Yeah the vast, vast majority of folk use Android, it’s Apple that fucked up SMS.
Fuck them, nobody uses SMS for that reason, let Apple sort it out, or be forced to by the EU again lol
True, but my entire family uses iPhones and I made them all switch to Signal.
iMessage isn’t required.
All my family uses Android, except for a few exceptions. They all dropped signal when it lost sms support. So we use sms instead, fucking cool move signal.
let Apple sort it out, or be forced to by the EU again lol
The EU’s Digital Markets Act doesn’t care about niche messengers like iMessage.
This is so comically wrong I don’t know where to start. SMS was fucked from the get go, especially in the US where it was common to charge by the message for SMS. Seriously. It was $0.25 to send and $0.10 to receive them on a lot of people’s plans.
The wireless carriers fucked SMS, and will absolutely fuck up RCS - along with all the various providers out there. It’s a dogshit standard that isn’t broadly interoperable still.
iMessage was a breath of fresh air for people who did use SMS.
You’re insanely correct, and it was extra fucked because it wasn’t even MORE DATA being used. It was piggybacking on unused data packets already being sent to towers, hence the character limit. BUT WE CAN NAKE MORE MONEY IF WE CHARGE FOR THAT
Sms was from a time communications weren’t done over IP, RCS or iMessage use the IP protocol, RCS could be implemented by the telcos but isn’t because , unlike SMS, it can also be implemented by anyone with a server with a connection to the internet but as RCS is an open GSMA telecom standard, it is implemented within all modem chips by phone makers, even Apple has a Qualcomm modem chip with RCS management included. I reckon it needs a few extra features in the basic standard such as E2E encryption, chatbot capabilities, malware and spoofing protection, maybe Google could help there as they have introduced those into their Message app and could disclose their code, but they are obviously trying hard to create a walled garden too… The solution could come from Meta as they seem pretty keen to advance on open communications (Threads interoperability with Mastodon is a demonstration of that policy)
It’s so weird to me that in the US you pay to receive messages or calls. Where I live the sender pays, or the caller pays. It doesn’t cost to receive. Plus you normally get unlimited messages anyway, like even a approx US$10 a month plan will have unlimited SMS included and like 200 minutes of outbound calling, plus data.
If you’re paying for messages received then people can send you unsolicited messages and it costs you money?
I think they’re now broadly free on all but the most restrictive plans- but when iMessage came to be they weren’t - and most phones wouldn’t split 160 characters into multiple messages. You were literally limited by that.
They used to charge extra if you were roaming too. I think T-Mobile was the first to stop and everyone followed.
