Apple will add RCS messaging support to iPhone, iPad, Mac through a software release come in the later half of next year, the company said in a statement on Thursday. It’s a move that’s pretty much guaranteed to finally kill the shiteous SMS dead.
RCS can do more than SMS and MMS: It allows users to share higher-resolution photos and videos between their devices; it supports read receipts; and there’s more fun stuff, like the ability to easily drop emoji and GIFs into a conversation. It also adds extra layers of security that the older messaging standards lack.
Apple has famously shunned RCS in favor of its own iMessage platform, resulting in a layer of incompatibility that anyone with an Android phone—or any iPhone user who regularly texts people with Android phones—is painfully aware of. Videos shared between iOS and Android are crunchy and low-bandwidth, and Android users are often confounded by group chats, with missed messages, absent emoji, and other glitches.
For years, Apple has been relying on SMS and MMS to bridge the digital divide between these messaging platforms. It’s the last major holdout, as RCS is already supported by major players like Google, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When Apple adds support for RCS, it won’t need that old bridge, and the move could signal the eventual death of SMS.
MacDailyNews Take: Premeditated.
It’s like giving half a glass of ice water to somebody in hell. Make the RCS messages purple, Apple!
This move also crisply kneecaps whatever diktats the EU were planning in the messaging arena; they’ll have to monkey with the markets somewhere else.
Note: RCS still does not support end-to-end encryption. Apple told TechRadar that it plans to work with the GSM Association to add encryption to the standard.
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