Google wants to shame Apple into adopting RCS in its Messages app
RCS is a cross-platform messaging protocol designed as a successor to the outdated SMS and MMS standards, and Google today launches a new website to try and shame Apple into adopting it.
If you have an iPhone and message Android-owning friends regularly using the Apple’s Messages app, then you’ll know that the message bubbles show up in different colors -- blue for fellow iPhone owners, and green for those on Android. However, you might also have encountered problems like low res photos and videos, missing read receipts and typing indicators, and broken group chats when engaging in cross-platform messaging. This, Google says bluntly, is down to Apple.
The search giant explains on its new site:
It’s not about the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no texting over Wi-Fi, and more. These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.
Apple turns texts between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, out-of-date technologies from the 90s and 00s. But Apple can adopt RCS -- the modern industry standard -- for these threads instead. Solving the problem without changing your iPhone to iPhone conversations and making messaging better for everyone.
The site also showcases tweets from frustrated users and media outlets covering the issue, and even goes so far as to recommend iPhone users switch to Signal or WhatsApp instead of Messages, until Apple fixes the issue.
You can see the new site here, and should you wish to encourage Apple to switch to RCS (don't hold your breath on this happening anytime soon, or ever), you can fire off a tweet from here, using Google’s #GetTheMessage hashtag.
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