hewbass

gatorguy said:

anonymouse said:

gatorguy said:

anonymouse said:

gatorguy said:

anonymouse said:

headfull0wine said:

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. 

CelticPaddy said:

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*.

auxio said:

gatorguy said:

anonymouse said:

headfull0wine said:

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. 

CelticPaddy said:

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. 

It'll work both ways. Sure, iPhone users who use RCS to message Android users won't be able to encrypt their messages, but the same goes for Android users who message iPhone users. So it's both Apple and Google won't pay for the server costs required to do E2E encryption for messages sent to the other's platform.

I've seen a couple of posts making this mistake.

E2EE does not require anything from the servers-- it runs over the top (the messages are encrypted and decrypted on device, the network/servers have nothing to do with it, they just deliver/route the encrypted text the same why they would any unencrypted text). The only thing required is that both ends of the conversation speak the same E2EE protocol, which will be established by the regular RCS capability exchange between the RCS messaging clients.

When E2EE is added to the RCS standard, which it will be because Apple have explicitly mentioned they will push for it, then all RCS messaging clients will be able adopt the same protocol.