Apple to Support RCS in Messages Next Year

[silbey]

@john23

My experience says not, where the apps like whatsapp do photo and video sharing well. And of course the apps have browser clients to work on mac and windoze to make typing easier, and reactions.

My experience with both Messages & WhatsApp is that (for my purposes) they’re indistinguishable from each other in terms of usage. I don’t know all the details of what’s going on behind the scenes but that doesn’t really matter to me.

[chirano (Conrad Hirano)]

@Shamino

A lot of it is that Apple makes the whole process pretty automatic. If you use Messages for everything, your messages will automatically detect and use iMessage for those who can receive it, falling back to SMS/MMS for everybody else (mostly Android users).

Although SMS doesn’t support group chats, Apple (and Android, I think) seem to do a good job of hiding it. I’ve got a few group chats with non-iPhone users. I assume the phone sends out multiple SMS messages for each message I send.

What happens with groups consisting of iPhone and Android users? I see a green chat bubble for me, which suggests everyone in the group receives messages through SMS/MMS, even the iPhone users.

[Shamino (David C.)]

That’s exactly what happens. If the group contains iMessage and non-iMessage users together, everybody chats using (insecure) SMS/MMS.

[alvarnell]

@silbey

I don’t know all the details of what’s going on behind the scenes but that doesn’t really matter to me.

It should! I would guess that you care whether your contacts and/or message contents are available in plain text to others or is it all encrypted.

[nello]

@Shamino

I’ve never had a problem sharing images with my friends on Android phones using Messages. I assume those are going out using MMS.

Images that I’ve received in a green bubble (coming from an iPhone in a mixed Messages chat) have had very low resolution, e.g., 400x300, which I thought was due using MMS. (When emailed the images were much higher resolution, as I recall.)

[silbey]

@alvarnell

I would guess that you care whether your contacts and/or message contents are available in plain text to others or is it all encrypted

I do not, actually.

[john23 (John)]

Alas, that ship has sailed. I can’t stand meta (don’t use facebook or instagram) and go on about privacy to what my friends consider a fault, but as almost everyone I know uses whatsapp I assume that facebook has all my contact data already.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

This, along with the ability to leave groups, is probably the biggest advantage of the move to RCS. Really I’m happy that Apple is doing it. Forget pressure from regulators- it’s just going to be a better experience than not supporting RCS.

[jzw (Jolin)]

@Simon

I suppose using something “everybody has” is the issue.

Yes, it was in widespread use before Facebook bought WhatsApp. Getting a whole group of people to switch for ‘no reason’ is essentially impossible. There was a change in terms that was imposed a few years ago and enough people were upset that it made the news. Several of my contacts set up accounts on Signal during that time, but by a few months later they weren’t using them.

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

@nello

I fail to see messaging’s appeal.

Really it’s the way that most of my contacts prefer to be contacted these days. Notifications are relatively instantaneous, they always carry their phones, it doesn’t require creating a separate subject line when creating a new thread. My kids have email accounts, yes, but they just don’t check them quite as often; they don’t have notifications set on email because so much of email these days is unimportant (most of my mail over the last week has been Black Friday or cyber Monday related.)

But honestly I contact people the way they most like to be contacted. Some, like you, prefer email. Some prefer WhatsApp. Most prefer messages (particularly iMessage). Some prefer calls.

Me? For personal messaging, I prefer messages really. For work-related stuff, email is really better, but messaging is ok, too.

[john23 (John)]

I have another question about imessage using SMS & MMS. For those in the US where imessage just seems to make it all work and your plan has infinity text messages, how does that work with contacts outside the US? Do you get free text messages to them as well? If not doesn’t that cost a packet when imessaging with an android user in the UK, or Japan, or wherever?

[ddmiller (Doug Miller)]

My text message plan is unlimited to anyone when I am in the US. If I travel I pay for SMS or MMS messages that I send, not recieve. (But when I travel I usually get a local SIM.)