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.
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.
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.
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?
iMessage lacks capability to send videos taken on iPhone. One day, I wish I could follow threads within a conversation with a group or individual when iMessage is ready; meanwhile I’ll stick with Signal app.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. No point in being a company which actually tries to make money from creating well-designed new technology products when you can be an advertising company which gives all the technology they create (typically clone) away for free.
I'm wondering if this business model is going to start making its way into other professions too. Where, say, architects and engineers create buildings for free, and make money by installing cameras, microphones, and special wireless signal monitoring systems into those buildings. How far do we take this "everything must be free" mentality?
I get the fact that, eventually, interoperability is needed/desired. Would would be ideal is compensating the creator of the technology when it's decided that it should be opened up for interoperability. Much like the FRAND system on the hardware side of things. That would ensure that companies which want to focus on innovating and creating technology products can avoid being forced to fund their work via advertising, or cloned and owned by competitors who come along after them. And yes, the technology they create should be evaluated to determine if they truly added value to it rather than just repackaging something which already existed.
Further to this point, back in the day, people said Apple would never grow its market share using it proprietary technology and processors. And it’s not like Microsoft helped much with interoperability. Everyone said they should license out OSX, allow the iPod to seamlessly work with windows etc, but Apple stuck to their guns and now after all the hard work they did, they now have to help out companies that don’t know how to architect software - like Google and Microsoft.
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.
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.
The encryption is end to end - only the devices on the end have the keys to encrypt and decrypt, the servers have no way of knowing what is in the data without the keys so they just "carry" data.
Pretty sure that they will have a meta tag that specifies which encryption algorithm to use in their RCS Universal Profile and the devices will alert users if it's not secure. Just like you see with the SSL with modern browsers.
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.
I’m sure there will be a third colour, maybe teal. That way you know if you will get advanced features with your friend on Android or basic SMS (green bubble) features. Blue will remain for iMessage only I feel.
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.
I’m sure there will be a third colour, maybe teal. That way you know if you will get advanced features with your friend on Android or basic SMS (green bubble) features. Blue will remain for iMessage only I feel.
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%.
Google is obviously not doing “ok” since they’ve been crying in the press for years now over Apple’s blue bubbles and Android market share in decline.
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%.
Google is obviously not doing “ok” since they’ve been crying in the press for years now over Apple’s blue bubbles and Android market share in decline.
My recollection is great. You're basing your entire argument on what they said over a year and a half ago. Did you purposely avoid more recent announcements, or just didn't want to look for any? Back in May this year Google announced it had risen to 800 million active users.
So here it is 6 months later, and a billion active users is almost certainly on the low side. Not too shabby for a service that's not yet available in every country.
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.
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.
The carriers can't do it for them. E2EE happens at the end points of the communication path, i.e. the phone (or whatever device) only. That's what makes it *End* to *End*.
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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.
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?
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.
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.
Last I recall reading, Google Messages has nearly a billion active users now, so they're doing OK.
Pretty sure that they will have a meta tag that specifies which encryption algorithm to use in their RCS Universal Profile and the devices will alert users if it's not secure. Just like you see with the SSL with modern browsers.
So here it is 6 months later, and a billion active users is almost certainly on the low side. Not too shabby for a service that's not yet available in every country.