It's that time of year again, folks. As the tech world has sights set on the latest Apple event that is producing the new iPhone 16 as we speak, we all know we'll be seeing slightly improved phones, some impressive specs, and a few 'innovative" or "magic" new features from Apple. For me, however, the...
RCS is the wrong one to use, since it is not an open enough standard for there to be a single FOSS RCS app on Android. Something like Matrix or the Signal protocol would be better.
Seriously? Matrix and signal already exists… So you can use them today instead of RCS to your heart’s desire.
I think they mean it more as it’s not only gonna be Google but Apple who are going to be shoving RCS down their throats of people wether they want it or not by shipping it as default.
On the other hand, the era when corporations cared even the tiniest bit for open standards in instant messaging was gone long ago. Now all instant messaging is a complete mess, we users have to deal with a myriad of apps and protocols that in the end are doing the same thing for the sake of “privacy”, and RCS will not fix that. Nor Signal, truth be told.
I yearn the glory days of multi-protocol IM apps like Pidgin and Trident on Android (though +IM seems to still be a thing) - when you could use whatever you wanted without “missing features” or risking to be banned.
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Yeah, no. Pretty bad argument.
When you buy a phone you know it will have calls and SMS - it’s what you bought the phone in the first place. You bought them because of that. RCS is still just a fancy alternative.
And you’re missing the point again - a company doing a multi IM service app, like Beeper Mini, is not the same that a group of volunteers doing a multi service IM app, like Pidgin. They’re still going to be closed source and they will not guarantee to give support for platforms people need. Beeper mini on desktop? Beeper mini on Linux/BSD? Forget it.
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For you. I have relatives with iPhones I don’t talk to frequently but when we get together and somebody takes a group photo it’s annoying. Being able to just text a decent resolution photo without people needing to download an app is a win.
I’ll continue to use Signal with friends and family I talk to regularly.
This right here. I have to have my mom send videos of the grandkids to my work iPhone because my personal Android received them heavily pixelated and compressed.
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Hundreds?!?! Ok, just name one hundred.
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If Apple implemented the Matrix or Signal protocol it would still work the same way for you, while not forcing other Android users to use on Google or Samsung’s proprietary apps, those being the only options for RCS.
Huh? No it wouldn’t. If Apple implemented the Signal protocol they would still have to publish an iMessage app to the Play Store for Android users.
Call Google’s messaging app proprietary all you want but at least their implementation of RCS is E2E encrypted.
If it used the Signal protocol any app that used that protocol which is open, could interact with it, that is the point. Whereas RCS is a closed protocol, just one that happens to also be interoperable with Google Messages, but not any other third party apps that people might want to make.
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that on Lemmy people are so against open standards and FOSS apps.
That’s not how it works. Other apps (ironically including Google’s RCS implementation) use the Signal Protocol. Simply using it doesn’t magically make your app interoperable with every other app that uses it. And Apple would be the last company to go out of their way to make it work.
Nobody here is against open standards or FOSS apps. I am actually lucky/privileged enough to be able to write open source code for a living.
You seem to not understand the reality of the situation and that use case other than yours exist.
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RCS is an open standard, but Google’s implementation of it isn’t AFAIK. That’s why there exist no 3rd party RCS client outside of those praised by Google.
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Are those carrier apps FOSS? Are they on F-Droid? How do you install them? If not, it’s not really any better.
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