Apple has unveiled a brand new era of iPhones with higher cameras, longer battery life, and a “Dynamic Island” as a substitute of a notch. One factor the brand new telephones will not have is RCS messaging assist. Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner was requested at Vox Media’s Code 2022 occasion whether or not the corporate would heed Google’s calls to undertake the common messaging normal. His reply was fairly snarky: “purchase your mother an iPhone.”
The problem lies in how Apple connects iPhones by means of the default messaging app. When an iPhone consumer sends a message to a different iPhone consumer, Apple intercepts it and routes it by means of a proprietary system you’ve got in all probability heard of known as iMessage. These messages can do greater than your common SMS with larger high quality media, learn receipts, enhanced group chat, and a lot extra. When chatting with an Android consumer, messages revert again to the outdated SMS format with inexperienced textual content bubbles as a substitute of blue.
Google has been operating an consciousness marketing campaign in hopes of pressuring Apple to assist the RCS normal that Android telephones use for enhanced messaging. Up to now, no cube, and it sounds prefer it’s not even on Apple’s radar. On the Code convention, Vox Media’s LiQuan Hunt informed Tim Prepare dinner that the dearth of RCS is an actual drawback for him, explaining that he is unable to ship high-quality video to his mom. That is when Prepare dinner spouted his “purchase your mother an iPhone” line.
It is no shock that is the social gathering line. Apple has no incentive to assist RCS, and it could by no means permit Android gadgets to connect with iMessage. This helps reenforce the concept that Android telephones take unhealthy pictures as a result of they find yourself blurry when despatched to iPhones as textual content messages. The way in which messaging works on iPhones is a significant lock-in issue, too. Folks do not need to lose their iMessage group chats they get when speaking to their iPhone-using buddies. Though RCS has most of the identical options, that solely helps should you’re speaking to different Android people.
With Apple stonewalling, the one viable answer for these annoyed by the inexperienced bubble state of affairs is to make use of a special messaging system. WhatsApp, Telegram, Fb Messenger, and all the remainder are merely connecting over the web. They’ll implement no matter options they need, they usually’ll work on all gadgets equally.
