Samsung has released a new video in support of Google’s #GetTheMessage campaign which calls for Apple to adopt RCS or “Rich Communication Services,” the cross-platform protocol pitched as a successor to SMS that adopts many of the features found in modern messaging apps… like Apple’s own iMessage.
Just download Signal. Cross platform, verifably E2E, and verifiably no data collected by Open Whisper (as per their submission in a lawsuit). Also, one of the authors/architects of Signal occasionally trolls the companies that provide mobile spyware.
I tried using signal but I had a lot of problems with it. I wouldn’t get my messages. The people I messaged didn’t get my messages. There was an emergency and someone couldn’t get ahold of me when they really needed to. After that I deleted signal and moved on. That’s just my experience. Yours could be different.
I managed to move a big portion of my friends and groups over to signal and quite a few Android users initially had notification issues that were fixed by updates. Maybe give it another chance.
No, I moved some of my friends and family over to signal and they all left after our issues. Now that it doesn’t even have SMS and no one I know uses it there isn’t any incentive for me to go back.
Yes. Interop outside of matrix, thanks to bridges.
I can’t find any matrix app.
WDYM you can’t find any? Are you searching for a matrix client for a light bulb? Or client for a fridge?
Jokes aside for PCs and phones’ official client is Element, it can be used in browser or installed locally anywhere(Electron, duh). If you prefer something more native, then you can choose nheko for PC.
EDIT: you can get Element in F-Droid
EDIT2: apparently Thunderbird supports matrix too. Well, Thunderbird supported federated protocols since the beginning.
I’ll play with Element this weekend, but so far I’m seeing exactly zero benefits your average person. Sure it might be interesting if you have a mostly techy group that will install stuff.
This discussion is reminiscence of the “Linux” on the desktop one… (And why Linux still only has what? 1-2% market share)
This public shaming bullshit reminds me of Epic’s Fortnite debacle and it’s not a good look, especially from Samsung who usually mocks Apple on Monday and is copying them by Friday (see “no CD drives in laptops” or “no headphone jack” or “no removable batteries in the phone”). I know they’re completely different issues but whining is whining.
There’s truth in this, but in the meantime, these small moments are huge and the alternative is that they are gone entirely in our monopolistic, fixed slice of capitalism. Enjoy the small bit of competition we still actually see. Agree that Google/ Samsung are ultimately disappointing but on balance, better than the walled garden, hyper inflated pricing and big-buttoned toddler interfaces of iOS
I don’t have to guess your position based on your language but I do want you to understand that some of us like the walled garden. There’s a lot of shit out there that I don’t have to deal with and don’t want to have to.
You like ease of functionality you would still have that. RCS is a protocol not an app.
Like how email is a protocol. Or hell, Lemmy.
You can use whatever message client you want and that can still be iMessage it’s just now it will operate as a protocol rather than just being Apple proprietary stuff. You’ll have exactly the same functionality because practically everything that iMessage currently does RCS already has it in it plus some stuff that it doesn’t have, typing notifications, read receipts, support for large file sizes, link previewing, automatic iCal (again the protocol not the app) integration, location sharing, even live stream support. You lose nothing by RCS been added to iMessage.
Only thing I know about RCS is that it has caused a few of my texts to never be sent, because the “send as normal text if RCS doesn’t work” also didn’t work. Other than that it has done nothing for me.
Except the commenter above is talking about SMS/MMS which is not encrypted and very easy for a government to snoop on via the telecom company. You have no protections.
I think this issue is mostly a USA one, considering that most communications there have caps (data, phone time, SMS etc.) Paradoxically, the market there doesn’t work very well and prices are relatively high. Big corporations take advantage of it to lock people to their ecosystems. There is a high probability that this issue, will be regulated by the EU, since US policy makers are unable to solve much more important problems. For them this is not an issue. The market has solved it.
It’s entirely a US issue. Everywhere else just uses platform agnostic apps like WhatsApp, telegram, signal, etc to get round the issue. Americans hitch their wagons to a corporate manufacturer like an identity and then moan about people who buy the other brand having different coloured text message bubbles.
You missed that standards should extend beyond international borders and are important regardless, but especially for international interoperability reasons.
You missed that using proprietary messaging apps made by companies is the actual way to dickride corporations and that standards are literally the only way to avoid doing so.
There’s more to it, but those are the main pieces.
I’d argue the SMS/MMS reliance in the US is entirely because there have been no caps on it for years now. Nearly all plans you can get here have unlimited SMS/MMS included, even cheap prepaid ones.
Having a fixed allotment of texts or minutes hasn’t been a thing for over a decade at this point, and the only thing that’s expensive now is data.
That was my understanding. I was told one of the reason for growth in apps like Whatsapp outside the US was that data was cheaper than texting (probably just per message cost).
I use SMS mostly. From time to time Google asks if I want to activate RCS and presents a policy along with it, which I decline. Does it pass through their servers? If it does, that’s gonna be a big no.
I’m not quite sure why you’re against a message going through a particular company’s servers. If it’s privacy then as far as I know SMS & MMS are like sending postcards in that everyone can see them.
Yeah I don’t think you’re right in that. I don’t think SMS or MMS are encrypted in anyway. I imagine you have an Android phone and unless you’re running a custom OS like Graphene don’t you think your data is already accessible?
Sorry, this just reads to me as the little kid being angry he can’t join the bigger kids. I really believe that were the shoe and the other foot and were it Google with iMessage, they wouldn’t be so keen to let Apple use it.
Well Google is arguably the big kid here 70% of all cell phones are android phones. Also, Google puts its apps/services on Apple devices. There’s no way to rewind time, change a variable or two, and then play it back to see how things change.
Come on. There isn’t anything near parity with the cross platforming of apps. Apple has a few (three of them are music apps) and I believe Google puts all or nearly all their apps on iOS.
When did I say there was parity? I just pointed out they do create Android apps for some of their services.
They’re both acting in the interest of the company and not the user. Apple make money by selling devices. Protecting the services that push you to purchase Apple devices makes sense.
Google are an advertising company and by bringing their services to Apple devices they make money off the users.
By saying “apple puts their services” it implied to me that you were suggesting that apple actually put much of its inhouse software on Android, which isn’t the case. Not in the same way that saying “Google puts its services on iOS” is accurate because a great deal of Google’s software is available on iOS.
In our conversation who is saying anything about altruism? What I said was Google releases a lot of, in my opinion, incredibly useful software for free and then pays for it by selling ads. I feel like this is incredibly obvious and for me it’s a good deal because I like Google’s free services and I’d rather see ads about things I might actually be interested in than things I’m not interested in.
Apple can do whatever it wants. Currently they want to keep a barrier between Android and Apple users as a strategy for driving iphone sales.
A reason could be just to create a better experience for its users. Currently Apple to Android messages are SMS and MMS, which are unencrypted. Apple could ensure the security of its users’ messages by implementing RCS, which has E2E encryption.
Google puts out a lot of free services: Gmail, maps, docs, sheets, voice, etc. It makes sense that they’re paying for those services some how.
Broadcast television is free and paid for with commercials. TV targeted the ads with the content of the show. Soap operas are called that because women typically watched them and women in those days bought the household supplies and that’s who advertised on those shows.
Google’s basically doing the same thing. They just have a different way of targeting the add. It’s a pretty open exchange.
I haven’t sent an SMS since like 2013 or something like that. Couldn’t care less about this blue green controversy, my use of SMS is receiving 2fa codes and spam.
It’s hard to get phone service without unlimited SMS in the USA. Using it is still worse than most alternatives so I do find it weird that people aren’t adopting chat apps more eagerly.
Right, nearly all US carrier and MVNO plans have offered unlimited SMS and MMS for years now. It’s free, it’s built-in, and it’s easy. For most, it doesn’t matter if chat apps are better, so it’s been very difficult to convince people you chat with to switch to a different app.
You'd have to convince everyone to switch to it and most Americans are going to have the reaction of: "Why would I want another fucking app that I have to make another damn account for when I have something that does pretty much what I want built in"
Activity groups will usually use some other service for member messaging (ex: my D&D group uses Discord for campaign discussion even though we all have eachothers phone numbers, a outdoor activity groups like a hiking group may use a facebook page, etc.)
It’s not necessary to convince everyone to switch. Even one person switching from SMS to an internet-based chat app means a better chat experience with that person.
I’ve had multiple apps to be able to talk to everyone I know since about 1998, so I find the strong resistance you’re describing bizarre. I have encountered it a few times though.
While Apple should adopt RCS, I cannot help but feel that Google is being extremely hypocritical. They complain about iMessage being proprietary, but their implementation of RCS isn’t open source, and I believe they even mentioned they have no plans to open it up for 3rd party devs to implement it into their own sms apps. This just feels like an iMessage equivalent for Android. It has rich features that are exclusive to Android as a platform (more specifically exclusive to Google Messages or whatever the app is called now)… just like iMessage within iOS/MacOS/iPadOS…
No idea, but that has nothing to do with anything. Considering that the standard is public and free (unlike ISO stuff bte), that most relevant telecoms support it, and that a lot of phone manufacturers have a custom client that does support it, it’s not remotely close to being closed sourced, and service-authentication-gated like iMessages.
Believe it or not you might need to pay for something that you like and use. Wierd fuckin notion I know.
Until free speech covers equal rights to emoji msg replies (etc), I really don’t see any way to force companies to make the playing field level for people who aren’t their customers.
Okay but their implementation is what they are touting. The standard RCS protocol is only marginally better than sms. Google constantly uses encryption in their ad campaigns for RCS, which is exclusive to to googles implementation. There is no way anyone is going to get Apple to work on an implementation that interoperates with Google
Yeah, the only issue is that RCS is actually better and the counter argument is that Apple is breaking the messaging platform by not implementing it in some way.
The other point to make here is that iMessage wouldn’t have to just disappear. They could continue to support iMessage while just allowing text messages to be better for those who just don’t want an iPhone. The whole thing is hypocritical on both sides. Apple has convinced it’s users, very successfully might I add, that it is an Android problem and instead of having choice over your phone, you should just buy an iPhone.
As someone who works in IT this is really not the answer users should get. To me, this is equivalent to, “your computer quit working? Just buy a new one.” But imagine you only had one choice and it’s because that company refuses to just improve standard text messaging for all users across the board but iPhone users don’t understand that Google has a method to fix this problem Apple just refuses to make it a better experience for everyone.
Additionally, I think RCS is an open platform. Google’s fork of it carries encryption and group messaging integration. Point being Google genuinely has a viable iMessage solution to non iMessage texts. Apple wouldn’t even have to stop using iMesaage.
While I agree, Apple is being obnoxiously stubborn and it truly only does benefit Apple users as well, it just feels disingenuous from Google. It more feels like they want to get their product onto Apple devices. If Apple could implement RCS the way they wanted to and interoperate with Google, then I think it would be a more valid argument (and I suppose they can, but Apple would be caught dead investing money into something like that). But Google clearly wants Apple to use their own version and is putting up this annoying ad campaign to mask it. (As far as I know, the standard RCS implementation doesn’t even include E2EE, rather it’s something unique to googles implementation, correct me if I’m wrong). Google uses encryption as a talking point in their ad campaigns and is honestly for me the biggest reason for it to be used in iOS. Otherwise the experience is only marginally better than sms, and I wouldn’t expect Apple to even bother with it. At least with encryption one can challenge Apple‘s stance on being a privacy focused company…
Im also a software engineer and it’s annoying as hell that Apple is stubborn, but from a business perspective, it’s a gold mine for Apple - ecosystem lock-in is just too valuable to them as a company.
They haven’t really. What they really should do is run their own RCS server and federate and support the e2e extension, but they don’t want to.
The most annoying part is that the imessage encryption protocol is so far behind state of art (same underlying encryption protocol with small RSA keys and no deniability since ~2011 when Signal has been around since 2010 with a better protocol). Meanwhile Google based their encryption extension on the Signal production. It would be a solid security improvement if Apple adopted it.
Google and Samsung should bribe regulators to make it happen. Apple will never changed unless they are forced to and the only way that happens is shoving money in corrupt assholes pockets.
Imagine a world where we can adopt a scalable, secure, open communication protocol where users can use whatever app they want. Imagine humanity moving past the diaspora of special-snowflake chat apps and on to better things.
We live in this world. We can adopt such a protocol. The hardest step is to convience your friends to install an app that supports it, because duopoly named Googloid and Apple iOS is not going to make it simple.
MKBHD closed this topic for me forever. Apple is never going to open up. It provides them tremendous value. They don’t give a shit if Samsung taunts them lol. They want your teenage kids taunting their friends over their green bubbles. And it’s working.
Yep. I never use sms nor other messaging systems save for WhatsApp. Not that I’m a fan of it since it was bought by Facebook, but it is what everybody here uses, and it works quite well, reliably, and has an interesting set of features.
It’s great in countries where it is so dominant that it is everyone’s default. (That’s not everywhere except America, BTW)
Anywhere it’s not 80%+ dominant already, you are stuck trying to convince everyone and their grandma to switch their message app and that just doesn’t work.
Plus… more Facebook on my phone? No thanks. I’m not saying any other company is an angel but Facebook is known to be the devil.
Exactly. The software is being kept closed source. You have no idea if Google is up to its shitty stunts to data track or anything along those lines. If it was open source then that argument is gone, till then…
Everyone can audit the code you clown, that is the point. When it is hidden you cannot do this. If you are trying to be clever and demean my intelligence, let me put it another way, Everyone who can use google can audit the code. Writing code is not something restrictive, there are many, many guides out there along with syntax breakdowns.
Idk what the person you’re arguing with is trying to say, but as a prolific user of open source software, there are thousands of serious vulnerabilities discovered every time some auditing company passes its eye over github.
Malicious commits are a whole nother thing and with the new spaghetti code nightmare that is python nowadays it’s extremely hard to figure out which commits are malicious.
Open source software is not more secure by default and the possibility of audit by anyone does not mean that it’s actually getting done. The idea that anyone who can write software can audit software is also absurd. Security auditing is a specialized subset of programming that requires significant training, skill and experience.
My point was that everyone can do it, but not everyone will commit the time and energy to do it. This fact alone is why people prefer an open source product over the hidden schemes behind the likes of Google and Samsung. And you right you will never stop malicious elements trying to take advantage of the flaws that are inevitable in the complexity of software today.
What I’m trying to push back on is your assertion that everyone can do it.
Security auditing is an extremely complex and specialized field within the already complex and specialized field of software development. Everyone cannot do it.
Even if it were as straightforward as you imply, just the prevalence of major security flaws in thousands of open source packages implies that everyone doesnt do it.
If I were to leave piles of aggregate and cement, barrels of water, hand tools and materials for forms, a grader and a compactor out and tell the neighborhood “now you can all pave your driveways” I’d be looked at like a crazy person because presented with the materials, tools and equipment to perform a job most people still lack the training and experience to perform it.
My only issue with RCS is that it requires that either LTE or wifi be on. I personally keep those off unless I want to actively use the internet. Not a big deal, minor annoyance though.
No reason to keep either on since they drain the battery even when not actively browsing the net. And if your LTE can’t find a tower to connect, it keeps trying to connect, draining the battery significantly. This was pretty bad for me a couple years ago; not so much anymore since I live in a city now but I still keep both off, mostly habit but also because I like having my battery above 90% while it’s sitting idle.
When I’m at home and want to use the net on my phone, I turn WiFi on, then off once done. When I’m outside the home and need the internet, I turn LTE on and then turn it back off once I’m done.
That’s why we still rely on SMS in rural Canada, most of the time our phones are too far from the tower for LTE to establish a link. Most attempts to use modern SMS replacements have ended in unreliable messaging and me having to support all my neighbours in shutting off the messaging support in their apps so they can use reliable SMS.
I run Pulse SMS on my phone to ensure my SMS is always SMS and will be delivered. Unfortunately I see no path away from reliance on 3G/HSPA as the eye closes on LTE after about 25km, resulting in “bars” on the phone but no ability to transfer data.
the eye closes on LTE after about 25km, resulting in “bars” on the phone but no ability to transfer data.
I've noticed this in the mountains as well, even though I don't think I'm that far from the tower I guess the normal cell signal bounces off the rock and stays readable but the data does not. Usually pretty close that they go out but as I go into a valley/ravine/hollow/canyon I do lose data first, while I still have 3/5 bars.
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