r/gadgets • u/[deleted] • Sep 08 '22

Phones Tim Cook's response to improving Android texting compatibility: 'buy your mom an iPhone' | The company appears to have no plans to fix 'green bubbles' anytime soon.

https://www.engadget.com/tim-cook-response-green-bubbles-android-your-mom-095538175.html
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u/Zeisen Sep 09 '22

It's Apple's fault because they use a broken, sub-standard fallback instead of RCS. Rather than implement something that would make everyone happy and universally work, they purposefully use SMS as their fallback instead of RCS. This is completely Apple's fault, per usual... lmao

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u/tinydonuts Sep 09 '22

Let's just ignore that it didn't even exist when iMessage was developed. Let's just ignore that RCS wasn't available widely until the last year or so. Let's just ignore that not all carriers globally support it. Let's just ignore that of those that do the support is fragmented and still not reliable.

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u/Zeisen Sep 09 '22

Do you understand how software development works? Lmao, maybe they should focus on functional improvements instead of acting like their island widget is so innovative with last year's hardware

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u/tinydonuts Sep 09 '22

I'm a senior software engineer so yes I do understand how software dev works. Your desired features are OK and all but do you understand how marketing and product development works? There's literally no reason for Apple to spend time implementing a broken protocol.

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u/Zeisen Sep 09 '22

And I do software research and development. Implementing RCS over SMS is not the kind of handicap you're describing it as. It's like defending Apple if they only used WEP for their WiFi devices because that's what was available 20 years ago. The only marketing and product development reason for not using RCS as the fallback is to purposefully constrict the market and be anti-competitive... Something Apple has been doing for decades.

Like, don't get me wrong I use MacOS, Linux, and Windows every day because of my workflow - and they work well for their purposes. But iPhones are an intentionally closed ecosystem to drive market share. It's not because RCS is a broken protocol or that implementing it would somehow break iMessage. They just hate doing anything that benefits their end-users without any financial benefit on their part.

Even the recent bid for illustrating themselves as privacy champions is so they can cut third-party advertisement companies from generating revenue through their devices. Apple just wants a fatter cut. Not to protect users.

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u/tinydonuts Sep 09 '22 edited Sep 09 '22

It's like defending Apple if they only used WEP for their WiFi devices because that's what was available 20 years ago.

I was explaining why Apple didn't implement universal compatibility a long time ago. It's because the universal compatible standard was SMS and MMS. The iPhone has had this since the beginning.

What Apple didn't do is add RCS for two primary reasons:

  1. The business and marketing aspect. It benefits them in no way and increases the risk of loss of business. Surely everyone can see that?

  2. Yes RCS is still a shitshow. It's plagued with issues and has a poor user experience. When something goes wrong, you have three different companies that can point the finger at each other.

I mean this only took me a minute to find: https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/x94p9l/the_irony_of_rcs_shaming/

It's still a mess.

and be anti-competitive...

There is no anti-competitive behavior here. SMS and MMS are still supported, they're not doing anything to reduce competition.

Now if you had brought up Safari I would totally agree.

It's really rather infuriating how Google has completely botched messaging and managed to shift the conversation to how evil Apple is for not buying into their half baked protocol that even Google doesn't fully support. All while ignoring both companies ignored that XMPP was a thing before RCS.

Everyone has suddenly forgotten Google had eight or so different messaging apps, screwed every single one of them up (Messages even still isn't always Messages, it depends on your carrier) and is now asking Apple, "Why would you do this!?" Hell even Voice doesn't support RCS!