity to the carrier. This obviously is a con (sms hijacking) but for many people it’s much more important.
Not to mention the importance of phone numbers being basically universal which is why 3rd party messaging apps haven’t totally replaced sms. RCS has the potential to do so, or at least cut down on sms usage further.
It's illegal tying[0]. Google used to force Chrome and Google Search as part of Google Play Store requirements. And were fined a few years ago by the EU[1]. Pretty much most of this reasoning could be applied to a messaging app too.
Why didn't Apple & iMessage run afoul of this same thing? Is it because Google was forcing third-party manufacturers to include things, but Apple of course just doesn't have that issue?
I've heard that since Android is the OS that 3rd parties use it could violate antitrust to include a Google branded chat-app. Apple does not distribute iOS so they can do whatever they want.
ehhhh, that twitter post is weird. It's like your phone number. You're free to switch carriers, and just like a phone number, you lose it if you stop paying. It's not designed to replace whatsapp, its replacing sms.
XMPP sucked, you guys have to stop bringing it out over and over again. Not having a common experience between clients because of that stupid « X » sucked. There’s an impossible to solve mismatch between XEPs supported by the clients and the servers.
XMPP is dead for reason, stop trying to bring it back
Because of the "stupid X", modern XMPP supports far more than it used to, and isn't stuck in the past like email and SMS.
There is a mismatch between iMessage (Apple) and RCS (Google's flavour of the month). To the point where there is almost no sensible interoperability between the two.
All XMPP does is provide answers to "If I want to implement feature X, how should that look on the wire".
Just as the XMPP Standards Foundation annually publishes the recommended baseline feature sets for XMPP clients, it wouldn't be hard for Apple and Google to follow that or (more likely) agree on their own baseline for interoperability between the two ecosystems.
As I always say when this comes up: the wire protocol is of least concern - it's not the reason these businesses don't prioritize interoperability. No protocol engineering can magically fix that.
> Because of the "stupid X", modern XMPP supports far more than it used to, and isn't stuck in the past like email and SMS.
Yeah, it’s dead. Maybe XMPP supports shiny stuff. But no client or server support them, and if they do it’s like they don’t understand the spec the same way.
A protocol should not be extensible, it should be full featured and regularly updated to include new needs. It should also propose a reference implementation and an official client so that there’s a clear baseline.
I use XMPP because unlike Matrix, XMPP is properly standardized and not a product by a single VC funded startup.
If you ever have multiple independent implementations a single monolithic spec will always only be partially supported (or there is only a single useable implementation like Synapse), so no different than having extensions.
Have you ever considered that your constant FUD against Matrix just ends up hurting open communications in general? How about putting your energy into improving XMPP rather than constantly whining about the existence of Matrix.
Matrix is properly standardised at https://spec.matrix.org by a non-profit foundation: https://matrix.org/foundation. Just because the core team created a startup to fund our work (3 years into the project) doesn’t make it “a product by a single VC funded startup” - especially when there are hundreds of independent companies building on the standard. Meanwhile empirically synapse, dendrite and conduit can all talk fine to each other and we haven’t seen any fragmentation yet.
If you want to complain about something, go attack the closed cabal of RCS or the hypercapitalism silos of FAANG - and leave us the hell alone.
I don't think that promoting existing internet standards over Matrix will hurt open communications.
Instead I think constantly reinventing the same thing with slightly different, incompatible primitives is hurting the ecosystem a lot more.
Bridges also won't solve this. The matrix.org XMPP implementation (besides not being mentioned anywhere, not even in the Matrix FAQ about XMPP) is almost unusable and I suspect it will never allow for encrypted communications or A/V calls.
I don't see any "whining" or "attack" before your comment. Sure the comment mentioning Matrix is a little confused about Matrix the foundation vs the startup, but did it really warrant what you just wrote?
Putting a notification on "matrix" on HN so you can jump on every critic and yell "leave us the hell alone" is not kind.
Matrix ended up hurting open communications in general. Simply because it is another open, federated standard. It splits usage. Creating another standard is a time honoured way to degrade and destroy an existing standard. I am not claiming that Matrix is some sort of conspiracy to destroy XMPP but it serves that purpose anyway. Every time you make a new incompatible thing you take away from the old thing.
HN struggles with the reality that users pick again and again, platforms with unified experiences instead of extensible platforms where everyone's client supports a different subset of features.
I'd rather have 5 IM apps on my phone than have one and have no idea how my message shows up to the other person. I like that I can use the best app for the job. I mostly talk to people on telegram but if I want to do a voice chat or share my screen, I switch to discord. It's very frictionless and modern OSs allow you to receive notifications while the app is not actually running so it consumes no resources.
> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background.
Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users.
Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just that they use RCS instead of SMS/MMS to talk to Android users. Not an unreasonable ask given RCS is likely to be a widely adopted standard and an non-trivial improvement over SMS.
Edit: Color aside, the read receipts, MMS quality, Wifi send etc all seem worth fixing with RCS.
This is the most trivial complaint I've ever read. I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles - it just means that it hasn't been sent via iMessage - if I send to an iPhone and sending falls back to SMS it looks just the same. I can't believe people get that upset about green v blue.
Let's be clear. Green vs blue is a bit of a red herring.
The real issue is that Apple has to have some fallback protocol for texting with non-iMessage devices, but refusing to upgrade the fallback protocol beyond SMS/MMS makes the texting experience worse for everyone, as described in the article.
(To avoid additional red herrings. No one is thinking here about opening up iMessage itself to non-Apple clients, just upgrading the fallback option. Also, I can't speak for everyone, but among the non-terminally-online Gen Xer and late-Millennial Americans I know, "texting" means using the built-in app on your phone. Switching to another app is a relationship step. Many of them are blithely unaware that they can't "just" text a photo or video to me or other Android users, nor that I can't just sign out of a group chat when I feel like it.)
SMS is also the fallback protocol for iMessage. If I’m in a place with poor signal, even my texts from the Messages app on my iPhone to my spouse’s iPhone go as SMS.
Edit to add: those bubbles are green too. That’s what the bubble colors really mean. Blue and green are not iPhone vs Android, it’s iMessage (end to end encrypted) vs SMS (less secure, less private).
> I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles
Besides the other issues... as soon as I heard that adolescents and teens (i.e., hyper-self-conscious, wanting group acceptance, figuring out social status) would be appearing differently in chats with schoolmates, based on whether they used Apple or non-Apple... that sure is a way to sell them Apples.
Another comment alluded to this, but small-minded people will always find a discriminant - toys, clothes, shoes, hair, height, weight, university, degree, house, cottage, trips, car, yacht, private jet, donations, endowments, and so on. Explore what your heart says to, make, buy and enjoy the things you love, and don't sweat the 'bullies'.
This comment says almost exactly the same thing without the first sentence. This trend of everyone calling everyone else a something-ist can’t die fast enough.
> Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility?
The thing with accessibility is that it does affect everyone.
If you get woken up by a call and open iMessage in the middle of the night, being able to read the message accurately while blinking away eye gunk matters.
Better contrast helps you read your text message if your phone is on a table across from you lying flat.
There's going to be times you're trying to read a message and your phone won't be 100% in front of you at arms length and you are able to take the time to bring the phone into focus with proper lighting around you.
If you get woken up by a call and open iMessage in the middle of the night,
being able to read the message accurately while blinking away eye gunk matters.
The only green text bubbles are for text you send via SMS. Incoming text is styled the same regardless of protocol.
I would happily use the eye gunk excuse for everyone contacting me at night. I probably find that word more funny because I just learned it and I am not a native speaker.
I still believe this is an issue. Colorblind or not, everyone probably has had difficulties reading their phone in direct sunlight. But these are seriously not insurmountable technical problems at all and the excuse is pretty weak.
I turned on the "increase contrast" accessibility feature just because it makes the green background color on those messages look nicer. Just do it. It isn't like they check to to see if you are diagnosed with colorblindness or whatever.
Not only that, but these are complaints coming from non-iPhone users, by definition, which means it is totally up to Android what color their messages are displayed in.
So making the bubble blue instead of green without changing the protocol would be already ok for you?
How do you cope with this right now, do you and your social group use alternatives to iMessage like signal or telegram?
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Regardless if they read the article or not, they were addressing one specific complaint which is unrelated to the others.
Google conclusively found there was a statistically most pleasing shade of blue in their 41 Shades of Blue experiment. This type of testing can be and is being leveraged for profit. It's not too difficult to imagine Apple tuning iMessage vs. SMS colors to be perfectly calming/nauseating respectively.
It's also worth noting that the current version of iMessage uses contrast levels that don't follow Apple's own HIG (the early green bubbles did, but the shade of green has gotten lighter and lighter over time)
These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything.
First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so.
Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
“Right now, Google runs three mainline messaging apps: Besides this Google Messages/RCS platform, there's also Google Chat, which is a more traditional over-the-top messaging service, and Google Voice, which is a Google-provided phone number with SMS. Google Hangouts is technically still around as the fourth messaging app, though that's shutting down in November. There are also siloed messaging apps built into Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Stadia, Google Pay, Google Assistant, and Google Phone, and none of them talk to each other.
Google's head of messaging also quit last month, so there's no telling what the future of Google messaging holds until someone takes the reins. I would suggest Google get its house in order before it starts throwing rocks at Apple.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
Fallbacks can be layered. For a company that claims go all-out for its consumers privacy, using SMS as the default fallback in the 21st century is pretty sus.
There’s over a dozen different versions of RCS, hand who knows which carrier supports which parts. It’d be more fall-through (the cracks) than fall back.
I personally think they should adopt something brand new and not evil. I'm not saying that RCS is evil, but from what I can tell, while it has federation, Google seems to be gaining a monopoly on RCS (sorry, I don't remember what article I read that in). My pick would be something like Matrix or even XMPP to make sure that there's a definite standard that is federated by design; however, you'd have to trust your carrier/software to not dump your messages onto Google's server instead of using a different server.
>First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so.
Is a standard from the 90s acceptable then? Do we say Apple shouldn't migrate to USB-C since it's old-ish? A standard being around a long time is a good thing, but when a better one comes along I don't see what excuse Apple has to not migrate (besides anti-competitiveness, which is a really good reason I suppose).
>Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
The argument in the article could be made irrespective of Google. The article isn't saying "Apple isn't playing nice so use our stuff instead", it's a critique of an obvious attempt by Apple to build a walled garden around messaging. Google is arguing for a standard adopted across the industry, not one of their many messaging apps.
The point of that specific complaint is that the market has evolved significantly since RCS was first created. Things we now take for granted were not built into the standard because they didn’t exist.
The green used on the website is significantly brighter than on an iPhone. In fact, on the iPhone, I would say the green gives better contrast than the white text on a blue background.
For direct messages, the colored bubbles are only used on messages you send. Messages received are always white text on black background (dark mode) or black text on grey background (light mode).
edit: my bad. "increase contrast" option is on, set years ago.
I just took screenshots of an Android green text bubble and the https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ site, and used Photoshop's eyedropper tool to compare colors. They're the exact same shade of green, #48dd8f.
But it's not just you! The green on Google's site looks visually brighter because the entire bubble is on a blue background. On iPhone, the green is normally on a white background.
Now, try setting your iPhone to Dark Mode in Settings, and you'll find that the green bubbles are still #48dd8f green and the text is still #ffffff pure white; it's harder to read on a black background, IMO.
Could you upload a screenshot from your phone? Searching images online I see plenty that roughly match the colors they're using on the video/website, but none as dark as your iPhone. Reference: https://i.imgur.com/PlGjjQg.png
The background color of the bubbles changes in a gradient kind of way, depending on their vertical position on screen. That may explain the disparity you're seeing.
iMessage was released on iOS 5 with the release of the iPhone 4S. Before then, all messages had a green background. Somehow sticking with the default of more than 10+ years is intentional maleficence by Apple?
In a product development org, refusing to prioritize something is identical to deprioritizing it.
@Time0 -> Priority1=X, Priority2=Y
@Time1 -> Priority1=X, Priority2=Z, Priority3=Y
Across this timeframe, Y's priority was lowered from P2 to P3, because the org intentionally decided to make Z a higher priority.
One could argue that improving this experience was never in their priority list; but as long as product leaders in the org knew about it; its the same thing. Letting something linger in the backlog, and intentionally deciding to never add it to the backlog in the first place, are identical.
I don't know about "maleficence", but intentional: Yes. Cognizant inaction conveys intentionality.
He's pointing out that Apple considered green originally the best background color for texting, and then added their own protocol with a blue background.
So it's not like they deliberately relegated SMS to green because they were certain blue was better; if they believed blue was superior, they'd have used it from the beginning.
Yes, and then Time Happened, and every other part of iOS was updated; including, by the way, THE GREEN BUBBLES, to make them less readable, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills and no one else remembers that they used to be a different shade of green, with black text, which has significantly more contrast [1].
Regardless, they could improve it at any time, yet its been like this for... a decade now? Cognizant Inaction Is Intention. It doesn't matter why it is how it is; they can make it whateverthehell they want, they run the code, they run the org, they got the keys to production, so: fix it!
The original color may not have been malicious, but it WAS DELIBERATE. Every design decision at Apple is deliberate; to assert otherwise is to be revisionist. Cognizant Inaction Is Intention. Its color was deliberately chosen originally; its color was deliberately changed; their inaction in fixing the accessibility issues that change created is Deliberate, because Cognizant Inaction is Intention.
As I'm trying to tell you, assuming malice instead of disagreement isn't productive. It's always been green, even when it was the only option. Perhaps they feel that green is still the best choice!
As others point out, there are accessibility options for people who want more contrast (and which benefit users with trouble reading these outbound messages in far more useful places).
It used to be black text on a green background with a bevel to make the text bubble look like it has depth. I'm probably in the minority but I still don't like the modern high contrast flat material design of everything.
What? I don't even notice the difference in color except that I know not to use the tapback stuff when I'm texting an Android user. Does the green on white actually bother anyone? This seems like grasping at straws to me.
The funny thing is that simply changing the text color to black causes the green-on-black to pass all those metrics, with the blue-on-black passing everything but WCAG AAA with the normal font (but still passes on the larger font).
(Same result using #64C567 for the green bubbles, which a sibling pointed out is the correct value.)
I've never heard this issue ever raised by anyone in real life.
I've only seen it brought up in internet tiffs about how Apple is using green message bubbles to "shame" non-Apple users. Which is similarly straw-graspy.
Given how cruel and capricious children tend to be, it would not surprise me in the least that iPhone-using US teenagers ostracize peers with Android devices because of the green bubbles.
I would not discount visibility issues for anyone with a visual impairment. But at the same time there are a lot of issues listed on the page, with the color contrast only being one of them. You may consider the other usability issues more significant, but either way as a whole it seems to be a problem.
This is ridiculous. As someone who suffered greatly from bullying throughout their education, the only way to deal with bullying is punishing bullies.
Bullies will always find something to bully others for, thats why they are bullies and not just expressing a preference.
I’m fairly convinced the bullying problem is a result of a society who treat kids as their parent’s property instead of communal property. Parents enable bullying.
It turns green when the message is sent over SMS, not when you text a "non-Apple device".
You can send SMS messages to Apple devices, from an Apple device, if you're not signed into iMessage, or they're not, or if your data connectivity is limited, or theirs is.
This! I got sick of iMessage, and I disabled it completely on my iPhone. Everything was SMS, and it made moving my sim card between devices easier. I found that if you don't explicitly turn off iMessage before you ditch your iPhone, no other iMessage users will be able to message you. All my messages were green all the time.
So, you're asserting that the color choice of the bubbles ten years ago was unintentional? That whatever developer coded it had no instruction, Jony Ive & Steve Jobs were silent, and they used a random number generator to pick the hex code?
And additionally, you're asserting that its impossible to change or improve? That its just such an intractable problem which we inherited, and changing it would be such a herculean effort that its not worth moving the needle on?
I've never seen the codebase for the iOS messages app. I believe, even acknowledging that, its probably an absolute mess of legacy code, and I have a ton of sympathy for the developers working on it. I also believe, even acknowledging that, that changing one color is something an intern could do (and because its a big tech product org, there'd be fifty user studies and three orgs of product managers involved and Tim Cook would get a say in it, but those are manufactured problems. Also, let's be clear; if Jobs were still alive & in control, even all those manufactured roadblocks would be torn down, if it were a change he cared to prioritize, because that's the kind of leader he was).
Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional.
I'm asserting that a decision was made that SMS messages were green.
Then a decision was made that iMessage messages would be blue.
I'm asserting this was not done with animosity. It was a decision by Apple's UX team to make it easy to visually identify the difference between the message mechanics and capabilities of the end-user.
It is remarkably simple, effective and easily understood.
If Apple chose to make it so there was no visual distinction between the message sending mechanisms, that would be a worse, and more confusing, user experience.
If Apple changed the colors, whatever the new colors they chose to use would just be the new focus of the debate. It would become "Orange Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles" or "Purple Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles". People would argue that Apple chose the new color based on some secondary negative characteristic of the new color, just as they do today with green.
I'm not asserting that Apple's choice of color is malicious; just that it needs to be improved.
Also, I'm not asserting that Green is bad. The issue is the shade of Green, and the a11y issues it creates. I don't know how you jumped on "entirely different colors" or "the same color"; Android's criticism in the original article is very clear, its an a11y contrast issue with the light green background and white text. That's it. Nothing else.
This issue is, seriously, a lot simpler than you're exploding it to be. Make it 10 shades darker; done. They even have an option in their accessibility settings to make it so. This is a simple change, any a11y expert (including, maybe, the MANY apple themselves employs) would say the way it stands today is bad, but their inaction conveys intention.
Apple has had an "increase contrast" option on iOS, which does exactly what you're asking for, specifically designed for a11y, within the Accessibility Settings panel of iOS, since iOS 8 I believe, potentially earlier. This increases contrasts throughout the entire iOS experience, and yes, makes the green bubbles several shades darker.
They are not "inactive".
(It's also important to remember that the "green bubbles" applies to messages sent, not received. Received texts, no matter to mechanism, are either black text on grey, or white text on near-black depending on Dark mode)
Now compare it to green bubbles today. Anyways, when I had iPhone, flat green bubbles annoyed me. Not because "hurr-durr I have a iPhone and you don't" but because SMS lacked many features and was hella slow to send. Plus, pretty much anywhere I lived I had horrible cellphone reception which made sending SMS a nightmare.
White text on green is significantly different - the older green bubbles with black text are noticeably clearer IMO, even if I also find it unlikely it was done deliberately to make SMS look bad. That said, Apple will certainly be aware of the cultural thing of the green vs blue bubbles given major news outlets have written on it (in the US anyway), so...
Apple commits many UI offenses, but the alleged illegibility of SMS messages is BS.
Not to mention that Apple's messaging is hideously broken in more ways than Android integration. iMessage will simply delete your phone number from its "can be reached at" list, which breaks years-long threads with a single (iPhone-using) friend into inexplicable new threads.
Ever go overseas? Try putting a local SIM into your USA phone somewhere else, and watch your phone "forget" all of your contacts. Seriously: WTF? Suddenly all of your contacts are unrecognized by number. It's idiotic.
I have quite literally never had that issue. I think people forget that Apple support a very fragmented and wide range of devices on multiple major OS releases and various version numbers. The long-term support period means some devices can be forgotten about even though they are receiving the latest updates. If you have found some edge-case bug, feel free to submit it. There is almost no other way for Apple to know and bother fixing it if you don't tell them.
This is not an "edge case." This is a readily reproducible defect. I've encountered it on different iPhones running current iOS in two countries with a gap of at least two years in between.
I have a paid-up developer account, so you can be assured that I filed a well-supported bug report on it.
The white on green is only used for the SMS messages you sent in the conversation.
Incoming messages are always black on grey, for SMS and iMessage both.
If the color scheme actually impacts legibility, it would only affect messages which you yourself wrote. It wouldn't have any effect on legibility of messages other people wrote, where that really matters a lot more.
Before iMessage was released all text messages sent from iPhones were SMS/MMS. They were all green. If an iPhone recipient is unavailable via iMessage a text will fall back to SMS. So green bubbles are intentional, they indicate a text was sent via SMS.
RCS doesn't inherently depend on Google servers. However Google doesn't see eye-to-eye with anyone. The carriers want their own version of RCS and Apple doesn't want to deal with it. Of course it's easier to get clicks by bashing Apple than by holding the carriers accountable (or supporting your own deprecated messaging platforms).
Google has exactly zero credibility here. Look how many messaging platforms they've created and killed off. Who's to say Google won't kill off RCS when they get a chance?
Google's server with Jibe Mobile only exists because the carriers weren't doing anything at all and they needed to have something that worked for everyone.
If Apple implemented support, they would have their own server, they wouldn't use Jibe or the carrier's.
SMS to me is solely the channel for machines to force a bad MFA implementation on me and couriers to tell me something is on the way/nearly there/delivered. All person to person comms, without exception, iPhone or Android users, is via WhatsApp. Anecdata from UK.
I think the argument about SMS being insecure is very real but exaggerated. We send password reset with capability URLs through non encrypted mail. Sure, the channel is most likely encrypted but anyone at mail service providers could easily take over a massive amount of accounts. Although the user would notice at least.
Sure, there are tools to intercept SMS without the user noticing, but as a second factor an attacker still doesn't have access to other factors.
The successor RCS has the problem that users cannot reset the password. If you are compromised you need to urgently contact your ISP.
To be clear, I don't consider it to be bad for primarily security reasons, I consider it to be bad because it's inconvenient when it's the only option and forced. I would always prefer TOTP or a push based system such as WhatsApp or telegram or similar. SMS can be slow, and uses an application I don't open for any other purpose.
What's really ridiculous is that iPhone _doesn't_ parse this and display the reaction bubble, so the SMS experience is better for Android people talking to iOS people than it is for iOS people talking to iOS people.
This is pretty disingenuous I think. Other than Android who is using RCS?
Why can't I message between WhatsApp and an RCS client. Or any other chat technology, how about Google Chat to RCS, or Slack to RCS, or anything else.
Their examples for 'the modern standard adopted by most of the mobile world': Motorola, OnePlus, Google Pixel, Samsung, Snapdragon are all providers of Android phones, so clearly they would use the default Android messaging service.
I have a few folk (mostly family) who uses Apple messaging, everyone else seems to be on WhatsApp.
According to the sources I was able to find, iOS and Android collectively make up more than 99% of the smart phone market. There isn’t any significant market share outside of Android because there is no significant market outside of Android.
Nowhere because it requires a phone company SIM. No SIM no RCS. So no RCS between a tablet and phone or two tablets or a PC and phone. Also, ever so wonderfully, carrier provided RCS has no E2EE. So you need Google's app using their RCS gateway to have E2EE only between Google messages users.
It's used by the manufacturers of phones, not just the Android base system. You don't need to be on the Google Messages app to use RCS. Eg it's supported on Samsung.
It's no different than half a dozen web "standards" Google invented like Web Serial, WebUSB, Web MIDI, etc. Google implemented it on their monopoly platform, and then declared it a "standard" and started getting their staff to start trying to shame everyone else for not adopting it as such.
Google acting like RCS is the hot new standard is pretty disingenuous. In theory it's a standard, but in reality most carriers haven't been interested and haven't implemented it so the vast majority of RCS messages are routed through Google.
I can't really blame Apple for not being interested in adopting a "standard" that's mostly Google pretending to be a standard.
RCS is infinitely better than the current state. Google isn't pretending it's a standard. They're trying to improve messaging between android and iphone uers. Apple won't because the current standard helps their business. It's pretty simple.
First RCS version been developed in late 00. Google had and has zero affiliation with it. What RCS today been published in 2016 and again, Google had no affiliation. Google wasn't even the first one to support RCS - it was Samsung in 2012.
Google, however, added their own extension for E2EE and started roll out with their self-hosted RCS rather than carrier hosted.
Given that RCS is mandatory in 5G networks and supported by world's largest carriers - Yes, it's an industry standard. Given that version used today is published in 2016 - Yes, it's modern. So, what's the problem?
RCS has zero carrier support (in fact carriers are trying to develop their own competing standard). Why would anyone (Apple or otherwise) buy into an already fragmented Google "standard" knowing full well that Google has a pernicious habit of killing off messaging products?
I’m not the person you replied to, but personally I really hate Google‘s tendency to create their own “standard” and then just shove it down everyone’s throat because they’re so ridiculously big and important.
Speedy and WebP were two examples. RCS already existed (I believe) but basically every single carrier has dragged their feet on it to the point of doing almost nothing (at least in the US) so now Google is basically running the entire thing through their network just to get it to work for their customers because carriers are incompetent/indifferent/directly opposed.
But I doubt that last part was listed in the article.
Yes, exactly, thank you. Nobody used WebP, and then Chrome used WebP, and now everybody has to use WebP because of Chrome's dominance, regardless of whether there might be better alternatives out there. They're trying to do the same with WebM but Webkit has held out on that one so far (not sure if FF has).
And then you have Cloudflare doing crap like automatically reconverting JPEGs to WebPs so when you try to download a JPEG you can use anywhere you end up with a WebP you can pretty much only use in a browser.
I find it interesting how many HN'ers now don't think consumer protection is a good thing.
(Actually, in hindsight it isn't that surprising. Tech companies only make the money they do because of the lack of consumer protections... so definitely in most HN'ers interest to keep the status quo.
European legislators are why I now have a cookie banner on every website I visit. It is hard to be enthusiastic for more of that. I could support basic antitrust actions that actually promote competition, but when it gets into actually writing technical requirements, the outcome seems less than ideal.
It's fine to debate what exact policy is the best, but it's not productive to just dismiss all regulation as bad because some are inconvenient.
FWIW, the only reason cookie banners are annoying is because the sites intentionally made it that way to bully you into allowing 3rd party cookies. EU regulations allow a site to not have banners if 3rd party tracking is opt-in. They could easily do it via a separate settings page. They only chose the banner because they want you to keep tracking cookies on and the annoying banner results in a higher rate of people agreeing to be tracked at the cost of annoyance (which is somehow respun to be directed to the policy not the site owners). Imagine if every time you enter a business you were asked to sign a liability waiver. That's what cookie banners are.
(You do not have to have a banner if all the cookies you use are first party "essential for functionality" cookies)
The problem is that it's insane to leave all of this for the website to implement correctly. It's a UX nightmare and it opens the door for a company to game the system, secretly ignore my privacy setting, etc. The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem. Sue the company if their "Allow" button is too big or it doesn't work as advertised.
It should be a consistent browser-based preference that makes it impossible for a website to do something that I told it not to do. The problem with that is it requires innovation because cookies have inherent privacy design flaws. When you can't innovate, legislate.
> The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem.
As a regulatory body, what else can they do...? In fact, I actually see this as a good thing.
You should think of regulation as an abstraction, an interface, a contract, that defines only a desired outcome (in this case the idea that 3rd party tracking should be opt-in rather than opt-out or non-opt). The details are then left to private entities to implement.
In fact, had they defined it to be say a browser feature or any other specific implementation, it would be strictly worse. By legislating the abstract concept of 3rd party tracking consent, they are leaving open the door to innovation. The idea is that if someone can come up with a better way of collecting consent in terms of UX, while still guaranteeing the same level of consumer protection, then they should be able to outcompete worse implementations.
The law does not require banners per-se (instead requiring affirmative consent before tracking can commence), nor does it require any button size (instead requiring that features not requiring tracking not be gated behind the consent wall and that certain consent outcomes shouldn't be favoured as a part of the UI). What we have is only that way because innovation is not that fast and the motivation to innovate here isn't that high (yet) --- banners are easy enough to implement and not so egregiously bad as to turn away users.
Yes, they should have just elevated the Do Not Track flag to legal status. If the flag is on, tracking cookies forbidden. Easy. It would have solved the cookie banner problem entirely. Some browsers have already removed it but I'm sure they would have put it back of the EU actually made this feature useful.
I don't know why they didn't use it in the law. Probably advertiser lobby because it's much easier to coerce the user into agreeing when they control the process (dark patterns)
I think you have it the wrong way around. Apple is exercising bureaucratic control over technology, the EU is about to give them a lecture in disruption.
It's a different world view I think. In Europe with our more socialist history, we view government regulations mainly as a protection of civil rights. Whereas in the US it seems to be viewed more as a kerbing of freedom.
It's not as black and white of course but this seems to be a recurring theme.
Another way to put it might be that Americans fundamentally do not trust the state, and Europeans (or at least Western and Northern Europeans) do.
Of course, this is painting with a very broad brush, and people in both places believe in all sorts of different political ideologies, but I think it generally tends to be true. Europeans are more likely to reason along direct lines like "this is a good policy, therefore it should be enacted" whereas Americans will think in more abstract terms like "this may be a good policy, but do we really want the state to have the power to enact such a policy? How may this power be abused in the future?"
I don't have a good explanation for _why_ this is the case; intuitively, you'd expect the opposite, since the US has never had a totalitarian regime, and most of Europe has within the last 100 years. My only guess is that nowadays the US is way more corrupt, undemocratic, poorly run, etc. than most countries in Western and Northern Europe which leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
Most people? But yeah, it's a local thing. Denmark have had free SMS for something like 20 years, at least as an optional add-on to your subscription. So there where never a reason to move to something else. If you frequently used SMS you just paid the small free for a large number of SMS message, or even unlimited. Current subscriptions pretty much all have free SMS.
When smartphones arrived, most just use the built in messing app. On the iPhone that means that you use iMessage, but it's not something you think about. If you took the average Danish iMessage user and asked them, they'd just say it's SMS.
I don't know that I would want Apple to just dominate the messaging market, but iMessage on Android would kill of many of the existing platforms pretty quickly.
I have dozens of group chats with iPhone, Android, and even PC users. We never encounter any of the limitations of SMS, for the same reason we can drive across the country and don’t have to constantly scan for new radio channels. It’s just not a technology that we use.
SMS is the old, WhatsApp/Telegram/Messenger/Signal/Discord/etc is the new.
So I have to replace the native messaging app that's decentralized, well proven, reliable, and pre-installed on every phone that can communicate with anyone in the world for 5 different centralized apps from the app store that may or may not exist next year and also try to move my entire network over?
I use iMessage. It's great, and doesn't get in the way. And as I said it's included on my phone. It also allows me to communicate with anyone and I don't have to think about if the person I'm contacting has it installed or not, it gracefully degrades to SMS when needed. That's a great messaging app!
While I do have browser tabs open for WhatsApp, Google Chat, and GroupMe, as well as the Signal desktop app running, most people I know do not do this, and do most/all of their messaging from their phone.
I get that's not your experience, but it is indeed an experience that exists, and is probably fairly common.
US here. On the old end of "millennial", if that matters.
More than 95% of my personal communication with other humans I know (remote communication, that is, not in-person, obviously) is in WhatsApp. The rest is phone and SMS and that's all older family.
SMS, like email, is mainly for machines to talk to me.
> More than 95% of my personal communication ... is in WhatsApp
This is wild to me. I'm squarely in the middle of the millennial generation and I've never used WhatsApp and I've never known anyone that uses it. Nearly all of my personal communication is through Messages on my iPhone/iPad/Mac.
I would estimate iOS has 99% market share among my social network, including nuclear and extended family. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a green bubble.
Yes, "everyone" was an exaggeration. But whatsapp usage in the US is pretty small. iMessage/sms and fb messenger are the only apps with enough market share to matter.
I won't claim like a sibling that this is "wild", because I think it's not that surprising that different people have different social circles and different group dynamics. But I too am an older US millennial (xennial, if we want to be trendy and overly specific), and my one-on-one communications are almost all on SMS. My group chats are mostly on Signal, WhatsApp, and Slack. I have a few one-on-one chats on Signal and WhatsApp, but the bulk of them are over SMS.
I'm not sure what "locked-in" means here. If something happens to WhatsApp (becomes paid-only, abandoned), you can use Telegram, Viber etc. Maybe the only problem is that you can lose chat history when switching, and that you must make sure all your friends/family migrate to the same service...
> I'm not sure what "locked-in" means here. If something happens to WhatsApp (becomes paid-only, abandoned), you can use Telegram, Viber etc. Maybe the only problem is that you can lose chat history when switching, and that you must make sure all your friends/family migrate to the same service...
And get your contact spread over 4 differents messaging App and consequently have all of them installed.
Since we can switch any time enough folks feel like moving over some of the major group threads to something else, how are we locked in? I can't really think of any time I didn't do nearly all of my communication over one or maybe two channels. In the 1990s, 95+% by landline phone. Then ICQ + Phone. Then SMS. Then WhatsApp.
I also do 95+% of my driving in a single car, and 95+% of my text editing in a single program. 95ish% of my browsing in a single browser. Not locked in to those, either—in all three cases I've switched before without difficulty, and likely will again. I have no idea where the lock-in notion's coming from.
"Locked in" doesn't just mean "I use a single thing for everything".
It means that switching costs are high. With the exception of losing chat history (which I was surprised to find most people don't seem to care about), switching costs between chat platforms are virtually nonexistent.
I dont remember when the last time sending message via SMS. You will not be able to find message app on my android launcher because I hide it, and many people in my circle never really open it other than to read spam message from operator.
So yeah most of the time whatsapp and telegram 100% of my circle. SMS is a thing from the past, I guess the gen z here don't even understand what's SMS.
That's a bit of an overstatement and really depend on who you ask. I'd say that no-one uses WhatsApp. I know exactly two people who uses WhatsApp, but that also not representative of their actual marketshare.
I see that it’s more limited to Western Europe but it really is dominant in a lot of markets.
But that’s not really the point, the point is that also in the markets where the network effect causes the majority of people to use Telegram, Viber or Facebook Messenger, they’re mostly not using SMS, because even if it is free, a messenger service is better.
This is a complete non-issue. I have no idea why people are complaining about this, except as another way in which Android users are trying to force their ecosystem choices on everyone else. The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application, most of which uses similar stylistic design choices as Apple uses for SMS, so it's hardly an issue.
I'm well aware that high schoolers get bullied for being poor and not being able to afford an iPhone. High schoolers were getting bullied for being poor and not being able to afford fancy clothes before cell phones were even a thing, and prior to smartphones were bullied for being poor and not being able to afford pagers or a cell phone (or a car, or ... or ...).
High schoolers are assholes and will find some excuse to torment each other regardless of what aesthetic and design choices somebody in Apple's UX team makes for their built-in messaging app. This is a massive nothingburger and I honestly have no idea why the media gives this any credence other than the shift of the media generally towards being anti-tech.
No it's not. iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does.
> The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application,
Completely unrelated. This discussion has nothing to do with iMessage / WhatsApp / etc. The problem is that Apple forces your SMS texts into effectively-2G-mode, Apple lies about the quality of the messaging you're getting from your native cellular service.
Imagine if they did the same thing to, say, your telephone calls from your phone number by running it through a ton of fake compression, and then said, "well, you could iMessage or Skype or Zoom instead if you don't want us fucking up your phone call audio".
This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS.
I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased.
> I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased.
Again, no it's not. My family have iPhones, I have Android. Apples garbage SMS?MMS group messaging made it so that I missed a huge number of messages from them, photos were poor quality, videos were unwatchable. We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it, but this impacted us for about 2 years. And I'm a tech person! The average user is going to have no idea what is going on. This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.
My wife has Android, I have iPhone, I know exactly what you're referring to. But this isn't "Apple's garbage SMS/MMS group messaging", this is just SMS/MMS group messaging, period. SMS/MMS is ancient, and it sucks, it was a hack when it was originally implemented and never really got better. Nobody here is claiming that SMS is good, we're merely pointing out that RCS is not the right answer and that SMS is the most viable /fallback/. Nobody should be using SMS as their primary messaging platform in 2022.
> We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it
Good, I'm glad to hear this. More people should use Signal. I even managed to get my 72 year old mother using it without any serious issues.
> This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.
It only affects people who refuse to use any one of the myriad other carrier-agnostic messaging apps. I travel extensively around the world, nearly everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp, and nearly everyone inside the US I interact with has at minimum FB Messenger or Discord. Obviously, all of these are operated by other for-profit tech entities and getting more people on Signal would be ideal, but it is what it is.
The right answer here is creating a new carrier-agnostic messaging standard with interoperability and privacy in mind, and then Google, various Android integrators, Apple, Microsoft, et al can build their own clients. RCS is not carrier agnostic, does not support E2E, and is really horribly designed protocol. Worse, because the carriers don't want to deal with it, de facto almost all RCS infrastructure globally is run by Google.
RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)
SMS is the outdated standard that's been mostly unused on smartphones since 2018 and is only supported for backwards compatibility. RCS is the replacement for SMS, and is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.
> Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform.
No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they basically had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses. It has nothing to do with "Google's own messaging platform" because RCS is *not* a messaging platform, it's literally just how all messages on all phones work in 2022.
There's no Google service for RCS. There's no login for RCS, there's no accounts for RCS. RCS is not an "app" or a "platform", it's literally just the native default built-in way all messaging from your SIM card works on all ~2019+ smartphones.
> There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS.
You know what, your right. And by your logic, there's no rational reason for iPhones to support Voice-over-LTE (that's a GSMA push), so maybe every iPhone should drop down to 2G everytime a phone call comes in (but not an iMessage Audio Call, of course). And by your logic, there's no reason for iPhones to support Carrier Roaming (that's another GSMA pushed thing), maybe Apple should ignore that one too.
> RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)
Nearly every carrier supports it via Google-operated infrastructure, the carriers don't actually want RCS, have been vocal about this, and it's why RCS had no uptake for over a decade until Google decided to force-feed it to everyone. https://jibe.google.com/ is their platform they provide to carriers, through partnerships (example: https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-google-messaging-...)
RCS is hot garbage, and if you've actually read the standard you'd already know that. There are plenty of arguments that can be made in favor of a carrier-agnostic messaging standard that provides broad interoperability, but RCS is not it. This is not the way.
> No, it's not. SMS is the outdated standard that's been gone since 2018. RCS is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.
This is absolutely false. 1. SMS is supported by /every/ carrier in the world, period. This is exactly why it's the perfect fallback, because it is guaranteed to be there and even work with pre-smartphone T9 devices. 2. SMS isn't "gone" since 2018 or since ever. RCS is not ubiquitous, it is literally only used on Android, is not supported by any feature phones, and Android only constitutes "effectively all modern smartphones" because the vast majority of people in the world can't afford an iPhone. Globally almost 80% of the market share is Android... in the West/OECD it's like 50%.
> No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses.
Uh... no... what you are saying here is a lie. Google added support for it because they wanted to, just like they wanted to make every other one of their previous 10+ messaging apps. RCS has been a standard since 2012 (or 2013, depending on who you asked) and the GSMA Universal Profile has been available since 2016, Google didn't even start deploying RCS until 2019 within Android Messages, and did so by cannibalizing the Allo team (another messaging boondoggle).
There is no legal or regulatory requirement or otherwise forcing Google to support RCS. The majority of carriers don't want RCS, and it was basically completely unadopted until Google footed the bill to build out the infrastructure for it.
I'm not going to even respond to the rest of your message. Look, I don't want to be uncharitable, but you frankly don't know what you're talking about and everything you are saying is incredibly biased in a pro-Google way without any basis in fact or reality. Please go actually read the RCS standard. Please go actually learn how RCS is implemented. Please go talk to someone that works with carriers on building out telecommunications systems (hint, I'm one of those people). You are straight out wrong.
> iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does.
Clearly every modern smartphone does not support it because iPhone does not. iPhone is half of the US market. A standard that only has 50% market penetration is hardly a standard.
> Imagine if they did the same thing to, say, your telephone calls from your phone number.
I’d be happy if no one could reach me via my telephone number. There would be a lot less spam calls to ignore. I would welcome a system where no one could dial me without me granting them permission first.
> regardless of what aesthetic and design choices somebody in Apple's UX team makes for their built-in messaging app
It's not about aesthetic design, and it's not just about high schoolers. Lots of grown up Apple users don't like adding Android users to their group chats, because falling back to MMS degrades the messaging experience for everyone. Things like images sending in low enough resolution to be useless.
As a European moving to the US, I can attest how hard it is to get Apple users to switch their group chats to WhatsApp/Facebook/Signal. I don't think I'm in a single such group that isn't majority non-Americans.
You can say Apple doesn't need to care about Android users being socially isolated. But some Apple users might like an easier way to include their non-Apple friends.
> As a European moving to the US, I can attest how hard it is to get Apple users to switch their group chats to WhatsApp/Facebook/Signal
I see this as more of a cultural problem. When I travel back to India, I don't complain that I can't use iMessage since iPhones are a rarity. Instead, I install whatever app I need to be involved in a group. And I weigh the cost against the value I get - if it's too much of a change for too little gain, I'd gladly sit it out.
I'm not saying the solution is to force users to buy iPhones. But the core problem isn't purely technical either.
> Instead, I install whatever app I need to be involved in a group.
While it wouldn't be their preference, I'm sure most Android users wouldn't mind installing iMessage to better talk with their iPhone friends.
That would require iMessage being an open standard, or Apple releasing a client for Android. Some commenters mention that the Digital Markets Act might force Apple to do this. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, and assuming they don't want to open iMessage, it would be nice of them to just support a better fallback option.
I really appreciated this comment. It subverted my expectations by inverting the situation: its not Apple's phone being locked to either Apple's messaging service or the texting standard from 1997, its people forcing Apple to implement a more modern standard.
The second the guy in the video complained about Android users getting blamed as if it were an actual problem I questioned the age demographic they were targeting.
Absolutely agree. Carriers have no rightful place in the discussion, they’re dumb data pipes and shouldn’t be able to nickel and dime customers on messaging quotas and features, as RCS is designed to allow.
Not so sure about that. We still call these devices "phones", with the expectation that any phone in the world can call any phone number in the world. With no other information than a phone number, you need to involve the carriers to deliver a message texted to an arbitrary phone number. That is why Apple need to fallback to SMS. They have no other means to deliver the message.
If Apple and Google teams up without carriers, they still don't have access to the full, true phone number database that carriers maintain.
Why, exactly, would Apple and Google not be able to fallback to SMS? Without involving carriers at all?
It's not like there's any real benefit to having the carriers in that conversation, you can already text from either device just fine. That would continue into the future.
SMS is not transferred over the internet. It is transferred over a telecoms network. Only the carriers can deliver a SMS message. I guess it is possible to deliver a message over the internet to a SMS gateway somewhere, but as SMS is telecoms technology, only internet is not enough.
First of all, SMS is based on a common protocol used across carriers. Each carrier does not need to individually support each model of device, and vice versa-- as long as both the phone and the carrier support the decades-old standard, your messages will get routed to a SMSC and from there to the recipient. The carriers are not involved in this process at all aside from setting up the industry standard protocols involved. It's also all or nothing, there's no identifying characteristic on a message saying "this was sent by that iPhone we don't want to support anymore".
Do we really need a single standard? I and many others use multiple messaging services and it’s fine. Each has their pros and cons. I can also contact people in multiple ways if one service fails.
I hate using multiple messaging services. I hate the annoying point in time when conversations with someone move beyond the needs of SMS/MMS, and we have to do the annoying dance to figure out which messaging apps we have in common. And god forbid it's a new group chat, then we have to figure out which messaging app several people have in common.
With an open, single, federated messaging standard that's integrated into the stock messaging app of every Android and Google phone, all of that just goes away. If people really want to use another app because it gives them some useful benefit, they can still choose to do so. But I want the default, universal messaging standard to be something that lets me send photos and videos without quality loss to the point that videos are unwatchable.
I would't even mind not having a _single_ standard, as long as all the standards were _open_ standards.
If I could use an Android iMessage client when I have to talk to iPhone users, that would be fine. Or we could even see the rebirth of multiplatform messengers like Pidgin, Gajim and Trillian.
The issue is that right now there is no way to have a modern text conversation with iPhone users (high quality media, reactions etc.) if they don't want to leave iMessage. (Most of them don't.)
I always thought iMessage was the dumbest thing. I’m abroad, I try to iMessage someone because I know it’s going to be free: oops, it downgrade to text and I end up paying. Or I’m on a bad wifi connection: oops, I will not use your signal and just block.
In any case everybody I know uses whatsapp so I don’t think it’s a huge deal. Texts are for spams or restaurant waiting lists.
So we’re just going start kicking and screaming because iOS users have a different experience than android users? Can anyone here help me understand why Android feels entitled to dictate non Android users’ experience? This seems like a cultural failure within Android that is a byproduct of their inability to satisfy their users. They have completely run out of cards and all that they have left is low budget low effort marketing like this - or is that actually all that they ever had, to begin with after all? Haha.
Maybe focus on delivering a meaningful experience for your users and pull your nose out of the tail end of the iPhone?
It’s a pain for iOS users as well. I have a friend with an android phone I want to message. We all have issues with the various 3rd party apps but her phone has solid RCS support. My iPhone does not (and cannot) until Apple implements RCS support.
Another fun one to point out: Google doesn't just want expanded RCS support because they have a monopoly on all the non-iMessage client devices, but they also run one of the largest providers of the data services for carriers to support RCS as well: https://jibe.google.com/jibe-platform/
Yet another angle on the Google vertical monopoly, and another reason Apple should stay very far away from RCS to protect user privacy.
It's also time for Google to fix texting. Google Voice still doesn't support RCS despite people asking for it for many years. It would be great if someone just copied this web page and filled in Google and Google Voice everywhere it talks about Apple and iMessage, but I get the feeling that Google doesn't even care how embarrassing it is.
It's more embarrassing than that: For most of the time I used Google Voice, it couldn't even forward MMS. I used Google Voice as my primary number for years, and I had to tell people that I couldn't receive group texts or pictures, which always got me weird puzzled looks.
And of course, now they've removed SMS forwarding entirely, and basically completely made the service useless/redundant. I'm glad I ported my main number out years ago.
When I stopped using Google Voice a couple of years ago I still couldn't receive group photos, would only receive 50% of group texts, and (Swedish) accented letters were each replaced by a seemingly random selection of 1-4 ascii characters. Such a mess, I wish I'd never signed up.
I and a ton of other kids switched to iphones in HS purely because of imessage. Google knows how big a lock-in factor it is. the wsj article from a while ago is actually the truth: group chats are terrible, mms just doesn't work, etc.
Maybe deep down, a lot of people on HN did too but won't admit it. Not calling anyone out, but I know how the crowd around here values 'networking' and the vanity associated with it.
Also just because the bubble vanity isn't an issue in your circles, doesn't mean it isn't an issue in other circles. Whether it's a stupid issue or not is irrelevant, it seems to be a real thing in many people's lives
Surprised the awful videos from platform to platform aren't highlighted more in the comments here. It's cleary Apple nerfing the video to make it look bad. The site's top video goes over it. It's awful.
> It's cleary Apple nerfing the video to make it look bad.
The site itself contradicts that claim. From the FAQ (emphasis added):
> When people with iPhones and Android phones text each other, Apple relies on SMS and MMS, outdated systems that cannot support large media files. That means photos and videos are often compressed and come through blurry. The severity varies by location and carrier based on compression and size limits.
Nothing you said contradicted my point. Apple forces SMS which nerfs videos, they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users. Android to Android works perfectly because they aren't using SMS, they are using RCS.
> they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users.
So you keep saying, but what’s the source for the claim? It inconveniences iOS users just as much since it only happens during the interaction of iOS and Android. I doubt Apple hates Android so much they specifically choose to inconvenience their own users to spite the competing platform. Seems to me a more likely explanation is that they don’t care enough or don’t want to implement the protocol.
Right now Apple is facing quite a lot of regulation in various places to open up their platform: open up app loading, open up repairs, etc. It’s hard not to imagine this being yet another salvo in forcing Apple to open up their messaging platform (and it aligns with recent regulatory efforts).
Except, unlike app stores and repairs, the standard being pushed here, RCS, is not a good solution by comparison. It’s locked to carriers, who have different and inconsistent implementations, rather than being tied to an identity like iMessage.
It’ll be a shame if Apple is forced to adopt an inferior standard here…
Apple will probably be forced to open up their iMessage implementation once the Digital Markets Act will be adopted, forcing large messenger companies to make their messaging services interoperable.
If they're smart, they work together with Google and other large messenger providers to form some sort of secure standard. If they keep being stubborn, they'll be forced to either stop selling iMessage in Europe or accept consequences to their technology much worse than cooperation. I'm no fan of breaking E2EE for interoperation, but since none of the big market players seem interested in working together, I think this will be unavoidable. It's a shame, really, that it had to come to regulation to get the market to work in the users' favour.
This probably won't matter to users outside the EU but big changes are coming over here.
Which is why regulation needs to step in. The "free" market has failed.
> happy children
Are they, though? Sure, if you're an iPhone user and everyone you know is an iPhone user, things are great. But once one person uses Android (or, god forbid, a feature phone), your experience gets much worse. No more E2EE, no more read receipts, no more typing notifications, no more reliable delivery and message ordering, no more sending videos at a watchable resolution...
Anyone who cares about communicating with Android devices uses WhatsApp. This is a non problem for 99.99% of the population. Google’s just complaining about sour grapes since they can’t compete.
One way looking at it is that carrier job is only to provide data service. They should not be in the business of messaging. Users (and market) will chose to use whatever messaging service they want.
This even applies to voice. I rather do Signal voice call than carrier voice call with most of my friends. Better quality, encryption, etc.
I like this in theory, but in practice it is very useful to have a universal way to contact people that doesn't depend on both parties having the same proprietary[0] app installed.
If I give someone my phone number (or email address, for that matter), I know they will be able to contact me without any more coordination required. That has a lot of value to me. If we eliminate phone numbers entirely (and thus SMS, MMS, and telco-mediated voice calling), we lose that ability.
I do think that, in the future (perhaps not in our lifetimes) we'll do away with phone numbers, but only after there is another universal way to contact via messaging or voice that involves only sharing some sort of identifier, without any other setup required.
[0] Yes, Signal is open source, but since they refuse to allow people to use modified clients, or build support for federation, they are a proprietary, closed system, just like WhatsApp or Telegram. It's just we can have more confidence in the privacy of our communications on Signal due to its open source nature.
I think that is shortsighted because data service does not overlap cell service. Go into a grocery store and try and imessage a photo. If your stores are anything like mine it just won't work, until you defer to sending it via SMS, at which point it sends instantly no problem. At the end of the day I'm not paying for data service, I'm paying for data service plus cell service. I want cell service, it has benefits and is not replaced by data only service.
I think this was the case in past but rapidly changed. As networks are get upgraded to newer cellular standards like LTE, 5G the data becomes pretty much standard.
The solution isn't RCS either, shoehorning yet another nonsense over a system designed to transmit operational messaging is absurd, just use proper rich media systems like the 10s of im platforms, or the reinvented wheels like matrix etc, it's in a similar vein to trying to add voice calls to IRC.
Assuming you have an operator that supports wifi calling and a phone that both supports it and is "whitelisted" (basically USA, Europe does not do such silly things)
woosh - read the comment again, it clearly implied the US has a prominent idea of whitelisting "compatible" handsets (ie; those bought from the network because unlocked is a hilariously quaint idea) whereas in Europe, unlocked handsets are generally the default, since people don't like it and regulations prevent it for the most part anyway, in those cases it's just incompatible/old/awful implementations, rather than operators denying said features.
But just in case: the quotes emphasised the act, the parenthesis referenced said nonsense with the target being the first mentioned (it could not possibly be interpreted any other way) as a result of the parent comment likely being from the US as T-Mobile outside of the US does not refer to itself as such, it's either what it became (ie; EE in the UK) or a regional variant.
You really gotta dial down the smugness. It made your comment difficult to actually understand and so annoying that I didn't want to finish reading it. Take whoosh back to reddit, please.
Apple messaging is super annoying. I use Android phone but also have an iPad. Whenever I chat with someone on iPhone, is suddenly decides to route all messages via iMessage instead of SMS and I do not see them on my phone. You have to disable iMessage in iPad to avoid this.
I don’t see how this is a problem. If you want to use an inferior method then it should be opt out (like you are doing) instead of the other way around.
The opt-out is global. I could not keep using iMessage on iPad and SMS on Android as long as Apple account is associated with the same mobile phone number.
Also, changing the mode of communication withot asking or informing users sounds like a bad idea. I send you SMS from my phone. You see it in your iMessage and type a reply and it goes back to my iPad.
If a contact of mine who uses apple tries to SMS me that should work as expected. Always. It _never_ does. Apple intercept it and screw it up to try for their vendor lock-in anti-competitive behaviour.
Apple need to be broken up every bit as badly as google do. It's just insane the way they _both_ behave. It's a competitive race to see how can screw the public harder, faster and deeper. It has to stop, now!
EDIT: ok I read other comments and learned that it's mostly a US-specific, cultural thing. I'm impressed that people in the US are still sending SMS, to be honest. Even with cheapest or free SMS, more modern chat apps became mainstream long ago in Europe, (probably) because they allowed to send photos and videos seamlessly, and messages didn't have length limitations.
Original message follows:
Could someone explain what this is about?
The page complains that pictures or videos are poor quality on SMS/MMS, and they lack encryption, like if those were relevant amd not a thing from the 90's.
Also I am reading things like "Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones", and that adds to my confusion.
I guess the issue is that I simply cannot start to understand who would in today's context use SMS to chat. I too use Android and have a lot of friends with iPhones... we just send encrypted, good-enough quality pictures with whatsapp, telegram, or what have you. SMS or other cellular-based services are a thing of the past that nobody would use. So what's all the fuss about?
I can’t take this site seriously. It says it’s ‘not about’ the green and blue bubbles.
It is, and it’s largely that Apple has a vested interest in making their ecosystem look so much better in general.
If I’m texting my friends with an Android and group chat, etc; isn’t working properly - I will automatically assume something about Android is broken, because it works perfectly to my other friends who use iPhones.
Apple will never - ever - ‘fix’ this, because it’s not ‘broken’, it’s a design meant to create the illusion that iOS is the better ecosystem.
iMessage is one of Apple’s most valuable psychological tricks to keep people within the ecosystem, or convert others to join in.
This is a waste of a call to action.
It will be about as effective as praying to Rain Gods for rain. :P
Apple has a massive vested interest in not fixing this ‘problem’.
There’s also a ton of cross platform messaging apps that already have no issues when used with each other - including popular open source ones like Signal.
The websites’ creator has their heart in the right place, but their mind is confused. This is all intentional on Apple’s part. It’s genius and they know it. They will never willingly stop a plan that is working so very well.
> iMessage is one of Apple’s most valuable psychological tricks to keep people within the ecosystem, or convert others to join in.
Perhaps a kernel of truth there, but the real success of iMessage is how it gives you all the features of a modern instant messaging platform without any hassle. Built in to the phone, same app as SMS with automatic fallback, available on MacOS, not limited to a phone#, etc.
Yeah, I can go download one of a number of other IM apps. A small fraction of people I interact with will be reachable on any given app, but a majority are reachable with iMessage. The network effect is very real.
> Apple has a vested interest in not fixing this ‘problem’.
Perhaps, you are right. Their vested interest is in making more $ for AAPL shareholders. The sands may shift. There are incoming regulatory pressures and what not.
However, it is still fair game to point out what is broken though. The Internet (such as it is) is full of opinions. It is not a waste. It is a perspective.
lol, in no way. The article has a call to action to try to get Apple to change course.
The author suggesting that indicates a total lack of comprehension to Apple’s plan and purpose/intention.
Calling for people to ask Apple to change this is like politely asking Opioid manufacturers to stop killing people. It’s profit. It has nothing to do with what’s best for the consumer.
My main point of the comment was not to explain the subtext of the article. It was to explain that the article just didn’t need to be written, and won’t change anything.
Agreed. I can't imagine what the decision makers at Google thought this webpage would do? Will it suddenly make Apple implement RCS - I think not...
The only thing that might make Apple make open messaging in the near future is the threat of the EU mandating it via the Digital Services Act. And those platform rules apply equally to any app with more than 45 million people - so iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, etc.
It seems likely to me that the site isn't particularly intended to be effective in making Apple fix their integration with non-iMessage texting. It's intended to be effective in raising awareness that Apple is deliberately doing a lousy job of integration with non-iMessage texting.
Contrary to everyone complaining, I would argue fragmentation is part of the innovation process. FireWire vs USB, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD etc. Whoever the market chooses is the winner and survivor. No one needs to “fix” anything. You just make a product that people will buy to survive.
Two systems are suboptimal for developers. It would be great if Apple and Google could get their heads together and find a way to interoperate.
I don't mind the bubble colour... I'm OK with an Apple colour, Google colour, and an interoperable colour. It would be useful to signal what features might be available with each technology.
What I would really like is for the interoperable solution to have a common API so I can programmatically sent a message to anyone (at least the two main players with an option for other phone makers — and also apps like Telegram — to join).
I use an iPhone and have never experienced any of these issues with blurriness. Do they have specific examples? As others have said, I think I'm good with the way things are right now.
Ask a friend with an Android to text you a video, and see if it looks sharp or blurry.
Using RCS as fall back would literally change nothing for you, except better quality conversations with Android users.
Apple would rather Android users feel isolated and thus pressured into adoption of a superior product than enhance iMessage to be RCS compatible. In Europe, people rarely use iMessage for group chats at all, WhatsApp / Telegram / Threema / Signal are defacto group chat apps for this very reason. People know iMessage is not multi-device friendly and no benefit to using it. I imagine this problem is nowhere near their list of actual problems worth looking at.
Looks like Google started to think about EU's DSA / DMA compliance and created this article to have proof to EU commission "look, we tried but they refused!"
Once upon a time, I couldn't see myself moving to an iPhone because of the limited options for ad blocking. Now that ad blocking on Brave iPhone presumably works, Apple's messaging behavior is the last thing that keeps me away. On the occasions when I get stuck in a group chat outside Signal and someone has an iPhone, it always seems to break the chats. Otherwise the iPhone mini seems like it would be a great option.
I agree that Apple is annoying about this, but it's silly for Android (.com?) to complain that texting _in general_ is broken because of Apple. They've got clearly the larger market share worldwide, and wherever Android is more popular, people are on WhatsApp instead of SMS anyway.
Even a group chat purely between US Android users tends to be carried out on Facebook Messenger, not SMS, I guess cause SMS sucks even on Android.
Could you expand on the non-standard behaviors? Long ago I noticed that using tags in Gmail causes a mess because they seem to appear as folders on an IMAP client. I’d like to know what other issues exist with respect to its IMAP implementation.
You know what's really funny? As a Google Fi user for all my cell coverage, but an Apple user for all my phones... Google doesn't let iPhone users send SMS messages to Android users out of the box. They've done something custom to their network that mucks up the ability to user an iPhone to send messages.
Anyway they're just as guilty as Apple of trying to manipulate users, this whole campaign is just PR. They don't like the fact that their users show up as inferior green-bubbles on Apple devices.
But really, these are separate platforms at this point. iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Snapchapt, AIM, ICQ, whatever else the kids are using today... you can't send messages between them all.
And look, dumbing communications down so they aren't using end-to-end encryption has consequences.
If you're an iPhone user, why would you care for apple to implement change? If you use iMessage, you'll keep using imessage, and if you live in a market where whatsapp dominates, then you just use whatsapp. I get this is a very shortsighted attitude, but I'd imagine how this is the avg iPhone use would think.
What's wrong with continuing to use SMS exactly? Why do we need to use alternative incompatible protocols if existing protocols are reliable and work even of 20 years old devices?
Both iPhone and Android support SMS and I see no improvement in either using iMessage or RCS. I may be biased because I don't use neither of them.
The only reason (from my POV) to stop using SMS, is that it is a security nightmare (no integrity or authentication, can be MITM) and for some crazy reason everyone has decided it is a splendid idea to use it for 2FA.
That is like using wolves to protect your sheep -- sure if you keep them well-fed it might work...
Otherwise, Google is complaining because iMessage is a moat Apple has, that Google can not break on its own.
How exactly does RCS fix the security issue? The texts are only E2E when both users are using the Google messaging app, plus group messages are just plain text
In Europe it’s WhatsApp or Telegram all over. I have maybe four people I know I can reliably text on iMessage. This green vs blue bubble is rather an example of how self centered America is, always thinking its own big bubble is actually the world. In Tech that’s quite clear to see.
It's quite frustrating as it's a uniquely North American issue. I also never see this being fixed, as I'm fairly certain iMessage dominates in markets where the iPhone also holds a majority market share as well (makes sense). If you're an iPhone user in north america, many of your friends use iMessage so you don't care about this. If you're an iPhone use elsewhere, you still don't care as you most likely use whatsapp, telegram, line etc.
What I really want to happen is for an independent, secure, ideally federated messaging system (matrix maybe?) to become ubiquitous and replace SMS and iMessage. Sadly, I don't have much hope that will happen anytime soon.
From personal experience, in Italy, texting is always done using app like Whatsapp, Telegram or similar. The native Android messaging app is just used to receive transactional SMS like OTP codes or similar, nothing else.
1. There's nothing wrong with SMS, it's just text
2. From the article - "It’s supported by most carriers". Unless it can be used everywhere, it doesn't sound like a replacement for SMS.
I haven't called a "normal" phone call or used SMS/MMS in many many years. Everyone I know (or care about rather) uses Telegram, and it's been great for us all.
Messaging currently requires you and the people you are communicating with to agree on a platform. If all you use is Telegraph, then you are not communicating with those who don't.
at least where i live, whatsapp is the defacto messaging platform -- i don't know a single person that doesn't have it, to the point where people won't call you, they just assume you have it so they just send you a message.
Let’s say Apple caves and implements RCS. What happens when Google does what Google does and changes it again, it breaks, then whines because Apple won’t implement it?
Google just salty because cool young people want the blue.
Only old, ugly people use Android.
… believe it or not, this is how young people think. When I was single, it was rare to find a hot girl I was interested in use Android. Now, maybe my taste in women is questionable, but that was the reality - much easier to ‘trust’ the blue, instead of that sketchy, broke ass Android green.
What a shame that google is posting this on the android.com domain. Not only is RCS broken and regressive, google does not even ship a reference implementation in AOSP. They haven't updated their stock AOSP apps in a decade. So why should Apple implement some proprietary backwards standard that google only implements in their proprietary app ?
Why are "native" communications worth saving? Personally I prefer the current state where you can use whatever internet based platform you want and all these platforms are free to implement new features without spending decades trying to negotiate a new version between vendors and carriers. RCS right now is already and outdated and substandard platform.
The reservation I have is that I still have to wade through a raft of shit when it comes to sorting out legitimate texts that wound up in Unknown Senders because they weren't in my Contacts.
I would like more control over the filtering of incoming messages, without sending them off-device.
Pathetic, Google. Just pick a single chat app that uses data on top of SMS.
WhatsApp and the other Facebook messaging apps won in Latin America because they’re zero-rated, like SMS effectively is within the US. If you want to make a popular chat app, pay those telcos.
I have never experienced blurry photos or videos as this alleges. I hate read receipts and typing bubbles anyway. I do agree that Apples group chats are highly annoying. Personally, I think it is Androids text platform that is bloated and inferior.
you've definitely experienced blurry media if someone texted you from the other kind of phone (note that your own media will still show up crisp in the conversion window even though the other end gets a mega compressed version)
Neither SMS, nor RCS, have built-in end-to-end encryption — and both should die a quick and timely death. iMessage to use end-to-end encryption, but it’s not open, and should also die.
What messaging needs is an open modern standards, nothing more, nothing less.
Hence why I said “not built in” — also per the document, “all RCS chat messages will be E2EE if both clients have the latest version of Messages” which means if an attacker with enough resources blocked the target end-point and inserted a device without the add-on E2EE encryption, sounds like the messages would be sent in the clear, which to me is not end-to-end encryption; that is unless both parties get an alert the messages will be sent in the clear, preferably before they are, using prior method a nation state or telecommunications company at their order could likely easily read all the messages and forward them on without either party knowing. Hence, SMS & RCS need to die.
Am I missing something?
PS- Assuming that document is by Google, but unclear, what is the source that links to it?
As much as there's somewhat of a point where a "standard, no vendor lock-in" messaging system is desirable, (RCS or otherwise), Google is the last company that should be giving anyone any sort of shit about messaging.
It’s funny the article uses blurry images as an example of broken experience and then suggests WhatsApp as an alternative, where image quality is absolutely horrendous.
Many of my friends groups stopped using WhatsApp only for this reason.
It seems like apple phones ruin photo and video quality when messaging with android too, even over third party apps like whatsapp and signal. Do they think I will run out and buy an apple phone so this doesn't happen?
Apple has no obligation to do anything. Messaging is broken on Android and it isn’t helped by Google’s stewardship. So the Android fans want Apple to swoop in and save them? No. That’s not how this works.
I'm honestly getting to the point where I want to ban sms entirely from my phone, 99% of the messages I'd receive are spam / phishing / advertising related. How does RCS solve this?
They tried so hard to make it look like a political statement. And ofc the tongue and cheek references came off as spiteful instead of productive in convincing Apple.
They don’t care, they want to make it inconvenient so we’ll all jump aboard the iShip. Until the bold image that Job’s left wears if in 30 years (give or take?) they’ll get away with it along with lightening ports and every other mediocre capitalization that makes them reminiscent of their previous cutting edge former self. Back then, their proprietarization at the very least helped drew their brand image.
Google pretending to be good guys as if there was any other major player they’d be helping out in this campaign was funny though.
This is not very smart, as apple doesn't do such things unless coerced by law. Instead , android should drop/cripple iphone support until they adopt RCS
The problem is that in the markets that use SMS and iMessage heavily (the US) Android has the minority. In general minority players have to go for interoperability, while majority players can try to force everyone else out of the market.
For me another frustrating thing when using iMessage on iPhone is that I often receive spam messages from unknown contacts, which I cannot block at all.
Click on the message thread, click on the sender at the top of the thread, select "info" for the contact, at the bottom select "block". Not obvious, I'll agree, but you can definitely block it (it should be a much shorter path). This works for iMessages and SMS.
When considering Google pushing for RCS, keep in mind Google has sabotaged MMS in Android for 10+ years due to the convenient Stagefreight bug. MMS being a practical and once widely used (for ringtones and such) content distribution channel with carrier billing out of Google's reach and ever increasing lust for sensor data that can be used for ad targeting. Think sending literature, reports, music for pennies (with greedy telcos kept in check in a regulated market).
ITT: Hundreds of iPhone users who'd rather have a shitty fallback to MMS than a better standard benefitting users of both platforms.
I don't see a single way using RCS as fallback over MMS would result in a worse experience for iMessage users. Apple users always like to complain about green messages in group chats. Why not do something simple that would fix it?
While they might sound convincing that they might mean this for everyone's good (and it might be good for everyone, this is typical of Google in GCP and elsewhere trying to force more modern experiences because "they know better" than everyone unwilling to upgrade their platform.
This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. The company that has had 47 different messaging apps and changes them weekly trying to lecture the company that nailed it first time. Grow up Google.
But isn't the request for a cross platform standard? Sure Apple got their own internal standard right, but the experience across platforms still matters.
Doesn't matter to me, I have an iPhone. But regardless of personal experience, Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android, and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging. They're not, they've just given up trying.
> "Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android" …
Sadly, some would say that they've tried and succeeded multiple times to make a "not-shit messaging app for Android" and then promptly murdered each success just as it became popular.
> … "and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging."
Yeah, this seems to be pretty much the "standard model" for most "tech giants" these days. :(
Exactly. They've positioned this as creating problems for iOS users; however, all of these items are frustrating for Android users, not the other way around.
Google can't act indignant that Apple isn't following their lead after they tried, and failed, repeatedly, to follow Apple's.
Google wanted a proprietary messaging service like iMessage for Android. They failed. They failed so many times they gave up and became champions of RCS, a standard the carriers were limping towards supporting.
Google pretending they're now champions of open standards and Apple is the big-bad meanie is ridiculous.
The article is an ad from Google. They have a vested interest.
While I'm sure there are grains of truth in the article, I'm also sure they're presented in such a way to lead you to a conclusion.
Google wants to either get access to the iMessage ecosystem or relegate it to the fringe. Because they can exert pressure on RCS, they cannot exert pressure on iMessage.
It affects them in that everytime an iPhone users text me a video I have to ask them to post it somewhere else so I can view it. The videos are so small and blurry I can never see what's happening in them. I[hone users are have unsent messages to android users without cell service which happens all the time and is confusing why some texts send and some don't and it's a function of the type of phone the receiving party has (?!)
It doesn’t. Messages fallback to SMS when I talk to my parents or friends who don’t have an iPhone and… it works. I can send text, photos, etc. and it works. Some accusations are ridiculous, like how white on green is somehow illegible compared to white on blue? Come on.
Only if "low quality blurry images and video" is your definition of "it works". Or maybe you've just never checked what the image actually looks like on the receiving phone.
It doesn't. An article written by Google for their own benefit is less of an article and actually more akin to corporate propaganda. It is not a trustworthy source.
This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service such as Signal or WhatsApp like the rest of the world has. Why are US citizens so set on having a terrible experience when messaging half of the population? How did other countries decide that using platform agnostic messaging services are better? I believe the UK has a similar split in Android/iOS users, yet they largely use WhatsApp.
In a way, it feels perfectly inline with America. We use Imperial when everyone else uses Metric. We use Fahrenheit when everyone else uses Celsius. But in this case, it's not as if our government led us down this path. The problem was entirely created by our market of users.
Ultimately, poor communication stifles society and innovation. It's in all of our best interests to improve the current situation. Sure, better alternatives such as Signal exist, but we will have to move mountains to convert everyone onto a new service. For now, I think it's best if we all apply pressure to Apple to adopt RCS. It's significantly better than where we are now, and that's a good thing.
> This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service
It makes sense if you look at the history.
For various reasons, the US was late to the party on text messaging at all. I remember back in ~2002, traveling the world and discovering people used SMS, when back home in the US it didn't really exist, at least not between different carriers.
BUT internationally, text messages were also often expensive, a few might add up to the price of a coffee.
So, as soon as data plans became a thing, it was a no-brainer for everyone internationally to switch to data-based messaging (like WhatsApp) -- it could save you like a hundred dollars a month.
On the other hand, when carriers in the US sorted out compatibility issues and SMS's became a thing later on, it was generally unlimited on most monthly plans. So people in the US never switched from SMS to data messaging because there was no financial incentive to do so, like there had been around the world.
Seen in this light, it shouldn't be hard to understand at all. It's all about whether SMS's were expensive or free when data plans became popular.
And so for most people in the US most of the time, SMS does everything you need, so why on earth would you go download a separate app? Nobody's "refusing", they're just following the path of least friction and getting on with their day.
Because of historical reasons. Americans had free texting for decades. Entire segments of phones were released dedicated to the texting experience with full keyboards. When the iphone came out it had unlimited data, but it was the exception not the norm, and it was slow as hell. People don't want to use data for something they already got for free, plus there's the whole network effect issue. Everyone has a phone number, not everyone is going to be on whatever chat platform you insisted on using. Imo I think its better this way, using this do it all technology that works on a modern phone or the flip phone my dad has, versus being reliant on whatsapp and therefore Meta.
For what it's worth all the reasons you listed also apply to the UK market, however WhatsApp dominates here so I think there's a missing piece to the puzzle.
I would guess UK has better cell coverage than the U.S. Data is too unreliable while you are out and about to be reliant on a chat app versus a text that will pretty much always reach you.
Cause it's not terrible. It still works ok the way it is, and people tend to use FB Messenger or something if they want a more complex group chat with Android users in it. Considering that they do this even if it's an all-Android chat, I don't think it's Apple's fault, as scummy as they act with SMS.
Also, people don't care for metric cause it's not better. Basing your system around the physical properties of water doesn't help for daily usage, just for some sciences and yes for nerds to feel better. For example, many digital thermostats have to add increments of 0.5 when you switch to Celsius since each degree is twice as coarse, and you can feel the difference. Put ˚F and ˚C weather forecasts side by side, and ask people which they prefer. It's a nice spread of 0-100˚F outdoors usually, and you basically don't go outside if it's not. Freeway speeds, 0-85MPH legally and 100 means trouble. Freeway miles, about 1 per minute. Feet/mile is weird, but that's cause nobody converts miles to feet; you don't care to compare say a trip distance to the height of a human.
This is such a U.S. and Europe centric view of "outdoors" that I almost spit out my coffee. And probably a small part of U.S. and Europe at that. Ask people in the tropics or subtropical regions and they probably never experienced 0˚F in their whole life.
Originally the lower defining point, 0°F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. That's just as arbitrary as defining 0˚C as the freezing point of water.
I don't mean that one small region hits 0-100˚F. That's not very common in the US or Europe either. But across all inhabited areas, 0-100˚F is pretty representative (again noting the sub-0 extremes where you're not going outside anyway). And say your area is just 60-100˚F, that's still decent, certainly better than a 22 degree range in Celsius.
I will agree that one of the few places that the imperial system is hands down better than metric is that on the highway it's roughly 1 mile per minute. That and it's just barely possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes, so makes for a nice clean time barrier. But these are just coincidences and are the exception not the rule
IMO the imperial system is full of these coincidences, and if you look at history, you can see how they emerged: from historical people changing the size of the units until they had enough useful coincidences.
A mile is about 1000 steps for a marching army, about 20 minutes of walking, or about 1 minute by car. Comfortable Farenheit temperatures roughly run from 0 to 100. A foot is about the length of a foot or a forearm, and an inch is about the length of the top joint of a thumb. 1/1000th of an inch (a "mil") is roughly the smallest discernable difference in size of objects when you look closely. People are about 6 feet tall. People weigh 100-200 lbs. The "lucky coincidences" continue. They do because they were evolved, not because they were accidents.
Contrast that with the metric system, which was built around properties of water and powers of 10 (which are not obviously better than the powers of 2 and 3 that the imperial system uses - next time you need a 1/3rd recipe you can see what I mean). It is not an accident that a day is 2x2x2x3 hours and an hour is 2x2x3x5 minutes (attempts to adopt metric time were proposed, but rejected). Neither is it an accident that a foot is 2x2x3 inches, and a mile is 2x2x2x2x2x3x5x11 feet (although I have never divided anything by 11 recently). Imperial volumetric measurements are basically binary fixed point: 1 gallon is 16 cups, and 1 cup is 16 tbsp. There are lots of historical names for the intermediate units, like quarts and furlongs, but those have evolved over a longer period of time.
For scientific use, the metric system is obviously a lot easier, and order of magnitude matters a lot more than easy divisibility and "feel" of a unit. For everyday use, I am not sold on it.
There are a few coincidences in the imperial system that make life easy. That highway driving speed is around 1 mile per minute is a pure coincidence.
Most/all of the other examples you list are pretty useless to me for daily life:
- A mile is closer to 2100 paces for me, a 6’2” guy
- 20min/mile walking is just as useful as 12min/km which is about equivalent speed
- Temps, sure it’s a nice 0-100 witch is symmetric but not much else
- 1/1000th of an inch doesn’t impact my daily life
- height and weight are similar to temperature. A pleasant range that doesn’t make anything in my life easier
- imperial volumetric measurements are actually insane and actively make my life worse. It doesn’t matter that they’re readily divisible by common numbers bc it’s impossible to remember what number to divide by to go between them.
They are coincidences since these units were created well before modern cars, but they seem to have been created with reasonable relations to human constraints, instead of water.
Everything you said about temperature is 100% true. Fahrenheit is simply better for day to day use.
I disagree with you about distance measurements. I think the relationship between millimeters, centimeters, and meters is so much better than the relationship between 1/8th inch, an inch, and a foot, that it makes up for the convenience of traveling roughly one mile per minute on the freeway.
I'm "split" on small lengths. Inches and feet were designed to divide nicely into many things, like 1/3, but the conversion is a little bothersome. Sub-inch measurements are usually expressed in fractions instead of decimals. Decimal inches are an option, but I guess that doesn't match the theme. So it's a matter of whether you want to do things in fractions or decimals, and one is probably better, but I can't tell which.
If you grow up with metric none of these assumptions apply. You learn that 0C is cold, 20C is nice and 40C is hot. At what F do you need to worry about snow? like 30ish? Metric this is 0C so there's usefulness both ways.
Whether or not you grow up with it, you have to use an extra decimal point to differentiate between noticeably different indoor temps, and you can't say "it's in the 20s" or something and know what to wear. Memorizing 32˚F for freezing is a one-time thing, which really only matters for ice. You might have snow at 40˚F or no snow at 0˚F.
Believe it or not, people don't seem to know the ˚F boiling point of water, probably cause it's just not a factor in everyday life. Your kettle whistles when it's boiling.
I can expect anyone who has a cell phone to be able to receive SMS. When I first started using a cell phone in 2007, that's all that was available. Or at least, it's all I knew that was available. Every phone I've owned since then has had the capability to use SMS, and I've never had a need to use anything else. So I don't see why I'd bother with something like Signal or WhatsApp, when there's no guarantee that the person I want to talk to will have it, and they don't offer anything I need that SMS/MMS doesn't already provide.
In many countries SMS can get expensive, especially for international use, depending on the phone billing policy. In poorer countries people often use free wifi areas for data-based messaging. Hence the popularity of WhatsApp. Even if you have a limited mobile data plan, WhatsApp uses the capacity very efficiently, so it's still affordable.
This might be news to you, but huge amounts of land in Canada and the US is still not well served by fast cell service. In those places, you often have an unreliable single bar 3G or 2G connection, and using a data heavy messenger like WhatsApp is entirely unrealistic.
A good argument I've heard is that in Europe, when people got their first mobile phone contracts, you were charged per SMS message, whereas in the US, unlimited texting was included in your plan.
The consequence of this was that in Europe, people preferred free online messaging over costly SMS.
Ah yes, whatsapp, that bastion of privacy, and not at all a messaging service that exists primarily for Meta to mine.
If everyone was on Signal, sure, but if everyone's on Whatsapp, maybe not the kind of thing to go "why don't you just do this too, why are North Americans so backward?" for something owned by what is basically still just Facebook.
Whatsapp and signal use the same encryption and the same messaging protocol.
Piece of advice: As far as tech is concerned, HN isn’t a place where you can get away with talking about things you don’t understand. You’ll far too often run up against people who have more expertise in what you write about than you have expertise brushing your teeth.
I know what I'm talking about, and I'm detecting some arrogance.
Also, it doesn't matter here, but where are you getting that WhatsApp and Signal use the same messaging protocol? Might be missing something, but I don't see that they both use XMPP, if that's what you mean.
I know what the words mean, but I don't know what the ends are doing. Facebook practically controls either end, unless users are reverse-engineering.
I also don't know what the middle is doing. Client still trusts the server to give the correct identity aka pubkey for the other clients. Server could give its own and mitm, like a corrupt root CA for TLS. Yes this requires more deliberate action on FB's part, so it's at least better than non-e2ee, but not trustless like people often claim. This issue isn't at all unique to WhatsApp.
No the middle is not trusted, that’s the whole point of end to end encryption. Users can check security keys. Also yes some people are reverse engineering clients. If you’re claiming that the whatsapp clients are backdoored and faking the end to end encryption claim that would be a pretty big news
The middle is trusted for the identity exchange and not afterwards. This is fundamental and has nothing to do with what protocol is used. If you explain to me an e2ee messaging protocol with a centralized server that you think is trustless, I can always show you a leap of faith in there.
The first time your client messages another on WhatsApp, it knows nothing other than the phone number and has to somehow go through WhatsApp to exchange keys with the other client. WhatsApp can simply fake that entire exchange. Now, WhatsApp also lets you physically visit another user and scan a QR code to verify the identity out-of-band, which escapes that "centralized server" limitation I mentioned, but few use that feature. Compare this to how HTTPS works; you trust the certificate authority unless you gather the certs yourself.
I doubt the clients are backdoored to defeat the encryption, but idk what advertising metrics they're sending or what might change in the future.
Yeah that’s end to end encryption. Like any security protocol it is based on assumptions and trust comes from somewhere. In this case trust comes from verifying each other security keys, or more meta: knowing that the incentive for the server to cheat are low as they might get caught by anyone checking and it could kill the entire product.
Companies will always act in their own best interest, that doesn't mean you should let spite get in the way of what would be a positive change for consumers. Google sucks. Apple sucks. Microsoft sucks. Unifying a broken ecosystem is a net positive regardless of which entity happens to be championing it
Feels like sort of a non issue, even the bottom of the page pushes people to apps like Whatsapp/Signal. If Google wants better iPhone messaging - can’t it just ship its solution in the App Store? Not really sure why Apple must update iMessage for Google to get what it wants.
I personally love iMessage and use it and Signal primarily - I don’t like the idea of Google dictating its feature set, especially considering its horrible messaging track record.
No, Google isn't trying to ship another messaging app. It's trying to improve the interoperability of Android and iPhone when using phone number texting. Your experience in iMessage when texting with an Android user would be improved.
I have an iPhone and friends with android. I don't have any problems texting them, nor they me. At most, this seems to be a problem for android users, and I'm skeptical because I've never really had anyone I actually know complain. Maybe we're just lucky?
This is spam for the Android operating system, nothing more.
Google claiming that RCS includes end-to-end encryption here is misleading.
Encryption got explicitly axed from the RCS spec because carriers don't like it.
The end-to-end crypto they're talking about is a custom Google thing and not part of RCS.
Friends don't let friends use unencrypted everyday communications.
Reject RCS and reject Google platform marketing.
PS: Note also that iMessage has a crypto backdoor maintained by Apple for the FBI; Google should not be encouraging iMessage to become more useful/popular, as this reduces privacy and makes people less safe.
> Note also that iMessage has a crypto backdoor maintained by Apple for the FBI
Describing iMessage as having an encryption back door is disingenuous at best. There's no known encryption back doors in iMessage. As far as can be determined iMessage is fully E2EE.
There is however a caveat that the unencrypted local messages backed up to iCloud can be turned over to LEAs/governments. This caveat holds for any unencrypted data synced to iCloud. It's no different than your e-mails sitting in your iCloud mail account. Disabling syncing of Messages with iCloud closes this hole.
Which is the same as any other E2EE system. Your OpSec is only as good as the worst OpSec as whoever you communicate with. Pretending this is an Apple issue is absurd.
Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is:
Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification. This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage. This makes it prohibitively expensive to send spam over iMessage. They have been doing so since iMessage was launched.
Android offers no such attestation that I’m aware of. Windows, on Pluton, could offer this attestation securely — and that is a key deliverable of Pluton.
It’s easy, then, to predict what Apple’s first non-Apple platform will be: Microsoft Windows 12, only if secure-booted, with Pluton-signed attestation that the kernel is unmodified. And it’s easy to predict how Apple will implement anti-spam: by applying “console” bans to specific Pluton chips by their serial number.
If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot. Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
(I recognize that this is extremely unpalatable to device hackers, but the same freedom to modify an OS kernel that hackers desire is also the freedom to spam all users, as we have seen repeatedly with all messaging software platforms operated without hardware-backed attestation for the past thirty years — including email, Jabber, and HN itself.)
(No, I do not work at Apple.)
I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
I'm not unsympathetic to Apple's difficulties and goals here (assuming this spam problem is actually the reason, though I'm skeptical that there aren't also self-serving reasons that would be sufficient for Apple), but I'm so tired of society's slide toward "security at any cost, and to hell with freedom" since the 9/11 attacks over 20 years ago.
(It's possible and likely that slide has been going on much longer, but I was a teenager in the 90s and not really aware of such things. But I think it's undeniable that the aftermath of 9/11 was a big turning point for the surveillance state and for average citizens being so scared of everything that they'd be willing to give up essential freedoms just to quell that fright.)
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
It’s really oppressive that Apple doesn’t let you install WhatsApp, Secret, Telegram, FB Messenger or any other communications app beyond their own.
While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
The points you want to raise are crucial, but this is far from the hill to die on.
Defaults matter. I too have WhatsApp, Signal, Google Chat and a few others on my phone, but the fragmentation is annoying to deal with, and getting social groups (or even individuals) to move to a single consolidating messaging platform turns out to be much more difficult than I expected.
If the default chat app is featureful and universally supported, people tend not to stray toward non-default alternatives unless they offer meaningful benefits. Sure, this ship has in many ways already sailed, since those alternative apps have a lot of mindshare and network effects.
But if Apple added RCS to its default messaging app (or if Google were permitted to add iMessage support to its default messaging app), I would ditch everything else and just message everyone (including groups) using the default Android Messages app, relying on it to select the best non-SMS/non-MMS contact method for everyone, regardless of platform.
Sure, it would take a little more work to move messaging groups over, but the cool thing is that I could just do it myself, and not wait for my friends to download yet another messaging app. This is the problem I ran into when I wanted to get friends off of WhatsApp; I had to convince people to install something else, and not everyone felt like doing it. But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
> While it’s all sweetness and light that Google got into bed with the phone carriers to develop this new “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Just wanted to call this out as FUD. RCS existed as a standard long before Google was involved (nearly a decade?). I too don't love that it's tied to a phone number, but options for doing this well are limited, and building a second, parallel identity system has its own issues. RCS at least can be federated, and it'd be possible to allow phone users to choose their own provider. And in practice, phone number portability means you aren't stuck with the crappy choice of ditching your "identity", or sticking with a phone provider you hate.
Not sure how iMessage or WhatsApp or Google Chat or Signal is any better, though, as they're all controlled by a single company that requires you to use their identity system.
Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch.
Bottom line is iMessage works really well and people like it. Same with FB messenger and Whatsapp. You want to move friends to something else? There needs to be a selling point much larger than just security.
> Perhaps you're missing the point though? Maybe your friends simply don't care enough to switch.
Right, I mean, that's exactly the point. I can't force someone else to install a messaging app I'd prefer to use. But if we had an actually-good, cross-platform messaging standard that was implemented in the default, stock messaging app of both Android and iOS, I would not have to depend on my friends caring or not. I could just use it, and know that they will receive the messages.
> But if we had an actually-good, cross-platform messaging standard that was implemented in the default, stock messaging app…
For billions of people that default is WhatsApp and installing it is as much a part of setting up your phone as is plugging in a SIM.
> that default is WhatsApp and installing it is as much a part of setting up your phone as is plugging in a SIM
You missed out the bit where you sign your soul over to Mark Zuckerberg.
Regular people don’t realise or care, they just want to be where their friends are.
Regular people don’t think giving up some privacy is the same as selling your soul…
For billions of people that default is WeChat/WeiXin and installing it is as much a part of setting up their phone as is plugging in a SIM.
I can safely know that any phone made today will have SMS/MMS capability, and nothing about WhatsApp/WeChat/Messenger/Telegram/...etc
The problem with moving groups over to iMessage is that you'll always leave some Android users out. Here in Spain Apple has a minority marketshare so that makes iMessage a total non-starter. But even in the US not everyone has an iPhone.
And really iMessage is not so much better than the cross-platform alternatives that it's worth leaving some friends out.
iMessage is kinda both its own messenger and SMS client. So when you text a number, I don't think you have a choice of how to send it. If the user is "Apple" it sends as an imessage, if not message, it turns the bubble green (so you know its SMS). Though in the epic trial Apple sees messaging as a "lock in feature"
" In another exchange, Apple executives discussed in 2013 whether releasing a version of iMessage for Android would make it easier to switch phone brands. iMessage is still exclusive to Apple products.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/epic-games-v-apple-trial-app...
> The problem with moving groups over to iMessage is that you'll always leave some Android users out.
I'm on several text chains with a mix of iOS and Android users. It works fine.
I think maybe your idea of “fine” differs from mine. It is a much worse experience than iMessage.
1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.
2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”
3. Photos are reduced to a size that fits in MMS (very low quality)
4. Videos look like postage stamps
5. The chat cannot be renamed or have a photo added
6. Members cannot be added or removed without starting a new group (conversation)
7. No message effects
There may be others, but this is off the top of my head.
We can disagree and still be friends.
> 1. No threading is supported. If you reply, it duplicates the message being replied to.
Threading (using "Reply") is not supported in mixed iMessage/SMS/MMS text chains. (I'm using iOS 16, so this may have been (unwisely) supported in earlier Message versions.)
> 2. “Tapbacks” (reactions) duplicate the message being reacted to with “so-and-so likes message … message”
You can now see iPhone tapbacks on Android phones in Google Messages. I'm not sure if it's on defaultly yet. https://www.macworld.com/article/610908/google-messages-andr...
The other things you list are limitations and side-effects of the standards used. They're valid, but I consider the experience "fine" without them. If the groups I text with cared about these we would probably use WhatsApp since everyone has that. Signal would be my preference, but it's hard to change people's habits.
Didn’t know about Tapback support on Android. Wish iOS had that support for non-iMessage chats!
I think the point I want to stress is that when everyone uses iMessage, it’s as easy as texting, but just about as good as WhatsApp/etc. from a feature/user experience point of view.
Agree that we can be friends. Hopefully my comment wasn’t seen as adversarial. I just get annoyed when I see the green text bubbles, because people try to use iMessage features and it’s just bad. Non-techies don’t realize it’s different because it’s the same app, but then wonder why photos aren’t high resolution, or things don’t work as expected.
But that uses MMS which many networks here (Europe) don't support anymore, or they charge a hefty fee (even though big SMS bundles are still a thing here). Especially for international use.
I didn't realise it was still used in the US though.
MMS definitely doesn't work on my phone, though I'm not sure if this is a provisioning/settings thing or that the provider has abandoned it. I never really looked into it as I've never needed it. I just tested it once to see if it worked.
I send international MMSes from my phone(android) to my mum's iphone, from UK to Poland, and it seems to work fine. Hasn't bankrupted me yet either(I just checked and it's apparently 30 pence per text).
MMS are 50p for me, that too much to use in the same way SMS are used.
Those aren’t iMessage group chats if they’re using SMS/MMS.
They are SMS/MMS sent from iMessage. It automatically falls back on SMS/MMS when you message someone who is not signed into iMessage.
You are conflating iMessage the service with "Messages" the app. An iMessage is definitionally not an SMS/MMS.
> But everyone already has the default messaging app installed, so that problem just goes away.
Okay, so let's say Apple implements RCS support. Should they support the version of RCS that the carriers want? The version Google implemented? Are they now going to be required to implement support for proprietary Google extensions? Will they have to run their own RCS servers because carriers don't support this version of RCS?
RCS is a fragmented mess. It's dead in the water. This noise is just Google flailing about after having binned yet another one of their messaging platforms. Personally I don't care what Apple does here. I still want SMS support for when I'm in an area with little/no data coverage and I'm still going to treat RCS with the same disdain I'd treat any unencrypted messaging platform.
They should implement the version (and extensions) that gives them interoperability with the most users. Which, yes, would probably be whatever Google implemented, including the E2EE extensions. This... isn't really hard?
> They should implement the version (and extensions) that gives them interoperability with the most users
They already have that, with SMS. Perhaps you only exchange messages with people in rich countries so don’t notice what is most commonly implemented by carriers?
Why should Apple (or anyone) be on the hook for implementing proprietary extensions? Once you peel back the marketing schtick this is just demanding that Google be able to determine which proprietary services are included on an Apple product. That's ridiculous on its face.
If the issue is interoperability with Android users, fine. Google had successful messaging apps on iOS (I used a few) and they destroyed them through their own mismanagement. RCS doesn't solve that in the slightest.
> This... isn't really hard?
If you want E2EE the demand is now that Apple spin up its own Google-RCS servers and/or rely on Google's infrastructure. If you want Apple to rely on the carriers you don't get E2EE. Rather than work with the carriers Google fragmented RCS making implementation that much more difficult.
At the end of the day, what we need is interop, so Apple should be forced to either open the protocol, or adopt something that is already open. But either option is strictly better than the existing mess.
It's easy to say that if Apple bent to the will of the carriers the iPhone would never have been as good as it is. But look at RCS, Google had to stand up their own infrastructure because the carriers weren't cutting it.
It's not that RCS is not the right product it's that RCS is the wrong approach entirely. Even in the United States Android is wildly popular. They've had every opportunity to create a wildly popular messaging platform and have failed. Google killed their own products as a result of their internal culture. This isn't Netscape vs IE again, it's more like Mosaic vs Gopher (or AOL vs Netscape if you like).
I was going to write "as much as I'd like to see non-Apple devices brought into the iMessage fold" but then I realized that's not true. I don't care because I'd just use Signal. In fact I still use Signal with some friends that have iPhones. RCS wouldn't change that, it'd either be one more shitty carrier product to avoid or one more shitty Google product that's going to get killed in a few months.
>or adopt something that is already open
Like SMS?
Obviously we're talking about something more modern than SMS here.
The problem is none of the 'more modern' open alternatives to SMS actually seem any better.
How exactly RCS is not strictly better than SMS?
Turn that on its head. What does RCS bring to the table? RCS brings two types of features: those that carriers will try to monetize (file transfer, VoIP, visual voice mail) and those that seek to drive "customer engagement" (chatbots, carousels, branding, quick-reply suggestions, "rich" cards).
From the Wikipedia page:
No. Thanks. As I said, I don't really care if Apple implements RCS support in their Message app. If they do it's just one more thing I'll disable.My take is that carriers should be dumb pipes. Voice, SMS, and data routing and that's it. Part of the reason RCS is already fragmented is because the carriers are trying to monetize it, you can bet your ass they're going to continue to drag their feet with E2EE – which is why Google's stood up their own separate RCS infrastructure.
Even just fixing group chats alone is a big deal.
Didn't Google Talk, Google Chat, Google Hangouts, and Google Meet all support group chats? Didn't Google Talk even allow for federation?
The problem with RCS as a solution is that you're either going to rely on the carriers or Google and Apple to host infrastructure. Requiring Apple to implement support for Google (hosted) products is ridiculous as Apple already lists Google chat apps in their app store. Requiring Apple to host their own servers to interoperate with Google's services is also ridiculous because again Apple already provides software to interoperate with Google's chat services.
Requiring Apple to support RCS so their users can leverage carrier hosted RCS is also ridiculous because that's a fancy way of saying Apple should be required to monetize their users for the carriers' benefit. Per the Wired article linked to MMS was created solely to extract money from their users (or as Wired put it to "collect a fee every time anyone snaps a photo"). I'm sure most folks who are old enough remember when SMS (which literally consumes no additional bandwidth) was a paid feature, does everyone remember when MMS cost even more than a plain SMS?
RCS may not be a cash grab by Google, but they certainly haven't had any luck in getting the carriers to implement customer friendly features. Another lowest common denominator "standard" like RCS isn't an improvement at all, especially not in the face of the freely available, cross platform messaging apps.
What does RCS theoretically bring to the group chat table?
File transfers? Google's gonna mine them or carriers will charge exorbitant storage/transfer/viewing fees.
E2EE? Carriers don't, Google does.
Tapback? Meh.
Typing indicators? Really?
International communication? You're gonna pay…
> What does RCS theoretically bring to the group chat table?
Interoperability.
In addition to having to implement E2EE on their own, Google's had to start paring back key RCS features like ads.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/04/google-disables-rcs-ads-in...
The default chat app and the technical merit dosn't matter. What matters is what people we want to chat with. Most of my friends and groups are on WhatsApp. Some prefer to use Telegram, me too. A very few living outside the country use FB Messenger. Nobody use SMS unless for emergencies, if they think the recipient has no data connection. RCS is totally unknown. If I say RCS somebody will ask me "the newspaper company?"
Making people switch is possible (use Telegram to chat with me), making a group switch is impossible as there is always at least one person that doesn't want to install a new app or can't (phones with tiny storage.) Anything else is irrilevant in my country. There are probably some friends of mine using iMessage when chatting with somebody they know to have an iPhone. They still to have to use WhatsApp to chat with everybody else.
Matrix solved federated messaging already
Is Matrix built into the default, stock messaging apps of Android and iOS? No, it's not, so it does not solve the problem I've posed in any useful way.
(Beyond that, I've found the usability of Matrix on both desktop and mobile to be atrocious.)
Yes, it does. It could easily be the backend of the messaging apps without you noticing any difference
Not fully encrypted yet though, not even if everyone opts into encryption.
And if we want to be technical XMPP was before that and it was federated by some large networks, however briefly.
Of course fully encrypted
As of 2021-08 that doesn't appear to be the case
> It however turned out that although the content of the message is encrypted, there is still a lot of user identifiable data that is not encrypted and can be seen by potential attackers.[0]
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266628172...
The amount of required metadata to maintain federation is very small. Some matrix instances operate in this minimalist or near minimalist domain, but in my experience, getting folks to share their custom forks of matrix requires some social schmoozing.
For better or worse, much of the fediverse is made up of small enclaves of hyper-paranoid tech weirdos who have often reinvented the wheel over and over, each in their own little group, which is a big problem for the casual person who wants to toss a server on a home server for friends and family.
And I say this as one of these hyper-paranoid tech weirdos. The network's growth is immensely stifled by the fact that people aren't keen on sharing, or building user friendly tools for the normies.
Message content can be fully end-to-end encrypted. Federation needs some unencrypted metadata. Some of it can be reduced, but some will be needed for federation to work. Signal probably needs less unencrypted metadata, but you lose federation.
Please encrypt user identifiable data like the recipient of a message such that only the recipient can read it
As did email with PGP before it /sarcasm off
> “standard” tied to a phone number subscription that brings along all the retrograde privacy nightmares of Big Telecom since the bell system broke up.
Is there a way to make an account with Apple that isn't tied to a mobile phone number? If so, I've never been able to find it.
You don't need an Apple ID to use iMessage. Just an Apple device.
Uh, don't you need an Apple ID to activate an iPhone?
Nope, you can just click skip. If the device had previously been enrolled in Find My iPhone you have to log back in to turn it off, but if it’s fresh out of the box you don’t have to hook it to iCloud/iTunes at all (and that’s not uncommon to block in corporate environments).
Not on my end, no skip button.
Not sure what device you’re on but every iphone I’ve set up I’ve (at least initially) skipped signing in. It’s not hidden or subtle or anything (especially compared to latest windows OS), it’s a big Skip link. The main downside is you can’t install any apps, and in my experience iMessage does NOT work until you log in with apple ID, just SMS/MMS.
Could be country specific..
True, or carrier lock specific if it involves activation. I would be surprised by this though, and deeply dislike the idea.
Phone still works without an ID. No idea if this means that you can only send SMS messages though.
I’m not logged in I can send iMessages and FaceTime, seems to link it to the phone number though.
It does.
The question was about phone numbers, not apple id.
You need a phone number for Apple ID, don't you?
Using iMessage requires an Apple ID. The Messages app on iPhones supports both SMS/MMS and iMessage because it’s a phone and needs to support SMS. But without being signed into an Apple ID on the device the Messages app only handles SMS/MMS, i.e., green chat bubbles.
That isn't true. You can use iMessage without an Apple ID on a phone. It uses your phone number. I promise you of this.
Yes, but if you don't have an Apple ID, the iMessage app will use SMS/MMS, not the proprietary encrypted Apple messaging protocol. This can be tested easily: send a message to another Apple user: it will arrive as a green SMS message, not a blue Apple messaging message.
iMessage without an appleid is just SMS…
Promise all you want, but in the US you can’t activate an iPhone without an Apple ID. Yes, you can set iMessage to only send/receive iMessages using your phone number. However, you cannot set it up in the first place without an Apple ID.
https://www.macworld.com/article/673831/how-to-use-an-iphone...
> You don't need an Apple ID to use iMessage. Just an Apple device.
Has Apple fixed the bug where it wasn't relinquishing your phone number and blackholing all iMessages which were supposed to be downgraded to SMS instead?
Years ago, yes: https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
In the past, AppleIDs could be created with only email address, and not phone numbers. I see that the current account creation step requires a phone number for verification via SMS/phone call.
That said, I don't believe you need to use that phone number for messaging – an email address is used as the contact information when messaging with iMessage. This is especially important for iPads/iPod Touches and Macs, which most don't have a cell phone number.
Only in US region. You can make Ukraine region Apple IDs without a phone number still.
> It’s really oppressive that Apple doesn’t let you install WhatsApp, Secret, Telegram, FB Messenger or any other communications app beyond their own.
They fully control those app's access to their store; Apple has full say over which communication apps you install on your iPhone, full-stop.
You say this like it is a bad thing. I used Signal, which is an open-source messaging app. If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that.
There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and security. Google, thus far, takes neither seriously. Google routinely sells your data (including location data, active timestamps for all apps, what you search for, the list goes on), and it routinely has malware show up on the play store. If Google could fix those issues and stop also murdering their various applications every year, maybe they'd be able to compete.
While it may sound like I have a hard-on for Apple products, I really do love Android, I just hate Google.
> There are many reasons many IT folks actually prefer an iPhone over Android. The two biggest ones are privacy and security.
I've been downvoted to hell for it before, but I'll add mine to this list because I don't _think_ it's all that uncommon either: I don't want another PC to administer and support.
I've had a lot of Android phones over the years (started with the ADP1!). Taking my last one as an example--it stopped receiving updates way too soon. Once apps started breaking, I ended up updating it by putting LineageOS on it. But then my camera never worked right again because apparently there's a driver issue. One time I updated and my microphone stopped working in phone calls so I had to wipe the thing and install an older OS on it...
You know what that sounds like to me these days? _Work_. That's literally the same sort of stuff I'm doing all friggin' day. Between work and my kid I'm lucky if I've got a couple hours a day to portion out to chores around the acreage and maybe whatever I could do ostensibly for fun. The last thing I want is to be obligated to work more because my damn phone is being a PC and doing PC things.
The fact that it's not customizable, not open, and just generally an appliance _is a feature to me_. My five year old phone is still receiving regular updates. I install them, it keeps working. I can't mess with it (and and up breaking things) even if I want to. I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone. If anything ever does go wrong, I don't need to fix it because I _can't_, reimage the phone if that doesn't work then well you're screwed.
Basically, I treat it the same way I do a toaster. It does what it does, there's a single big knob that makes my options clear. If that knob can't make it do what I want then I either learn to live with it or find another toaster. It's never gonna cook a steak for me, and that's fine. I'd rather not have steak or use another device to cook my steak than shun the toaster and try and pan-fry myself toast every morning.
I pay a premium to get an appliance instead of a PC because I _want_ an appliance. I'm happy I can outsource all the decisions and work and keep the brain space free. Sorry if I'm contributing to the downfall of society and freedom or whatever, but I just don't have the time to do anything else anymore.
The big difference between a toaster and your phone is that the phone gets updates. Which, aside from fixing things, also do stuff like change UI. On Android, when Google comes up with some new inane idea for the launcher, I can at least install a different one. On iOS, when Apple does the same, I don't really have a choice other than to go along with it.
> On iOS, when Apple does the same, I don't really have a choice other than to go along with it.
Part of my original comment:
> I don't have to think about how I want the phone to work because it just works the Apple way and if I don't like it I can just get a different phone.
That's a feature to me. I don't spend any brainspace when I'm using my phone on thinking about things that annoy me or things that could be better. Launcher sucks? Does it suck bad enough to make me switch platforms? No? Then it's not worth worrying about any further and so I won't.
When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.
You're perfectly welcome to have good defaults, but how do those conflict with allowing people to use third-party messaging apps and letting people customize their phone? Your comment isn't a refutation of the argument you're replying to.
> When I used Android, knowing I _could_ fix those annoyances meant I _did_ fix those annoyances. That's just not something important for me to be spending my time on, but I know I will if put in that situation.
The more important difference between my phone and my (non-existent) toaster is, that the toaster won't be connected to any networks (beside the wall-power outlet). While the phone is connected to various outside networks and has a generic computer inside.
You can refuse upgrade on iOS. Apple provides security fixes for some time.
> If Apple were censoring messaging apps I would agree with your seemingly negative sentiment, however, as someone who has pushed out apps to the Apple and Mac app stores, I can say they absolutely do not do that.
Perhaps not in your country, but they've certainly done it before - censoring Telegram in both Russia[0] and Iran[1], for example.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/telegram-apple... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/world/middleeast/iran-tel...
What’s to stop governments banning RCS?
The fact that more secure alternatives are freely available, and by sabotaging SMS/iMessage they would be losing their wiretap on the nation's text messages?
Are you really suggesting governments requiring those apps be banned from distribution in their jurisdictions shares the context of the post you're replying to?
Yes. As for some other mobile OSs I'm not required to comply with whatever is on their official store, and can just install an app from a different source.
> You say this like it is a bad thing.
It has been a bad thing for me because iOS decided to get me off Whtasapp and forced me using the much worse Apple message system without me having any say in it.
I have a SE and a relatively older iOS version on it, can't remember exactly which one. I don't have internet banking and don't have very much of a financial presence online, and, as such, I don't care that much about security on my phone (hence the older iOS version).
Some time ago I had checked the "offload apps"in case of full disk" option or something like that, with the implicit understanding, from my part, that I could "reload" any of those apps once I would have made enough space available (usually by deleting some older videos and photos). One of those offloaded apps was Whatsapp.
It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore. Whatsapp doesn't support my iOS version anymore, hence I cannot "reload" it, hence I cannot use it anymore. Trying to install the exact Whatsapp "version" that used to worked perfectly fine on my phone is, of course, impossible. This is very unsatisfactory for me.
And back to the subject at hand, of course that Apple can't hold a candle when it comes to more mature messaging systems like Whatsapp (I haven't used Telegram and Signal). The "upload photos" experience in iMessage is day and night worse and less intuitive compared to Whatsapp. I also don't know if iMessage has any builtin groups and, even if it were to have, it would be of no use to me because more than half of my friends and acquaintances don't own an iPhone so they can't use iMessage.
I’ve been able to download apps that require newer OSes on iPhone. If I have downloaded it before, it lets me download the last compatible version. Is this not the case with WhatsApp or somethinh
Yes, I have the “cloud”-y thingie close to the WhatsApp icon, meaning is offloaded. When clicking on the item to “load” it again it tries to do just that, only to give me a “Unable to download” message (or something similar) a few seconds later. I’ve tried searching for the app directly in the AppStore, I cannot find it anymore, presumably because of that older iOS I have running. Forgot to mention, the same happened to me with the Google Maps (?!) app also last year or so.
> It turns out I cannot "reload" any of those offloaded apps if any one of them doesn't support my iOS version anymore.
You can – unless the application publisher decides to disable this. It sounds like Facebook disabled your ability to install an older version of WhatsApp that supports the version of iOS you are running. All it would take for this to work for you is for somebody at Facebook to tick a single box that allows their users to do this.
Got it. So it’s a shared blame between Apple de facto uninstalling one of the few installed apps I was using on a regular basis and FB not allowing their app to run on iOS versions that are approaching their estimated end-of-life.
Not sure how that helps users like me, but had you told me 20+ years ago that this was going to be “the state of the art” when it comes to app management (by two of the biggest tech companies in the world) I would have called you crazy. And I was a Windows 2000 user back in those days.
It’s also funny that, in a way, the WhatsApp app was the one that nuked itself. The “full storage” issue had been caused by some of my friends sending constant photos and videos of their cats (and one guinea pig) via WhatsApp, storage gets full, iOS decides to offload the WhatsApp app, I get left out of the app once I’m not allowed to “reload” it anymore. Again, crazy to think that this is the state of the art in app management.
Apple (like Google) gets to decide what the pain points are in their ecosystem, so likewise they also get to peddle the solution.
"Want to sideload apps? No problem, just pay us $99/year for temporary installation privileges!"
"Want to sell your app? Here, just give us 30% of your proceeds."
"Running out of storage? Here's a red-dot notification in your Settings app begging you to pay for iCloud."
I don't think any of these companies will (or should) get out of this antitrust litigation unscathed. The amount of control all of these platform-holders exert is unreasonable, and unless the government steps in we're helpless to stop it.
GrapheneOS.org
Apple also collects timestamps for app usage (iOS and MacOS), tracks Spotlight usage and tracks your iPhone with Find My by default. This insidious behavior is widespread, and saying it's only Google's issue is comically hypocritical. Malware is a rampant issue on both operating systems, both iOS 16 and Android 12 have zero-click exploits that allow completely rooted control of the device.
I'd argue Google competes just fine. If you hate Google, then use AOSP or an AOSP-derived OS; there's not a drop of Google, Apple or anyone code out of the box. Of course, I'd wager that 'privacy and security' don't matter as much to IT folks as brand-loyalty or ease-of-use, so it's all a bit of a moot point in the end. Arguing that either of these OSes is more secure than the other is a bad comedy routine; they're both being spied on by PRISM, they're both vulnerable to NSO Pegasus.
> Apple also collects timestamps for app usage (iOS and MacOS), tracks Spotlight usage and tracks your iPhone with Find My by default
Hmm, as I understand it:
"Timestamps for app usage": notarization checks happen the first time you start a new app, basically like OCSP to enable certificate revocation: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/gatekeeper-and-runt... I dislike online validation and would prefer a revocation list. I also dislike syspolicyd's perpetual, repeated, and CPU-hungry anti-malware scanning. Installing Xcode or enabling developer mode allows pointless online checks to be turned off for scripts in Terminal at least.
"tracks spotlight usage": Siri suggestions https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/siri-suggestions... I usually turn this off.
"Find My": a feature that allows you to go to icloud.com and locate your iPhone if it is lost, and also creates its own ad hoc network for finding iPhones. Probably that involves location information. I usually turn this off.
What I'd like to know is: Is there any evidence that Apple is retaining this information and using it for other purposes, for example to build user-specific profiles for advertising the way Google or Facebook might?
> What I'd like to know is: Is there any evidence that Apple is retaining this information and using it for other purposes
Sure; all sorts of data leaves your iPhone in the form of encrypted channels to Apple servers, whether you have telemetry/analytics enabled or not. When you fully power-down your iPhone with Find My disabled, your Baseband modem is still sending and receiving information from nearby cell towers. Apple has created conduits specifically for harvesting and retaining this data, they wouldn't collect it all if this wasn't the case.
Oh, and if you still don't believe me, you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them. There is nothing besides marketing that suggests Apple has a commitment to privacy or security.
> There is nothing besides marketing that suggests Apple has a commitment to privacy or security
That is not what I hear from people who work there.
> you should look into some of the more recent PRISM revelations (eg. how iMessage and Find My can be used by law enforcement), or the ways that the CCP uses the data Apple collects for them
I'd be interested in references/citations if you have them.
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices, and cripple a bunch of critical applications if I decide I want to, y'know, actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
Egads, no. The abuse heaped on me by Apple pales in comparison to the spam phone calls and emails I get. If I start getting spam via iMessage, I'll be an extremely unhappy camper. It already happens with text messages and that's bad enough.
Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam, so I guess you've just been lucky? And it shows that this attestation junk doesn't actually curb the spam problem, so it's just an analogue of security theater.
Anyhow, sure, if you want to give away your freedom to actually own your devices, just so you don't get spam... I guess that's your choice. I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Regardless, iPhones also receive SMSes. If it's impossible to spam over iMessage, they'll just use SMS. If it becomes impossible to spam over SMS, then presumably Apple can implement similar measures for iMessage that don't require us all to have hermetically-sealed, locked-down devices.
> Sounds like other people in this thread already get a lot of iMessage spam
Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send. They're getting SMS spam.
> I just don't want to be locked into a system where that's the only choice.
Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices. My contacts are sync'd between them, calendar, mail, all of it just works either way. Only reason I'm back on iPhone right now is because the churn (and by extension, TCO) is significantly lower. If the calculus changes on that, I'll jump ship again, no big deal.
> Who's locked in? I can and have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android devices.
The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world. And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
> The cost to switch is not trivial for most of the world.
Why not?
> And the cost of iPhones is high compared to the alternatives.
Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
> Why not?
Because iPhones and Androids of comparable quality are not cheap. And many people don't know how to move their data and photos among devices regardless.
> Given that the discussion is about switching from Apple being hard, this seems like the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
You said you switched back and forth repeatedly. I was responding to that, since I view it as a luxury not everyone can afford. And folks who've sold an organ to get a blue bubble may have some sunk-cost fallacy to overcome even if they're only going from Apple to anything else.
> Same folks who didn't realize that all messages show up in the same color, the blue bubbles only happen when you send.
Doesn't seem that's the case. Folks have followed up confirming that the messages are coming over iMessage, and not SMS.
The spammers mass send an sms spoofing a number that has iMessage. When you reply, it goes to an iPhone in the spammers hand. That way they don’t have to navigate millions of messages on the phone. Using things like blue bubbles, they can even interact via api and use a cms
Did you think”no spam ever” was the pitch? Then you misunderstood.
iMessage users don't get spam from other iMessage users. Also, iMessage lets you filter out 'known' and 'unknown' senders. Apple also will automatically flag/block certain messages if they are clearly spam.
> iMessage lets you filter out 'known' and 'unknown' senders
Nitpick, that's not an iMessage feature, but at "Messages" feature -- the app. The filtering applies to both iMessage and SMS.
Apparently PRISM has not been a wake up call.
What do people need ? Apple coming and killing their cat ?
Even knowingly using child labor wasn't enough [0] - or people just don' know about it, so spread the word please. This is how Apple actually care about children unlike what their PR says [1].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309202
> I'd rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices,
Why do you present this as a binary choice?
Why do I need to suffer at the whims of your wants and needs? Why are you so hellbent on advertising your opinion in this binary manner? Don’t like iMessage? Use something else. Nobody is stopping you. Why do you feel compelled to bring the conversation back to this weirdly obsessed and diluted dilemma where you see a first party solution and start kicking and screaming incessantly
> rather live in a world with spam than a world where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices
So use Android! I have friends with Android. We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!
This thread is about a hypothetical situation where Apple allows iMessage on other platforms (such as Android), but only on platforms that can securely attest that they have not been modified.
Yes, I use Android, but would like to also be able to interoperate with iMessage. But I don't want to be stuck in a (for now hypothetical) state where I have to choose between using iMessage and being able to do what I want with my phone.
> We use WhatsApp abroad and SMS at home. The messages are green and I can't tapback. That's it!
SMS has ordering, latency, and delivery issues. You also cannot send media over SMS, and MMS has size limits for media that were set decades ago. Any video you send over MMS will be recompressed to the point where it'll be unwatchable. SMS also does not support group chats. MMS does, but delivery and message ordering issues are even worse there, and group chats are inflexible; for example you can't add new people to an existing group chat, or remove existing people.
I do use WhatsApp, grudgingly, for some people who refuse to switch to something else, but I'd like to reduce my reliance on things owned by Meta/Facebook.
But group chats don't work over SMS. That's a big deal-breaker IMO.
> group chats don't work over SMS
I have multiple group chats running with mixtures of iPhone and Android users.
You're using MMS for those group chats, not SMS.
Yes indeed, and some networks here in Europe don't support MMS anymore.
I'm pretty sure ive had group chat work over SMS in australia, much to my dismay.
It was probably MMS, not SMS. SMS does not support group chat, but MMS does.
> I'd rather live in a world with spam […]
That is a personal choice, and I choose to not have spam on my phone. Several months ago I was subjected to a floodgate of good ol' fashioned SMS spam that lasted several weeks. There was no way to stop the spam because the phone was receiving it through the legacy SMS channel coming specifically from Android devices infected with Flubot; the bulk of spam now comes from unpatched Android devices because hardware vendors stop releasing security updates after a short cycle, or due to loose default app permissions set on the device. I ended up creating a support ticket with my mobile telco and soon I received the following reply from a human being:
> … where corporations get to decide what I run on my devices …Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users. If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
The corporations, good or bad or anything in between, must be bound by the code of conduct they ought not to be allowed to get out from: must request the explicit user consent first.
> That is a personal choice, and I choose to not have spam on my phone.
The problem here is that we are talking about a (possible, hypothetical) measure that blocks spam, but requires phones to be 100% locked down and unmodified from the factory. I categorically refuse to accept that sort of thing. If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state. Your shitty telco is actually fully capable of blocking spam like what you've received, but they have chosen not to.
> Corporations, such as Google, make decisions for users without getting their consent nor without informing the users.
Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone.
I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable. If I want to use Google Docs or whatever, they will make decisions about how my data is used, and what features are present in the product, etc. I accept that, and am ok with that. But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
> If you sign into a Google account in a web browser on your phone, for instance, the sign-in will also silently and non-consentually sign you into your Google account across all Google apps installed on the device without informing you.
Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
> The problem here is […] I categorically refuse to accept that sort of thing.
It is a perceived problem specifically for you (and, based on the arguments presented so far, it appears to solely based on the personal dislike rather than on objective grounds). If you refuse to accept it, that is solely your personal choice, and I, for one, have no objections to you being able to exercise freedoms to make your own choice(s).
> If you will accept that, then you are a part of the problem.
You have neither moral nor any other right to inflict the sense of collective guilt upon anyone, including myself, who has an opinion distinct from that of yours. What is an adjudged problem for you, is a feature (and not a bug) for some, and is a conscious compromise for some others. I am in the latter category as I have consciously consented to the trade-off after weighing up pros and cons of alternatives existing at the time – it became my personal informed choice.
> In reality, though, there are plenty of ways to combat spam that do not require us to have locked-down phones …
Combating text message spam requires a non-trackable, universal digital identity which is a non-solved problem. SMS and RCS do not solve this problem as they both allow a digital identity to assume one persona exactly: the device owner's phone number. iMessage, o the other hand, offers a stop-gap solution and allows iMessage users to assume one of the many personas (either a default phone number or one of the email addresses registered with iMessage), and it allows the user to select the specific persona on their own volition. Countering spam is a bonus and optional feature that comes as a byproduct of the iMessage way of tackling the identity management, and is not a requirement. Allowing multiple personas in iMessage also allows the user to disassociate themselves from their phone number, change it however frequently they want yet allow their friends circle and relatives to stay in touch via another persona (email address(es) registered with iMessage) – a useful feature when the iMessage user moves to live overseas.
A successful and a badly needed replacement for SMS (the protocol) will have to solve the identity management problem (as well as a morass of present SMS and RCS security vulnerabilities) first before it can become a viable option. And only then, it will have to be pushed out in a centralised manner (e.g. become a mandatory requirement for all 6G or 7G networks) so that no mobile telco would have a chance to opt out from the text messaging protocol upgrade. The adopotion of such a standard will take years, though, as users won't instantly upgrade their devices overnight, so the interoperability between GSM and new style text messages for some time will look exactly like it does today between SMS and iMessage.
As for Google crying foul on not being to interoperate with iMessage, in reality they are shedding crocodile tears and are not telling you what they actually mean by that. Google wants to track every text message to a user across both major mobile platforms (Android and iOS) AND beyond, which is something they can't do today. SMS does not offer a unique transferrable digital ID (other than IMSI which gets incised out once a message hits the SMSC), therefore Google can't link the user to activities on their smartphone to wider activities across all of their devices and the web as mobile phone numbers are not typically used for web browsing and in general app use.
Apple controls the passage of the Rubikon (iMessage) that, once crossed, would instantaly allow Google to find a creative way to track users, so Google wants that (in the same vein as Facebook does). Yet, Google is being coy about their true intentions.
> I get that they make other random decisions for us. Sure, that's inevitable … and move closer and closer to a corporate nanny state.
I vehemently and vociferously object to corporations encroaching on our larger freedoms, and, regretfully, strict regulation and even stricter enforcement of the regulation appears to be the only way to accomplish it.
> Sure, but at present I can wipe my phone and install GrapheneOS or CalyxOS or whatever, and Google will not be able to make any decisions as to what I do on my phone […] But if I'm sold a piece of general-purpose hardware, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it.
To the best of my knowledge, nearly no-one (apart from Librem) sells general-purpose smartphones today. Each offering comes with a host of pros and cons, yet none of them are neither marketed nor sold as the general-purpose computing hardware.
Also, the option of wiping an OS is not ubiquitous on Android platforms and some handsets have the hardware that stock and alternative Android distribution may or may not support. Therefore, there is no such a thing as a generic Android phone which is what the majority of Android users have. And no, since you are part of the HN congregation, you are not a representative selection of the Android user base.
Apple, on the other hand, sells a package that happens to have a smartphone (or a smartwatch, or a tablet) and an OS (as a conduit into the package), and the nicely wrapped package has well stipulated constraints that one either takes or leaves. Purchasing an iPhone is not mandatory in any jurisdictions that I am aware of, either, therefore an the act of puchasing one is also a personal and conscientious choice.
> Maybe if you use Chrome, but... I don't. So that doesn't happen to me.
Ha, the classic «it does not happen on my laptop!» remark.
Sarcasm aside, it is more insidious than that. I had to log into Google using my work Google account in Safari on my laptop, but because Safari syncs the browser cookies and local storage across devices via iCloud (it is another feature I have consciously consented to), the Google account cookies have made it into my phone via an iCloud sync. Next time when I opened Google Maps on my phone, it pulled the Google cookie + stuff out of the Safari local storage, and I was then instantly and silently logged into Google using my work Google account (I degoogled myself years ago in favour of paid 3rd party services and no longer personal Google accounts). Such a practice, apart from being blatantly deceitful, is borderline nefarious, so, with all due respect, I do not buy into Google's crocodile tears about iMessage.
I think the thing you're missing is that the spam countermeasure we're talking about relies on the sender's phone being locked down, not the recipient's. If spammers can get around this by just using non-locked-down phones, the whole thing is pointless. It only works if you require everyone's phone to be locked down.
That is why I mentioned the universal/global, non-trackable digital identity as a solution and a posion pill for the locked down device. Such a digital identity has to be decentralised, resistant to ID theft attacks and a wide range of other attack vectors and, most importantly, be independent of hardware vendors so they could never wield influence over their users.
If an identity can be verified via a presented assumed persona (supplied as a proxy for the identity in question) as a third party identity verification service call, locking down a device becomes redundant (although the hardware vendor will likely continue to do so for other reasons). It does not seem likely that the identity management is going to be solved any time soon though.
> I choose to not have spam on my phone. Several months ago I was subjected to a floodgate of good ol' fashioned SMS spam that lasted several weeks.
If Apple provides an anti-spam SMS filtering service it is completely orthogonal to how much they decide to handcuff their own users.
SMS is not a platform specific protocol and cell phone numbers have their own independent authority (however dysfunctional it may be). So unless you decide to block yourself from the entire world outside of Apple devices, it has nothing to do with being locked down. Locking down a platform from it's own users does not intrinsically benefit security or spam prevention, saying so is a false dichotomy, no matter how much Apple spins it.
I never had spam on my Android phone for that matter, but the reliance on manufacturers to supply security updates is a side effect that is primarily induced because the platforms are as locked down as they are.
I hear you believe me.
But in the past five years, I have received so much call spam that I just don't answer my phone anymore. Imagine that, the primary use of a phone and it's all cocked up.
Imagine what happens to imessages if they leave it open.
Blame the cretins that spam people.
Sounds like iMessage spam is already a problem (if another poster in this thread is to be believed).
Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones. I do get some SMS spam, but not a ton, and most of it is auto-flagged and I never see it.
> Blame the cretins that spam people.
SMS and voice call spam is actually a solved problem, but carriers have been dragging their feet implementing the solutions (and have lobbied the US government to give them more time). Killing spam does not require our devices to be locked down. Carriers deserve some blame here too.
But I don't really care about blame, I care about outcomes. Blaming spammers isn't going to fix anything. Forcing carriers to implement the required technical measures to stamp out spam... that could actually work.
> Forcing carriers to implement the required technical measures to stamp out spam... that could actually work.
Another desperately needed measure is enabling law enforcement to actually fight spam at the root: follow the money. When the spammers can't monetize their spam, they won't have any incentive to spam and scam.
Uncooperative countries (e.g. India, just look Mark Rober's Youtube series where he and a bunch of associates track down and prank scam call centers or Turkey which is the German equivalent) should be sanctioned until they are compliant. Letting spammers, scammers and hackers operate in a foreign country unimpeded should be considered an act of war.
Forcing carriers or anyone to implement technological measures (remember the idea to charge people .5 cents to send out emails?) is a worthwhile effort but it's at the core a band-aid at best and the only thing it achieves is to marginally drive up the cost and complexity of service for everyone else while the scammers simply find workarounds.
Blaming spammers is like blaming mosquitoes. What's the point?
You don’t need the world to change for you. Simply use android and live in that ecosystem.
And what if you care about your privacy ? Because there is ONE alternative doesn't really mean I have the freedom to choose...
If you care about privacy, you would use Android (or one of the newer open source mobile operating systems).
Use a degoogled phone
SMS spam is real.
I've not had a single SMS/messaging spam message in the last decade. In the UK if that makes a difference, maybe we have effective laws around it? Not looked into it.
I’m also in the UK and received two SMS spam messages last month, which wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary. Both were low effort fishing attempts along the lines of “You have been sent a package that requires the payment of customs fees. Please provide your account information at http://customs.uk.gov.scam.example.xn--horse-sw3b
I probably get more of those now than the “we’ve heard that you’ve been in an auto accident that wasn’t your fault” robocalls.
I'm in Singapore and when I read this I realised that it's been a long time since I received an SMS spam message. It must be at least 2 years. And even then they were quite rare (one ever few months maybe?).
I wonder what different telcos does differently, because I have heard about some countries where you're getting flooder by these things.
In the last 6 months SMS spam has increased a lot for me. A lot of it are random messages like "I'm sorry but please don't message me again!" or "Hey, I really had a great time last night, let's make plans for next weekend!" that basically is reply-bait.
Same here and I've used and shared the same number for at least 20 years. I had no idea SMS spam was an issue until I read this thread
It’s not going to be uniform for everyone. The primary number I’ve used for ages doesn’t get SMS spam at all. A secondary number which probably got recycled from someone else receives multiple spam messages every single day.
Here in Australia I am still getting a few a week.
And we have a loophole that allows politicians to legally spam whenever they want.
I've had maybe one or two spammy text messages in the last decade. My phone number's already in many spammer's databases based on the number of spam calls I get.
But costs real money to send and is severely limited in what it can do. RCS would open the door to lots of new ways to spam and troll people.
Please tell me where I claimed it wasn't.
And I'd rather the opposite and the current situation offers us both that choice.
You’d rather live in that world, many others would choose the low-spam one.
I’m not sure this is either/or though. I have a secure/locked down device with iMessage and an open not-as-nice device for my playground as a programmer and hardware hacker.
Yes. Or let the user choose in settings:
(i) Allow rich non-iPhone messages through for all people.
(ii) As (i) but only for numbers in my contacts list, or who I have replied to.
(iii) Don't allow rich non-iPhone messages. Use SMS.
But to be honest you don’t really need to live in the whole world of spam, if that’s your preference then you can just avoid Apple stuff? You live in the best world of choice
> actually do whatever I want with the hardware I own.
But you don't own the hardware running iMessage.
I agree in principle. But it depends on how much spam and what the corporations are allowing.
You don't think Google can blacklist apps?
You could compile AOSP (and remove any blocks in it) yourself or get a ROM that doesn't block an app. You can't do that with iOS.
True, but we're talking single digits if not less than 1% of the Android population there, regardless of the ability. And if you add Google services you're right back where you started.
Sure, but I'm talking about simply having the capability. If Google started getting ridiculous, regularly censoring apps, deleting data off people's phones, stuff like that, I can easily believe that there'd be a push to make installing an alternative ROM or OS a simple thing to do. Regardless, the option is there. I think there's a ton of value in that, even if the vast majority of users don't avail themselves of it.
With iOS, you live with what Apple lets you do, and that's that.
so live in your world with spam and green text bubbles and blurry images.
It isn't about opening up iMessage. The article is about using RCS instead of SMS/MMS as the fallback. It's a pretty reasonable ask that will raise the quality of service when texting with the majority of the market. They can continue to lock down iMessage however they want.
It's not a "reasonable" ask if you're Apple, selfish, and therefore want iMessage to remain superior to SMS at all costs, because it's part of your luxury appeal.
It also not reasonable because a lot of countries, also in europe, do not have RCS support on their networks. Or the right version of RCS.
Most people in Europe don't use iMessage though.
There are literally multiple internal Apple emails released through court testimony where Apple executives clearly explain how important iMessage is to lock-in to iPhone and how if parents can just buy an Android and install an iMessage app it would mean disaster.
In none of these emails is spam or privacy or security even mentioned.
The primary reason Apple is doing it for platform lock-in, plain and simple. They literally said so themselves internally. Any other explanation is fanboyism.
> There are literally multiple internal Apple emails released through court testimony where Apple executives clearly explain how important iMessage is to lock-in to iPhone and how if parents can just buy an Android and install an iMessage app it would mean disaster.
I’m genuinely interested. Do you have a link?
You misunderstand. I don’t care about Apple’s desire for lock-in at all. I want Google RCS to implement, and make mandatory, secured device identifier attestation. I want to be able to block the actual hardware devices that spam me through carrier messaging. RCS could have offered that, and doesn’t. What a shame.
Why does RCS need to do that? RCS replaces SMS as the baseline interoperable protocol, not the iMessage protocol.
That has nothing to do with allowing RCS alongside SMS and iMessage.
My iPhone gets plenty of spam SMS messages, alongside my iMessage chats. The sanctity of iMessage communications doesn't stop that.
Swapping SMS for RCS support messages doesn't increase the spam surface.
> If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot. Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
This exists and has existed for years, via the SafetyNet Attestation API [1].
[1]: https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation
As indicated elsethread, that API doc expressly declares near the top that it is not usable for device identifiers. Without device identifiers, there is no way to stop spammers.
1. No, you don't need device IDs to stop spammers.
2. I don't think you know what you're talking about. Android supports the device attestation: https://source.android.com/security/keystore/attestation
> ID attestation allows the device to provide proof of its hardware identifiers, such as serial number or IMEI.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bweeks-acme-device-at...
It feels like you've concocted some narrative to support your incredibly speculative original comment about how Apple does this because spam. You're clearly wrong. You can do attested compute on Android as others have been trying to point out.
Okay, I’ll assume you’re right, which considerably worsens the case for RCS:
Google could have given us device-signed messaging with RCS, so that users and carriers could block devices for spamming regardless of the source address.
Google didn’t. They had the power to do so in RCS using their own APIs, and yet they chose not to offer an effective protection.
How is this failure by Google a selling point for RCS? Why would anyone consider RCS at all without device attestation? We don’t need yet another abuse-laden, unidentifiable-source chat protocol. We need a material improvement in quality of life for users, not a veneer of fancy bells and whistles on top of the same plague of spam as today.
Maybe your hypothesis that device attestation is the answer to spam is just… wrong?
Maybe Google doesn't think you need device attestation to manage spam on a messaging platform. There are numerous examples of apps today that don’t suffer from spam and don’t use device attestation. And there are examples of spam on iMessage.
Furthermore, I can already receive messages on my iPhone from non-iMessage users so I don’t even understand how any of what you’re saying makes sense in the first place. RCS is a protocol (not a platform) that would make the experience of receiving those messages better. It does not add some new attack vector for spammers.
Have you tried using a device with an RCS messenger app and been plagued with spam more-so than on iPhone? I switch between devices all the time and have not noticed any difference.
It’s not about spam. It’s about Apple playing lazy/dirty. Hence the OP.
I was replying to this assertion:
> If Android wants to join the party, then Android phone builders need to implement secure boot with hardware-signed attestation of non-rooted-ness, in the style of Apple T2 + macOS or Microsoft Pluton + Secure Boot.
You didn't mention device IDs.
OP clearly doesn't know what they're talking about either, because Android supports signed hardware ID attestation too.
There are literally emails leaked, that say iMessage is closed, because Apple wants monopoly in this area.
Yet in every thread recently someone spreads FUD how without uncle's Apple protection, bad world will hurt you, when reality shows that's nonexistent problem on other platforms.
I’m celebrating the antispam properties of device attestation, not asking anyone to trust Apple. I’m quite upset that Google RCS doesn’t include device attestation. It would have helped us get rid of text spam in carrier messaging, and made a convincing case for adoption by telcos. Imagine being able to block text spam by the equipment sending it. Imagine being able to block phone spam by the equipment calling you. It’s a missed opportunity for Google and for all of us.
You wrote:
> Most businesses, consumers, and developers universally continue to ignore the primary reason that iMessage is a closed platform, rather than an app on every platform as iTunes is: Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam.
That statement is false. Primary reason is, that Apple wanted to lock customers in their ecosystem. You can read about it here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android...
Also attestation doesn't stop spam (see other responses in this thread) and is harmful mechanism that will lead to more walled gardens.
This doesn’t work though. I receive enough iMessage spam specifically through Apple ids that I wish I could disable the ability to message me unless you use a phone number.
That's weird -- my phone number is definitely in some spammer lists (I get so many calls) but I have never once received an SMS or iMessage spam. What kind of things do they send?
Pig butchering mostly. “I am going to play golf with my business partners tomorrow. Will you have time to join us Dave?”
https://www.rrstar.com/story/business/2022/04/30/new-pig-but...
Ah, I've only ever seen that in emails. Annoying!
I believe that is SMS spam originating from outside of iMessage
I definitely get iMessage spam
If you're 100% sure it's iMessage and not SMS, report it to Apple. They can ban that account.
They’ll ban the entire device used to send it, not just the one account. But see also elsethread “wait, how do I know this was delivered over iMessage”, since MMS allows the From field to be an email address.
On the top of the first message it'll either say Text Message or iMessage. If it's an iMessage and you delete the thread without replying, it'll ask if you want to report the message as spam.
How would you prove the account is sending spam? By sending them screenshots? Will they believe you? This could be used to ban a neighbor I don't like. Or does Apple spy all conversations so they can check themselves? :P
With blue bubbles?
Remember, the color of the bubbles only changes for messages YOU send, not messages you receive. Received messages are always black on grey.
> Received messages are always black on grey.
What on Earth are you talking about?
You only see the colors on messages you send. OP is implying that you wouldn’t know what “color” the conversation is unless you’re actively replying to the spammer.
You can still tell whether it is an iMessage or text message without replying and observing the color. Long-press on the incoming message. If the menu shows: Reply, Copy, Translate, More… then it is an iMessage. If the menu shows: Copy, Translate, More… then it is a text.
The text input box will also say whether it is a text message or iMessage before you start typing anything.
That's cool, didn't know that Apple didn't try to somehow shoehorn threads into SMS (like they currently do extremely poorly with tapbacks and stickers)
Messages you receive are always black text on a grey bubble. What part of this was confusing?
As other have mentioned, you can tell if it's iMessage or not in a few different ways, the send button color, the "Text Message" or "iMessage" label interspersed in the conversation, etc, but if you want to talk about the color of the bubbles, that only applies to outgoing messages.
The gist of the article has been a soapbox of mine for years. We wouldn't stand for "you can only send Gmail email to other Gmail users" (Fidonet people know), and shouldn't settle for similar with messaging. That said, this spam angle is an aspect I hadn't fully considered.
Google closed down their Jabber gateway because they couldn’t stop the endless flood of spam into their userbase. If they had instead required device identifier attestations to accompany all Jabber messages, they could have left that API open for everyone to use, and simply banned device identifiers used for spamming. I wish they’d done so, instead of just giving up and closing their doors to Jabber.
Do you have any good source on why Google decided to shut down their XMPP service? I'd really like to read about it.
Not sure about the spam thing, after all they also provide a federating email service.
This article has some context and links to original sources: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-talk-to-...
How much effort/development have they put in to the spam detection on Gmail?
If you have the ability to detect spam in emails you can probably also detect spam in chat messages.
I used Google Talk pretty much since the day it was released, and I don't recall any "endless flood of spam".
This idea that we need to rely on big Google to protect us is insane. Just make it so that messages from unknown contacts are not as annoying or even hidden entirely unless you go explicitly looking for them.
You don't need to stop federation. You don't need device attestation. These don't benefit the user. They are only there to give the platforms more control.
I used Google Talk actively at the time. Don't recall any spam.
How hard is it to generate new device identifiers?
How easily can you mail a Google calendar item to Google user, using non-Google software?
Doesn't it fall back to a .ics file?
Very easily. The ICS standard is supported by everything.
Calendar sorta works -- the meetings yes, but things like suggesting a new time or co-viewing calendars to find a time don't.
This is a lawyer excuse. I've had Signal for years and the number of spam messages I've received over it is none. It's not a real problem.
SMS on the other hand... but iPhones receive SMS too, don't they?
I get like two spam SMS a year. And my SMS app always properly flags them as being spam/scams. This really is such a terrible excuse.
It's also ignoring the root issue. Adding RCS to iMessages doesn't affect the spam. You'll still get it from both SMS and RCS.
Apple not adding RCS is 100% due to keeping market share.
> I get like two spam SMS a year.
Consider yourself lucky. I get hundreds.
In recent months I get about 2 per week.
In recent weeks I get two per day. I don't know what's changed.
I've seen SMS spam maybe 3 or 4 times ever. Before Signal started permanently storing sensitive user data in the cloud (and refusing to update their privacy policy) I was using Signal for both secure communication and SMS/MMS and since I've moved away from them I still don't see any more spam now than I did then. I think the solution for the spam problem has a lot more to do with not giving your cell phone number out to every company who asks for it than it does what client you're using to read/store messages.
Of course the real solution should be on the network's end, but not giving out your number to any businesses is probably the best thing you can do while still accepting random texts from anybody.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but that’s because Signal is teeny tiny. If Signal makes it to a billion users I guarantee it will happen to them.
SMS is bigger than even iMessage, so if you can spam everyone with iMessage and more by using SMS, why would anyone bother with iMessage?
Bigger doesn't necessarily mean more profitable.
IMessage is full of profitable phone owners
That receive messages over SMS in the same app...
What's the advantage of iMessage spam? Group chat spam? Higher quality video spam? Is that worth all the effort to do your spamming only on Apple devices?
Easy targets.
Signal is not a profitable target for spammers. Those using it are least likely to be caught by spam.
You can build a hackintosh, generate a serial number, and get on iMessage without any fully-authenticated hardware or even a legitimate secondary Apple device. Spammers use these setups to iMessage spam to great effect.
I think the onus is on Apple to open the platform.
And yet I get plenty of spam via text on my iPhone. What is more, I cannot block numbers from texting me (unless there's an option I haven't found). What is more, a clearly spam text will stay as an alert number grabbing at my attention until I open up and see whatever spam image text was sent my way to dismiss it which is surely a security risk.
I used to work at Apple but this messaging stuff is really damning.
How does unmodified software relate in any way to the ability to console-ban bad actors? It's apple's servers, apple's accounts, and apple's devices. They are perfectly capable of burning a private key into the fuses of every device they sell, keeping a revocation list, and requiring a valid signature from an unrevoked key to log in and send messages. You can't get around that with any quantity of homebrew or custom software. Same reason that you don't see spam on Nintendo Switch games - if Nintendo bans your hardware you're not getting back online unless you buy a new Switch, and that's enough of a cost to make spam uneconomical. You can't do that with Android because maintaining a single revocation list across many manufacturers would be impossible - or because Google would have to host it and they'd get mobbed by angry HNers frothing at the mouth about their privacy - but Apple is totally capable of it and already gets a free pass on whatever walled garden shenanigans they can imagine.
Attestation is service that can only be provided by the builder of the phone. Most commercially available Android phones provide this, and banks and DRM rely on it. https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation and https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity/overview
That API is not useful for anti-spam purposes, as individual devices cannot be banned for spamming by their serial number. Quoting that page:
> The API is not designed to fulfill the following use cases:
> Contain signals for app-specific use-cases, such as device identifiers
Android does provide device attestation via Keymaster 3 and has for years: https://source.android.com/security/keystore/attestation
SafetyNet does not specifically give you a device ID, but keystore attestation does. SafetyNet is a higher-level API used to verify you're in a trusted compute environment (which is also sufficient for anti-spam, btw). The keystore attestation API provides everything you need to acquire signed data directly from the HSM with things like device IDs and security trust level baked in.
You need to read up: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bweeks-acme-device-at...
That can be built trivially using this API. The app stores an identifier, which it knows has not been tampered with because of attestation. Giving apps access to a unique device identifier shared across apps is a privacy leak but can be obtained with the proper scary permission.
> Giving apps access to a unique device identifier shared across apps is a privacy leak
Correct: 'Non-heuristic antispam' and 'Private device identifiers' are incompatible requirements, unless you introduce another expensive obstacle to overcome. Spamming depends on cheap/free sock puppet accounts. The cost per account is inversely proportional to the value it holds to spammers. That cost can be in Apple's iMessage terms: $100+ per serial number, all devices must include burned-in serial number attestation in their server communications. Or that cost can be in bureaucracy: $10 per notarized "account signup request with verified citizenship", but now all communications can be associated with the notary's logs of your citizenship ID number.
There is no way to stop spam without incurring one or another cost to each user. Apple's method doesn't care who you are, so long as you possess Apple hardware. The Pluton method wouldn't either. What other methods exist that are unconcerned with the exact identity of the user, but still make spamming unprofitable?
I mean, maybe expensive dongles should be a thing of the past and Apple should invest in machine learning a bit more. My Pixel does a great job filtering out SMS spam, with 2 false positives (both automated messages) and zero false negatives in the last month.
I have received a single iMessage spam message in ten years, total. You would have, statistically, received at least 240 false positives in that time assuming current heuristics technology. I don’t think heuristics are the answer if your goal is Project Zero Spam.
My goal is not project zero spam, my goal is interoperability and the end of expensive dongles.
I just showed how Apple could implement exactly its method on Android. I'm not sure why you're looking for other methods.
As far as private antispam, you can imagine a hashcash-like system that takes into account how many messages you've accepted from the sender, but this is a completely different discussion.
You can disable Secure Boot on a Mac and still use iMessage.
In this state, it would still be theoretically possible to attest to some kind of unique hardware ID, as the Secure Enclave is still locked down. But even if it weren't, it would be good enough to just distribute a unique key with each device. Sure you could take it off the device, but who cares? If it got banned, you'd still need to buy a new device for a new key.
…But given the sibling comment (by pxeboot) about using iMessage in a VM, I'm not sure whether any of this is actually done.
iMessage works on Hackintosh too
Spamming doesn’t, however, as it requires a lot of serial number lookups and creates a very identifiable trail of behavior just to get a single device working. Scaling that process up to spamming would be unprofitable and risk being caught.
“I am concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove and obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” Craig Federighi, Apple software senior vice president, wrote in 2013."
They'll find another reason not to implement it on other platforms.
Consider whether Apple has changed their position about shipping key functionalities of their platform to non-Apple devices in the decade since then, in light of (for example) their purchase of and continued offerings of Android-friendly Beats products, their beta of Apple Music as a webpage in any browser, and their TV services app spreading to every smart television platform that competes with Apple TVs.
Those other products have their own revenue streams. Apple would not profit from allowing access to iMessage without owning an Apple device.
You can't even get their browser on another platform.
Any limitations/restrictions that Apple imposes on their devices that usually provides them some competitive advantage is ALWAYS explained away as 'protecting' the user. It's a joke how often this corporate spin is used as an excuse.
This is a great point which I haven't heard before in this age-old debate.
But until Apple's dominance starts to wane, there's no chance in hell they will provide iMessage for other platforms unless forced by regulation.
If push comes to shove, they can implement heuristics which run texts from non-Apple devices through a harder spam filter. Spam isn't non-existent on the iMessage network, and there already seems to be a rudimentary spam filter in place.
Apple could easily charge $1/mo or $10/year for iMessage on secured devices, with automatic refund and prorated cancellation if no secured device is signed in within a given billing period; and then discount $1/mo if one or more Apple devices are signed in and active during a given billing period. They'd make a billion dollars a month off of secured Android users, without exposing themselves to any new spam whatsoever, and showing Android users that Apple users have a better experience. Win-win for platform marketing and cloud services revenue.
iMessage spam isn't non-existent because sometimes someone tries to spam, gets a few messages out, and then their device gets console-banned. The iMessage "unsend" feature doesn't yet exist in any released iOS or macOS, so it can't be used to hide the spam after the fact.
Hell, they could charge a token amount for un-secured devices, which I imagine could make things prohibitively expensive for spammers.
I would (grudgingly, because the whole thing is just stupid) pay 3 bucks a month or so to be able to message iPhone users from Android without dealing with unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell. I have a ton of barely-recognizable videos of my niece and nephews from my sister because she always forgets that sending me video over MMS is a boatload of fail.
I don’t expect Apple to ever allow unsecured devices into the iMessage network.
iMessage worked fine on Jailbroken iOS devices since.. always.
Jailbreaking iOS doesn’t affect the OS on the Secure Encoave chip. Crypto attestations of device identity can be protected from alteration by jsilbreakers.
> unreliable message delivery and ordering, and photos and videos pixelated to hell.
Unless I've been an edge case, SMS/MMS has been nothing BUT super reliable on my phones in Australia. Can you provide a demo ? I'd like to see what you're talking about since maybe I do have the photos and videos pixelated, I just don't see this.
Because the overlap between spammers and unscrupulous people with credit card numbers is 0?
They're just going to use prepaid cards they scammed from people to buy iMessage and absolutely spam the crap out of that.
Well Apple is going to be forced anyway, the EU's Digital Markets Act will be enforced soon.
And fines are up to 20% of global revenue.
As an iPhone user I do not like EU dictating how Apple software should work at all. The same with chargers as well.
Sure we can all have a discussion about how it should work - but having bureaucrats decide is the worst idea ever.
There's such a thing as overregulation, but when industry fails to act in an upstanding manner they are playing chicken with regulators. Here's the result. The way to avoid this is create an industry body to develop a standard and 'regulate' themselves. It looks bad when you do that, then also flaunt the standard for greater profit/market position.
As much as I agree with this in principle, there is absolutely no denying that Apple is abusing their power when it comes to consumer lock-in.
I find it very hard to argue against regulation which is only meant to make devices more interoperable. USB-C for charging is mature enough at this point that it seems reasonable to declare it THE charging port.
An interesting - partially ironic - observation here, is that Apple actually designed the reversible USB-C connector and submitted it to the USB-IF - a team of bureaucrats. Bureaucrats, who of course previously were responsible for blunders such as micro-USB-B 3.0, and more recently, the ambiguous shitshow that is the current state of the USB spec.
I wholeheartedly believe that Apple is such a design-driven company that they would actually engage with regulators again (gasp, even the EU), if they were to come up with a better connector design down the road. Everybody wins.
> but having bureaucrats decide is the worst idea ever
I agree wholeheartedly, but what's the alternative? The so-called "free market" (not that such a thing actually exists) clearly has not solved this problem for us.
It's a problem for you only because you want to use iMessage. iMessage is about as far from a monopoly as you can get.
Who else 'sells' imessage ?
So every app is a monopoly now? This is getting ridiculous.
Signal
Explain how please.
I couldn’t agree more. I like the walled garden. I don’t care if some messages are green. If I wanted to have granular control over everything, I’d buy an Android phone. I really struggle to see why some regulatory body should be able to force a company to alter their products unless it’s something that impacts customer safety. There are plenty of alternatives in the market.
I suspect most iPhone users are of a similar opinion or no opinion at all. Sure, here on HN you can find plenty of strong opinions, but the average iPhone user doesn’t care and is happy with the ecosystem and hardware.
Is iMessage a "Number-independent interpersonal communication services (e.g., messengers)"?
It's a messenger but it's based on phone numbers AFAIK--unlike something like WhatsApp.
You can sign up and use an email for iMessage through wifi
Ah. I've only used it as a default SMS alternative on Apple devices including iPhone.
It is, I use it from my Mac Mini without owing an iPhone.
Apple is already not even close to dominant in a lot of EU countries. As a result nobody uses iMessage here (I never get any, nor SMS). That never swayed them to open it up.
> Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modification.
This can't be true. It is trivial to get iMessage working in a macOS VM with randomly generated hardware IDs.
If it was as simple as that, we would all endlessly be plagued by iMessage spam. It isn’t.
Well, I had like four spam messages from the same people (but different Apple IDs) in the past few months.
It is, but spammers are not clever.
That attitude is what gets people phished. They are generally very clever, but will take the path of least resistance. If you accuse them of anything, it’s laziness.
Roll IPs...? What else needed?
> the same freedom to modify an OS kernel that hackers desire is also the freedom to spam all users
Yes, and that is absolutely fine. Computer freedom is more important than the ability to prevent spam. It should be illegal to prevent the rooting of devices or even put up any roadblocks for the user. It doesn't really matter how much this freedom impacts their networks. The freedom to run whatever software we want and interoperate with everything without being discriminated against should be our inviolable right.
If that is the main reason, then why not use RCS when communicating with Android devices, and their own proprietary system when communicating with other iPhones. And or push to add an optional attestation to RCS that apple can use.
I have two cell phone, android and iOS. On Android I install my own spam filter message app and see no spam at all. On contrary, I still get plenty of spam from iMessage.
So I don't think it works.
This is just wrong because as others have pointed out, you can have a fully virtualized macOS environment with no secure boot or any kind and iMessage will run just fine.
Also, since basically every device that receives message also receives sms, isn’t this irrelevant?
What do you mean Android doesn't have an analog? It has both secure boot and device attestation. It has multiple APIs that can be used to design applications requiring varying levels of trusted computing context.
There's the high-level SafeyNet API which essentially lets you assert that you're running on a non-modified device running non-modified software in the context of a verified boot:
* https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation
It also has the lower-level Keymaster 3 API (since 2017) which provides HSM-signed certificates with the device attestiation extension, including the system trust level and verified device identifiers:
* https://source.android.com/security/keystore/attestation
* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bweeks-acme-device-at...
Microsoft is the one that's late to party... And your hypothesis seems pretty dependent on an argument that Apple can't build iMessaging on other platforms because they're the only platform with device attestation. That's simply not true.
If Apple wanted iMessage on other platforms, they've had at least 5 years to build it in the way you theorize must be required.
There are multiple public bypasses for SafetyNet. Many 3rd party roms provide them out-of-the-box. Granted, Apple's attestation is bypassable as well.
Furthermore, others mentioned that a large portion of SMS-spam originates from the FluBot infected Android devices. Well, the only reason FluBot does not infect iPhones is laziness - it is perfectly doable at scale using custom configuration profiles.
Yep good point. Are there bypasses for the hsm-backed signed attestation?
> Until then, Apple iMessage will remain single platform.
This seems to be a strawman - no one is asking for cross-platfrom iMessage, just for Apple to upgrade it's officially-supported cross-platform messaging stack (SMS) from the 90s.
That is just ridiculous.
I don't get random spam on Matrix/Element... it even handles video calls and more...
Do you get spam calls on your iphone?
I do get random spam on Matrix/Element, a couple of times a month. I am in some big public channels though, which may make me a lower hanging target to find my matrix ID to send spam to
Yet…
But seriously, we all know spam and abuse from bad actors is a huge problem for any sort or platform. Email, phone calls, physical mail. Sometimes people will put fliers on your car window to spam it.
Same with VPS providers. Even my router gets random pings and port scans. Forums have to fight bots. It goes on.
I have even gotten iMessage spam, which can easily be reported.
It comes in waves and goes away.
I get spam on Matrix. And Matrix is hardly used so these are just people trolling rather than having some kind of organized entity behind it. As far as I know there is really no anti spam measures on the network.
The number of people using Matrix/Element is so small and relatively sophisticated that it probably has a super low expected value for spammers.
Not true for iMessage at all...
Matrix userbase is much larger than IRC. In my experience IRC spam is still worse, but matrix spam will grow more common as the platform grows. But matrix.org devs are aware and have some plans for spam. Distributed/federated reputation...
I mean... the spam texting I get is annoying, but it doesn't seem much different between iOS vs. Android devices...
iMessage spam has been through the roof for me the last couple of months. 1 or 2 messages a day with no obvious reporting mechanism. Whatever Apple is doing, it’s not working and it’s disingenuous to claim this is the reason iMessage isn’t on Android.
From the tech emails it seems they're more concerned about lockin than security.
https://twitter.com/techemails/status/1463558823109660677?la...
>short version - don't make mail, calendar, iMessage work on Android and it's impossible to switch
> https://twitter.com/techemails/
Slightly off-topic, but wow. What an absolutely brilliant twitter account.
So the reason to track and identify every app on every device and have a switch to remotely brick it is to reduce spam ?
My BS detectors just tripped.
Would you be ok if your home had the same "security" features? Say BigCo home builders install a front door, sensors, cameras and scanners in your home that allow them to monitor track and remotely lock you out of your home, your water and power supply ? Their reason? ... so that they can shutdown "bad neighbors" and keep the neighborhood "clean". And remember there's no fkin way you can get rid of those scanners, cameras and other control mechanisms.
But ya'know they gave you a piece of paper that says "we respect your privacy" with BigCo logo on it ?
I don't get why Apple, MS or anyone should be able to get away with this.
I never get spam on any other networks either. Be it WhatsApp, telegram, signal or even matrix.
It's not that big a problem apparently, and doesn't require giving up that much control.
On the other hand I social never use iMessage. It's not very popular here in Spain at all because of the Apple-only thing. Android is far bigger in marketshare here.
A good enough and low hanging fruit solution to spam is an allowed list. Generally allow contacts (initially at least). Track spam feedback by age against contacts.
If someone does end up in a spam list (and they don't rack up a high score across multiple targets), let them know they're in such a list and where to start looking to resolve that issue. A good enough solution for this is to have number carriers attest to have verified the government issued ID of the individual in question; and if spam happens shortly after that to yield the government ID number of that individual.
An alternate form I've considered, for email, is to pay a postage (transfer + storage) micro-transaction fee, and possibly an attention fee for prompt review. The custom might be to refund these in cases of legitimate messages.
I have received zero spam messages over iMessage in maybe ten years, without using an allow list. Why, as a consumer, would I tolerate the degree of effort you describe when I have a perfect zero-effort solution available today?
But... this is ridiculous on its face. SMS and iMessage both live in the Messages app. The only thing you achieve by locking down iMessage is that spam messages appear as green bubbles in Messages instead of as blue bubbles in Messages. It does literally nothing to prevent spam.
I'm having trouble understanding how this is a good solution... If a customer purchases a used iPhone from another person, and that person had used it for spam, is the customer now screwed and unable to message their friends without buying a new phone?
This is about adopting RCS, NOT about pushing iMessage to other platforms.
This post is about Google pushing RCS to other platforms. I’m pointing out why their competitor, Apple, has not done the same with RCS’s competitor, iMessage. It’s an apples-to-apples comparison, and I consider it relevant to be mindful of this particular difference when considering RCS.
Google could have implemented crypto-signed device identifier attestation as a mandatory requirement for RCS, which would have given them considerable leverage against iMessage. Why wouldn’t they? What was more important to them than stopping texting spam?
> This post is about Google pushing RCS to other platforms.
RCS doesn't belong to Google. It's a standard.
> which would have given them considerable leverage against iMessage.
Citation needed.
> and that is a key deliverable of Pluton
But there are very important key disadvantages that come with that. And I don't believe fighting spam is Microsofts MO. Just open Edge and look at the ads. This is very close to selling penis enlargement pills.
"device hackers" - seriously? You mean people that like to have control about what their devices do. Installing software you want should never be hacking.
That aside I am very skeptical of forcing Apple to open their messaging. The responsibility to choose a different medium is on the user.
Apple apologists always find some wacky reason to justify things, but this is the first I’m hearing of “iMessage exists to prevent spam”…
Have you used WhatsApp or Telegram? Neither need hardware attestation. No spam, in the decade I’ve used them. I have an iPhone and a Pixel, neither have spam.
Unless the gov allows free-for-all SMS, which is not the case in the continents I’ve lived in. Sounds like a uniquely US problem, which iMessage can’t stop? You still get them, and Apple just hides them in a folder.
What are you on about really?
> This permits Apple to simply “console ban” any Apple device that spams on iMessage.
This does nothing to protect users from non-Apple devices.
Or this is because more iTunes users means more potential customers to their iTunes store, i.e. more revenue when it is cross platform. While opening up iMessage will not incease their revenue but makes people easier to switch to other platform such as Android.
It is not like other platforms cannot deal with spam...
Are we really at the point where letting a corporation decide what we can/cannot do on our own hardware is a good thing now?
Though the more I think about it the more I realize that we are indeed already at that point, and people really think that's a good thing. That's really sad to me.
You're talking as if spam via text messages is a common occurence? I've had maybe one spammy text message on Android in the last 10 years, even though most websites I use have my phone number. Spammy phone calls are constant, but Apple doesn't do anything to prevent that.
Since iMessage is restricted to those with an Apple ID, what's stopping them from releasing cross-platform apps that function only if the user has a valid Apple device? I think it's a business choice, not a spam one.
> Apple is using device serial numbers for anti-spam, supported by a fully-authenticated hardware and software stack that does not allow user modificatio
Ah, perfect tracking. Let's add that to Pluton list of promises.
I literally never receive spam on telegram. And I have been using it for years. And by never I really mean never. I'm very doubtful spam is the crux of the issue here.
The device still receives SMS messages, which makes all that wonderful iMessage security completely useless when receiving spam SMS messages with fake headers.
Would it be possible to have Android devices that have attestation, but with a one-way switch to disable attestation and allow users to root?
Android does have it. OP is making ridiculously false claims to support some incredibly speculative spam prevention narrative that simply isn't true.
What’s the point though. People still receive spam that doesn’t originate in the iMessage ecosystem. The end result is the same.
I get imessage spam every day. I report junk every time, but it seems like they have infinite accounts.
SMS spam isn't a thing on iOS?
I don't see what any of this has to do with Apple not supporting RCS.
Thank you. I have tried explaining this to people but the “freedom” people overwhelmingly flood the discussion and prevent any meaningful debate about it. Of course for them that point is not debatable but still for majority of people no spam is a huge deal.
You can connect to iMessage from a hackintosh though?
Then why do I still get texting spam on my iPhone?
I can understand Google's frustration but they have no one to blame but themselves.
Everyone is familiar with their graveyard of failed messaging applications (along with their graveyard of products generally).
When I had an android phone, I tried RCS with someone else on Android. It never worked. I'm sure it's improved, but as the common theme of this story goes, Google blew their chance.
I also don't trust google to abide by the "standard" they've created. Their track record is abysmal. I don't want to use yet another messaging service that they've built. I don't trust it to exist in the future, receive support and updates, and for it to be maintained. If google abandons it that means the telecoms are stuck holding the bag and when we demand even more from the next iteration of messaging apps, RCS will go the way SMS has today.
This is nothing more than Google reaping the results of their own failures. It's a shame they squandered the opportunity over the last 15 years to develop a cohesive messaging app strategy across their products, but its their shame and now they have to pay the price.
In a last ditch effort they're trying to throw all the blame on Apple who was able to innovate and launch a successful messaging service years ago. Apple recognized that SMS could be improved, and they improved it. They didn't wait for anyone and they recognize the importance of continued support - a quality Google does not seem to foster.
Google had their chance over and over again but they blew it over and over again. I don't care about the little things RCS adds, message bubbles, delivery confirmation etc. These may be nice additions but they truly don't make a large difference. If an Android phone wants to send a high quality image, video etc they can share a link. That's good enough for me.
Google failed, miserably and publicly. This latest campaign is just embarrassing for them.
> I don't want to use yet another messaging service that they've built.
You literally wouldn't be. You would keep using iMessage. All that would be different is that you could now send images and videos to Android users. Right now you have to switch to another app to do that.
This is not a '"standard" they've created', this is a GSM Association standard, and it would be Apple, not Google, implementing it.
Are you saying that Apple doesn't send MMS? because from my experience, it totally can.
I know because I've got the bill for it.
But to go back to the original point, I don't want google near my chat history. I don't really like Apple having it either.
Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone.
At some point we should require people to tell us whether they have read the link or not so we can know if it's worth taking their opinions into account.
> Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s.
Your first paragraph is copied verbatim from Google's marketing material[0] without attribution. I just wanted to point out for anyone out there if you google that phrase you will find it verbatim repeated across the internet. I know this isn't an academic environment - who cares about plagiarism - but just to highlight it as part of media literacy. Your comment is part of a media/marketing campaign, it is not an actual back-and-forth dialogue that one would expect on HN.
[0] https://www.android.com/get-the-message/
I just copy pasted from the link you are commenting...
> But Apple can adopt RCS—the modern industry standard—for these threads instead.
Ah, yes, the “industry standard” which relies on proprietary extensions made by Google which are only implemented in one of Google’s applications, and whose carrier adoption figures are based on Google hosting the servers.
RCS is better, but don’t oversell this as more than Google’s attempt to pressure Apple into helping them recover from repeated self-inflicted damage. If they hadn’t screwed up their messaging strategy so many times since the 2000s nobody would care about iMessage. We could be using an open cross-platform system if they hadn’t killed that concept trying to force people to use Google+.
Indeed. Ron Amadeo has done a lot of in-depth coverage of Google's RCS push the past few years, and he brings up some very good points I didn't see talked about much. Here's the latest article about Google's new campaign:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
I said in another comment that Google continuing to call RCS a "standard" is disingenuous. What they're really pushing for is Apple implementing Google's proprietary fork of RCS, where most messages are routed through their own servers. That doesn't sound like a standard to me and I don't see why Apple would/should go for that.
It’s also telling how they punted on the things people want like support for all of their devices or need, like E2E for all chats rather than just one on one.
Imagine an alternate universe where they backed a dump truck full of cash over to the Signal Foundation and said “hire all of the developers you need to make first-class desktop clients and add federation for people willing to meet CA-level requirements. We’ll ship integration in Messenger and Gmail this year.” Apple would have a lot more pressure from something which is open and better rather than a marketing play for a Google subsidiary.
> Are you saying that Apple doesn't send MMS? because from my experience, it totally can.
I'm saying you should currently use another app if you want to send images or movies, because MMS compresses media beyond recognition.
I don't understand why Apple users are against a simple fix that would let them send these things from inside iMessesage instead?
Why do you think this would let Google have more of your chat history?
I suspect it would let more people spam me.
> Their track record is abysmal.
And just to reinforce this, a decade ago Google supported a cross platform messaging standard: XMPP. And then they stopped it https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/google-move....
> Everyone is familiar with their graveyard of failed messaging applications (along with their graveyard of products generally).
I agree
And that's why Whatsapp and maybe Telegram/Signal/etc are the "standards" today
If you don’t care about the additional RCS features, then aren’t you saying essentially SMS is fine? Do you prefer iMessage just since it is more secure (compared to sms that is)?
I don't love RCS[0], but Apple implementing it (including the E2EE extensions) would strike a huge blow to messaging fragmentation immediately, at least in the US.
Hell, Apple doesn't have to ditch iMessage; they just have to support RCS for messaging with Android users, or group messaging with mixed Android/iOS devices.
I would also (grudgingly) accept an opening of the iMessage protocol so Google could implement it in the Android Messages app. Not ideal by any measure, and I figure Apple would never do this (and I suspect Google would hypocritically not want to do this anyway), but it would at least improve things.
The thing that's sad overall is that the current state of affairs is just a result of an anti-consumer corporate pissing match. The only losers here are the users, both on iOS and Android. And meanwhile both Apple and Google get to tout the benefits of their preferred solution as if they're both the good guys, fighting for their users. When in reality they're merely fighting for their own market dominance.
[0] Tying messaging to your carrier is just a continuation of the crappy SMS "portability" experience. Sure, most RCS backend implementations are currently provided by Google, but one thing I'd like to see would be the ability to select your RCS provider. Maybe others would crop up if this were an option, and if RCS were actually popular.
> the current state of affairs is just a result of an anti-consumer corporate pissing match.
This would be true if Google didn't want to implement the iMessage protocol as you predict; but in the current state of affairs it's just Apple being anticompetitive.
>This would be true if Google didn't want to implement the iMessage protocol as you predict; but in the current state of affairs it's just Apple being anticompetitive.
I do believe, everyone understands how Google is motivated to get hands-on access to iMessage. They have had so many messaging services over the years, that I stopped keeping track already. At the same time iMessage is 11 years old and in good standing.
If you look at the launch date of WhatsApp, you'll see that in fact Apple is competitive. They introduced iMessage two years after WA got it's run.
Has Google said that they'd implement iMessage if Apple were to open up the protocol/service? Given Google's history with messaging, I'd be surprised if they'd be so interested in doing this.
More likely they'd prefer Apple just build a standalone iMessage app for Android. (And I feel like this option would be more palatable to Apple too, if the alternative is opening up the protocol to third parties.)
Even if Google didn't implement it, which I think they would, somebody else would do so and put it on the Play store. That's all it would take to make this issue go away for everyone.
RCS is dead. The Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) has given up. Google is the one still pushing for it. iMessage is simply a big Apple moat. Why would Apple give it up to enhance Google's business position?
Google wants us to pick theirs over Apple's. Also note that to my knowledge, RCS is not available in all countries.
The other funny thing is that Google complains about SMS being insecure -- all while RCS does not support end to end encryption. Google Messages added that feature recently relatively (last year? please correct me below) and I still can't understand if it's on by default or not.
Here is a random article about RCS state. Feel free to google for more: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1327240-in-the-us-rcs-text-m...
I would love a common solution, but rationally I can not blame Apple for keeping a (to me from experiencing both) superior experience that brings in customers. And Google has just managed to catch up. Google will need to make their messaging an order or two better, to the point that Apple will have to join.
P.S. Also, I am skeptical any time the phrases privacy, end-to-end encryption, and Google cohabitate the same statement.
(Edit)P.S.2. Just use https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/bluebubbles/9P3XF8KJ... in the meantime.
A lot has happened with RCS since that random article.
* All of the major US carriers announced that they'd ship Google Messages by default on android phones (including RCS). I believe Verizon was the last one [1].
* Google enabled end-to-end encryption by default for 1:1 chats [2]. They've said that e2e for group chats is coming later this year [3].
* Samsung replaced their own messaging client with a tweaked version of Google Messages on the S22 (edit: in the US) [4]. Samsung Messages already supported RCS, but I'm not sure if it supported Google's extensions like e2e.
And as others have mentioned: this isn't about Google wanting Apple to replace iMessage with RCS; it's about Google wanting Apple to support RCS as iMessage fallback in addition to the existing SMS support. Apple to Apple would certainly still be iMessage.
1: https://9to5google.com/2021/07/20/verizon-will-adopt-google-...
2: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/google-enables-end-t...
3: https://9to5google.com/2022/05/11/google-messages-rcs-group-...
4: https://www.androidpolice.com/samsung-galaxy-s22-series-ship...
To add to this, Xiaomi and Oppo, which collectively dominate the South Asian markets and has big presence in Europe, also dropped their own messaging app a few years ago in favor of Google Messages app.
And as you can see in my comment "what is Apple's motive for giving up their moat?"
Edit: I am not sure I understand why the downvote. Also disagreement should not be expressed with downvote. I was stressing that my point (and Apple's I guess) is it doesn't make business sense what Google is asking.
SMS isn't their moat, though. They wouldn't give up iMessage.
Supporting RCS (again, in addition to iMessage) would make their product better: it would allow higher quality media to be sent to and received from non-Apple users; it would allow for typing indicators and read receipts with non-Apple users; and (perhaps most importantly) it would allow - if Apple adopted Google's extensions - e2e encryption with non-Apple users. Apple loves privacy, after all.
It results in a better experience for their users, but it would not improve their business. It would lower the barrier to switching from iOS to Android. A lot of people, myself included, only have an iPhone because of iMessage. I would love if my iPhone supported RCS. But that is at least in part because it would pave the way to me being free from Apple (not that I’d necessarily switch). And that hurts Apple directly.
It also hurts them because it decreases their network effect. If people do not encourage each other to move to iMessage because RCS is more available, fewer users switch to iPhones.
If that's not called moat, I don't know what is.
I run a phone business in Australia which is, as far as I'm aware, the only product that supports voice, txt and picture messaging on a virtual number outside of North America.
Ever since I built the product, people have been telling me SMS is obsolete and RCS is coming (4 years now). Google bought Jibe Mobile in 2015, if you go to the Jibe website and try to submit their "Get Started" form there is an error.
I have tried to get in touch with carriers to find out how to connect up RCS from my product (because hey, don't want to get behind the 8 ball) and haven't found any way to get it set up, even when asking my upstream providers.
I really don't think RCS is going anywhere, but if it is, it would be good to be able to build it into my product!
[0] http://www.benkophone.com/
IIRC with RCS, carriers don't run the infrastructure, Google does.
That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s a federated system with each carrier supposed to run things for their customers.
Why does it work today? After years of begging Google gave up and put all their users without carrier support (basically everyone) onto a Google RCS instance.
Despite how the article tries to portray things in many ways it’s iMessage but worse. With Google running everything it might as well be proprietary. And it lacks full E2E encryption.
Things probably would’ve been better off if Google had just stuck to their own private protocol and used that instead, perhaps opening it.
Telstra kicked off RCS in Australia, but only on their network, then Google did one for everyone else, but it doesn't work with Telstra AFACT.
Vodafone has this business RCS page:
https://www.vodafone.com/business/carrier-services/messaging...
and they "launched" in 2018, but from what I can tell still no-one is using it.
There's a lot of confusion around it.
> from what I can tell still no-one is using it.
> There's a lot of confusion around it.
The story of every feature introduced by telcos in the last 100 years that goes beyond voice calls or text messages.
It's not just on the telcos, Android fragmentation as a whole makes implementing new network features an uphill battle. VoLTE is an absolute mess (on Android) if your build doesn't have settings for your carrier. Google doesn't sell the Pixel in my country, so the only way to enable VoLTE here is to root your device. This is only going to get worse with carriers sunsetting 3G networks - anyone roaming on a Pixel in such a country won't be able to make calls, even to emergency numbers.
I seem to recall a similar picture when SMS was introduced. For many years, you couldn't text people outside your phone network.
Maybe it's dead in the US, but German providers added support in 2021. Of course everyone here already uses cross platform messengers, so I guess it's dead, here, too.
This is a US thing, right?
Haven't received an SMS from a real person (in other words, all SMSes I get are 2FA etc) for, at least 5 years, maybe 10.
Even people who use iPhones don't send SMSes, MMSes or anything as obsolete (including RCS). Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber). Locale: Central Europe.
So, why would anyone stick to the obsolete stuff? Are there regions of the US which have cell phone signals but no Internet access?
This is indeed a US thing (culturally). Most countries seem to have chat culture revolve around Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat or LINE.
On top of that, most people don't really care and read whatever comes in regardless of the format.
MMS was a failed concept, and so is RCS. Not because the technology is fundamentally bad, it's the implementation that is fundamentally flawed by keeping telcos in the loop. The only reason SMS didn't die is purely by accident: it was included as some sort of auxiliary technical channel, not really intended as a means of chatting with other people. Heck, it was almost not even included in the GSM standard and mostly thought of as a useless waste of protocol specification. This made it unattractive to market or monetise at first, and later on with the whole ringtone/bitmap mess around the 00's it only enjoyed a short bubble of commercial exploitation.
The cost, and the limited format then caused the likes of BBM and even MSN for mobile to be used as true chat replacements, except in the USA. That was around the same time as the flop that was MMS. Then WhatsApp (and others) came along and by then the whole telco legacy mindset finally caught up and it was way too late. Then Apple came around and a decade later finally RCS was invented at some sad endeavour to get back in the loop as a telco.
Similar things were tried to 'replace' email etc. in the AOL days, which also turned into a big flop.
BBM was pretty big when I was in high school and college. It died the same death as Blackberry when the iPhone came out.
MMS wasn't a failed concept. It was successful at what it was designed for at the time - to share a photo or short video on 2G/3G phones. Not bidirectional conversational messaging.
MMS was never designed to be used for group chats. It was a clever implementation by Apple which made it become the standard for cellular group chats once every other platform copied it.
The US market standardized on mobile plans with unlimited texting a long, long time ago, so I think this caused people to mostly stick to SMS/MMS for communication since it was the path of least resistance. I don't know what the situation in Europe is like now, but in the past I remember it being difficult to find plans without very small SMS caps when traveling. That could be why Europeans naturally gravitated towards other messaging platforms.
Unlimited SMS plans have been a thing in western europe for the past 15 years, at least. People switched to whatsapp because you can send pictures, not only text.
The percentage of WhatsApp users across countries: https://imgur.com/0Jz527h
It clearly shows that people in Europe, South America and Africa are huge users of WhatsApp and only 18% use it in the US.
MMS existed long before phones that had chat apps.
MMS was (is?) spectacularly expensive, I recall sending an MMS and it costing in the realm of £1.50 -> £2.00 per message, furthermore there was a maximum size to the attachment you could send with it (100k-200k?). These two alone made it a non-starter.
Sure it was exciting at first when the first 3G colour display phones with cameras were a thing, but the cost and size limits were prohibitive when proper smartphones came on the scene.
Yah, MMS is part of "unlimited text" in the US-- albeit the quality is garbage (1MB).
I remember MMS being both expensive but also often broken as each user had to set up a bunch of APN in his phone. And the image quality was crap.
I'm amazed it's still a thing in some port of the world.
Do unlimited SMS plans in Europe in general include unlimited MMS too? That's how it's worked in the U.S. for a very long time.
When people in America want to send pictures without both ends having iMessage, they either use MMS (aka "text it to me") or share them some other way.
Also in Latin America. Even though we have nice 4G text messages do take a while to get through, even if my speed test is high!
TelCos just prefer to use the Internet. And I agree.
I still don't understand how SMS took off in the US. for a long time you had to pay to receive texts, which is madness.
given that undercurrent of expense, I'm still not sure why the US hasn't moved to whatsapp/signal/other. The only thing I can think of is that mobile data is even more expensive.
When you had to pay to receive SMS, WhatsApp didn't exist. Your only other options were more cumbersome things like email and AIM, which still required paying for a phone internet plan and having a capable phone.
If I'm not mistaken, a lot happens on Facebook in the US, including instant messaging.
In Argentina WhatsApp became the de-facto standard definitely because it was “free” messaging compared to the expensive SMS. The carriers ruined it for all of us.
Network effect. SMS works everywhere, all phones support it out-of-the-box. WhatsApp is opt-in. Almost nobody I communicate with regularly has a WhatsApp account.
How do you SMS people without a USA phone number?
Most Americans have few or zero regular international contacts. The US is geographically huge and there are only two other nations within relatively reach.
Personally I have one person in my contacts who's not in the US. This is someone I communicate with about twice a year, and we do indeed use WhatsApp for that.
For non-North American recipients from a North American phone number, you have to prefix with the country code[0]. So unnecessary if you're in the US and want to call Canada or Jamaica or wherever. But say you want to call someone with a UK phone number, you just send the SMS to +44-<their phone number>.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_country_calling_codes
As a leftover artifact from growing up not allowed to call long-distance, I frequently think of things like "Is long-distance texting charges a thing? Will I get charged for texting my friend with a Mexico number? Does it matter if she's currently in Mexico or the US? Does sending a picture incur a fee even if an sms doesn't?"
Social networks.
But as other comments mentioned, the number of people I "text" with regularly without a U.S. phone number / the ability to send and receive SMS is very small.
Because its better than chat apps. I can send a text all over the place. Cell coverage for nondata service is incredible, you'd have to be really remote at this point to not have it at which point you definitely don't have a data connection. Meanwhile there are places all over my city where I can't get a reliable enough LTE connection to open my chat apps let alone send a message, much less one with any attachments. Inside stores are especially bad with LTE. I can't even get an imessage out inside the grocery store. I have to defer to sms, but then it sends instantly.
Want to reply on:
> Everyone just seems to use WhatsApp and Telegram (or if they don't know any better, Viber).
To remark that Telegram by default is not E2E encrypted, you need to explicitly start a "secret chat". And group chats are not encrypted as well. And when you start a secret chat it uses Telegrams "probably maybe secure, but possibly not because it's a non-standard in house built" encryption scheme with weird choices.
I absolutely love Telegram, but I will also definitely not use it for anything more confidential than mindless chatter and cat pictures".
And they rolled their own crypto.
For some reason whatsapp/telegram/etc haven't taken off nearly as well in the US as they have in the rest of the world.
NYT had an article about this recently- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/technology/sms-whatsapp.h...
basically it's the lowest common denominator. There are so many chat apps out there (signal, sms, fb, ig are popular in my circles) and the default app is the only one everyone has installed.
For people close to me, I insist on the use of signal, but I don't have that kind of social capital with every single acquaintance.
France here. I use SMS every single day, moreso than any specific given messaging app. I also routinely use Whatsapp with North Africans and Live Messenger with old FB contacts.
These things are highly localized.
(From the US)
I have never even considered downloading an app to text people… because I just text them. I’ve never understood or needed something different. I’m only now piecing together that this is an American thing though.
> Are there regions of the US which have cell phone signals but no Internet access?
Yes, there are huge swaths of the U.S. that are lightly covered and don’t support Internet applications. I was in Marin County, CA (just north of San Francisco) last year and regularly saw 0 bars of 4g. At those times only SMS got through to friends and family (Messages app falls back to SMS if there is insufficient bandwidth for iMessage).
It works for every phone and doesn’t require me to have an app installed. It doesn’t change on which contact I have (“oh she uses WhatsApp, he uses some other app, this group chat is on facebook messenger, etc”.
It’s just one tech that works on all phones. I don’t even mind if its missing five million emojis or things like that.
South East Asia has tons of SMS spam, WhatsApp spam, Telegram spam and basically <insert any messaging app here> spam.
SMS not in used a lot in Europe doesn't mean the world is not using it.
My assumption was always that, from the get-go, iPhone just had that much of a bigger market share in the US compared to e.g. Europe. I remember in Finland in the early 2010s most of the people in my age group (~20-25 years old) had Android phones while I've understood in the US I'd been in the majority. Not suprising that that situation lead to different networking effects in the US vs elsewhere.
Yes. I don't think I know a single person in Germany that seriously uses iMessage or text message. WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, ... is the name of the game here.
I think a major factor is that Apple/iOS has a much lower market share vs. Android here, so iMessage was never a viable option unless you wanted to reach only 20% of your contacts.
SMS is convenient because everyone has it. With those other services, I have to find out what they use, install it, register for an account, etc. Simpler just to send a text.
does WhatsApp still require you to hand over all your contacts to them when you sign up?
None of my contacts gave consent for me to share their private information.
on iPhone you can refuse and it still works. source i use whatsapp this way
No, you don't have to give them your contacts, but doing so makes it easier to contact people
I was recently forced to install WhatsApp, and it absolutely forced me to give it my contact list.
I finally got my elderly relatives on Whatsapp about 3 years ago.
> This is a US thing, right?
This is the leading surveillance capitalism company trying to lay the groundwork to break the privacy of Apple's messaging system, demanding that Apple give up the privacy that it provides its paying customers, because it is intolerable to Google that there exists data that it doesn't have access to.
The rest is noise from morons who think that you don't deserve privacy unless you sysadmin your phone to an NSA standard, and people who work in adtech.
Supporting RCS doesn't give Google access to iMessage data. Currently SMS is also not encrypted.
Also number of times per week there are posts complaining about current state of capitalism in US, but then if walls of garden built by company with one of the highest valuations in history are endangered, hundreds of cultists will defend them with fire in their eyes and little merit in their words (see recent threads about EU legislation).
RCS itself does not support E2E encryption. That’s an extension Google developed. It only works if BOTH people are using Google’s Messages app.
Group chats? Totally plain text in the clear. No encryption at all.
RCS is not good enough. Fix the issues, develop something better, I don’t care.
Only E2E is good enough.
SMS/MMS, which is the only iMessage fallback today, is not E2E.
Not that I'm a proponent of keeping SMS around, but then what's the incentive to move to RCS?
The actual "open" parts of RCS don't seem any better.
Apart from better media, typing indicators, etc., RCS allows richer metadata (like content types) and various side channels (AFAIK) that allow extensions like E2E to be added. SMS is just 160 characters.
I believe Google will share their E2E spec with others. They published an overview a while ago [1], but presumably they'd offer more to someone wanting to actually implement it.
1: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
Better media is a valid point, but I feel like mentioning typing indicators right after totally takes away from it. It felt so out of place in the article as well. Sorry, but who gives a fuck? All you need to do is wait a couple more seconds and you will know whether the recipient got your message, because in 99/100 cases, guess what follows the typing indicator? A message. I honestly do not get the benefit. If anything, it stresses me out.
Sorry to pick and choose from your comment. Like I said, the other points are definitely valid. It's just this feature I don't understand bringing up.
I find them useful. To each their own, I suppose.
I agree 100% tbh, but the site does list a few incentives - no more blurry images/videos, possibility for tapback and animations etc.
I'm all for standards, but this is mainly sour grapes by Google. If they hadn't shot themselves in the foot dozens of times with messaging they could've dominated using the head start they had with Google Talk. Google should put all messages from iPhone users in comic sans.
They had a surefire strategy starting in 2013 when they added SMS integration to Hangouts and made it a default-installed app on all Androids. It was tied to your Google account so most people (and basically all Android users) already had an account. It was pre-installed, meaning you didn't need to pitch people to install another app, which is usually a big ask. Instead you say "hey open this app you already have installed, we can chat here and it's better, and you can text all your other contacts who don't have it too." It had video calling too, basically all you needed.
But then Allo and Duo came along. Remember Allo? Me neither! It was Hangouts' death sentence anyway! And now Duo is being rebranded/merged into Meet for some reason.
Get out of the Google ecosystem wherever you can. They're only getting worse.
I still remember the glory that was Google Talk back in 2005-ish. And you could connect to it from other xmpp networks. It's insane to me that the current google chat app (a neglected box within gmail) is WAYYY worse than it was almost 20 years ago.
This is sour grapes for users. Google doesn't own the RCS standard, fwiw. I still use SMS/MMS and it is really, really nice when another user is using RCS because modern messaging features actually work. I can send long voice memos/song ideas to others, high resolution photos, see if a message was read etc. RCS is a huge upgrade, and really has nothing to do with Google.
This is genius.
First, Apple shaming Microsoft. Then, Microsoft shaming Google. Now, Google shaming Apple.
> missing read receipts and typing indicators
Life is better without both of these.
> no texting over Wi-Fi
This claim was odd. I visited Europe a few months ago and definitely sent/received SMS over wifi using my iPhone.
> When people with iPhones and Android phones text each other, Apple relies on SMS and MMS, outdated systems which do not always support texting over wi-fi. That means if you don’t have a cellular network connection, depending on your carrier and situation, you may not be able to send and receive texts.
Oh, so the claim was deliberately misleading. That's not a good way to build trust.
> definitely sent/received SMS over wifi using my iPhone
Are you certain? From what I understand about how SMS works, I don’t see how that’s possible. Apple’s own docs also appear to suggest that SMS-over-WiFi won’t work: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207006
Most operators do cellular over wifi now (because 4G/5G sucks indoor). Not all of them though.
I’m curious about how this works, can you link me someplace where I can read more about it? I tried searching for “cellular over wifi” but wasn’t about to find anything promising.
EDIT: I searched harder and found “VoWiFi”. It looks like this can support SMS and is supported by iOS. TIL.
For someone more curious, I tried to learn more about this tech, and this [1] is the best resource I found about someone explaining how it works.
Essentially VoWifi connects to your ISP via a IPSec VPN using secrets derived using your sim card as a smart card, then connects to a internal SIP server and voila.
I spent a lot of time trying to connect to the IPSec server from a computer, but couldn't figure out how to get the challenge solved by my sim. Gosh I wish I could make normal calls from my computer.
1. https://worthdoingbadly.com/vowifi/
Thanks for this link! This is a great explanation which clears a lot of things up to me.
Bingo. My carrier offers it as Wifi Calling. It worked surprisingly well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_Access_Network
4G is not so bad here because of the 700 / 800 MHz band which has really good penetration.
But 5G is mainly done on 3.5Ghz and that's tough yes. Of course they can use the same frequencies for 5G. Though the bandwidth at such low frequencies is limited, and thus the maximum speeds.
I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway? I've been using WhatsApp for ages now and so does everybody else in my country - and every country I've been in, apart from China and Japan. My friend who's from the US once said "I've paid for those text messages, so I'm going to use them!" But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text. WhatsApp is free! Is there any viable reason why Apple users use SMS so much?
Almost nobody I know uses WhatsApp. On the other hand, a significant number of people I meet do have iMessage. There's no incentive for me to install WhatsApp. Even my friends internationally all have iPhones. I don't install third-party apps unless there is a very good reason. SMS is an inferior but acceptable fallback for edge cases.
Your bubble is not representative of the whole world though. >80% of mobile devices are not iPhones. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-fore...)
80% is not an edge case.
This is a subthread about someone not from the US being surprised at the messaging habits of people in the US, so I think quoting a stat about iPhone/iMessage penetration in the US is perfectly relevant. The US "bubble" is the only one that matters in this particular conversation, as it's specifically what this conversation is about.
Nothing in the comment I've replied to quotes a stat or references the US, and nothing in the grandparent comment references stats or talks about the habits of the US specifically either. I'm also not questioning the relevance of any posted stats. I'm really confused by this comment, is it a mis post from another thread?
Not sure what you mean. The originator of this thread[0] is mostly talking about being surprised at US messaging habits.
Agreed that the person you replied to did not specifically mention the US, but their comment is consistent with a US user's experience, which makes sense since the thread is about US messaging.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32405042
I don't understand how you're confused.
Someone asks:
> I still don't get why people use SMS/MMS anyway?
Someone responds:
> [I use SMS/MMS because] Almost nobody I know uses WhatsApp.
You respond:
> Your bubble is not representative of the whole world though.
Not only did the responder not claim for their bubble to represent the world, but it doesn't matter in any case. The set of people they'll be messaging on their phone is largely constrained to their "bubble." If nobody in their bubble uses WhatsApp, then why would they install WhatsApp?
As for the meta discussion revolving around the US: just because nobody mentioned it doesn't mean that's not obviously the central focus of this comment thread. If someone's bubble contains no WhatsApp users, you can be 99% sure that they are American. The US is the main place where platforms like WhatsApp have not been widely adopted. iPhones are extremely popular there, and iMessage is widely used. It's a country of over 300 million people where the vast majority of residents don't communicate with people outside the country.
This comment comes from a position of privilege and power. Not everyone can afford iPhones and neither is a value-for-money at those prices. If all your international friends are also using iPhones, then you are definitely in a very special bubble.
There are many people in the US who have no international contacts, and so they grew up using only the default messaging app. And they are not sufficiently incentivized to install another app like WhatsApp.
Between NYC/SF, I do not know a single person that does not use both iMessage and WhatsApp. But typically it is people who are not children of immigrants and whose social circles have no one outside the country that tend to not have WhatsApp.
SMS is the only federated messaging system guaranteed available on all cell phones. That makes it more useful than any walled garden.
It's weird to me that so many people don't seem to get that. SMS/MMS are terrible in many ways, but they have the benefit of the universal network effect, without even trying.
Sure, if I want to send someone videos, or do regular group chats, I'm going to find an alternative platform. But if it's just a casual contact, or I don't anticipate needing these things, I'll just stick with SMS.
Not end to end encrypted lol
I'll have you know all of my texts are encrypted with GPG.
90% of my time is spent copying and pastingl...help me.
True cypherpunks encrypt their messages by hand using a one-time pad.
Not having any friends makes this less of a burden than you might think.
That's a hard problem that a lot of smart people are trying to figure out. I'd say there's been good progress.
https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10252671?hl=en
I think this is exclusive to Jibe and Google Messages but a widespread (in terms of installs) proof-of-concept is still pretty cool, and better than nothing.
The bigger problem is adding E2E to SMS is going to attract the FBI's ire, they really really really like reading everybody's texts.
WhatsApp was appealing before it got sucked into the FB vortex. Thanks, but no thanks.
If there were a single 3rd-party messaging platform that I trusted, and my friends started using it, sure. But since 75% use iPhones/iMessage, and the rest SMS, why in the world would I use WhatsApp?
To exchange photos and video with those on Android.
Fairly limited use case for opening myself up to more Meta in my life. I'll pass.
It comes preinstalled, works, is free. Why would I look for a different messaging app? What does WhatsApp do that the preinstalled, free, messaging app doesn't?
Group messages to anyone regardless of platform.
SMS is crap for group chats, and imessage doesn't work if someone in the group isn't using ios.
Now, you absolutely might not care about those things, but millions of people definitely do.
> SMS is crap for group chats
SMS doesn't do group chats; I think you're thinking of MMS. I agree that it's not a great experience, though.
> Group messages to anyone regardless of platform.
That's the thing though; that's not true. WhatsApp might be available on both Android and iOS, but it only works if the person you want to talk to has it installed and has set up an account. That requires coordination. If I meet someone new and want to get in touch with them, I'm going to ask for their phone number (or email address). I'm not going to ask them which messaging apps they have installed so we can figure out which one(s) we have in common.
Sure, if later on I want to start a long-running group chat including this person, I'll absolutely go to the effort of finding a common chat platform that is not MMS, because MMS is terrible. But if I'm only doing 1-on-1 conversations, or just short one-off group chats, I won't bother.
(Interestingly, for some people, even though I have group chats with them on an alternate platform, I'll still message them 1-on-1 using SMS. Not sure why that's the case, and it's not universal. I guess it's just whatever we'd gotten used to, and saw no need to change.)
I think this is region specific. In the UK and a lot of western Europe, you'd probably assume that the other person does have Whatsapp installed and just try messaging on that. If that didn't work, then you might try Messenger or SMS.
A lot of people I know use groupme for groupchats, especially because they support a lot of users, but then its texts for everything else because its simpler. Chat apps have shortcomings, especially if you live where data connections are spotty which is everywhere in America with a large indoor space. My grocery store might as well be a faraday cage for anything demanding my 4g connection, but SMS goes through instantly.
Deliver your messages encrypted, not mess up video quality when sending to/from Android users, sends messages over WiFi just to name a few.
I've seen this position a lot throughout this thread and I have a question: all of these apps (whatsapp, signal, etc.) appear to be "free" - how do you suppose they will make money? In the US, the users of sms/mms/imessage paid in some way for this service and can have some reasonable expectation for delivery and availability.
I believe the Signal Foundation runs on donations. So far this appears to have been sustainable, but of course you could make the argument that we don't know if that will always be the case.
But that's the case for any business, even one for which users directly pay for the service.
In the case of WhatsApp they charge businesses for business features.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408818454938-...
Prior to business features a long time ago they used to charge a one time $1 fee to download then $1 per year.
I use WhatsApp as well, but not many of the people I communicate with have it. SMS/MMS is a common denominator that everyone with a phone number has, and can always be relied upon to work without foreknowledge that the other party has a particular app installed.
> But if I send him a text from Europe to the US, I pay 1 damn euro per delivered text
How the tables have turned! It's no secret that the US has more expensive cellular plans than the rest of the world, but with my carrier, international texting is free.
> Is there any viable reason why Apple users use SMS so much?
They don't. At least not in my experience. I have an iPhone, but there's about a 50/50 split ios/android in my friends and family.
Group chats are almost entirely WhatsApp, and single messages are a blend of WhatsApp, iMessage and SMS.
I probably use SMS/MMS once a week
As counterpoint, I am an Android user in the US, and 90%+ of my contacts are US-based iPhone users. While I do use Signal, WhatsApp, or GChat for nearly all of my group chats, I have 1-on-1 conversations over SMS daily, with quite a few people.
I've managed to move a few of the 1-on-1 chats to Signal, but not many.
I'm not sure I understand.... if 90%+ of your contacts are on iOS, why are you using SMS instead of iMessage?
I wonder if that's a US based thing (I'm in NZ)?
Apple users don't use SMS—they use iMessage. It's seamless and automatic. All your contacts are automatically there as long as you have a phone number or email address which is an AppleID. It's so seamless most people don't even realize they are using it.
There you go talking about the US again and assuming it represents the whole world. You Americans are so bad for that.
The USA is very much iMessage driven relative to rest of the world.
Because most Americans are texting for free
So does the rest of the world
At least not in Indonesia.
Example: https://www.telkomsel.com/en/tariff
A text costs you Rp 350.
I’d rather skip messaging friends and family altogether than use a service owned and operated by sociopath anti-human Mark Zuckerberg.
I setup a BlueBubbles server on a spare Mac and I installed the BlueBubbles App. Boom. iMessages on Android. Done.
Messaging is already extremely fragmented. BB is only the eighth messaging app on my phone. Considering getting on Beeper to consolodate this madness. Matrix/Element was too rough to utilize as is.
Almost everyone I text with is on iMessage in the US. 95% or more of my regular contacts. Many are often outspoken about their cult like allegiance to iMessage. Finally some respect.
The look on their face when I send them an iMessage from my Galaxy is priceless.
Now, nearly all of the SMS messages I get are spam. Google Messages and the phone companies are pathetic at stopping them.
> The look on their face when I send them an iMessage from my Galaxy is priceless.
Well, technically it was relayed through your Mac. Not sure how many Galaxy users have Macs to send message through, so I’m not sure it’s a workable solution for most.
Probably many, since macs are the most popular laptop/desktop computers, and many people have one.
I wanna live in the world where what you said is true!
I have not had this experience. Google Messages has been incredible at stopping spam for me. Android is best in class on calls as well. I was seeing memes about car warranties and looked it up. Apparently a big problem with spam calls. Haven't seen a spam call on my pixels in years. All filtered into the ether.
Yeah and there's also mautrix-imessage for those wanting to use element.
I know it's rough setting up but there's a really great ansible playbook that makes it easy to maintain. I really love having all my messaging consolidated and not having all those privacy-invasive apps on my phone. Having my chats all in one big database is another boon.
The playbook doesn't support mautrix-imessage but that's because that needs to be run on macOS.
mautrix-imessage is actually developed by Beeper. iirc they just send you a jailbroken iPhone if you subscribe to them (as far as I can remember)
Yes, tulir works for beeper. But I think they stopped doing that iPhone thing, and if you use iOS there are less features available: https://github.com/mautrix/imessage/blob/master/ROADMAP.md . A Mac with SIP disabled is now the recommended method (apparently this can be a VM too!)
That iPhone thing was something they did in the beginning, before they used the name Beeper, I forget the name they used.
I like the idea of Beeper but self-hosting is important to me, so I use the ansible playbook instead. For hosted services there's also Element One by the way, though that doesn't include the iMessage bridge.
Can this be done without setting up a private Mac server?
You don't have to setup on a dedicated Mac server. You could also use a jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch
At that point just make a hackintosh VM and run it from there. Why even buy apples stuff if you're not gonna use it.
It'd probably consume less power, and as you'd have to leave this on 24/7, that is worth considering.
This is so funny because they don't even do a good job themselves with their own service.
I'm a Google phone user on Google Fi, and make heavy use of the web app (message.google.com/web) in addition to texting via the phone. Once you get a long conversation history, the phone experience becomes poor - conversations won't load, messages won't send - and the web will often lose sync and need to be re-paired (which may or may not itself work). On top of that, some days messages just will not send quickly, not over wifi or 5g, to the point that it's too hard to converse via text and we just give up.
Google has an alternative configuration for Fi users, btw: you can do all your calls and texts through Fi, have Fi store your messages and voicemails, etc. Except you have to turn off RCS for this, because Fi doesn't support it. So you get the SMS/MMS experience they are complaining about, and on top of that they convert all your audio and video to 3gpp and downscale the heck out of it such that it's nearly worthless.
Who knows what's realistically possible but I wonder if Google is going about this the right way. Call up Tim Cook and say we'd like to give Android users a better messaging experience, how can we work with you to do that. Don't try to embarrass Apple into helping you - Apple very likely does not care - and certainly if you're going to point out where their choices lead to a worse experience for your users, make sure you're not doing the same thing.
Just to counter your anecdote, I've never had a single performance issue on the Android Messages app on my phone or the web interface. I have had friends with iPhones that fail to render images I've sent them, and they send this obnoxious "so and so responded with a thumbs up" (still do, android phones just do the right thing now and show a thumbs up reaction instead of the text). So YMMV. Apple needs to fix their broken messaging app.
I would agree more if the RCS standard wasn’t also hot garbage…
I would encourage anyone who is curious to read more about it. It’s taken so long to gain traction that it has also become somewhat legacy. Also, it still requires a carrier sponsored phone plan? How is this “modern” in comparison to say every other carrier agnostic messaging app in existence?
Also this: https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1480679515298934786
It really is god-awful. RCS is a technology that benefits mobile operators, not users.
Also, Google really aren't in a position to lecture anyone on this topic, given their N+1 approach to messaging services.
Speak for yourself; I LOVE texting my fellow-Android-owners with RCS. My photos don't get squashed a la MMS, sending multimedia Just Works, and typing/receipt indicators are lovely. Maybe the mobile operators are getting far bigger wins, but as an average person texting my friends, it's great.
I'm just annoyed that it's opt-in, and still seems to have some issues. I think I converse with exactly three other people who use Android.
One of them works with RCS! Yay!
The second hasn't enabled RCS for some reason. (Or he has -- I haven't asked him -- but for some reason the machinery in between hasn't figured out that we're both RCS-capable.)
The third has enabled RCS, and the messages I send to him go over RCS, but when he replies, they go over SMS/MMS. No idea why.
Yeah I definitely feel that pain, especially with the swapping back and forth to and from RCS.
Honestly same. And the same thing for getting Wi-Fi calls with people on the same network and how they sound crystal clear but then you call someone who's not on your network and it sounds like a crappy phone call again. When my dad and I were both on Google fi our phone calls sounded great and texting through RCS was great. He switched to the same carrier that his new wife has and the service is just degraded.
Its definitely a compromise, but Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers. We can sit back behind our keyboards and criticize but it is a way to get something going. I don't think carriers have any incentive to improve this area, and probably nothing would happen
> Its definitely a compromise, but Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers.
Are they, though? Google absolutely could have implemented an iMessage competitor, directly in the stock Android Messages app, and then required third-party Android manufacturers to include it as the stock SMS/MMS/"gMessage" app as a part of Android conformance testing.
But no, instead they choose to play games with Allo, Duo, Hangouts, Chat, etc., all of which are an optional download and need not be included in the stock install. And even if/when they are required, it's still an extra app that a user has to find, and understand why they should use it.
Now, I don't want them to do this. I want them to promote and support a federated, open standard; I don't want another iMessage. RCS is not great for many reasons, but at least it's not a walled garden.
> Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers
Yet again I recall the deal with the devil Apple did with AT&T, giving them a year or two of exclusive rights to sell the iPhone in return for having exactly zero control over the device. That was an excellent trade. Before 2007, carriers were intrusively involved with all aspects of a mobile phone.
I understand that there are huge interoperability and legacy requirements on the phone network. But for the sake of solving the biggest problem of Android to iPhone communication I think we can and should demand something which is actually modern (ie platform and carrier agnostic).
The problem with RCS is that the solution has been stuck in GSM consortium hell for over a decade.
> Google is ultimately at the mercy of the carriers
I mean...are they?
If Google were serious about pushing a new standard, and were willing to actually push it on the carriers, they have plenty of money, reach, and clout to make their point heard loud and clear. That would be triply true if it weren't a "new standard" that was yet another transparent attempt to gather more data from users.
They don't even need to push it on the carriers. They can just implement their own siloed iMessage clone in the stock Android Messages app. They don't need to integrate with any carrier services to do so. Hell, simply moving Google Chat into the stock Android Messages app, and seamlessly switching between SMS/MMS and GChat (like Apple does between SMS/MMS and iMessage) would do the trick. (To be clear, I don't want them to do this, but they could.)
And even if Google pushed a new, better standard (than RCS) on the carriers, Apple could (and probably would) still refuse to implement it.
I dont imagine implementing their own imessage clone would work as hardware vendors such as samsung will remove the stock app and ship their own.
>There are zero benefits to phone identity over email
I can think of one: most people’s email identity is subject to termination under Google’s ToS. Same thing with identity tied to Facebook or other social networks. In the US, your ability to take your phone number to a different carrier is protected by federal regulations.
It is actually light years better than SMS/RCS and has a huge value to end users. I can see if a message was read, I can send legit voice memos without size limits, I can send large high resolution photos.
It may not be perfect but it is better than what Apple is doing now.
Very interesting. I wonder what protocol and format the EU commission will point to in enforcing the Digital Markets Act
No one really wants to understand it, they just want to complain that Apple doesn't support it
I don’t love phone based identity but it’s wrong to say it has no benefits.
While it does lock you out if you don’t pay, at least you won’t be locked out by accident since you can generally prove your identity to the carrier. This obviously is a con (sms hijacking) but for many people it’s much more important.
Not to mention the importance of phone numbers being basically universal which is why 3rd party messaging apps haven’t totally replaced sms. RCS has the potential to do so, or at least cut down on sms usage further.
Google cannot legally ship, as part of Android, a carrier-agnostic messaging app like iMessage.
Could you elaborate? I've never heard this before.
It's illegal tying[0]. Google used to force Chrome and Google Search as part of Google Play Store requirements. And were fined a few years ago by the EU[1]. Pretty much most of this reasoning could be applied to a messaging app too.
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_...
Why didn't Apple & iMessage run afoul of this same thing? Is it because Google was forcing third-party manufacturers to include things, but Apple of course just doesn't have that issue?
> Is it because Google was forcing third-party manufacturers to include things, but Apple of course just doesn't have that issue?
Yes.
I've heard that since Android is the OS that 3rd parties use it could violate antitrust to include a Google branded chat-app. Apple does not distribute iOS so they can do whatever they want.
ehhhh, that twitter post is weird. It's like your phone number. You're free to switch carriers, and just like a phone number, you lose it if you stop paying. It's not designed to replace whatsapp, its replacing sms.
I miss XMPP :(
XMPP sucked, you guys have to stop bringing it out over and over again. Not having a common experience between clients because of that stupid « X » sucked. There’s an impossible to solve mismatch between XEPs supported by the clients and the servers.
XMPP is dead for reason, stop trying to bring it back
Because of the "stupid X", modern XMPP supports far more than it used to, and isn't stuck in the past like email and SMS.
There is a mismatch between iMessage (Apple) and RCS (Google's flavour of the month). To the point where there is almost no sensible interoperability between the two.
All XMPP does is provide answers to "If I want to implement feature X, how should that look on the wire".
Just as the XMPP Standards Foundation annually publishes the recommended baseline feature sets for XMPP clients, it wouldn't be hard for Apple and Google to follow that or (more likely) agree on their own baseline for interoperability between the two ecosystems.
As I always say when this comes up: the wire protocol is of least concern - it's not the reason these businesses don't prioritize interoperability. No protocol engineering can magically fix that.
> Because of the "stupid X", modern XMPP supports far more than it used to, and isn't stuck in the past like email and SMS.
Yeah, it’s dead. Maybe XMPP supports shiny stuff. But no client or server support them, and if they do it’s like they don’t understand the spec the same way.
A protocol should not be extensible, it should be full featured and regularly updated to include new needs. It should also propose a reference implementation and an official client so that there’s a clear baseline.
Matrix is doing it way better than XMPP ever did.
I use XMPP because unlike Matrix, XMPP is properly standardized and not a product by a single VC funded startup.
If you ever have multiple independent implementations a single monolithic spec will always only be partially supported (or there is only a single useable implementation like Synapse), so no different than having extensions.
Have you ever considered that your constant FUD against Matrix just ends up hurting open communications in general? How about putting your energy into improving XMPP rather than constantly whining about the existence of Matrix.
Matrix is properly standardised at https://spec.matrix.org by a non-profit foundation: https://matrix.org/foundation. Just because the core team created a startup to fund our work (3 years into the project) doesn’t make it “a product by a single VC funded startup” - especially when there are hundreds of independent companies building on the standard. Meanwhile empirically synapse, dendrite and conduit can all talk fine to each other and we haven’t seen any fragmentation yet.
If you want to complain about something, go attack the closed cabal of RCS or the hypercapitalism silos of FAANG - and leave us the hell alone.
I don't think that promoting existing internet standards over Matrix will hurt open communications.
Instead I think constantly reinventing the same thing with slightly different, incompatible primitives is hurting the ecosystem a lot more.
Bridges also won't solve this. The matrix.org XMPP implementation (besides not being mentioned anywhere, not even in the Matrix FAQ about XMPP) is almost unusable and I suspect it will never allow for encrypted communications or A/V calls.
I don't see any "whining" or "attack" before your comment. Sure the comment mentioning Matrix is a little confused about Matrix the foundation vs the startup, but did it really warrant what you just wrote?
Putting a notification on "matrix" on HN so you can jump on every critic and yell "leave us the hell alone" is not kind.
Matrix ended up hurting open communications in general. Simply because it is another open, federated standard. It splits usage. Creating another standard is a time honoured way to degrade and destroy an existing standard. I am not claiming that Matrix is some sort of conspiracy to destroy XMPP but it serves that purpose anyway. Every time you make a new incompatible thing you take away from the old thing.
HN struggles with the reality that users pick again and again, platforms with unified experiences instead of extensible platforms where everyone's client supports a different subset of features.
I'd rather have 5 IM apps on my phone than have one and have no idea how my message shows up to the other person. I like that I can use the best app for the job. I mostly talk to people on telegram but if I want to do a voice chat or share my screen, I switch to discord. It's very frictionless and modern OSs allow you to receive notifications while the app is not actually running so it consumes no resources.
It's XMPP that misses you ;)
Agree. It sounds similar to the argument for USB-C charging, also a hot mess of a standard. But RCS is definitely more offensive.
> iPhones make texts with Android phones difficult to read, by using white text on a bright green background.
Wow. I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one. Whatever you want to say about Google's messaging mess and RCS - Apple seems to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to text with Android users.
Also it doesn't sound like Google's asking Apple to give up iMessage - just that they use RCS instead of SMS/MMS to talk to Android users. Not an unreasonable ask given RCS is likely to be a widely adopted standard and an non-trivial improvement over SMS.
Edit: Color aside, the read receipts, MMS quality, Wifi send etc all seem worth fixing with RCS.
This is the most trivial complaint I've ever read. I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles - it just means that it hasn't been sent via iMessage - if I send to an iPhone and sending falls back to SMS it looks just the same. I can't believe people get that upset about green v blue.
Let's be clear. Green vs blue is a bit of a red herring.
The real issue is that Apple has to have some fallback protocol for texting with non-iMessage devices, but refusing to upgrade the fallback protocol beyond SMS/MMS makes the texting experience worse for everyone, as described in the article.
(To avoid additional red herrings. No one is thinking here about opening up iMessage itself to non-Apple clients, just upgrading the fallback option. Also, I can't speak for everyone, but among the non-terminally-online Gen Xer and late-Millennial Americans I know, "texting" means using the built-in app on your phone. Switching to another app is a relationship step. Many of them are blithely unaware that they can't "just" text a photo or video to me or other Android users, nor that I can't just sign out of a group chat when I feel like it.)
SMS is also the fallback protocol for iMessage. If I’m in a place with poor signal, even my texts from the Messages app on my iPhone to my spouse’s iPhone go as SMS.
Edit to add: those bubbles are green too. That’s what the bubble colors really mean. Blue and green are not iPhone vs Android, it’s iMessage (end to end encrypted) vs SMS (less secure, less private).
> I'm in my 50s and I have zero problems reading green bubbles
Besides the other issues... as soon as I heard that adolescents and teens (i.e., hyper-self-conscious, wanting group acceptance, figuring out social status) would be appearing differently in chats with schoolmates, based on whether they used Apple or non-Apple... that sure is a way to sell them Apples.
Another comment alluded to this, but small-minded people will always find a discriminant - toys, clothes, shoes, hair, height, weight, university, degree, house, cottage, trips, car, yacht, private jet, donations, endowments, and so on. Explore what your heart says to, make, buy and enjoy the things you love, and don't sweat the 'bullies'.
Some teens buy old and cheap iphones that aren't really useable.
And then they leave them plugged in at home and forward the messages to their Android device.
Just so that they show up as a blue bubble on their friends phones.
Status obsessions of teens should not be a serious consideration in how messaging communications work.
That’s very ableist of you.
About 1 in 12 males are colorblind. I’m in this group.
I find white text on a bright green background very difficult to read.
This comment says almost exactly the same thing without the first sentence. This trend of everyone calling everyone else a something-ist can’t die fast enough.
I know it's awful that I thought of this, but I half-expected your second sentence to call him a label-ist.
You’re right. I should’ve left it off. I was frustrated.
Which is why there are accessibility settings for exactly that.
sure, but why keep an inaccessible default?
Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility?
I do agree that the green bubbles aren’t great looking but thats what they chose for iOS even prior to iMessage existing.
> Because it doesn’t affect everyone
This isn't a good answer. We can use sensible attractive UI/UX defaults without being exclusive.
> Because it doesn’t affect everyone and aesthetics are not equal to accessibility?
The thing with accessibility is that it does affect everyone.
If you get woken up by a call and open iMessage in the middle of the night, being able to read the message accurately while blinking away eye gunk matters.
Better contrast helps you read your text message if your phone is on a table across from you lying flat.
There's going to be times you're trying to read a message and your phone won't be 100% in front of you at arms length and you are able to take the time to bring the phone into focus with proper lighting around you.
I would happily use the eye gunk excuse for everyone contacting me at night. I probably find that word more funny because I just learned it and I am not a native speaker.
I still believe this is an issue. Colorblind or not, everyone probably has had difficulties reading their phone in direct sunlight. But these are seriously not insurmountable technical problems at all and the excuse is pretty weak.
I turned on the "increase contrast" accessibility feature just because it makes the green background color on those messages look nicer. Just do it. It isn't like they check to to see if you are diagnosed with colorblindness or whatever.
I am a colorblind male and I apologize on behalf of colorblind people using the word ableist. The bubble text is fine for me.
It’s the text you send, not incoming, so you don’t need to read it much. There’s also various accessibility features to help with color across the os.
Not only that, but these are complaints coming from non-iPhone users, by definition, which means it is totally up to Android what color their messages are displayed in.
iPhone User texts Android user - the iPhone user sees their outbound message as green on white.
This is not up to Android, it is up to Apple how their UX displays texts to non-Apple users.
Are 1 in 12 colorblind in a way that makes the white on green difficult to read
What if 3 in 12 who aren’t colorblind find it easier to read white on green?
Not everything is worthy of a social justice battle.
On iPhone you can enable one of several system-wide colour modes designed for colour-blind. Give it a try.
So making the bubble blue instead of green without changing the protocol would be already ok for you? How do you cope with this right now, do you and your social group use alternatives to iMessage like signal or telegram?
You read the messages you send?
You don’t?
Not after I send them...
If you read the article, you’d know that there are actually multiple functional issues due to Apple insisting on SMS/MMS.
From the guidelines¹:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Regardless if they read the article or not, they were addressing one specific complaint which is unrelated to the others.
¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Google conclusively found there was a statistically most pleasing shade of blue in their 41 Shades of Blue experiment. This type of testing can be and is being leveraged for profit. It's not too difficult to imagine Apple tuning iMessage vs. SMS colors to be perfectly calming/nauseating respectively.
It's also worth noting that the current version of iMessage uses contrast levels that don't follow Apple's own HIG (the early green bubbles did, but the shade of green has gotten lighter and lighter over time)
These days it’s good marketing to blame Apple for everything.
First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so.
Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
“Right now, Google runs three mainline messaging apps: Besides this Google Messages/RCS platform, there's also Google Chat, which is a more traditional over-the-top messaging service, and Google Voice, which is a Google-provided phone number with SMS. Google Hangouts is technically still around as the fourth messaging app, though that's shutting down in November. There are also siloed messaging apps built into Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Stadia, Google Pay, Google Assistant, and Google Phone, and none of them talk to each other.
Google's head of messaging also quit last month, so there's no telling what the future of Google messaging holds until someone takes the reins. I would suggest Google get its house in order before it starts throwing rocks at Apple.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...
So Apple should stick to en even older standard (SMS/MMS)?
All that Google is asking is for the fallback to be at least in the current century, is that too much to ask.
Isn’t that the safest fallback, if you know they aren’t using iMessage? The other phone could be a phone that can’t accept RCS or iMessage.
Fallbacks can be layered. For a company that claims go all-out for its consumers privacy, using SMS as the default fallback in the 21st century is pretty sus.
There’s over a dozen different versions of RCS, hand who knows which carrier supports which parts. It’d be more fall-through (the cracks) than fall back.
Yes it seems that RCS is actually not a real fallback, it is a request to support yet another modern(ish) system.
I personally think they should adopt something brand new and not evil. I'm not saying that RCS is evil, but from what I can tell, while it has federation, Google seems to be gaining a monopoly on RCS (sorry, I don't remember what article I read that in). My pick would be something like Matrix or even XMPP to make sure that there's a definite standard that is federated by design; however, you'd have to trust your carrier/software to not dump your messages onto Google's server instead of using a different server.
>First, RCS is not a very modern or practical standard. It was created in 2008 by carriers (GSMA!!) for their SMS/MMS centric (at the time) platforms. So is it a good idea to adopt this more than a decade later? I don’t think so.
Is a standard from the 90s acceptable then? Do we say Apple shouldn't migrate to USB-C since it's old-ish? A standard being around a long time is a good thing, but when a better one comes along I don't see what excuse Apple has to not migrate (besides anti-competitiveness, which is a really good reason I suppose).
>Second, it’s really not Apple’s fault that Google has failed to come up with a messaging solution. Google has released 13 separate messenger apps since 2011!
The argument in the article could be made irrespective of Google. The article isn't saying "Apple isn't playing nice so use our stuff instead", it's a critique of an obvious attempt by Apple to build a walled garden around messaging. Google is arguing for a standard adopted across the industry, not one of their many messaging apps.
The point of that specific complaint is that the market has evolved significantly since RCS was first created. Things we now take for granted were not built into the standard because they didn’t exist.
The green used on the website is significantly brighter than on an iPhone. In fact, on the iPhone, I would say the green gives better contrast than the white text on a blue background.
For direct messages, the colored bubbles are only used on messages you send. Messages received are always white text on black background (dark mode) or black text on grey background (light mode).
edit: my bad. "increase contrast" option is on, set years ago.
The green (and also the blue, but less so) used by iMessage doesn't even meet the minimum contrast set by apple accesibility guidelines [1]
[1] https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce...
I just took screenshots of an Android green text bubble and the https://www.android.com/get-the-message/ site, and used Photoshop's eyedropper tool to compare colors. They're the exact same shade of green, #48dd8f.
But it's not just you! The green on Google's site looks visually brighter because the entire bubble is on a blue background. On iPhone, the green is normally on a white background.
Now, try setting your iPhone to Dark Mode in Settings, and you'll find that the green bubbles are still #48dd8f green and the text is still #ffffff pure white; it's harder to read on a black background, IMO.
No, not for me. I'm seeing much darker on my phone:
On the page: #75d993
In the video: #58bf5d
From my iPhone (iOS 15.6): #317332
Edit: scratch that! Apparently I turned on “increase contrast” years ago.
Could you upload a screenshot from your phone? Searching images online I see plenty that roughly match the colors they're using on the video/website, but none as dark as your iPhone. Reference: https://i.imgur.com/PlGjjQg.png
Maybe a personalization option?
Yes. Apparently I turned on the “increase contrast” Accessibility option years ago. I’ll be leaving it on.
The background color of the bubbles changes in a gradient kind of way, depending on their vertical position on screen. That may explain the disparity you're seeing.
It's objectively much worse contrast.
https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/B3-CB781_1017ST_2_...
My contrast tool says the blue contrast is 3.4:1 while the green is 1.9:1
The "increase contrast" green is both more readable and also just nicer looking. I don't know why it isn't the default.
iMessage was released on iOS 5 with the release of the iPhone 4S. Before then, all messages had a green background. Somehow sticking with the default of more than 10+ years is intentional maleficence by Apple?
In a product development org, refusing to prioritize something is identical to deprioritizing it.
@Time0 -> Priority1=X, Priority2=Y
@Time1 -> Priority1=X, Priority2=Z, Priority3=Y
Across this timeframe, Y's priority was lowered from P2 to P3, because the org intentionally decided to make Z a higher priority.
One could argue that improving this experience was never in their priority list; but as long as product leaders in the org knew about it; its the same thing. Letting something linger in the backlog, and intentionally deciding to never add it to the backlog in the first place, are identical.
I don't know about "maleficence", but intentional: Yes. Cognizant inaction conveys intentionality.
I think you're misreading the above comment.
He's pointing out that Apple considered green originally the best background color for texting, and then added their own protocol with a blue background.
So it's not like they deliberately relegated SMS to green because they were certain blue was better; if they believed blue was superior, they'd have used it from the beginning.
Yes, and then Time Happened, and every other part of iOS was updated; including, by the way, THE GREEN BUBBLES, to make them less readable, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills and no one else remembers that they used to be a different shade of green, with black text, which has significantly more contrast [1].
Regardless, they could improve it at any time, yet its been like this for... a decade now? Cognizant Inaction Is Intention. It doesn't matter why it is how it is; they can make it whateverthehell they want, they run the code, they run the org, they got the keys to production, so: fix it!
The original color may not have been malicious, but it WAS DELIBERATE. Every design decision at Apple is deliberate; to assert otherwise is to be revisionist. Cognizant Inaction Is Intention. Its color was deliberately chosen originally; its color was deliberately changed; their inaction in fixing the accessibility issues that change created is Deliberate, because Cognizant Inaction is Intention.
[1] https://d2bs8hqp6qvsw6.cloudfront.net/article/images/750x750...
As I'm trying to tell you, assuming malice instead of disagreement isn't productive. It's always been green, even when it was the only option. Perhaps they feel that green is still the best choice!
As others point out, there are accessibility options for people who want more contrast (and which benefit users with trouble reading these outbound messages in far more useful places).
It's not the same shade of green, IIRC it's been changed 2 or 3 times, each iteration having lower contrast with the text color.
It used to be black text on a green background with a bevel to make the text bubble look like it has depth. I'm probably in the minority but I still don't like the modern high contrast flat material design of everything.
In addition to that, iMessage in iOS 5 and 6 did NOT use white for text. Black letters were used instead.
As an iPhone user, it’s very clear that it is done intentionally. The shade of green hurts to read.
No but not updating the default for 10 years in a way that mostly affects only Android users seems like borderline malfeasance to me.
It's not a "default", it's an indicator of how the message was sent.
So every sent message looks white on bright green or just the ones sent over SMS/MMS (I.e. to Android users)?
Messages sent via SMS/MMS are green, messages sent via iMessage are blue.
If you send a message via SMS/MMS to an iPhone user, it's green.
There is no detection if the user on the other end is an Android user.
So it's a default.
Are you saying the default phone that users go out and buy, is an iPhone?
No, green is the default.
Blue is the default, because iOS always tries iMessage first in preference to SMS.
There's a setting for that too.
No.
What? I don't even notice the difference in color except that I know not to use the tapback stuff when I'm texting an Android user. Does the green on white actually bother anyone? This seems like grasping at straws to me.
https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=3cd882&fgcolor=...
The colours do not pass the A11Y standards, which means people with poor eyesight can't read the messages properly.
This did made me curious to see if the blue background passes - and it doesn't either. https://color.a11y.com/ContrastPair/?bgcolor=047aff&fgcolor=...
At least the blue background passes WCAG AA with larger sized text, while the green doesn't pass at all.
The funny thing is that simply changing the text color to black causes the green-on-black to pass all those metrics, with the blue-on-black passing everything but WCAG AAA with the normal font (but still passes on the larger font).
(Same result using #64C567 for the green bubbles, which a sibling pointed out is the correct value.)
Wrong color, iMessage uses #64C567 for the green background, which has a higher contrast than the pair you supplied (1.85 versus 2.15)
I'm confused by all the mention of "what colour apple uses" in messages, message bubbles are a mask over a gradient
Still doesn't pass? Also thanks for pointing out the error!
There is an "Increase Contrast" option in Settings for visually-impaired users.
I've never heard this issue ever raised by anyone in real life.
I've only seen it brought up in internet tiffs about how Apple is using green message bubbles to "shame" non-Apple users. Which is similarly straw-graspy.
Given how cruel and capricious children tend to be, it would not surprise me in the least that iPhone-using US teenagers ostracize peers with Android devices because of the green bubbles.
While it doesn't surprise me, if it wasn't one thing it would probably be another.
Conversely if you're a parent with a distraught teenager being teased about this, I imagine that's cold comfort.
they are... https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
During my highschool years, kids were bullied both for having and for not having both iPhones and Android phones.
yes it is a thing, from January 2022...
Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
That has nothing to do with the readability of the color scheme of your (outgoing!) texts though.
Yeah, they're separate effects, but both triggered (because I wouldn't say teenagers being cruel is _caused_ by Apple) by the way Apple treats SMSs
I would not discount visibility issues for anyone with a visual impairment. But at the same time there are a lot of issues listed on the page, with the color contrast only being one of them. You may consider the other usability issues more significant, but either way as a whole it seems to be a problem.
Tapback works, too - it just appears to the non-iMessage receiver as an another SMS message with the text equivalent of the tapback emoticon.
The Green is historical, not a specific decision by Apple to hinder reading texts.
Before iOS 5, and the release of iMessage, all messages on iOS were green.
That Google is painting this as something else speaks to how disingenuous this whole conversation has gotten, in all corners.
> Before iOS 5, and the release of iMessage, all messages on iOS were green.
The green is inherited from iChat on Mac OS X, which used black text for the green bubbles: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/revie...
But it turns automatically green when you text a non iPhone device.
You have no idea how much of a hot topic this is I modern bullying
This is ridiculous. As someone who suffered greatly from bullying throughout their education, the only way to deal with bullying is punishing bullies.
Bullies will always find something to bully others for, thats why they are bullies and not just expressing a preference.
I’m fairly convinced the bullying problem is a result of a society who treat kids as their parent’s property instead of communal property. Parents enable bullying.
If apple made them all the same color I think bullying would change by around 0%
It turns green when the message is sent over SMS, not when you text a "non-Apple device".
You can send SMS messages to Apple devices, from an Apple device, if you're not signed into iMessage, or they're not, or if your data connectivity is limited, or theirs is.
This! I got sick of iMessage, and I disabled it completely on my iPhone. Everything was SMS, and it made moving my sim card between devices easier. I found that if you don't explicitly turn off iMessage before you ditch your iPhone, no other iMessage users will be able to message you. All my messages were green all the time.
So, you're asserting that the color choice of the bubbles ten years ago was unintentional? That whatever developer coded it had no instruction, Jony Ive & Steve Jobs were silent, and they used a random number generator to pick the hex code?
And additionally, you're asserting that its impossible to change or improve? That its just such an intractable problem which we inherited, and changing it would be such a herculean effort that its not worth moving the needle on?
I've never seen the codebase for the iOS messages app. I believe, even acknowledging that, its probably an absolute mess of legacy code, and I have a ton of sympathy for the developers working on it. I also believe, even acknowledging that, that changing one color is something an intern could do (and because its a big tech product org, there'd be fifty user studies and three orgs of product managers involved and Tim Cook would get a say in it, but those are manufactured problems. Also, let's be clear; if Jobs were still alive & in control, even all those manufactured roadblocks would be torn down, if it were a change he cared to prioritize, because that's the kind of leader he was).
Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional. Inaction is Intentional.
I'm asserting that a decision was made that SMS messages were green.
Then a decision was made that iMessage messages would be blue.
I'm asserting this was not done with animosity. It was a decision by Apple's UX team to make it easy to visually identify the difference between the message mechanics and capabilities of the end-user.
It is remarkably simple, effective and easily understood.
If Apple chose to make it so there was no visual distinction between the message sending mechanisms, that would be a worse, and more confusing, user experience.
If Apple changed the colors, whatever the new colors they chose to use would just be the new focus of the debate. It would become "Orange Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles" or "Purple Bubbles vs Blue Bubbles". People would argue that Apple chose the new color based on some secondary negative characteristic of the new color, just as they do today with green.
I'm not asserting that Apple's choice of color is malicious; just that it needs to be improved.
Also, I'm not asserting that Green is bad. The issue is the shade of Green, and the a11y issues it creates. I don't know how you jumped on "entirely different colors" or "the same color"; Android's criticism in the original article is very clear, its an a11y contrast issue with the light green background and white text. That's it. Nothing else.
This issue is, seriously, a lot simpler than you're exploding it to be. Make it 10 shades darker; done. They even have an option in their accessibility settings to make it so. This is a simple change, any a11y expert (including, maybe, the MANY apple themselves employs) would say the way it stands today is bad, but their inaction conveys intention.
Apple has had an "increase contrast" option on iOS, which does exactly what you're asking for, specifically designed for a11y, within the Accessibility Settings panel of iOS, since iOS 8 I believe, potentially earlier. This increases contrasts throughout the entire iOS experience, and yes, makes the green bubbles several shades darker.
They are not "inactive".
(It's also important to remember that the "green bubbles" applies to messages sent, not received. Received texts, no matter to mechanism, are either black text on grey, or white text on near-black depending on Dark mode)
While true, prior iMessage it was only green bubbles. However, iMessage was released with iOS5 and iOS5 and every iOS prior apple went flat, used very different green: https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/04/9ddbf98c-4b94-11e4-b6...
Now compare it to green bubbles today. Anyways, when I had iPhone, flat green bubbles annoyed me. Not because "hurr-durr I have a iPhone and you don't" but because SMS lacked many features and was hella slow to send. Plus, pretty much anywhere I lived I had horrible cellphone reception which made sending SMS a nightmare.
This point is a fallacy.
Prior to the invention of iMessage - (iOS 6?) - all iPhone texts were this colour of green. It was the same no matter who you texted.
This means Apple never intentionally designed the green bubbles to be more difficult to read.
The text was black though to be fair:
https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-tell-if-youre-sending-a...
White text on green is significantly different - the older green bubbles with black text are noticeably clearer IMO, even if I also find it unlikely it was done deliberately to make SMS look bad. That said, Apple will certainly be aware of the cultural thing of the green vs blue bubbles given major news outlets have written on it (in the US anyway), so...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
I seem to recall the green being a few shades darker (so there was higher contrast)
I don’t think it was a darker green, but the text was black until sometime around iOS 7, I think?
Apple commits many UI offenses, but the alleged illegibility of SMS messages is BS.
Not to mention that Apple's messaging is hideously broken in more ways than Android integration. iMessage will simply delete your phone number from its "can be reached at" list, which breaks years-long threads with a single (iPhone-using) friend into inexplicable new threads.
Ever go overseas? Try putting a local SIM into your USA phone somewhere else, and watch your phone "forget" all of your contacts. Seriously: WTF? Suddenly all of your contacts are unrecognized by number. It's idiotic.
I have quite literally never had that issue. I think people forget that Apple support a very fragmented and wide range of devices on multiple major OS releases and various version numbers. The long-term support period means some devices can be forgotten about even though they are receiving the latest updates. If you have found some edge-case bug, feel free to submit it. There is almost no other way for Apple to know and bother fixing it if you don't tell them.
This is not an "edge case." This is a readily reproducible defect. I've encountered it on different iPhones running current iOS in two countries with a gap of at least two years in between.
I have a paid-up developer account, so you can be assured that I filed a well-supported bug report on it.
The white on green is only used for the SMS messages you sent in the conversation.
Incoming messages are always black on grey, for SMS and iMessage both.
If the color scheme actually impacts legibility, it would only affect messages which you yourself wrote. It wouldn't have any effect on legibility of messages other people wrote, where that really matters a lot more.
The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage always struck me as very intentional.
Before iMessage was released all text messages sent from iPhones were SMS/MMS. They were all green. If an iPhone recipient is unavailable via iMessage a text will fall back to SMS. So green bubbles are intentional, they indicate a text was sent via SMS.
> The puke-green text bubbles from android and calm-blue bubbles from iMessage
This quoted bit is actually incorrect. All messages from android and from iMessage are in identical gray text bubbles.
The blue/green bubbles are for your own sent messages only
> I can't really come up with anything creative to blame Google for this one.
I got the impression RCS de-facto depends on Google servers in some way. Can someone confirm if that's the case?
RCS doesn't inherently depend on Google servers. However Google doesn't see eye-to-eye with anyone. The carriers want their own version of RCS and Apple doesn't want to deal with it. Of course it's easier to get clicks by bashing Apple than by holding the carriers accountable (or supporting your own deprecated messaging platforms).
https://pocketnow.com/why-you-should-probably-avoid-googles-...
Google has exactly zero credibility here. Look how many messaging platforms they've created and killed off. Who's to say Google won't kill off RCS when they get a chance?
https://killedbygoogle.com/
Google's server with Jibe Mobile only exists because the carriers weren't doing anything at all and they needed to have something that worked for everyone.
If Apple implemented support, they would have their own server, they wouldn't use Jibe or the carrier's.
One thing to note is that received texts show up the same, it’s only sent messages that are blue/green.
SMS to me is solely the channel for machines to force a bad MFA implementation on me and couriers to tell me something is on the way/nearly there/delivered. All person to person comms, without exception, iPhone or Android users, is via WhatsApp. Anecdata from UK.
I agree that SMS is obsolete, but I will not so willingly jump to another zuckerberg platform
I think the argument about SMS being insecure is very real but exaggerated. We send password reset with capability URLs through non encrypted mail. Sure, the channel is most likely encrypted but anyone at mail service providers could easily take over a massive amount of accounts. Although the user would notice at least.
Sure, there are tools to intercept SMS without the user noticing, but as a second factor an attacker still doesn't have access to other factors.
The successor RCS has the problem that users cannot reset the password. If you are compromised you need to urgently contact your ISP.
To be clear, I don't consider it to be bad for primarily security reasons, I consider it to be bad because it's inconvenient when it's the only option and forced. I would always prefer TOTP or a push based system such as WhatsApp or telegram or similar. SMS can be slow, and uses an application I don't open for any other purpose.
I far, far prefer a protocol over Zuckerware, but to each their own.
If the current dumb phone comeback continues, SMS won't be going anywhere any time soon
Same, from the US
Really? iMessage is very much used in the USA.
I guess not where I’ve lived (chicago, sf)
Loved “It’s time for Apple to fix texting”
What's really ridiculous is that Android is now parsing this and displaying a reaction bubble.
What's really ridiculous is that iPhone _doesn't_ parse this and display the reaction bubble, so the SMS experience is better for Android people talking to iOS people than it is for iOS people talking to iOS people.
This is fixed in iOS 16 (at least, they said it was. Haven’t tested it.)
Brilliant.
This is pretty disingenuous I think. Other than Android who is using RCS?
Why can't I message between WhatsApp and an RCS client. Or any other chat technology, how about Google Chat to RCS, or Slack to RCS, or anything else.
Their examples for 'the modern standard adopted by most of the mobile world': Motorola, OnePlus, Google Pixel, Samsung, Snapdragon are all providers of Android phones, so clearly they would use the default Android messaging service.
I have a few folk (mostly family) who uses Apple messaging, everyone else seems to be on WhatsApp.
> Other than Android who is using RCS?
Don't forget Android has over 80% world-wide market share.
This is like saying Windows is the standard operating system.
My point still stands they are saying adopt our technology, but being disingenuous by calling it a standard.
Besides that how many people are using WhatsApp instead on both iPhone and Android.
No, it is not. The RCS standards are managed by the GSMA.
It is supported by many companies, one of which is Google.
Google RCS isn’t the same as the carriers RCS, and the carriers support different versions.
So where is it used except Android? With any market share that makes it significant beyond android?
According to the sources I was able to find, iOS and Android collectively make up more than 99% of the smart phone market. There isn’t any significant market share outside of Android because there is no significant market outside of Android.
Nowhere because it requires a phone company SIM. No SIM no RCS. So no RCS between a tablet and phone or two tablets or a PC and phone. Also, ever so wonderfully, carrier provided RCS has no E2EE. So you need Google's app using their RCS gateway to have E2EE only between Google messages users.
That's a weird reply when a market has mostly two players. By definition there won't be any other significant market share.
That's my point, it maybe a standard but for all intents and purposes it is just used by a single player.
It's used by the manufacturers of phones, not just the Android base system. You don't need to be on the Google Messages app to use RCS. Eg it's supported on Samsung.
A lot of Android handset manufacturers do not in fact leave the default X in place for most X.
It's no different than half a dozen web "standards" Google invented like Web Serial, WebUSB, Web MIDI, etc. Google implemented it on their monopoly platform, and then declared it a "standard" and started getting their staff to start trying to shame everyone else for not adopting it as such.
Actually it came from the GSMA https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/rcs/
Apple connect to our messaging platform voice, i mean messages i mean allo i mean duo i mean hangouts i mean...
Google acting like RCS is the hot new standard is pretty disingenuous. In theory it's a standard, but in reality most carriers haven't been interested and haven't implemented it so the vast majority of RCS messages are routed through Google.
I can't really blame Apple for not being interested in adopting a "standard" that's mostly Google pretending to be a standard.
RCS is infinitely better than the current state. Google isn't pretending it's a standard. They're trying to improve messaging between android and iphone uers. Apple won't because the current standard helps their business. It's pretty simple.
> Google isn't pretending it's a standard.
They call it “the modern industry standard” half a dozen times on the page. Zero mention of their affiliation.
First RCS version been developed in late 00. Google had and has zero affiliation with it. What RCS today been published in 2016 and again, Google had no affiliation. Google wasn't even the first one to support RCS - it was Samsung in 2012.
Google, however, added their own extension for E2EE and started roll out with their self-hosted RCS rather than carrier hosted.
Given that RCS is mandatory in 5G networks and supported by world's largest carriers - Yes, it's an industry standard. Given that version used today is published in 2016 - Yes, it's modern. So, what's the problem?
RCS has zero carrier support (in fact carriers are trying to develop their own competing standard). Why would anyone (Apple or otherwise) buy into an already fragmented Google "standard" knowing full well that Google has a pernicious habit of killing off messaging products?
There are at least a few major carriers in North America offering RCS support.
One-on-one E2EE is a big deal and I would to see Apple on-board with it too, including without iCloud exceptions.
Unfortunately they did implement WebP support in WebKit…
Just wondering, why "Unfortunately"?
I’m not the person you replied to, but personally I really hate Google‘s tendency to create their own “standard” and then just shove it down everyone’s throat because they’re so ridiculously big and important.
Speedy and WebP were two examples. RCS already existed (I believe) but basically every single carrier has dragged their feet on it to the point of doing almost nothing (at least in the US) so now Google is basically running the entire thing through their network just to get it to work for their customers because carriers are incompetent/indifferent/directly opposed.
But I doubt that last part was listed in the article.
Yes, exactly, thank you. Nobody used WebP, and then Chrome used WebP, and now everybody has to use WebP because of Chrome's dominance, regardless of whether there might be better alternatives out there. They're trying to do the same with WebM but Webkit has held out on that one so far (not sure if FF has).
And then you have Cloudflare doing crap like automatically reconverting JPEGs to WebPs so when you try to download a JPEG you can use anywhere you end up with a WebP you can pretty much only use in a browser.
Android and Chrome too. They are products, not open source. Google uses its lawyers to jump through loopholes and lie about being open
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but with better PR
Funny thing is the EU doesn't give a fuck and is going to force them.
I find it interesting how many HN'ers now think bureaucratic control of technology is a Good Thing(tm).
I find it interesting how many HN'ers now don't think consumer protection is a good thing.
(Actually, in hindsight it isn't that surprising. Tech companies only make the money they do because of the lack of consumer protections... so definitely in most HN'ers interest to keep the status quo.
European legislators are why I now have a cookie banner on every website I visit. It is hard to be enthusiastic for more of that. I could support basic antitrust actions that actually promote competition, but when it gets into actually writing technical requirements, the outcome seems less than ideal.
It's fine to debate what exact policy is the best, but it's not productive to just dismiss all regulation as bad because some are inconvenient.
FWIW, the only reason cookie banners are annoying is because the sites intentionally made it that way to bully you into allowing 3rd party cookies. EU regulations allow a site to not have banners if 3rd party tracking is opt-in. They could easily do it via a separate settings page. They only chose the banner because they want you to keep tracking cookies on and the annoying banner results in a higher rate of people agreeing to be tracked at the cost of annoyance (which is somehow respun to be directed to the policy not the site owners). Imagine if every time you enter a business you were asked to sign a liability waiver. That's what cookie banners are.
(You do not have to have a banner if all the cookies you use are first party "essential for functionality" cookies)
The problem is that it's insane to leave all of this for the website to implement correctly. It's a UX nightmare and it opens the door for a company to game the system, secretly ignore my privacy setting, etc. The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem. Sue the company if their "Allow" button is too big or it doesn't work as advertised.
It should be a consistent browser-based preference that makes it impossible for a website to do something that I told it not to do. The problem with that is it requires innovation because cookies have inherent privacy design flaws. When you can't innovate, legislate.
> The EU solution is, of course, to turn a technical problem into a legal problem.
As a regulatory body, what else can they do...? In fact, I actually see this as a good thing.
You should think of regulation as an abstraction, an interface, a contract, that defines only a desired outcome (in this case the idea that 3rd party tracking should be opt-in rather than opt-out or non-opt). The details are then left to private entities to implement.
In fact, had they defined it to be say a browser feature or any other specific implementation, it would be strictly worse. By legislating the abstract concept of 3rd party tracking consent, they are leaving open the door to innovation. The idea is that if someone can come up with a better way of collecting consent in terms of UX, while still guaranteeing the same level of consumer protection, then they should be able to outcompete worse implementations.
The law does not require banners per-se (instead requiring affirmative consent before tracking can commence), nor does it require any button size (instead requiring that features not requiring tracking not be gated behind the consent wall and that certain consent outcomes shouldn't be favoured as a part of the UI). What we have is only that way because innovation is not that fast and the motivation to innovate here isn't that high (yet) --- banners are easy enough to implement and not so egregiously bad as to turn away users.
Yes, they should have just elevated the Do Not Track flag to legal status. If the flag is on, tracking cookies forbidden. Easy. It would have solved the cookie banner problem entirely. Some browsers have already removed it but I'm sure they would have put it back of the EU actually made this feature useful.
I don't know why they didn't use it in the law. Probably advertiser lobby because it's much easier to coerce the user into agreeing when they control the process (dark patterns)
Web developers’ deciding to use cookies, knowing the regulation exists, is why you now have a cookie banner on every website you visit.
I think you have it the wrong way around. Apple is exercising bureaucratic control over technology, the EU is about to give them a lecture in disruption.
It's only funny when you break up a bad faith company like apple.
In most other cases it's government overreach, but ruining iOS would make the tech ecosystem better.
The hundreds of millions of people who freely choose to use iOS would disagree with you.
In this battle of private tyranny versus bureaucratic behemoth, the latter is slightly more aligned with what I want, the freedom of interoperability.
EU bureaucrats are marginally more accountable than Apple/Google middle management bureaucrats.
It's a different world view I think. In Europe with our more socialist history, we view government regulations mainly as a protection of civil rights. Whereas in the US it seems to be viewed more as a kerbing of freedom.
It's not as black and white of course but this seems to be a recurring theme.
Another way to put it might be that Americans fundamentally do not trust the state, and Europeans (or at least Western and Northern Europeans) do.
Of course, this is painting with a very broad brush, and people in both places believe in all sorts of different political ideologies, but I think it generally tends to be true. Europeans are more likely to reason along direct lines like "this is a good policy, therefore it should be enacted" whereas Americans will think in more abstract terms like "this may be a good policy, but do we really want the state to have the power to enact such a policy? How may this power be abused in the future?"
I don't have a good explanation for _why_ this is the case; intuitively, you'd expect the opposite, since the US has never had a totalitarian regime, and most of Europe has within the last 100 years. My only guess is that nowadays the US is way more corrupt, undemocratic, poorly run, etc. than most countries in Western and Northern Europe which leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
Yeah this is gonna happen soon anyways. Not because of some Google website, but because of the Digital Markets Act.
Who uses sms anymore these days?
I tried to go back to a non-smart phone, but it was impossible due to not having whatsapp. That might be a 'local' thing though, not sure.
Anyway, they should just release imessage for android; that would piss off meta too, which is a win in my book ;)
> Who uses sms anymore these days?
Most people? But yeah, it's a local thing. Denmark have had free SMS for something like 20 years, at least as an optional add-on to your subscription. So there where never a reason to move to something else. If you frequently used SMS you just paid the small free for a large number of SMS message, or even unlimited. Current subscriptions pretty much all have free SMS.
When smartphones arrived, most just use the built in messing app. On the iPhone that means that you use iMessage, but it's not something you think about. If you took the average Danish iMessage user and asked them, they'd just say it's SMS.
I don't know that I would want Apple to just dominate the messaging market, but iMessage on Android would kill of many of the existing platforms pretty quickly.
Everyone in the US (if there is at least one android user in the chat)
I have dozens of group chats with iPhone, Android, and even PC users. We never encounter any of the limitations of SMS, for the same reason we can drive across the country and don’t have to constantly scan for new radio channels. It’s just not a technology that we use.
SMS is the old, WhatsApp/Telegram/Messenger/Signal/Discord/etc is the new.
So I have to replace the native messaging app that's decentralized, well proven, reliable, and pre-installed on every phone that can communicate with anyone in the world for 5 different centralized apps from the app store that may or may not exist next year and also try to move my entire network over?
No thanks, I'll stick to SMS.
SMS that is not usable from all my other non-phone computers!
For this reason alone, I greatly prefer iMessage/discord/slack/whateverIsNext so I can use it on my phone and my computers.
I use iMessage. It's great, and doesn't get in the way. And as I said it's included on my phone. It also allows me to communicate with anyone and I don't have to think about if the person I'm contacting has it installed or not, it gracefully degrades to SMS when needed. That's a great messaging app!
While I do have browser tabs open for WhatsApp, Google Chat, and GroupMe, as well as the Signal desktop app running, most people I know do not do this, and do most/all of their messaging from their phone.
I get that's not your experience, but it is indeed an experience that exists, and is probably fairly common.
US here. On the old end of "millennial", if that matters.
More than 95% of my personal communication with other humans I know (remote communication, that is, not in-person, obviously) is in WhatsApp. The rest is phone and SMS and that's all older family.
SMS, like email, is mainly for machines to talk to me.
> More than 95% of my personal communication ... is in WhatsApp
This is wild to me. I'm squarely in the middle of the millennial generation and I've never used WhatsApp and I've never known anyone that uses it. Nearly all of my personal communication is through Messages on my iPhone/iPad/Mac.
You must live in a very special bubble then, given that Android's market share is currently at 72 %.
72% globally, sure. iOS dominates where I live https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
I would estimate iOS has 99% market share among my social network, including nuclear and extended family. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a green bubble.
Yes, "everyone" was an exaggeration. But whatsapp usage in the US is pretty small. iMessage/sms and fb messenger are the only apps with enough market share to matter.
I won't claim like a sibling that this is "wild", because I think it's not that surprising that different people have different social circles and different group dynamics. But I too am an older US millennial (xennial, if we want to be trendy and overly specific), and my one-on-one communications are almost all on SMS. My group chats are mostly on Signal, WhatsApp, and Slack. I have a few one-on-one chats on Signal and WhatsApp, but the bulk of them are over SMS.
That sounds horrible to be so locked-in.
I'm not sure what "locked-in" means here. If something happens to WhatsApp (becomes paid-only, abandoned), you can use Telegram, Viber etc. Maybe the only problem is that you can lose chat history when switching, and that you must make sure all your friends/family migrate to the same service...
Something did happen to WhatsApp: it got bought out and now embeds Facebook spyware.
It's time to switch to Signal. (Telegram and most of the others are not end to end encrypted.)
> I'm not sure what "locked-in" means here. If something happens to WhatsApp (becomes paid-only, abandoned), you can use Telegram, Viber etc. Maybe the only problem is that you can lose chat history when switching, and that you must make sure all your friends/family migrate to the same service...
And get your contact spread over 4 differents messaging App and consequently have all of them installed.
Locked in to WhatsApp as opposed to iMessage? At least it works on all platforms
We're not, so it isn't.
You just said 95% of your communication happens through one app, if that isn't locked in then what is it, locked in with visitation rights?
Since we can switch any time enough folks feel like moving over some of the major group threads to something else, how are we locked in? I can't really think of any time I didn't do nearly all of my communication over one or maybe two channels. In the 1990s, 95+% by landline phone. Then ICQ + Phone. Then SMS. Then WhatsApp.
I also do 95+% of my driving in a single car, and 95+% of my text editing in a single program. 95ish% of my browsing in a single browser. Not locked in to those, either—in all three cases I've switched before without difficulty, and likely will again. I have no idea where the lock-in notion's coming from.
"Locked in" doesn't just mean "I use a single thing for everything".
It means that switching costs are high. With the exception of losing chat history (which I was surprised to find most people don't seem to care about), switching costs between chat platforms are virtually nonexistent.
I’m in the US and everyone I know uses whatsapp
I use and prefer that others use SMS for messaging me. I do have other communication apps, but by far and away SMS is my daily driver.
I dont remember when the last time sending message via SMS. You will not be able to find message app on my android launcher because I hide it, and many people in my circle never really open it other than to read spam message from operator.
So yeah most of the time whatsapp and telegram 100% of my circle. SMS is a thing from the past, I guess the gen z here don't even understand what's SMS.
(someone from SEA region)
I absolutely use SMS. I use Android and don't have Facebook or Whatsapp so if you want to text me you are gonna use SMS.
Plenty of people in Europe with our pre-pay SIM cards, having like 5 000 free SMS per month, minimum.
I have infinite free SMS per month and I uses less than 1 a month. In Europe everyone uses WhatsApp.
> In Europe everyone uses WhatsApp.
That's a bit of an overstatement and really depend on who you ask. I'd say that no-one uses WhatsApp. I know exactly two people who uses WhatsApp, but that also not representative of their actual marketshare.
https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/research/market-researc...
I see that it’s more limited to Western Europe but it really is dominant in a lot of markets.
But that’s not really the point, the point is that also in the markets where the network effect causes the majority of people to use Telegram, Viber or Facebook Messenger, they’re mostly not using SMS, because even if it is free, a messenger service is better.
Except I know people that never touched WhatsApp, so no not everyone.
Also all my contacts on Balkan countries rather go with Viber, so, nope not everyone.
It's the only texting solution you can be sure to know works if you just have a phone number. So in these situations, it is the best choice.
Agree. SMS is relegated to 2FA and before today I did not even know that Apple had a special SMS application for its users.
This is a complete non-issue. I have no idea why people are complaining about this, except as another way in which Android users are trying to force their ecosystem choices on everyone else. The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application, most of which uses similar stylistic design choices as Apple uses for SMS, so it's hardly an issue.
I'm well aware that high schoolers get bullied for being poor and not being able to afford an iPhone. High schoolers were getting bullied for being poor and not being able to afford fancy clothes before cell phones were even a thing, and prior to smartphones were bullied for being poor and not being able to afford pagers or a cell phone (or a car, or ... or ...).
High schoolers are assholes and will find some excuse to torment each other regardless of what aesthetic and design choices somebody in Apple's UX team makes for their built-in messaging app. This is a massive nothingburger and I honestly have no idea why the media gives this any credence other than the shift of the media generally towards being anti-tech.
> This is a complete non-issue.
No it's not. iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does.
> The majority of people globally don't even use built-in messengers, they use WhatsApp or a similar application,
Completely unrelated. This discussion has nothing to do with iMessage / WhatsApp / etc. The problem is that Apple forces your SMS texts into effectively-2G-mode, Apple lies about the quality of the messaging you're getting from your native cellular service.
Imagine if they did the same thing to, say, your telephone calls from your phone number by running it through a ton of fake compression, and then said, "well, you could iMessage or Skype or Zoom instead if you don't want us fucking up your phone call audio".
This is an incredibly disingenuous way to describe this. They support SMS as a fallback for iMessage. SMS is a ubiquitous and broadly supported standard. RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported until recently when Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform. There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS.
I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased.
> I re-iterate, this a complete non-issue. The way you are phrasing it is incredibly biased.
Again, no it's not. My family have iPhones, I have Android. Apples garbage SMS?MMS group messaging made it so that I missed a huge number of messages from them, photos were poor quality, videos were unwatchable. We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it, but this impacted us for about 2 years. And I'm a tech person! The average user is going to have no idea what is going on. This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.
> Apples garbage SMS?MMS group messaging
My wife has Android, I have iPhone, I know exactly what you're referring to. But this isn't "Apple's garbage SMS/MMS group messaging", this is just SMS/MMS group messaging, period. SMS/MMS is ancient, and it sucks, it was a hack when it was originally implemented and never really got better. Nobody here is claiming that SMS is good, we're merely pointing out that RCS is not the right answer and that SMS is the most viable /fallback/. Nobody should be using SMS as their primary messaging platform in 2022.
> We switched to Signal a year ago and have been happy with it
Good, I'm glad to hear this. More people should use Signal. I even managed to get my 72 year old mother using it without any serious issues.
> This affects a large number of people and saying it's a non-issue is dismissive.
It only affects people who refuse to use any one of the myriad other carrier-agnostic messaging apps. I travel extensively around the world, nearly everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp, and nearly everyone inside the US I interact with has at minimum FB Messenger or Discord. Obviously, all of these are operated by other for-profit tech entities and getting more people on Signal would be ideal, but it is what it is.
The right answer here is creating a new carrier-agnostic messaging standard with interoperability and privacy in mind, and then Google, various Android integrators, Apple, Microsoft, et al can build their own clients. RCS is not carrier agnostic, does not support E2E, and is really horribly designed protocol. Worse, because the carriers don't want to deal with it, de facto almost all RCS infrastructure globally is run by Google.
> RCS is a boondoggle that nobody supported
RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)
SMS is the outdated standard that's been mostly unused on smartphones since 2018 and is only supported for backwards compatibility. RCS is the replacement for SMS, and is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.
> Google decided to add support for it to Android in yet another attempt at building their own messaging platform.
No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they basically had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses. It has nothing to do with "Google's own messaging platform" because RCS is *not* a messaging platform, it's literally just how all messages on all phones work in 2022.
There's no Google service for RCS. There's no login for RCS, there's no accounts for RCS. RCS is not an "app" or a "platform", it's literally just the native default built-in way all messaging from your SIM card works on all ~2019+ smartphones.
> There is no rational reason to take offense that iPhones don't support RCS.
You know what, your right. And by your logic, there's no rational reason for iPhones to support Voice-over-LTE (that's a GSMA push), so maybe every iPhone should drop down to 2G everytime a phone call comes in (but not an iMessage Audio Call, of course). And by your logic, there's no reason for iPhones to support Carrier Roaming (that's another GSMA pushed thing), maybe Apple should ignore that one too.
> RCS is the official messaging spec of the GSMA, they effectively set mobile standards. It's on 90+ mobile operators in nearly every nation on the planet. It's just as widely supported as, say, Voice-over-LTE is (another standard by that same group)
Nearly every carrier supports it via Google-operated infrastructure, the carriers don't actually want RCS, have been vocal about this, and it's why RCS had no uptake for over a decade until Google decided to force-feed it to everyone. https://jibe.google.com/ is their platform they provide to carriers, through partnerships (example: https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-google-messaging-...)
RCS is hot garbage, and if you've actually read the standard you'd already know that. There are plenty of arguments that can be made in favor of a carrier-agnostic messaging standard that provides broad interoperability, but RCS is not it. This is not the way.
> No, it's not. SMS is the outdated standard that's been gone since 2018. RCS is the current ubiquitous and broadly supported standard, since 2019 effectively all modern smartphones and cell network use it.
This is absolutely false. 1. SMS is supported by /every/ carrier in the world, period. This is exactly why it's the perfect fallback, because it is guaranteed to be there and even work with pre-smartphone T9 devices. 2. SMS isn't "gone" since 2018 or since ever. RCS is not ubiquitous, it is literally only used on Android, is not supported by any feature phones, and Android only constitutes "effectively all modern smartphones" because the vast majority of people in the world can't afford an iPhone. Globally almost 80% of the market share is Android... in the West/OECD it's like 50%.
> No, that's a complete lie. Google added support for it, because they had to, it's an industry spec that practically every cellular provider uses.
Uh... no... what you are saying here is a lie. Google added support for it because they wanted to, just like they wanted to make every other one of their previous 10+ messaging apps. RCS has been a standard since 2012 (or 2013, depending on who you asked) and the GSMA Universal Profile has been available since 2016, Google didn't even start deploying RCS until 2019 within Android Messages, and did so by cannibalizing the Allo team (another messaging boondoggle).
There is no legal or regulatory requirement or otherwise forcing Google to support RCS. The majority of carriers don't want RCS, and it was basically completely unadopted until Google footed the bill to build out the infrastructure for it.
> There's no Google service for RCS.
https://jibe.google.com/
I'm not going to even respond to the rest of your message. Look, I don't want to be uncharitable, but you frankly don't know what you're talking about and everything you are saying is incredibly biased in a pro-Google way without any basis in fact or reality. Please go actually read the RCS standard. Please go actually learn how RCS is implemented. Please go talk to someone that works with carriers on building out telecommunications systems (hint, I'm one of those people). You are straight out wrong.
> iPhones intentionally don't support modern cellular messaging. There's nothing wrong with insisting they support LTE spec (RCS), like every modern smartphone does.
Clearly every modern smartphone does not support it because iPhone does not. iPhone is half of the US market. A standard that only has 50% market penetration is hardly a standard.
> Imagine if they did the same thing to, say, your telephone calls from your phone number.
I’d be happy if no one could reach me via my telephone number. There would be a lot less spam calls to ignore. I would welcome a system where no one could dial me without me granting them permission first.
> regardless of what aesthetic and design choices somebody in Apple's UX team makes for their built-in messaging app
It's not about aesthetic design, and it's not just about high schoolers. Lots of grown up Apple users don't like adding Android users to their group chats, because falling back to MMS degrades the messaging experience for everyone. Things like images sending in low enough resolution to be useless.
As a European moving to the US, I can attest how hard it is to get Apple users to switch their group chats to WhatsApp/Facebook/Signal. I don't think I'm in a single such group that isn't majority non-Americans.
You can say Apple doesn't need to care about Android users being socially isolated. But some Apple users might like an easier way to include their non-Apple friends.
> As a European moving to the US, I can attest how hard it is to get Apple users to switch their group chats to WhatsApp/Facebook/Signal
I see this as more of a cultural problem. When I travel back to India, I don't complain that I can't use iMessage since iPhones are a rarity. Instead, I install whatever app I need to be involved in a group. And I weigh the cost against the value I get - if it's too much of a change for too little gain, I'd gladly sit it out.
I'm not saying the solution is to force users to buy iPhones. But the core problem isn't purely technical either.
> Instead, I install whatever app I need to be involved in a group.
While it wouldn't be their preference, I'm sure most Android users wouldn't mind installing iMessage to better talk with their iPhone friends.
That would require iMessage being an open standard, or Apple releasing a client for Android. Some commenters mention that the Digital Markets Act might force Apple to do this. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, and assuming they don't want to open iMessage, it would be nice of them to just support a better fallback option.
I really appreciated this comment. It subverted my expectations by inverting the situation: its not Apple's phone being locked to either Apple's messaging service or the texting standard from 1997, its people forcing Apple to implement a more modern standard.
lol
The second the guy in the video complained about Android users getting blamed as if it were an actual problem I questioned the age demographic they were targeting.
From what I’m seeing RCS just isn’t a true solution. Apple and Google should come together to create a standard outside of the carriers.
Absolutely agree. Carriers have no rightful place in the discussion, they’re dumb data pipes and shouldn’t be able to nickel and dime customers on messaging quotas and features, as RCS is designed to allow.
Not so sure about that. We still call these devices "phones", with the expectation that any phone in the world can call any phone number in the world. With no other information than a phone number, you need to involve the carriers to deliver a message texted to an arbitrary phone number. That is why Apple need to fallback to SMS. They have no other means to deliver the message.
If Apple and Google teams up without carriers, they still don't have access to the full, true phone number database that carriers maintain.
Why, exactly, would Apple and Google not be able to fallback to SMS? Without involving carriers at all?
It's not like there's any real benefit to having the carriers in that conversation, you can already text from either device just fine. That would continue into the future.
SMS is not transferred over the internet. It is transferred over a telecoms network. Only the carriers can deliver a SMS message. I guess it is possible to deliver a message over the internet to a SMS gateway somewhere, but as SMS is telecoms technology, only internet is not enough.
First of all, SMS is based on a common protocol used across carriers. Each carrier does not need to individually support each model of device, and vice versa-- as long as both the phone and the carrier support the decades-old standard, your messages will get routed to a SMSC and from there to the recipient. The carriers are not involved in this process at all aside from setting up the industry standard protocols involved. It's also all or nothing, there's no identifying characteristic on a message saying "this was sent by that iPhone we don't want to support anymore".
Additionally, 5G SMS does generally go over IP as SMSoIP: https://www.iplook.com/info/what-are-the-changes-of-sms-in-5...
Do we really need a single standard? I and many others use multiple messaging services and it’s fine. Each has their pros and cons. I can also contact people in multiple ways if one service fails.
I hate using multiple messaging services. I hate the annoying point in time when conversations with someone move beyond the needs of SMS/MMS, and we have to do the annoying dance to figure out which messaging apps we have in common. And god forbid it's a new group chat, then we have to figure out which messaging app several people have in common.
With an open, single, federated messaging standard that's integrated into the stock messaging app of every Android and Google phone, all of that just goes away. If people really want to use another app because it gives them some useful benefit, they can still choose to do so. But I want the default, universal messaging standard to be something that lets me send photos and videos without quality loss to the point that videos are unwatchable.
I would't even mind not having a _single_ standard, as long as all the standards were _open_ standards.
If I could use an Android iMessage client when I have to talk to iPhone users, that would be fine. Or we could even see the rebirth of multiplatform messengers like Pidgin, Gajim and Trillian.
The issue is that right now there is no way to have a modern text conversation with iPhone users (high quality media, reactions etc.) if they don't want to leave iMessage. (Most of them don't.)
I always thought iMessage was the dumbest thing. I’m abroad, I try to iMessage someone because I know it’s going to be free: oops, it downgrade to text and I end up paying. Or I’m on a bad wifi connection: oops, I will not use your signal and just block.
In any case everybody I know uses whatsapp so I don’t think it’s a huge deal. Texts are for spams or restaurant waiting lists.
Then disable ‘send as SMS if iMessage fails'. There’s a toggle for it.
I just use whatsapp instead
So we’re just going start kicking and screaming because iOS users have a different experience than android users? Can anyone here help me understand why Android feels entitled to dictate non Android users’ experience? This seems like a cultural failure within Android that is a byproduct of their inability to satisfy their users. They have completely run out of cards and all that they have left is low budget low effort marketing like this - or is that actually all that they ever had, to begin with after all? Haha.
Maybe focus on delivering a meaningful experience for your users and pull your nose out of the tail end of the iPhone?
It’s a pain for iOS users as well. I have a friend with an android phone I want to message. We all have issues with the various 3rd party apps but her phone has solid RCS support. My iPhone does not (and cannot) until Apple implements RCS support.
Another fun one to point out: Google doesn't just want expanded RCS support because they have a monopoly on all the non-iMessage client devices, but they also run one of the largest providers of the data services for carriers to support RCS as well: https://jibe.google.com/jibe-platform/
Yet another angle on the Google vertical monopoly, and another reason Apple should stay very far away from RCS to protect user privacy.
It's also time for Google to fix texting. Google Voice still doesn't support RCS despite people asking for it for many years. It would be great if someone just copied this web page and filled in Google and Google Voice everywhere it talks about Apple and iMessage, but I get the feeling that Google doesn't even care how embarrassing it is.
It's more embarrassing than that: For most of the time I used Google Voice, it couldn't even forward MMS. I used Google Voice as my primary number for years, and I had to tell people that I couldn't receive group texts or pictures, which always got me weird puzzled looks.
And of course, now they've removed SMS forwarding entirely, and basically completely made the service useless/redundant. I'm glad I ported my main number out years ago.
When I stopped using Google Voice a couple of years ago I still couldn't receive group photos, would only receive 50% of group texts, and (Swedish) accented letters were each replaced by a seemingly random selection of 1-4 ascii characters. Such a mess, I wish I'd never signed up.
I and a ton of other kids switched to iphones in HS purely because of imessage. Google knows how big a lock-in factor it is. the wsj article from a while ago is actually the truth: group chats are terrible, mms just doesn't work, etc.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
Maybe deep down, a lot of people on HN did too but won't admit it. Not calling anyone out, but I know how the crowd around here values 'networking' and the vanity associated with it.
Also just because the bubble vanity isn't an issue in your circles, doesn't mean it isn't an issue in other circles. Whether it's a stupid issue or not is irrelevant, it seems to be a real thing in many people's lives
Surprised the awful videos from platform to platform aren't highlighted more in the comments here. It's cleary Apple nerfing the video to make it look bad. The site's top video goes over it. It's awful.
> It's cleary Apple nerfing the video to make it look bad.
The site itself contradicts that claim. From the FAQ (emphasis added):
> When people with iPhones and Android phones text each other, Apple relies on SMS and MMS, outdated systems that cannot support large media files. That means photos and videos are often compressed and come through blurry. The severity varies by location and carrier based on compression and size limits.
> Apple relies on SMS and MMS
This is the whole point. Apple chooses to fall back to an outdated system instead of one that supports higher quality media files.
And that's just one of the ways they provide a worse quality experience for everyone involved in a cross platform group chat.
There is really no reason for them to do that, except to force people onto Apple if they want to be part of group conversations with most Americans.
> This is the whole point.
It’s the point of the website but is not the point the person I replied to made. I replied to what I quoted, not the article.
Nothing you said contradicted my point. Apple forces SMS which nerfs videos, they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users. Android to Android works perfectly because they aren't using SMS, they are using RCS.
> they choose that on purpose to inconvenience Android users.
So you keep saying, but what’s the source for the claim? It inconveniences iOS users just as much since it only happens during the interaction of iOS and Android. I doubt Apple hates Android so much they specifically choose to inconvenience their own users to spite the competing platform. Seems to me a more likely explanation is that they don’t care enough or don’t want to implement the protocol.
Yes, Apple falls back to an outdated system (on purpose) which nerfs videos. That is not contradictory at all.
Right now Apple is facing quite a lot of regulation in various places to open up their platform: open up app loading, open up repairs, etc. It’s hard not to imagine this being yet another salvo in forcing Apple to open up their messaging platform (and it aligns with recent regulatory efforts).
Except, unlike app stores and repairs, the standard being pushed here, RCS, is not a good solution by comparison. It’s locked to carriers, who have different and inconsistent implementations, rather than being tied to an identity like iMessage.
It’ll be a shame if Apple is forced to adopt an inferior standard here…
Apple will probably be forced to open up their iMessage implementation once the Digital Markets Act will be adopted, forcing large messenger companies to make their messaging services interoperable.
If they're smart, they work together with Google and other large messenger providers to form some sort of secure standard. If they keep being stubborn, they'll be forced to either stop selling iMessage in Europe or accept consequences to their technology much worse than cooperation. I'm no fan of breaking E2EE for interoperation, but since none of the big market players seem interested in working together, I think this will be unavoidable. It's a shame, really, that it had to come to regulation to get the market to work in the users' favour.
This probably won't matter to users outside the EU but big changes are coming over here.
This is about RCS vs. SMS. Apple and Google support SMS as a cross-platform standard. They should support RCS, which is superior.
Apple, pointing to all the happy children in the iMessage pool: "nah, we good, thanks"
Which is why regulation needs to step in. The "free" market has failed.
> happy children
Are they, though? Sure, if you're an iPhone user and everyone you know is an iPhone user, things are great. But once one person uses Android (or, god forbid, a feature phone), your experience gets much worse. No more E2EE, no more read receipts, no more typing notifications, no more reliable delivery and message ordering, no more sending videos at a watchable resolution...
Anyone who cares about communicating with Android devices uses WhatsApp. This is a non problem for 99.99% of the population. Google’s just complaining about sour grapes since they can’t compete.
One way looking at it is that carrier job is only to provide data service. They should not be in the business of messaging. Users (and market) will chose to use whatever messaging service they want.
This even applies to voice. I rather do Signal voice call than carrier voice call with most of my friends. Better quality, encryption, etc.
I like this in theory, but in practice it is very useful to have a universal way to contact people that doesn't depend on both parties having the same proprietary[0] app installed.
If I give someone my phone number (or email address, for that matter), I know they will be able to contact me without any more coordination required. That has a lot of value to me. If we eliminate phone numbers entirely (and thus SMS, MMS, and telco-mediated voice calling), we lose that ability.
I do think that, in the future (perhaps not in our lifetimes) we'll do away with phone numbers, but only after there is another universal way to contact via messaging or voice that involves only sharing some sort of identifier, without any other setup required.
[0] Yes, Signal is open source, but since they refuse to allow people to use modified clients, or build support for federation, they are a proprietary, closed system, just like WhatsApp or Telegram. It's just we can have more confidence in the privacy of our communications on Signal due to its open source nature.
Signal's APIs do not prohibit modified clients.
I think that is shortsighted because data service does not overlap cell service. Go into a grocery store and try and imessage a photo. If your stores are anything like mine it just won't work, until you defer to sending it via SMS, at which point it sends instantly no problem. At the end of the day I'm not paying for data service, I'm paying for data service plus cell service. I want cell service, it has benefits and is not replaced by data only service.
I think this was the case in past but rapidly changed. As networks are get upgraded to newer cellular standards like LTE, 5G the data becomes pretty much standard.
Those who do not understand the OSI model are doomed to repeat it.
The solution isn't RCS either, shoehorning yet another nonsense over a system designed to transmit operational messaging is absurd, just use proper rich media systems like the 10s of im platforms, or the reinvented wheels like matrix etc, it's in a similar vein to trying to add voice calls to IRC.
> Texts from iPhones can’t always be sent to Android over Wi-Fi, leaving your messages unsent and convos hanging if you don’t have cell service.
Yes they can? I have no cellular service at home but I have wifi, and my iPhone connects to "T-Mobile Wi-Fi" via my home internet.
SMS messages are sent and received just fine.
Assuming you have an operator that supports wifi calling and a phone that both supports it and is "whitelisted" (basically USA, Europe does not do such silly things)
> [...] (basically USA, Europe does not do such silly things)
What? Europe has Wi-Fi Calling, too [0].
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204040
woosh - read the comment again, it clearly implied the US has a prominent idea of whitelisting "compatible" handsets (ie; those bought from the network because unlocked is a hilariously quaint idea) whereas in Europe, unlocked handsets are generally the default, since people don't like it and regulations prevent it for the most part anyway, in those cases it's just incompatible/old/awful implementations, rather than operators denying said features.
But just in case: the quotes emphasised the act, the parenthesis referenced said nonsense with the target being the first mentioned (it could not possibly be interpreted any other way) as a result of the parent comment likely being from the US as T-Mobile outside of the US does not refer to itself as such, it's either what it became (ie; EE in the UK) or a regional variant.
You really gotta dial down the smugness. It made your comment difficult to actually understand and so annoying that I didn't want to finish reading it. Take whoosh back to reddit, please.
Case in point, not smugness, repeatedly having to explain the obvious to an audience that is not reddit and should know better
Apple messaging is super annoying. I use Android phone but also have an iPad. Whenever I chat with someone on iPhone, is suddenly decides to route all messages via iMessage instead of SMS and I do not see them on my phone. You have to disable iMessage in iPad to avoid this.
I don’t see how this is a problem. If you want to use an inferior method then it should be opt out (like you are doing) instead of the other way around.
The opt-out is global. I could not keep using iMessage on iPad and SMS on Android as long as Apple account is associated with the same mobile phone number.
Also, changing the mode of communication withot asking or informing users sounds like a bad idea. I send you SMS from my phone. You see it in your iMessage and type a reply and it goes back to my iPad.
It's time for SMS to BE SMS. Always.
If I want to use something else, I'll use it.
If a contact of mine who uses apple tries to SMS me that should work as expected. Always. It _never_ does. Apple intercept it and screw it up to try for their vendor lock-in anti-competitive behaviour.
Apple need to be broken up every bit as badly as google do. It's just insane the way they _both_ behave. It's a competitive race to see how can screw the public harder, faster and deeper. It has to stop, now!
EDIT: ok I read other comments and learned that it's mostly a US-specific, cultural thing. I'm impressed that people in the US are still sending SMS, to be honest. Even with cheapest or free SMS, more modern chat apps became mainstream long ago in Europe, (probably) because they allowed to send photos and videos seamlessly, and messages didn't have length limitations.
Original message follows:
Could someone explain what this is about?
The page complains that pictures or videos are poor quality on SMS/MMS, and they lack encryption, like if those were relevant amd not a thing from the 90's.
Also I am reading things like "Since I'm on Android, I'm stuck using SMS a lot, since most people I know have iPhones", and that adds to my confusion.
I guess the issue is that I simply cannot start to understand who would in today's context use SMS to chat. I too use Android and have a lot of friends with iPhones... we just send encrypted, good-enough quality pictures with whatsapp, telegram, or what have you. SMS or other cellular-based services are a thing of the past that nobody would use. So what's all the fuss about?
If you friends an family use text you will too. It's simple network effects.
I can’t take this site seriously. It says it’s ‘not about’ the green and blue bubbles.
It is, and it’s largely that Apple has a vested interest in making their ecosystem look so much better in general.
If I’m texting my friends with an Android and group chat, etc; isn’t working properly - I will automatically assume something about Android is broken, because it works perfectly to my other friends who use iPhones.
Apple will never - ever - ‘fix’ this, because it’s not ‘broken’, it’s a design meant to create the illusion that iOS is the better ecosystem.
iMessage is one of Apple’s most valuable psychological tricks to keep people within the ecosystem, or convert others to join in.
This is a waste of a call to action.
It will be about as effective as praying to Rain Gods for rain. :P
Apple has a massive vested interest in not fixing this ‘problem’.
There’s also a ton of cross platform messaging apps that already have no issues when used with each other - including popular open source ones like Signal.
The websites’ creator has their heart in the right place, but their mind is confused. This is all intentional on Apple’s part. It’s genius and they know it. They will never willingly stop a plan that is working so very well.
> iMessage is one of Apple’s most valuable psychological tricks to keep people within the ecosystem, or convert others to join in.
Perhaps a kernel of truth there, but the real success of iMessage is how it gives you all the features of a modern instant messaging platform without any hassle. Built in to the phone, same app as SMS with automatic fallback, available on MacOS, not limited to a phone#, etc.
Yeah, I can go download one of a number of other IM apps. A small fraction of people I interact with will be reachable on any given app, but a majority are reachable with iMessage. The network effect is very real.
Couldn't everyone have that ecosystem if they adopted a common standard?
> Apple has a vested interest in not fixing this ‘problem’.
Perhaps, you are right. Their vested interest is in making more $ for AAPL shareholders. The sands may shift. There are incoming regulatory pressures and what not.
However, it is still fair game to point out what is broken though. The Internet (such as it is) is full of opinions. It is not a waste. It is a perspective.
You've explained the subtext of the article. Which means the article did need to be written.
lol, in no way. The article has a call to action to try to get Apple to change course.
The author suggesting that indicates a total lack of comprehension to Apple’s plan and purpose/intention.
Calling for people to ask Apple to change this is like politely asking Opioid manufacturers to stop killing people. It’s profit. It has nothing to do with what’s best for the consumer.
My main point of the comment was not to explain the subtext of the article. It was to explain that the article just didn’t need to be written, and won’t change anything.
The audience isn't really Apple. It's regulators.
> This is a waste of a call to action.
Agreed. I can't imagine what the decision makers at Google thought this webpage would do? Will it suddenly make Apple implement RCS - I think not...
The only thing that might make Apple make open messaging in the near future is the threat of the EU mandating it via the Digital Services Act. And those platform rules apply equally to any app with more than 45 million people - so iMessage, Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, etc.
It seems likely to me that the site isn't particularly intended to be effective in making Apple fix their integration with non-iMessage texting. It's intended to be effective in raising awareness that Apple is deliberately doing a lousy job of integration with non-iMessage texting.
Contrary to everyone complaining, I would argue fragmentation is part of the innovation process. FireWire vs USB, Blu-ray vs HD-DVD etc. Whoever the market chooses is the winner and survivor. No one needs to “fix” anything. You just make a product that people will buy to survive.
Two systems are suboptimal for developers. It would be great if Apple and Google could get their heads together and find a way to interoperate.
I don't mind the bubble colour... I'm OK with an Apple colour, Google colour, and an interoperable colour. It would be useful to signal what features might be available with each technology.
What I would really like is for the interoperable solution to have a common API so I can programmatically sent a message to anyone (at least the two main players with an option for other phone makers — and also apps like Telegram — to join).
>What I would really like is for the interoperable solution to have a common API so I can programmatically sent a message to anyone
No thanks, we don't want your spam.
Doesn't fix SPAM but I can still dream of a better environment.
I use an iPhone and have never experienced any of these issues with blurriness. Do they have specific examples? As others have said, I think I'm good with the way things are right now.
Ask a friend with an Android to text you a video, and see if it looks sharp or blurry. Using RCS as fall back would literally change nothing for you, except better quality conversations with Android users.
Apple would rather Android users feel isolated and thus pressured into adoption of a superior product than enhance iMessage to be RCS compatible. In Europe, people rarely use iMessage for group chats at all, WhatsApp / Telegram / Threema / Signal are defacto group chat apps for this very reason. People know iMessage is not multi-device friendly and no benefit to using it. I imagine this problem is nowhere near their list of actual problems worth looking at.
Looks like Google started to think about EU's DSA / DMA compliance and created this article to have proof to EU commission "look, we tried but they refused!"
Once upon a time, I couldn't see myself moving to an iPhone because of the limited options for ad blocking. Now that ad blocking on Brave iPhone presumably works, Apple's messaging behavior is the last thing that keeps me away. On the occasions when I get stuck in a group chat outside Signal and someone has an iPhone, it always seems to break the chats. Otherwise the iPhone mini seems like it would be a great option.
I agree that Apple is annoying about this, but it's silly for Android (.com?) to complain that texting _in general_ is broken because of Apple. They've got clearly the larger market share worldwide, and wherever Android is more popular, people are on WhatsApp instead of SMS anyway.
Even a group chat purely between US Android users tends to be carried out on Facebook Messenger, not SMS, I guess cause SMS sucks even on Android.
Maybe Google should enable push notification support again for Mail.app Gmail users too.
I'm pretty sure last time I checked, Gmail supported IMAP's IDLE[1] extension just fine. I get instant notifications on Mail.app.
[1]https://samjohnston.org/2008/07/18/proof-gmail-imap-gimap-su...
Or even just make Gmail’s IMAP support properly spec compliant instead of requiring third party clients to hack around its nonstandard behaviors.
AFAIK, Gmail's IMAP uses OAUTH2 authentication through SASL (RFC7628). Legacy email clients don't implement that RFC, but it's far from a hack.
Could you expand on the non-standard behaviors? Long ago I noticed that using tags in Gmail causes a mess because they seem to appear as folders on an IMAP client. I’d like to know what other issues exist with respect to its IMAP implementation.
You know what's really funny? As a Google Fi user for all my cell coverage, but an Apple user for all my phones... Google doesn't let iPhone users send SMS messages to Android users out of the box. They've done something custom to their network that mucks up the ability to user an iPhone to send messages.
Anyway they're just as guilty as Apple of trying to manipulate users, this whole campaign is just PR. They don't like the fact that their users show up as inferior green-bubbles on Apple devices.
But really, these are separate platforms at this point. iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Snapchapt, AIM, ICQ, whatever else the kids are using today... you can't send messages between them all.
And look, dumbing communications down so they aren't using end-to-end encryption has consequences.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/10/23299502/facebook-chat-me...
That video reminds me of the “I’m a Mac” ads in that it does a great job of making Apple look dated and out of touch. I love good marketing.
If you're an iPhone user, why would you care for apple to implement change? If you use iMessage, you'll keep using imessage, and if you live in a market where whatsapp dominates, then you just use whatsapp. I get this is a very shortsighted attitude, but I'd imagine how this is the avg iPhone use would think.
What's wrong with continuing to use SMS exactly? Why do we need to use alternative incompatible protocols if existing protocols are reliable and work even of 20 years old devices?
Both iPhone and Android support SMS and I see no improvement in either using iMessage or RCS. I may be biased because I don't use neither of them.
The only reason (from my POV) to stop using SMS, is that it is a security nightmare (no integrity or authentication, can be MITM) and for some crazy reason everyone has decided it is a splendid idea to use it for 2FA.
That is like using wolves to protect your sheep -- sure if you keep them well-fed it might work...
Otherwise, Google is complaining because iMessage is a moat Apple has, that Google can not break on its own.
How exactly does RCS fix the security issue? The texts are only E2E when both users are using the Google messaging app, plus group messages are just plain text
I didn't say one should use RCS.
> What's wrong with continuing to use SMS exactly
You can't send images with SMS. People like to send each other images.
“RCS is the modern standard adopted by most of the mobile world…”
(logos of Motorola, Samsung, OnePlus, Google Pixel, Snapdragon)
So…. Android then.
This may not be true in the US, but in the "mobile world", Android is "most of".
In Europe it’s WhatsApp or Telegram all over. I have maybe four people I know I can reliably text on iMessage. This green vs blue bubble is rather an example of how self centered America is, always thinking its own big bubble is actually the world. In Tech that’s quite clear to see.
It's quite frustrating as it's a uniquely North American issue. I also never see this being fixed, as I'm fairly certain iMessage dominates in markets where the iPhone also holds a majority market share as well (makes sense). If you're an iPhone user in north america, many of your friends use iMessage so you don't care about this. If you're an iPhone use elsewhere, you still don't care as you most likely use whatsapp, telegram, line etc.
What I really want to happen is for an independent, secure, ideally federated messaging system (matrix maybe?) to become ubiquitous and replace SMS and iMessage. Sadly, I don't have much hope that will happen anytime soon.
From personal experience, in Italy, texting is always done using app like Whatsapp, Telegram or similar. The native Android messaging app is just used to receive transactional SMS like OTP codes or similar, nothing else.
1. There's nothing wrong with SMS, it's just text 2. From the article - "It’s supported by most carriers". Unless it can be used everywhere, it doesn't sound like a replacement for SMS.
"It's time for WhatsApp, which everyone seems to want to use, to stop intrusively requesting access to my contacts for me to be able to use it."
"It's time for Android to stop being such a POS"
...etc
I haven't called a "normal" phone call or used SMS/MMS in many many years. Everyone I know (or care about rather) uses Telegram, and it's been great for us all.
Telegram? Never heard of it.
Messaging currently requires you and the people you are communicating with to agree on a platform. If all you use is Telegraph, then you are not communicating with those who don't.
that's terrific, but if telegram were the universal standard used for 95%+ of messaging then Google wouldn't bother with this effort.
at least where i live, whatsapp is the defacto messaging platform -- i don't know a single person that doesn't have it, to the point where people won't call you, they just assume you have it so they just send you a message.
so last month Google finally shut down their gtalk XMPP gateway
talk about hypocrisy
I mean, there are many people who would prefer an iPhone if you could only run Android on it -- including, apparently, the European Commission.
But Apple doesn't make commodity hardware.
Let’s say Apple caves and implements RCS. What happens when Google does what Google does and changes it again, it breaks, then whines because Apple won’t implement it?
Why in the world does anyone want another carrier standard? What do the carriers want? Who. Cares.
Say absolutely NO to any standard that requires carrier implementation.
Really hopeful this is the push needed to get RCS mainstream. I use RCS on Android a bunch, and when the other user has it working it is amazing!!!
Google just salty because cool young people want the blue.
Only old, ugly people use Android.
… believe it or not, this is how young people think. When I was single, it was rare to find a hot girl I was interested in use Android. Now, maybe my taste in women is questionable, but that was the reality - much easier to ‘trust’ the blue, instead of that sketchy, broke ass Android green.
What a shame that google is posting this on the android.com domain. Not only is RCS broken and regressive, google does not even ship a reference implementation in AOSP. They haven't updated their stock AOSP apps in a decade. So why should Apple implement some proprietary backwards standard that google only implements in their proprietary app ?
They couldn't even find a hi-res logo for WhatsApp on the bottom. [1]
[1] https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Jv09_Bj8cea5-_S6DdpoA_MolG...
These comments are a firestorm. It would be nice for apple to adobt the rcs standard, would benefit native communications.
Why are "native" communications worth saving? Personally I prefer the current state where you can use whatever internet based platform you want and all these platforms are free to implement new features without spending decades trying to negotiate a new version between vendors and carriers. RCS right now is already and outdated and substandard platform.
It sounds like RCS is simply some additional specs on top of IMS, which is the basis of VoLTE/VoWiFI and IMS is some additional specs on top of SIP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
I wish Apple would give me a way to filter junk SMS texts via a regexp or something, without needing a third-party app.
Settings → Messages → Filter Unknown Senders
I appreciate your help.
The reservation I have is that I still have to wade through a raft of shit when it comes to sorting out legitimate texts that wound up in Unknown Senders because they weren't in my Contacts.
I would like more control over the filtering of incoming messages, without sending them off-device.
Pathetic, Google. Just pick a single chat app that uses data on top of SMS.
WhatsApp and the other Facebook messaging apps won in Latin America because they’re zero-rated, like SMS effectively is within the US. If you want to make a popular chat app, pay those telcos.
I have never experienced blurry photos or videos as this alleges. I hate read receipts and typing bubbles anyway. I do agree that Apples group chats are highly annoying. Personally, I think it is Androids text platform that is bloated and inferior.
you've definitely experienced blurry media if someone texted you from the other kind of phone (note that your own media will still show up crisp in the conversion window even though the other end gets a mega compressed version)
RCS rollout has been a mess with a poor UX , unclear consent etc. Apple definitely doesn't want to inconvenience users with that garbage.
There are tons of great cross-device messaging apps e.g. Whatsapp , Signal, Telegram. The market has provided solutions.
How does have RCS have poor UX?
onboarding and distinguishing feature support
Neither SMS, nor RCS, have built-in end-to-end encryption — and both should die a quick and timely death. iMessage to use end-to-end encryption, but it’s not open, and should also die.
What messaging needs is an open modern standards, nothing more, nothing less.
RCS on Signal/Android does: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
Hence why I said “not built in” — also per the document, “all RCS chat messages will be E2EE if both clients have the latest version of Messages” which means if an attacker with enough resources blocked the target end-point and inserted a device without the add-on E2EE encryption, sounds like the messages would be sent in the clear, which to me is not end-to-end encryption; that is unless both parties get an alert the messages will be sent in the clear, preferably before they are, using prior method a nation state or telecommunications company at their order could likely easily read all the messages and forward them on without either party knowing. Hence, SMS & RCS need to die.
Am I missing something?
PS- Assuming that document is by Google, but unclear, what is the source that links to it?
As much as there's somewhat of a point where a "standard, no vendor lock-in" messaging system is desirable, (RCS or otherwise), Google is the last company that should be giving anyone any sort of shit about messaging.
It’s funny the article uses blurry images as an example of broken experience and then suggests WhatsApp as an alternative, where image quality is absolutely horrendous.
Many of my friends groups stopped using WhatsApp only for this reason.
It seems like apple phones ruin photo and video quality when messaging with android too, even over third party apps like whatsapp and signal. Do they think I will run out and buy an apple phone so this doesn't happen?
That's the apps themselves compressing the shit out of media to save on costs. Apps have full ability to get lossless media out and send it to anyone.
RCS has no E2E encryption. Pass.
Apple does need to fix messaging, but this isn't the way.
Apple has no obligation to do anything. Messaging is broken on Android and it isn’t helped by Google’s stewardship. So the Android fans want Apple to swoop in and save them? No. That’s not how this works.
I'm honestly getting to the point where I want to ban sms entirely from my phone, 99% of the messages I'd receive are spam / phishing / advertising related. How does RCS solve this?
They tried so hard to make it look like a political statement. And ofc the tongue and cheek references came off as spiteful instead of productive in convincing Apple.
They don’t care, they want to make it inconvenient so we’ll all jump aboard the iShip. Until the bold image that Job’s left wears if in 30 years (give or take?) they’ll get away with it along with lightening ports and every other mediocre capitalization that makes them reminiscent of their previous cutting edge former self. Back then, their proprietarization at the very least helped drew their brand image.
Google pretending to be good guys as if there was any other major player they’d be helping out in this campaign was funny though.
Would Apple moving to RCS mean more of their users data to google?
more like, it's time to kill texting.
how many times can we attempt to patch new features on top of a protocol that was never intended for those purposes and is fundamentally insecure.
This is not very smart, as apple doesn't do such things unless coerced by law. Instead , android should drop/cripple iphone support until they adopt RCS
The problem is that in the markets that use SMS and iMessage heavily (the US) Android has the minority. In general minority players have to go for interoperability, while majority players can try to force everyone else out of the market.
For me another frustrating thing when using iMessage on iPhone is that I often receive spam messages from unknown contacts, which I cannot block at all.
Click on the message thread, click on the sender at the top of the thread, select "info" for the contact, at the bottom select "block". Not obvious, I'll agree, but you can definitely block it (it should be a much shorter path). This works for iMessages and SMS.
Personally, I keep RCS disabled on my phone. After trying it for a while, I found it very, very annoying. I strongly prefer plain text.
Side note: I wonder why they didn't put Telegram in the "Other messaging apps." section, instead of only Whatsapp and Signal.
WhatsApp and Signal are E2EE. Telegram is not.
When considering Google pushing for RCS, keep in mind Google has sabotaged MMS in Android for 10+ years due to the convenient Stagefreight bug. MMS being a practical and once widely used (for ringtones and such) content distribution channel with carrier billing out of Google's reach and ever increasing lust for sensor data that can be used for ad targeting. Think sending literature, reports, music for pennies (with greedy telcos kept in check in a regulated market).
RCS implementations are broken too, Google adding their own expanded or nonstandard implementation
But a step in the right direction
ITT: Hundreds of iPhone users who'd rather have a shitty fallback to MMS than a better standard benefitting users of both platforms.
I don't see a single way using RCS as fallback over MMS would result in a worse experience for iMessage users. Apple users always like to complain about green messages in group chats. Why not do something simple that would fix it?
Oh, it’s the beginning of the horse corpse beating season just before every iPhone launch.
While they might sound convincing that they might mean this for everyone's good (and it might be good for everyone, this is typical of Google in GCP and elsewhere trying to force more modern experiences because "they know better" than everyone unwilling to upgrade their platform.
This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. The company that has had 47 different messaging apps and changes them weekly trying to lecture the company that nailed it first time. Grow up Google.
But isn't the request for a cross platform standard? Sure Apple got their own internal standard right, but the experience across platforms still matters.
Doesn't matter to me, I have an iPhone. But regardless of personal experience, Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android, and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging. They're not, they've just given up trying.
> "Google has tried and failed endlessly to make a not-shit messaging app for Android" …
Sadly, some would say that they've tried and succeeded multiple times to make a "not-shit messaging app for Android" and then promptly murdered each success just as it became popular.
> … "and has now seemingly given up and adopted a terrible protocol, and is crowing about it like they're the saviour of messaging."
Yeah, this seems to be pretty much the "standard model" for most "tech giants" these days. :(
> … "They're not, they've just given up trying."
On so many levels beyond just messaging. :(
Exactly. They've positioned this as creating problems for iOS users; however, all of these items are frustrating for Android users, not the other way around.
They're preaching to the wrong choir.
I literally have no issues when texting with friends who use android. Maybe it's because I'm old.
This
Yeah it does and Google removing XMPP federation from Google talk should means
"What happens when they no longer stand to benefit the most?"
should probably come up.
Yeah, so many in this thread are acting ignorant to what is actually going on. Which is surprising considering the audience.
RCS is a new standard, Google doesn't own it people.
Absolutely.
Google can't act indignant that Apple isn't following their lead after they tried, and failed, repeatedly, to follow Apple's.
Google wanted a proprietary messaging service like iMessage for Android. They failed. They failed so many times they gave up and became champions of RCS, a standard the carriers were limping towards supporting.
Google pretending they're now champions of open standards and Apple is the big-bad meanie is ridiculous.
How did they nail it if it doesnt work well with 80% of phones?
It does.
Apple needs to fix their keyboard auto correct. It sucks for texting
You're ducking right they do!
Ah, another "grassroots" initiative to adopt a "standard" (RCS) from Google! No thanks, I don't want this RCS crap on my phone.
iMessage works seamlessly on my multiple phones, iPads, and Macs. Fuck off with that carrier lock-in trash.
It's from GSMA https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/rcs/
Originally yes. Today it’s Google’s playground. Much like the WHATWG.
Why would Apple fix something that do not affect Apple users ?
Per the article, they do affect iPhone users.
The article is an ad from Google. They have a vested interest.
While I'm sure there are grains of truth in the article, I'm also sure they're presented in such a way to lead you to a conclusion.
Google wants to either get access to the iMessage ecosystem or relegate it to the fringe. Because they can exert pressure on RCS, they cannot exert pressure on iMessage.
Per experience, they do not. At least, they do not affect me in the slightest. Never had any of these alleged problems.
It affects them in that everytime an iPhone users text me a video I have to ask them to post it somewhere else so I can view it. The videos are so small and blurry I can never see what's happening in them. I[hone users are have unsent messages to android users without cell service which happens all the time and is confusing why some texts send and some don't and it's a function of the type of phone the receiving party has (?!)
You get a notification if your iPhone can't send the SMS, and a clear indication that it didn't send.
The lack of ability to leave a group text chat is the most annoying thing ever. Spammers send these group texts and there’s no way to leave.
It doesn’t. Messages fallback to SMS when I talk to my parents or friends who don’t have an iPhone and… it works. I can send text, photos, etc. and it works. Some accusations are ridiculous, like how white on green is somehow illegible compared to white on blue? Come on.
> I can send text, photos, etc. and it works.
Only if "low quality blurry images and video" is your definition of "it works". Or maybe you've just never checked what the image actually looks like on the receiving phone.
It doesn't. An article written by Google for their own benefit is less of an article and actually more akin to corporate propaganda. It is not a trustworthy source.
It does affect Apple users, very much so.
Simple; regulators will come after if Apple refuses to do so. DMA is just one response.
Adroid.com not biased
When it is time for Google to fix android?
Is RCS supported by twilio?
Does Twilio support RCS?
Yes. https://www.twilio.com/learn/call-and-text-marketing/what-is...
Not anymore: they say “The RCS Business Messaging Developer Preview is currently paused”.
I hope the EU continues on it's legislative path to force Apple into playing nice.
The unconventional hair color is why I know I can trust this dude in the video.
android(dot)com says Apple product bad! Shocking!
Pfft. What a joke.
It's time for Google to fix browsing.
It's tine for Google to fix search.
Whatever
* if you use the right carrier
This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service such as Signal or WhatsApp like the rest of the world has. Why are US citizens so set on having a terrible experience when messaging half of the population? How did other countries decide that using platform agnostic messaging services are better? I believe the UK has a similar split in Android/iOS users, yet they largely use WhatsApp.
In a way, it feels perfectly inline with America. We use Imperial when everyone else uses Metric. We use Fahrenheit when everyone else uses Celsius. But in this case, it's not as if our government led us down this path. The problem was entirely created by our market of users.
Ultimately, poor communication stifles society and innovation. It's in all of our best interests to improve the current situation. Sure, better alternatives such as Signal exist, but we will have to move mountains to convert everyone onto a new service. For now, I think it's best if we all apply pressure to Apple to adopt RCS. It's significantly better than where we are now, and that's a good thing.
> This is such a weirdly US specific issue. It's hard to understand why people in this country refuse to adopt a data-based messaging service
It makes sense if you look at the history.
For various reasons, the US was late to the party on text messaging at all. I remember back in ~2002, traveling the world and discovering people used SMS, when back home in the US it didn't really exist, at least not between different carriers.
BUT internationally, text messages were also often expensive, a few might add up to the price of a coffee.
So, as soon as data plans became a thing, it was a no-brainer for everyone internationally to switch to data-based messaging (like WhatsApp) -- it could save you like a hundred dollars a month.
On the other hand, when carriers in the US sorted out compatibility issues and SMS's became a thing later on, it was generally unlimited on most monthly plans. So people in the US never switched from SMS to data messaging because there was no financial incentive to do so, like there had been around the world.
Seen in this light, it shouldn't be hard to understand at all. It's all about whether SMS's were expensive or free when data plans became popular.
And so for most people in the US most of the time, SMS does everything you need, so why on earth would you go download a separate app? Nobody's "refusing", they're just following the path of least friction and getting on with their day.
Because of historical reasons. Americans had free texting for decades. Entire segments of phones were released dedicated to the texting experience with full keyboards. When the iphone came out it had unlimited data, but it was the exception not the norm, and it was slow as hell. People don't want to use data for something they already got for free, plus there's the whole network effect issue. Everyone has a phone number, not everyone is going to be on whatever chat platform you insisted on using. Imo I think its better this way, using this do it all technology that works on a modern phone or the flip phone my dad has, versus being reliant on whatsapp and therefore Meta.
For what it's worth all the reasons you listed also apply to the UK market, however WhatsApp dominates here so I think there's a missing piece to the puzzle.
I would guess UK has better cell coverage than the U.S. Data is too unreliable while you are out and about to be reliant on a chat app versus a text that will pretty much always reach you.
Cause it's not terrible. It still works ok the way it is, and people tend to use FB Messenger or something if they want a more complex group chat with Android users in it. Considering that they do this even if it's an all-Android chat, I don't think it's Apple's fault, as scummy as they act with SMS.
Also, people don't care for metric cause it's not better. Basing your system around the physical properties of water doesn't help for daily usage, just for some sciences and yes for nerds to feel better. For example, many digital thermostats have to add increments of 0.5 when you switch to Celsius since each degree is twice as coarse, and you can feel the difference. Put ˚F and ˚C weather forecasts side by side, and ask people which they prefer. It's a nice spread of 0-100˚F outdoors usually, and you basically don't go outside if it's not. Freeway speeds, 0-85MPH legally and 100 means trouble. Freeway miles, about 1 per minute. Feet/mile is weird, but that's cause nobody converts miles to feet; you don't care to compare say a trip distance to the height of a human.
> It's a nice spread of 0-100˚F outdoors usually
This is such a U.S. and Europe centric view of "outdoors" that I almost spit out my coffee. And probably a small part of U.S. and Europe at that. Ask people in the tropics or subtropical regions and they probably never experienced 0˚F in their whole life.
Originally the lower defining point, 0°F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. That's just as arbitrary as defining 0˚C as the freezing point of water.
I don't mean that one small region hits 0-100˚F. That's not very common in the US or Europe either. But across all inhabited areas, 0-100˚F is pretty representative (again noting the sub-0 extremes where you're not going outside anyway). And say your area is just 60-100˚F, that's still decent, certainly better than a 22 degree range in Celsius.
I will agree that one of the few places that the imperial system is hands down better than metric is that on the highway it's roughly 1 mile per minute. That and it's just barely possible to run a mile in under 4 minutes, so makes for a nice clean time barrier. But these are just coincidences and are the exception not the rule
IMO the imperial system is full of these coincidences, and if you look at history, you can see how they emerged: from historical people changing the size of the units until they had enough useful coincidences.
A mile is about 1000 steps for a marching army, about 20 minutes of walking, or about 1 minute by car. Comfortable Farenheit temperatures roughly run from 0 to 100. A foot is about the length of a foot or a forearm, and an inch is about the length of the top joint of a thumb. 1/1000th of an inch (a "mil") is roughly the smallest discernable difference in size of objects when you look closely. People are about 6 feet tall. People weigh 100-200 lbs. The "lucky coincidences" continue. They do because they were evolved, not because they were accidents.
Contrast that with the metric system, which was built around properties of water and powers of 10 (which are not obviously better than the powers of 2 and 3 that the imperial system uses - next time you need a 1/3rd recipe you can see what I mean). It is not an accident that a day is 2x2x2x3 hours and an hour is 2x2x3x5 minutes (attempts to adopt metric time were proposed, but rejected). Neither is it an accident that a foot is 2x2x3 inches, and a mile is 2x2x2x2x2x3x5x11 feet (although I have never divided anything by 11 recently). Imperial volumetric measurements are basically binary fixed point: 1 gallon is 16 cups, and 1 cup is 16 tbsp. There are lots of historical names for the intermediate units, like quarts and furlongs, but those have evolved over a longer period of time.
For scientific use, the metric system is obviously a lot easier, and order of magnitude matters a lot more than easy divisibility and "feel" of a unit. For everyday use, I am not sold on it.
There are a few coincidences in the imperial system that make life easy. That highway driving speed is around 1 mile per minute is a pure coincidence.
Most/all of the other examples you list are pretty useless to me for daily life:
- A mile is closer to 2100 paces for me, a 6’2” guy
- 20min/mile walking is just as useful as 12min/km which is about equivalent speed
- Temps, sure it’s a nice 0-100 witch is symmetric but not much else
- 1/1000th of an inch doesn’t impact my daily life
- height and weight are similar to temperature. A pleasant range that doesn’t make anything in my life easier
- imperial volumetric measurements are actually insane and actively make my life worse. It doesn’t matter that they’re readily divisible by common numbers bc it’s impossible to remember what number to divide by to go between them.
Yeah, the only thing human-centric about metric is using the same base as the number of fingers most people have.
They are coincidences since these units were created well before modern cars, but they seem to have been created with reasonable relations to human constraints, instead of water.
Everything you said about temperature is 100% true. Fahrenheit is simply better for day to day use.
I disagree with you about distance measurements. I think the relationship between millimeters, centimeters, and meters is so much better than the relationship between 1/8th inch, an inch, and a foot, that it makes up for the convenience of traveling roughly one mile per minute on the freeway.
I'm "split" on small lengths. Inches and feet were designed to divide nicely into many things, like 1/3, but the conversion is a little bothersome. Sub-inch measurements are usually expressed in fractions instead of decimals. Decimal inches are an option, but I guess that doesn't match the theme. So it's a matter of whether you want to do things in fractions or decimals, and one is probably better, but I can't tell which.
If you grow up with metric none of these assumptions apply. You learn that 0C is cold, 20C is nice and 40C is hot. At what F do you need to worry about snow? like 30ish? Metric this is 0C so there's usefulness both ways.
Whether or not you grow up with it, you have to use an extra decimal point to differentiate between noticeably different indoor temps, and you can't say "it's in the 20s" or something and know what to wear. Memorizing 32˚F for freezing is a one-time thing, which really only matters for ice. You might have snow at 40˚F or no snow at 0˚F.
Believe it or not, people don't seem to know the ˚F boiling point of water, probably cause it's just not a factor in everyday life. Your kettle whistles when it's boiling.
I can expect anyone who has a cell phone to be able to receive SMS. When I first started using a cell phone in 2007, that's all that was available. Or at least, it's all I knew that was available. Every phone I've owned since then has had the capability to use SMS, and I've never had a need to use anything else. So I don't see why I'd bother with something like Signal or WhatsApp, when there's no guarantee that the person I want to talk to will have it, and they don't offer anything I need that SMS/MMS doesn't already provide.
In many countries SMS can get expensive, especially for international use, depending on the phone billing policy. In poorer countries people often use free wifi areas for data-based messaging. Hence the popularity of WhatsApp. Even if you have a limited mobile data plan, WhatsApp uses the capacity very efficiently, so it's still affordable.
This might be news to you, but huge amounts of land in Canada and the US is still not well served by fast cell service. In those places, you often have an unreliable single bar 3G or 2G connection, and using a data heavy messenger like WhatsApp is entirely unrealistic.
A good argument I've heard is that in Europe, when people got their first mobile phone contracts, you were charged per SMS message, whereas in the US, unlimited texting was included in your plan.
The consequence of this was that in Europe, people preferred free online messaging over costly SMS.
20+ years down the line and old habits die hard.
The problem is which one?
I don't use iMessage much, but there isn't One Alternative that everyone has conglomerated on.
Some groups use Whatsapp. Some use Facebook Messenger. Some use Discord. I jump around between all of them.
But if you have someone's phone number you can at least text them.
Ah yes, whatsapp, that bastion of privacy, and not at all a messaging service that exists primarily for Meta to mine.
If everyone was on Signal, sure, but if everyone's on Whatsapp, maybe not the kind of thing to go "why don't you just do this too, why are North Americans so backward?" for something owned by what is basically still just Facebook.
Oh yes, let’s ignore the fact that whatsapp has end to end encryption
That doesn't mean a whole lot.
Whatsapp and signal use the same encryption and the same messaging protocol.
Piece of advice: As far as tech is concerned, HN isn’t a place where you can get away with talking about things you don’t understand. You’ll far too often run up against people who have more expertise in what you write about than you have expertise brushing your teeth.
I know what I'm talking about, and I'm detecting some arrogance.
Also, it doesn't matter here, but where are you getting that WhatsApp and Signal use the same messaging protocol? Might be missing something, but I don't see that they both use XMPP, if that's what you mean.
What's app literally uses the signal protocol[0] for the exchanging of messages.
[0] https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
The Signal protocol is an encryption protocol and not a message exchange protocol.
I think WhatsApp is built on ejabberd for message exchange and possibly could be able to federate using XMPP.
If you don’t know what these words mean sure
I know what the words mean, but I don't know what the ends are doing. Facebook practically controls either end, unless users are reverse-engineering.
I also don't know what the middle is doing. Client still trusts the server to give the correct identity aka pubkey for the other clients. Server could give its own and mitm, like a corrupt root CA for TLS. Yes this requires more deliberate action on FB's part, so it's at least better than non-e2ee, but not trustless like people often claim. This issue isn't at all unique to WhatsApp.
No the middle is not trusted, that’s the whole point of end to end encryption. Users can check security keys. Also yes some people are reverse engineering clients. If you’re claiming that the whatsapp clients are backdoored and faking the end to end encryption claim that would be a pretty big news
The middle is trusted for the identity exchange and not afterwards. This is fundamental and has nothing to do with what protocol is used. If you explain to me an e2ee messaging protocol with a centralized server that you think is trustless, I can always show you a leap of faith in there.
The first time your client messages another on WhatsApp, it knows nothing other than the phone number and has to somehow go through WhatsApp to exchange keys with the other client. WhatsApp can simply fake that entire exchange. Now, WhatsApp also lets you physically visit another user and scan a QR code to verify the identity out-of-band, which escapes that "centralized server" limitation I mentioned, but few use that feature. Compare this to how HTTPS works; you trust the certificate authority unless you gather the certs yourself.
I doubt the clients are backdoored to defeat the encryption, but idk what advertising metrics they're sending or what might change in the future.
Yeah that’s end to end encryption. Like any security protocol it is based on assumptions and trust comes from somewhere. In this case trust comes from verifying each other security keys, or more meta: knowing that the incentive for the server to cheat are low as they might get caught by anyone checking and it could kill the entire product.
Most people I know in the US use whatsapp (except for like one person)
It's just too late for anyone to switch. The network effect went in Apple's favor. It could've happened to any country.
As someone who worked around Windows Phone and had to deal with Google's unwillingness to support other eco systems; Pound sand android.
Companies will always act in their own best interest, that doesn't mean you should let spite get in the way of what would be a positive change for consumers. Google sucks. Apple sucks. Microsoft sucks. Unifying a broken ecosystem is a net positive regardless of which entity happens to be championing it
Precisely why apple is acting in their best interest. I don't want RCS or anything to do with Google on my phone.
pretty rich coming from Google who has been bungling its own messaging ecosystem for years
> android.com
I'm sure they are not biased at all
Feels like sort of a non issue, even the bottom of the page pushes people to apps like Whatsapp/Signal. If Google wants better iPhone messaging - can’t it just ship its solution in the App Store? Not really sure why Apple must update iMessage for Google to get what it wants.
I personally love iMessage and use it and Signal primarily - I don’t like the idea of Google dictating its feature set, especially considering its horrible messaging track record.
No, Google isn't trying to ship another messaging app. It's trying to improve the interoperability of Android and iPhone when using phone number texting. Your experience in iMessage when texting with an Android user would be improved.
I have an iPhone and friends with android. I don't have any problems texting them, nor they me. At most, this seems to be a problem for android users, and I'm skeptical because I've never really had anyone I actually know complain. Maybe we're just lucky?
It's about the color of the messages.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
This is spam for the Android operating system, nothing more.
Google claiming that RCS includes end-to-end encryption here is misleading.
Encryption got explicitly axed from the RCS spec because carriers don't like it.
The end-to-end crypto they're talking about is a custom Google thing and not part of RCS.
Friends don't let friends use unencrypted everyday communications.
Reject RCS and reject Google platform marketing.
PS: Note also that iMessage has a crypto backdoor maintained by Apple for the FBI; Google should not be encouraging iMessage to become more useful/popular, as this reduces privacy and makes people less safe.
> Note also that iMessage has a crypto backdoor maintained by Apple for the FBI
Describing iMessage as having an encryption back door is disingenuous at best. There's no known encryption back doors in iMessage. As far as can be determined iMessage is fully E2EE.
There is however a caveat that the unencrypted local messages backed up to iCloud can be turned over to LEAs/governments. This caveat holds for any unencrypted data synced to iCloud. It's no different than your e-mails sitting in your iCloud mail account. Disabling syncing of Messages with iCloud closes this hole.
> Disabling syncing of Messages with iCloud closes this hole.
It does not. The people you iMessage with still have it turned on, because it is on by default, and Apple will get it from those devices instead.
Which is the same as any other E2EE system. Your OpSec is only as good as the worst OpSec as whoever you communicate with. Pretending this is an Apple issue is absurd.
This is also false! Signal stores messages and keys in iOS storage classes that do not leave the device and are not included in backups.