this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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RCS has been around since 2008 and got Universal Profile specifications in 2016.
It took Google until 2019 to get RCS out, and they include proprietary Google extensions that may or may not be supported by other providers, further complicating rollout of RCS.
They're genuinely not somehow way better in this regard.
Well I've been able to RCS with basically everyone on an android phone since 2019 with almost no issues. That's 5 years now.
I don't really care how Apple wants to try and justify it. The answer is they don't want to add support for an alternative to their walled garden proprietary system that no one else can use. They want to force everyone onto an iPhone and iMessage if possible. The only reason they're even looking at RCS support now is because of regulators starting to look at their glaring lack of support for interoperability.
That’s because almost everyone on an Android phone is using Google Jibe for RCS, they even turned it on through software for carriers that didn’t support it. It’s not surprising that a Google competitor didn’t jump to implement Jibe.
Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T all ditched their own RCS, they also use Google RCS. They’ve positioned themselves central to the entire stack.
And absolutely zero users care about the reasons. They only know that sending messages back and forth is dogshit.
The source of the lack of support across is Apple not wanting to even try because they want everyone to use their proprietary system on their devices instead. Google at least implemented a system to get RCS support to as many devices as they could, even when carriers didn't do anything to help. Apple instead had to be threatened by regulators before they even began to consider looking at it.
“As many devices as they could” with Google at the center of nearly all of it (and if you want all the features, you want the Google one). This isn’t done out of altruism.
I never said or even got close to claiming that it was.
But there is a distinct difference between Google taking a fragmented RCS implementation across carriers and manufacturers on Android devices, and providing a single universally supported option for Android (the operating system that they control, but don't prevent others from modifying heavily)... and Apple actively trying to avoid RCS support entirely in favor of their own proprietary system that does not support any products they don't make and sell directly. Verizon had their own RCS app on Android, and Samsung added RCS support to their Messaging app on their devices, among others prior to the Universal Profile and Google adding support directly in Android Messages. That's not something anyone can do or offer for iPhones other than Apple
Google worked to add support for essentially all Android customers. Apple decided none of their customers should be able to use RCS, whether they want to or not, simply because they had their own thing that only their customers could use and won't let anyone else use. You can't possibly be trying to claim that Apple is in any way a good guy here. Comparing the two directly here, Apple is clearly worse with no good reasoning for it, it is entirely for selfish reasons.
Google's proprietary "RCS" and iMessage are the same thing. They're proprietary apps that work on their OS and are useless for intercommunication.