Reading comprehension is hard.

That’s why I deleted my post.

AFAIK only the “new” formats are (for the basic apps, the ones ending on x). Apple’s office suite is much older than those.

It is now but the older formats used to be more like an executable byte code. Efficient but insecure.

Apple could fix this by uploading the photos to iCloud and sending a link. But improving the experience of SMS chats is not profitable, so they instead actively downgrade the experience.

Yea, this is a USA problem. Elsewhere everyone just uses a messaging app of their network’s choice.

We use messenger, which I also don’t like. Its ridiculous. If these fucken tech giants aren’t going to right interoperability standards then someone needs to force them to. We made all this shit to make life better and somehow have forgotten that was the fucken goal.

I prefer Signal to telegram and it’s been amazing the whole time I’ve used it

Now if I could just convince more people I know to switch to it that’d be great

That’s certainly less desirable option for many. But why is wanting modern cross platform messaging so bad? It works iPhone to iPhone, works Android to Android, theoretically if there were other players (maybe if BB or Windows still had phones) they could also achieve the same using RCS with Android. This argument is and has always been about default protocols that phone can communicate with. Of course downloading 3rd party chat apps, emailing them, mailing them a letter, using a cup and string, stopping communication because they chose to use a phone from a different manufacture are all still “options”.

That doesn’t solve the interoperability problem. You can’t guarantee who has what messaging app. You shouldn’t need a 3rd party app for basic functionality, anyway.

I like Signal better than my standard android SMS app. I can send more pictures at a time, video at high quality, and it does groups well.

Right, right.

Do you hear yourself?

I think the point is all these features are supported by RCS. Open standard that would be trivial for Apple to implement. They choose not to because they are greedy cunts. They are fully aware that this causes bullying and inability of tech illiterate to communicate with their friends/family.

Nobody older than 13 cares about color of text messages and most people recognize convenience of a single app for all messaging needs. This is an issue that Apple could trivially make disappear overnight if they weren’t cunts.

Fuck Apple.

So you’re saying it’s just about bubble color

I use Android, specifically Samsung.

I thought it was just the bubble color thing and people getting made fun of for their bubble color because that’s what every headline on the subject is about, and comments rarely go into depth about the rest of the issues that come from this incompatibility.

I’ve noticed similar incompatibility between Verizon messages app and non-verizon standard messages apps.

I’ve found this feature mostly reliable. Those times where it doesn’t work, or I’m travelling, or don’t have phone reception is kinda annoying. But being able to just use my Mac is fantastic.

To be fair, I am using Google (via Android) and am also giving Google (Chrome) the middle finger.

oh I understand yeah. certainly. but surely it’s not difficult to explain it to most users.

them understanding or caring about the issue is another problem. brand loyalty is a thing. but then there’s users for whom brand loyalty isn’t really a choice, it’s just what they’re used to or they’re not skilled enough to understand what the difference is.

i feel that’s a much stronger problem here. that particular subset of people don’t understand the device they are using. they’re basically angry because the green people in their messages don’t look right or don’t load right. that makes it “bad” if you don’t understand why.

basic understanding of the technology you carry in your pocket is lacking for a huge user base. but apple… kind of relies on people not understanding. it makes it easier for apple to go “Green text bad! hate people with that!” and still keep it’s users that might not understand in the dark.

Most Android phones use RCS now but iPhone doesn’t, so with an iPhone in the chat it will also need to resort to sending SMS/MMS instead

Whenever it has to fallback to SMS.

I mean there’s really no other realistic way to enable a single app to utilize two very different communication “protocols” (in quotes, because SMS is only nominally a protocol).

I’ve always though iMessage was the approach to getting away from crappy SMS.

So when Signal did the same, I was very optimistic. It removed a barrier to entry for users by supporting SMS plus an encrypted method for connections that had Signal. And you could enable it to add a signature saying something like “Sent from Signal, this could be an encrypted conversation if you download Signal” or something like that. That was a great idea.

(weird, not sure why these are two comments and it looks like I replied to myself)

Cross-platform clients, yes, but that’s only a (small) part of the way there. For example, Signal is actively hostile to other client implementations just like Apple is with iMessage, unfortunately :(

There is no public iMessage API that people can pay to use. Beeper (or rather the code it’s based on) reverse-engineered the iMessage protocol and server APIs and they simply make the same requests as the iMessage app on iOS would.