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Apple is bringing RCS to the iPhone in iOS 18 | The new standard will replace SMS as the default communication protocol between Android and iOS devices (www.theverge.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.

Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.

Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I try not to.

I'll happily use one or more of any of dozens of proper modern, network-based messaging systems. A few off the top of my head, none of which must be tied to hardware/sim/phone number (Signal is working on moving away from phone numbers, and it's still not tied to a phone number the same way RCS is):

Matrix

Signal

Conversations

Simplex

Wire

Or pick an XMPP server and client, there's plenty out there. I was using XMPP on my phone in 2009, chatting, sending uncompressed videos to people on desktops/laptops.

Hell, even Telegram is a thousand times better than this RCS garbage.

Don't get me started on the privacy nightmare of WhatsApp... Holy shit, may as well not even care about privacy or encryption.

(I have most of these messaging apps on my phones and my laptop, because they work).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Unfortunately, no matter how good the alternatives are, you are stuck with whatever is on the other end. I can't force anyone to change their main app for comms. Even if I do manage to get them to install anything else, they will realise they only use it with me and probably drop it next time they change their phone.

While I do agree whatsapp is a privacy nightmare , I also see why it won't go away anytime soon. You only need someone's phone number to contact them, you get easy media transfers although compressed to shit, it's still serviceable and it's carier independant, and most importantly free even internationaly. People even started using it for audio calls due to higher quality audio over the plain voice calls. All these reasons create the perfect mix for the average privacy-ignorant person to overlook any competitors.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Matrix

Signal

Conversations

Simplex

Wire

Deltachat too, FOSS, E2EE, it relies on users' already existing email accounts to vehicle the messages (https://delta.chat)