With just days to go before the European Union's Digital Markets Act designates gatekeepers, Apple is allegedly arguing iMessage isn't popular enough to be classified as a gatekeeper service.
That is not clear yet, since the law does not specify the protocol needed to make that happen. The law forces them to make the messenger interoperable while keeping features like E2E encryption. Basically like ActivitPub with more security / privacy features.
If they stay true to their word, they will force them to implement interoperability and not just force them to give some sort of API access.
So if you install WhatsApp their plan is that Meta must provide a seamless experience in talking to every other person even if that person is using e.g. iMessage
A new protocol for the given reason is faster implemented, more secure and better scalable then just trying to do something with existing solutions that were never designed with something like this in mind.
How will it be a good thing for all Apple users since Apple users use iMessage and don’t give a crap about SMS or RCS?
Maybe it it was someone else besides google pushing RCS it might have a better adoption rate. But by this time next year google will have moved to another message app.
You’re absolutely right, but the knuckle-draggers are too busy with their FOMO to hear it.
iMessage supports a dense layer of features in excess of what’s possible with the RCS standard. RCS is a decent fallback, and maybe progress could be made towards supporting it as a fallback. But the issue is that not even all Android phones enable RCS by default, meaning iMessage would have to have a fallback and a second fallback.
And honestly, the bottom line is that Apple is unlikely to prioritize implementing RCS until their customer base is asking them to do so, which they largely aren’t. The vast majority of the anger towards Apple regarding RCS is from people who don’t buy Apple phones, or from Apple’s direct competitors seeking to improve their products. Apple users (myself included) don’t really care because a marginally better SMS experience is still going to be worse than iMessage, and if I’m really looking for rich cross-platform messaging, I can use any of the dozen widely-used apps that do exactly that.
They turn off iMessage in Europe. Or have argue it’s ability to fall back to SMS meets this. Or the industry invents a protocol that they all use and iMessage gets a new colored bubble.
What does this look like in practice?
That is not clear yet, since the law does not specify the protocol needed to make that happen. The law forces them to make the messenger interoperable while keeping features like E2E encryption. Basically like ActivitPub with more security / privacy features.
It will just force them to document and open up their APIs and protocols.
How would that be a feasible solution?
If they stay true to their word, they will force them to implement interoperability and not just force them to give some sort of API access.
So if you install WhatsApp their plan is that Meta must provide a seamless experience in talking to every other person even if that person is using e.g. iMessage
A new protocol for the given reason is faster implemented, more secure and better scalable then just trying to do something with existing solutions that were never designed with something like this in mind.
all of this stuff is just API calls anyway, that’s how the internet operates, none of this is done via an analogue signal transfer
It could mean they make iMessage compatible with RCS for fucking once. Which would actually be a good thing for all Apple users.
How will it be a good thing for all Apple users since Apple users use iMessage and don’t give a crap about SMS or RCS?
Maybe it it was someone else besides google pushing RCS it might have a better adoption rate. But by this time next year google will have moved to another message app.
You’re absolutely right, but the knuckle-draggers are too busy with their FOMO to hear it.
iMessage supports a dense layer of features in excess of what’s possible with the RCS standard. RCS is a decent fallback, and maybe progress could be made towards supporting it as a fallback. But the issue is that not even all Android phones enable RCS by default, meaning iMessage would have to have a fallback and a second fallback.
And honestly, the bottom line is that Apple is unlikely to prioritize implementing RCS until their customer base is asking them to do so, which they largely aren’t. The vast majority of the anger towards Apple regarding RCS is from people who don’t buy Apple phones, or from Apple’s direct competitors seeking to improve their products. Apple users (myself included) don’t really care because a marginally better SMS experience is still going to be worse than iMessage, and if I’m really looking for rich cross-platform messaging, I can use any of the dozen widely-used apps that do exactly that.
They turn off iMessage in Europe. Or have argue it’s ability to fall back to SMS meets this. Or the industry invents a protocol that they all use and iMessage gets a new colored bubble.
An endless sea of spam that Apple is legally required to deliver.