New Google site begs Apple for mercy in messaging war

Google is tired of losing so badly to iMessage, so it wants Apple to adopt RCS.

Read the whole story

 

[Publius Enigma]

I might be coming at this from an unusual angle, but as someone who desperately wants to return to having a “dumbphone” for increased portability, outdoor screen readability and battery life, the biggest inhibitor has been the fragmentation of messaging services. I would desperately like to see the introduction of a modern, open, cross-platform, cross-carrier messaging service that makes it more feasible to have phones beyond those running iOS and Android. SMS had severe flaws, but it (eventually) worked globally, across practically every mobile device and carrier - and was easily implemented by all phone manufactures.

That being said, this reeks of desperation from Google.

 

[Publius Enigma]

What specifically do people find lacking about Google's RCS? I honestly don't understand why Ron is poopooing it. As far as I'm concerned it has been a terrific seamless messenger with virtually all of the features I'd seen in iMessage.

Ron talks about wanting APIs. What would these APIs do? Wouldn't they just centralize control over RCS in Google hands? To my eye it seems better to have an open standard with open source implementations. Frequently that removes the need for APIs. Is the real complaint that Google hasn't open sourced enough of their client and server?

It's about an Google on one hand claiming that RCS is an open standard, while having a proprietary fork it that's not an open standard.

It's Google standing behind the pretense of an "open standard," while actually trying to pressure Apple into adopting a proprietary protocol that will only benefit Google. If Google wants to use their proprietary protocol in their own messaging apps, that's fine, but to complain that Apple is using their own proprietary protocol instead of Google's is hypocritical

BTW, "open standard" isn't the same as "open source." PDF is an open standard, but Adobe Acrobat is closed-source. It's about making the APIs and whatever else is necessary to use the protocol free* and in the clear for everyone to use.

If Google wants their version of RCS to be adopted, they need to do the necessary steps to make it an open standard. As it is they're just whining that Apple isn't making it easier for Google to monopolize messaging.

*Or at least extremely reasonably priced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonabl ... _licensing

Almost in the same way that Android was sold as being an open-source operating system, and used that to gain market share, but then proceeded to make it increasingly closed through all sorts of devious means? (Restricting access to Google Play and Google Play Services to only authorised Android devices, ceasing development of core AOSP applications).

 

[Publius Enigma]

I keep hearing about this, but I have never, ever met a single person who cares what color my texts are. And until today, I never knew this was an issue. And I work in an office with 20 other people, at least 15 of which use iphones. (I use android).

I mean seriously, are there really people out there who actually give a shit if your texts are coming through imessage or SMS? Are there really people out there who are making fun of others because "their texts are green and mine is blue"?

This sounds to me like a whole bunch of people who are blowing a complete non-issue out of proportion. I am willing to bet that 99% of users couldn't give half a shit less.

I have the opposite problem: I own an iPhone and I often specifically want to send my texts as “green” texts (ie SMS), because I often change my SIM between phones and if someone tries to reply to an iMessage I’ve sent before switching phones, I won’t get the reply. Sending all messages from my iPhone as an SMS would solve the problem, but iMessage doesn’t offer that option.

 

[Publius Enigma]

I keep hearing about this, but I have never, ever met a single person who cares what color my texts are. And until today, I never knew this was an issue. And I work in an office with 20 other people, at least 15 of which use iphones. (I use android).

I mean seriously, are there really people out there who actually give a shit if your texts are coming through imessage or SMS? Are there really people out there who are making fun of others because "their texts are green and mine is blue"?

This sounds to me like a whole bunch of people who are blowing a complete non-issue out of proportion. I am willing to bet that 99% of users couldn't give half a shit less.

I have the opposite problem: I own an iPhone and I often specifically want to send my texts as “green” texts (ie SMS), because I often change my SIM between phones and if someone tries to reply to an iMessage I’ve sent before switching phones, I won’t get the reply. Sending all messages from my iPhone as an SMS would solve the problem, but iMessage doesn’t offer that option.

Settings -> Messages -> iMessage (toggle it off)

Problem with that approach is that there are some people I communicate with exclusively via iMessage. Apple’s approach is either all or nothing, and automated. There’s also quite a few bugs related to threading that can cause messages to be sent via the wrong medium (for example, if I have an iCloud address associated with iMessage, and a mobile phone number not associated with iMessage, if a sender has both of those addresses stored against my contact and initiates a new message to my mobile number, iMessage will associate the mobile number with my contact, then pull up the existing iMessage thread and send it via iMessage , despite my mobile number and iMessage not being linked. Being able to directly control the medium would be useful).

 

[Publius Enigma]

I keep hearing about this, but I have never, ever met a single person who cares what color my texts are. And until today, I never knew this was an issue. And I work in an office with 20 other people, at least 15 of which use iphones. (I use android).

I mean seriously, are there really people out there who actually give a shit if your texts are coming through imessage or SMS? Are there really people out there who are making fun of others because "their texts are green and mine is blue"?

This sounds to me like a whole bunch of people who are blowing a complete non-issue out of proportion. I am willing to bet that 99% of users couldn't give half a shit less.

I have the opposite problem: I own an iPhone and I often specifically want to send my texts as “green” texts (ie SMS), because I often change my SIM between phones and if someone tries to reply to an iMessage I’ve sent before switching phones, I won’t get the reply. Sending all messages from my iPhone as an SMS would solve the problem, but iMessage doesn’t offer that option.

So....what does Settings -> Messages -> iMessage do then? Oh wait, it enables/disables iMessage.

You can even choose to enable it and not use it for the mobile number.

The problem is that there are some people I communicate with using iMessage exclusively (eg they don’t have mobile numbers). And when I’m using that phone, it is advantageous to be able to still use iMessage for some contacts, but not all.

Turning off iMessage on your own phone also doesn’t stop people sending you iMessage seven if they enter your phone number - even if that phone number is not associated with your iMessage account - due to a design flaw in the way iOS handles contacts and threaded messages. If my wife sends me a message to my phone number, which isn’t associated with my iMessage, and she has previously conversed with me to my iMessage (via an associated email account), her phone will automatically send it to the iMessage account, not the phone number she entered.

Apple have tried to be clever in their implementation and it works for 95% of use cases, but for the 5% where it doesn’t work it’s a nightmare. Having the option to explicitly set the message type when sending would you a long way to resolving these issues. Having a modern, genuinely open messaging protocol that was device and carrier agnostic would go further again.

 

[Publius Enigma]

I keep hearing about this, but I have never, ever met a single person who cares what color my texts are. And until today, I never knew this was an issue. And I work in an office with 20 other people, at least 15 of which use iphones. (I use android).

I mean seriously, are there really people out there who actually give a shit if your texts are coming through imessage or SMS? Are there really people out there who are making fun of others because "their texts are green and mine is blue"?

This sounds to me like a whole bunch of people who are blowing a complete non-issue out of proportion. I am willing to bet that 99% of users couldn't give half a shit less.

I have the opposite problem: I own an iPhone and I often specifically want to send my texts as “green” texts (ie SMS), because I often change my SIM between phones and if someone tries to reply to an iMessage I’ve sent before switching phones, I won’t get the reply. Sending all messages from my iPhone as an SMS would solve the problem, but iMessage doesn’t offer that option.

Settings -> Messages -> iMessage (toggle it off)

Problem with that approach is that there are some people I communicate with exclusively via iMessage. Apple’s approach is either all or nothing, and automated. There’s also quite a few bugs related to threading that can cause messages to be sent via the wrong medium (for example, if I have an iCloud address associated with iMessage, and a mobile phone number not associated with iMessage, if a sender has both of those addresses stored against my contact and initiates a new message to my mobile number, iMessage will associate the mobile number with my contact, then pull up the existing iMessage thread and send it via iMessage , despite my mobile number and iMessage not being linked. Being able to directly control the medium would be useful).

Switch to Android.

I mean, you already have contacts that you sometimes use iMessage with and sometimes use plain SMS with depending on whether you switch SIMs. You want a per-message manual setting in the messaging app to switch between iMessage and SMS. Good luck with that.

Or, switch to Signal/WhatsApp/WeChat/Kakao/etc: that's OS-independent (phone, tablet, PC).

My friends in another country have been on the same WeChat group for literal years.

ETA On iOS, Settings→Messages→ Send & Receive (under "iMessage"): You can select/deselect phone numbers and Apple IDs which are attached to iMessage. You can decide which phone number or Apple ID to start new conversations with.

You really didn't look at the Settings, did you?

I have looked in settings, and have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand how iMessage works under the hood. Once iMessage has been turned on, turning it off is not as simple as changing the setting - doing so can result in message loss. There are a number of design flaws with apple’s implementation, but it only affects a very small number of use cases.

 

[Publius Enigma]

So file a feature request with Apple for the per-message mode switch.

You know what to do to not lose messages. Decide: do you care more the text of the messages or all the other features.

Or get another SIM for your iPhone. (I have 2 in my iPhone 11.) Use one purely for SMS messaging.

Or, one phone per person you want to message with.

Jebus.

All perfectly reasonable, pragmatic solutions. Despite my degraded IQ relative to the average techbro, it may surprise you to discover these are all things I have tried and explored as solutions to my specific problem.

None of this is about my specific problem.

My point is that this wouldn't be an issue at all if we had a modern, interoperable messaging standard that was carrier and device agnostic. Instead we have a mish-mash of carrier-based solutions and over-the-top messaging. When it's typical to have 3-5 messaging services installed, and it's virtually impossible in the modern world not to use iOS or Android, just to message someone - when messaging is probably our prime form of communication, something has gone wrong. Just because Google have dug their own grave with messaging doesn't mean they're philosophically wrong about the need for an open messaging standard. It does make them hypocritical however.

 

[Publius Enigma]

"...and now Google's latest strategy is to... beg its competition for mercy?"

Edited for specificity:

"...and now Baal's latest strategy is to... beg Satan for mercy?"

Wait. If you hate both Apple and Google...

That's a dark place to be.

As someone who started with Windows H/PC 1.0 and PalmOS 4.0 - and moved through various incarnations of Windows CE, Windows Mobile, EPOC, Symbian, BBOS and Windows Phone - yes, I agree.

I dislike Apple's oversimplifications and increasingly obtuse user interface (hiding UI elements behind gestures <> simplicity, just the perception of simplicity), but I also dislike Google's business practices. Add on the lack of genuine choice in hardware (homogenous 5" glass slabs anyone) and it's get me feeling seriously uninspired about phones - which is a shame given how necessary they are to participate in modern society.