If RCS is such an awesome standard, why not mandate it for all EU phones? Apple already supports the current standard, which is SMS. The idea that they have to open up their proprietary software seems silly to me.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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I kinda understand it, because iMessage is completely irrelevant outside the US. It still sucks, bacuse more choice and less lock in is always better for consumers.
It's funny to me that someone now has to say in an Apple boardroom every so often:
"So how do we make sure this isn't too successful in the EU?"
It's strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.
I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn't WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole "ew, green bubbles" drama just isn't a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)
Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to "problems that are big enough to care about" is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I'm all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.
Airdrop is the “blue bubble” thing where I am. When we’re traveling to poor signal areas (hiking, scuba diving, etc) the iPhone folks share the pictures they took with Airdrop. The Android folks just need to wait for it in whatsapp. And until recently, those pics in whatsapp are compressed to heck.
It just means you are around more iphone folks than android. If roles were reversed, android users could share photos using nearby share, or even nfc which is at least a decade old by now, and neither is compatible with ios.
Why not use Bluetooth?
Android also has "airdrop". It's called "nearby share". Works weekly l exactly the same way so there's no need to WhatsApp it. You can share it right there with all android users.
Look on your phone settings. There's also going to be a nearby share quick toggle if you want to turn it on and off manually.
Also press "share" on a photo and nearby share will be an option. Press it and try it out and learn it.
I’m not saying the feature doesn’t exist. I’m just saying that is what happening around me. Even though our community doesn’t use imessage, Android is still the red haired stepchild.
It's also funny that Apple phones are seen as an "old people" thing because they're for simpletons, let's be honest
Oh cock off. My home network has seven windows machines and three Linux machines. I love iOS because I fuck around with computers all day, I’m not into fucking around with my phone. I want a secure device that lasts a long time, stays extremely fast, and requires no fucking. My five year old iPhone matches all of this perfectly.
As an android owner, I am pretty sure I haven't fucked any of my phones.... Yet.
I don’t use google products or services, so if I had an Android phone I’d have to fuck around with de-Googling and custom ROMs and all that, which I’m not willing to do.
Glad you found an incredibly niche exception to my generalisation lol
Most of my mates who are in tech have iPhones as well. It’s not that niche. It’s a great, fast phone with one-click incremental encrypted image backups so if something fucks up, you’re given a new one and in minutes it’s the exact same phone as the dead one, with zero fucking around.
My brother in Christ, if you have a home network with 7 Windows and 3 Linux machines, you don't have any mates 😂😂
Apple's whole modern "it's reliable and just works" cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.
Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you're doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don't need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.
And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).
The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple's design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.
The article says that Apple is still planning on making iMessage compatible with RCS, but isn't Apple's incentive gone if there's no longer any EU pressure? How likely is it that Apple will cancel their RCS plans?
There's still plenty of EU pressure. This was a close enough thing that the EU spent months investigating it before making a decision.
That sends a pretty clear message to Apple "we're OK with what you're doing with messaging right now, but only just barely". If Apple does something the EU doesn't like, new legislation can be written.
There's also pressure in the USA and other countries where iMessage is far more widely used. The pressure hasn't gone anywhere yet, but it definitely could. The USA came down hard on Ma Bell when they dominated the phone industry. They're so dead most people have forgotten they existed. They were arguably the biggest company in the entire world at the time. Just like Apple is now.
Part of the order against Ma Bell was to order the company to stop selling phones. Imagine if the USA did that again, with Apple this time. I listened to an interview with an antitrust regulator in the USA yesterday (Decoder podcast)... he said they're short staffed and rely on punitive damages so harsh that other companies choose voluntary compliance, removing the need to actually regulate the whole industry (they don't have enough people to do that). Pretty scary stuff - the EU's approach is far gentler.
“we’re OK with what you’re doing with messaging right now, but only just barely”. If Apple does something the EU doesn’t like, new legislation can be written.
Because of the "only just barely" part, new legislation might not even be necessary.
If Apple only narrowly avoided falling under the core platform definition, just a change in market share might be enough for that to change under the existing rules.
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