The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
This is exactly what I’m expecting. The company of “buy your mom an iPhone” isn’t going to be aiming for maximum interoperability.
Yeah but the company of “wants to remain in the EU market” might
The EU is fine with iMessage shenanigans, because they’re not a significant enough part of the market to matter. Nobody uses SMS either.
It’s WhatsApp all the way here.
No, they’ll aim for minimum interoperability that the EU will let them get away with, and they’ll push that line every chance they get