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Messaging on iPhone will include RCS support in 2024
Following years of pressure from Google for Apple to adopt the presently flawed RCS system within iMessage, Apple has committed to doing so during 2024.
Android does not have a true equivalent alternative to Apple’s iMessage on iPhone — despite the Nothing company trying — and Google’s previous attempts have failed. Consequently, Google has been trying to argue that Apple is failing customers by not supporting its nearest attempt, RCS, and finally Apple has caved in.
In a statement to AppleInsider, and other venues, an Apple spokesperson was clear about the RCS debut.
This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.
Part of the pressure on Apple to adopt RCS has been to do with how — in the US — there is a perceived stigma between the blue and green text messages of iMessage and other users. It’s a distinction that is simply not noticed in the rest of the world, where WhatsApp has typically far greater penetration than iMessage.
It’s not clear whether Apple’s support of RCS will give Android users the same blue button appearance as iMessage users.
However, it should improved issues such as sending images and videos between iPhone and Android. At present, Android users in a group message chat will receive scaled-down images sent over traditional MMS.
William Gallagher has 30 years of experience between the BBC and AppleInsider discussing Apple technology. Outside of AppleInsider, he's best known for writing Doctor Who radio dramas for BBC/Big Finish, and is the De…
gatorguy said:dee_dee said:nubus said:After a decade of being tone-deaf… what a surprise! Nice to see Apple become smart about politics. It would have been better if Apple had taken part in the design of the standard, but this is good. Much better than being forced as with USB-C, right-to-repair, and soon AppStore alternatives.Only approx 20% of Android users have access to RCS, and the standard is a hot mess. Apple must be feeling charitable this holiday season.
I know some article said it was claimed, but without any source for it. “Someone said”, in other words. I’d consider it a suspect estimate.
Last I recall reading, Google Messages has nearly a billion active users now, so they’re doing OK.
Your recollection is not that great. Google themselves said there’s 500 million users, and there’s over 3 billion androids in the world so that’s actually closer to 15%.
anonymouse said:gatorguy said:anonymouse said:gatorguy said:anonymouse said:headfull0wine said:I think they’ll still have blue and green bubbles. It’s just that the green bubble fallback option will be RCS and have more functionality than SMS. They won’t have the same level of encryption or the “surprise and delight” features like Memoji. Hence the need to still distinguish RCS from iMessage.CelticPaddy said:It wasn’t done for marketing purposes. It was done to distinguish the difference between iMessage and SMS/MMS. The bubbles were all green originally.Exactly, because the iPhone user needs to know what messaging protocol is being used for a conversation so they can decide what’s appropriate to say in that conversation (e.g., you probably don’t want to share a password when seeing green bubbles).
I think they will go with a third color in the red family, with pink being the most likely. If the RCS standard gets E2EE, there might be a 4th color (purple?) that denotes that. Why 2 different colors for RCS? Because older implementations that don’t support E2EE will still be around for quite a while and you need to be able to distinguish them from those that do.
You understand that Apple’s implementation will be the unencrypted one, left in the hands of carriers to manage? That will mean you as an iPhone user are not the only one who should know what protocol is being used. When you’re in a conversation with Google RCS users, their messages may not be as private as they otherwise would be would be due to your RCS exposing them to carrier snooping.
But at the moment the only way to E2E encrypt your RCS messages will be for Apple to secure them on Apple servers or use Google to do so. It doesn’t appear Apple wants to go to that trouble and expense and will wait out carriers to take responsibility for it whenever GSM finalizes.
Apple’s implementation will be the Standard one. If E2EE becomes part of the standard then Apple will likely support it. As far as Android users knowing what messaging protocol is in use, that’s Google’s problem to solve, not Apple’s.
We agree 100%.
Be that as it may, I think the RCS messages flowing from your iPhone could end up encrypted by Google anyway since all the big US carriers, and many in the EU, are turning to Google RCS (Jibe) but I’m not entirely certain that’s how it will work in practice. Give it a few days and it will be better explained how it will pan out.
100%? Maybe I’m wrong.
It’s pointless for Google to encrypt the messages after they leave your iPhone (and decrypt them before they arrive). I mean, that’s effectively unencrypted messaging, so why bother? To pretend to users on one end or the other that they are encrypted?
Valid points. Perhaps Apple RCS won’t ever offer E2EE until carriers do it for them.
ianbetteridge said:gatorguy said:AppleInsider said:Following years of pressure from Google for Apple to adopt the presently flawed RCS system within iMessage, Apple has committed to doing so during 2024.
Android does not have a true equivalent alternative to Apple’s iMessage…Ummm, yes they do. The equally secure and private Google Messages. Unfortunately, the initial implementation of RCS on the iPhone will not be end-to-end encrypted. Still showing a bit of stubbornness I suppose.
Keeping the blue bubble/green bubble distinction would be an advantage for Android users using the E2EE Google Messages (Apple users too if they understand what it means) since it will designate the conversation as potentially insecure. But I’ve been seeing claims the bubbles are going away. I don’t know how true that is, as I thought blue and green indicated the level of encryption.
It’s not stubbornness, it’s simply that the extensions which Google has made to RCS which support E2E encryption are proprietary and only available via the closed-source Google Messages app, and with service providers that run their customers’ messages on Google (proprietary) Jibe platform.
The reality is that Google end-to-end messaging system, while built on RCS, is as proprietary and closed as iMessage. That’s why non-Google versions of Android such as Graphene which ship the stock (open source) messages app don’t have support for encrypted RCS. If you want that on Android, you and all your friends have to be using Google’s closed-off software.
And Google will celebrate the day they no longer need to take care of privacy and security themselves and trust the carriers to do what they should have been doing all along.
Google never intended to take responsibility for making RCS secure by accepting responsibility for the infrastructure to make it so. It’s costly, time-consuming, and a drag on resources that could be used better. The day RCS becomes E2EE as a GSMA standard on carriers worldwide is the day Google announces Google RCS is dead, having served its purpose.
Following years of pressure from Google for Apple to adopt the presently flawed RCS system within iMessage, Apple has committed to doing so during 2024.
auxio said:nubus said:After a decade of being tone-deaf… what a surprise! Nice to see Apple become smart about politics. It would have been better if Apple had taken part in the design of the standard, but this is good. Much better than being forced as with USB-C, right-to-repair, and soon AppStore alternatives.Because hey, if you invest in the R&D and come up with a well designed technology from the get-go, you should be forced to either give it away to everyone or switch to someone else’s once they clone it.
Apple did exactly so with the Mini DisplayPort and offered a free license. And with improvements to Bluetooth that are now part of the standard. And once again with the Qi2 charging standard, which is based on Magsafe. The iPhone 15 series are the first to be certified for Qi2, and it will bring interoperability to charging – by the design from Apple. For Apple to work with standard organizations is nothing new.
I can’t wait for 23:59 on December 31st 2024 when this is released ! Lol
It would be nice if this solves the major issue of accidentally sending some content to a non iPhone user and MMS being used. For some reason in the UK an MMS can cost a small fortune.