Apple will lastly undertake RCS in iOS 18, successfully ending a yearslong combat for function parity between iMessage and Android. However the announcement wasn’t a celebration — you would’ve blinked and missed it. As a substitute of exhibiting how RCS will make issues higher, Apple softly introduced assist for the usual and centered on all the good options coming to iMessage customers — not RCS ones.
Apple didn’t go over how RCS adoption will lastly let iPhone and Android customers ship one another high-resolution footage and movies. It didn’t even say how RCS will allow assist for cross-platform learn receipts and typing indicators. Apple solely highlighted the flashy options coming to iMessage, together with methods to daring and italicize textual content, enhancements to Tapbacks, and the flexibility to schedule a textual content.
These are all nice adjustments, however iPhone customers received’t be capable to use these options when chatting with somebody on Android. And we don’t even understand how the emoji created with Genmoji, Apple’s new AI emoji creation software, will seem in texts despatched to customers on Android, both.
The corporate buried RCS on its iOS 18 preview web page, too. It doesn’t even confer with Android customers by title: “RCS (Wealthy Communication Providers) messages carry richer media and supply and browse receipts for individuals who don’t use iMessage.” The included picture reveals an RCS chat on the iPhone, which has the inexperienced bubbles indicating the particular person you’re texting isn’t on an iPhone.
Apple first confirmed RCS assist was coming final yr. “This can work alongside iMessage, which is able to proceed to be one of the best and most safe messaging expertise for Apple customers,” Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy mentioned in an announcement to The Verge on the time. But it surely wasn’t essentially a magnanimous transfer. Apple was largely pressured to assist RCS in response to the mounting strain from world regulators and competing firms. Which will assist clarify the considerably disgruntled method to asserting its rollout in iOS 18.
However Apple’s adoption of RCS has been years within the making. Each main service already made the swap to RCS. Apple was the one holdout, and regulators, mixed with some unhealthy press (keep in mind when Tim Prepare dinner informed a man to purchase his mother an iPhone?), made it more and more mandatory for the corporate to deal with the problem.”
The truth that Apple ignored RCS throughout its keynote makes it seem to be Apple didn’t suppose it was worthy sufficient of exhibiting off — which is goofy. The entire inhabitants of Android customers, together with myself, has been caught getting pictures and movies from iPhone customers that you simply want a magnifying glass to make out (whereas additionally making an attempt to persuade them to obtain a third-party messenger that really helps high-res media).
This can be a huge enchancment for each Android and iPhone customers! It’s simply too unhealthy that the long-awaited unification of the iPhone and Android’s messaging programs was drowned out by unsettling AI-generated emoji and jiggling iMessage bubbles. Even with out Apple’s acknowledgment, I’m simply stoked that I’ll lastly be capable to alternate pictures and movies from the twenty first century with my iPhone-wielding family and friends members for as soon as.