Google is holding the 2023 version of its annual I/O convention at this time, and the corporate introduced many new issues for Android and Pixel merchandise. Throughout the keynote, the corporate once more teased Apple for not offering help for the RCS messaging protocol on the iPhone.
What’s RCS
RCS is a brand new open messaging customary created by Google to interchange SMS, which is kind of outdated, restricted, and never safe. Nevertheless, whereas Google has been pushing RCS for each Android person, Apple has by no means appeared open to the concept of adopting RCS on iOS. It is because the corporate already has iMessage, its personal answer to interchange SMS.
However whereas RCS is an open customary, iMessage is barely accessible on Apple units. And this finally ends up affecting conversations between iPhone and Android customers utilizing the default Messages app of their respective units. Throughout at this time’s I/O, Google mentioned that there are already greater than 800 million folks utilizing RCS on the earth.
The corporate then teased Apple by suggesting that this quantity could possibly be even larger if each working system “will get the message and adopts RCS.” Android VP Sameer Samat additionally added that he hopes everybody can “hand around in the group chat collectively, it doesn’t matter what machine we’re utilizing.”
Apple refuses to undertake RCS
Final yr, when requested about RCS by a buyer who couldn’t ship his mom sure movies as a result of she makes use of an Android telephone, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner instructed him to “purchase your mother an iPhone.” Cook dinner additionally mentioned he doesn’t see Apple customers asking the corporate “to place numerous power into that.” Within the US, the place iMessage is de facto fashionable, permitting iPhone customers to ship RCS could find yourself hurting iPhone gross sales.
Craig Federighi as soon as mentioned that “iMessage on Android would merely serve to take away [an] impediment to iPhone households giving their children Android telephones.” A number of stories present that folks within the US, particularly youngsters, purchase iPhones simply due to iMessage. However in nations the place neither iMessage nor SMS/RCS are fashionable, this isn’t precisely an issue.
Nonetheless, bringing RCS to the iPhone would end in an a variety of benefits for customers – not solely due to the interoperability between iOS and Android but additionally as a result of RCS has end-to-end encrypted messages, whereas SMS doesn’t. Sadly, a Bloomberg report from December 2022 revealed that Apple nonetheless has no plans to undertake RCS in its units.
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