Beeper reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users::The push to bring iMessage to Android users today adds a new contender. A startup called Beeper, which had been working on a multi-platform messaging
oh, can’t android users receive high-quality videos and photos? after 16 years of smartphones, you’d think they’d have that figured out…
It’s not the android side that’s failing, it’s Apples refusal to implement anything other than SMS for cross ecosystem compatibility.
@Mountaineer @gregorum Apple is going to implement RCS, the EU put pressure on them.
However I am surprised that Beeper was able to do this in software. With everyone else using an Apple device as a proxy, I figured the protocol required a magic handshake from the TPM chip in an Apple device. That would be easy to do.
There’s some gotchas in Apples statement:
They have promised to implement “RCS Universal Profile”
This means the bare minimum, not the advanced features implemented by Google and Samsung etc.
An example of a missing feature from Universal Profile is end to end encryption.
They also said: “This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”
The implication of this is that it won’t be in the iMessage app, it will be in a separate but official app, siloing your Android friends from your iPhone friends.
When this comes out, every European is going to shrug and keep using Whatsapp.
RCS is too liitle, too late. It sucks. People have issues with it today… It’s less reliable than SMS, and it’s E2EE is problematic.
Fortunately much of the world has moved away from SMS already, so those folks aren’t coming back. I try real hard to get people away from it.
iOS can’t send hi quality videos or images over SMS. It’s a choice made by Apple.
I can send large videos (more than 50mb, for sure) over SMS from my Android phone on Verizon to a Verizon iPhone. They receive it in same quality. When they send it back, the iPhone butchers it.
Verizon, unlike other carriers, doesn’t seem to have an MMS size limit.
You need to think of iMessage as Google messages, Whatsapp, telegram, signal, etc. Except this is only installed on iPhones and they want everyone to know it. It’s arrogant and stupid. The app could just be released for Android and it would be no different than the others I mentioned.
It’s gatekeeping.
Android to Android, sure.
But Apple and Google refuse to play nicely with each other, so Android to Iphone or Iphone to Android both suck.
It’s not a lack of capability, it’s the refusal to implement it to try and force users to pick a side.
To be fair, Google’s messaging plans and implementations have been all over the place for a decade. Apple still should have been more proactive. They promised iMessage would come to Android until they realized how much of a moat it became for their business.
I don’t really care which of them is responsible for it not working decently, that’s why I didn’t point the finger at one in particular.
Point is, it’s between these two companies to agree on a solution that works for both of them and actually implement it. Yet after all this time, they still haven’t to the detriment of consumers globally.
I’ll believe the IOS RCS implementation when it’s actually released. Promises from corporations are worthless.
If you’re talking about RCS, androids newer native messaging system, no apple has not implemented that yet.
There has always been dozens of messaging apps users can use, including Google Chat, but they are all seprate apps that both you and the recipient have to choose to install and use. That’s the main problem.
The goal is to have the native messaging apps on both platforms be able to speak to each other with the same quality right out of the box, just as they can within the same platform right now (apple to apple, and android to android).
Android uses RCS now, a higher quality and more feature rich standard than SMS. However… Apple hasn’t added it to iOS, so it doesn’t work to send to iPhones and they receive bog-standard SMS from Android devices.
iOS can’t send hi quality videos or images over SMS. It’s a choice made by Apple.
I can send large videos (more than 50mb, for sure) over SMS from my Android phone on Verizon to a Verizon iPhone. They receive it in same quality. When they send it back, the iPhone butchers it.
Verizon, unlike other carriers, doesn’t seem to have an MMS size limit.
