Apple is adopting RCS, and no, that won't solve the green/blue bubble issue. They'll still distinguish RCS and SMS from iMessage.

iMessage is Apple's value-add and has its own app ecosystem, apparently/allegedly true E2E.

  *> Personally if it's a business / marketing advantage unless their hand is forced for business reasons they should never change it.*

Yep, that is Apple's intent, according to Apple emails leaked from various court cases.

To the vast majority of people though it will solve the problem. Android to iPhone communication will be close enough to the iMessage experience.

Yeah, maybe it will make some improvement for Android people, who are the majority of the mobile market.

For iPhone users, they'll still be some non-blue bubble people who lack the E2E[1] and tight iMessage app integrations that are popular among iPhone users these days. At least until governments possibly intervene.

1. E2E insofar as not carrier-accessible (unlike RCS), which is a bit of a hot button issue in the US, post-Snowden/PRISM. If carriers have access to RCS payloads or even metadata, they will most definitely harvest it for marketing purposes, as well as ship it off to the US government.

WhatsApp/Signal involve other people you want to communicate with having those apps, which is fairly unlikely in the US (at least outside of tech/international social groups). Only chat apps out here you can count on are facebook messenger, sms/rcs, groupme, or imessage. iMessage is probably the best of these.

I have directly asked many relatives/friends in their 20s/30s, and they have told me they would assume an Android user has a higher likelihood of being “weird”.

The barrier to entry to installing WhatsApp or Signal is near zero, just a minute of one’s time. And given that most everyone is using Meta’s other apps anyway, the privacy costs are moot. In fact, all of the people I asked have WhatsApp already, but mostly to remain in legacy group chats with older family.

Also in many countries Android is a sign of your social/economic class as many such headsets are super inexpensive compared to an iPhone.

If Apple started a new color "purple," that indicates sent via iPhone 15 Max well then that would be a further marketing boost for the multiple millions of ppl who care about social class & flaunt it. Apple overall is a luxury brand another one of their marketing strategies.

Whatsapp and signal don't load messages that were sent before joining a channel, a modern feature that slack has had since launch.

I would not expect/want that behavior from a chat app. If I was having a conversation with 3 people, and then a 4th person walked up and joined the conversation, I expect them to not be privy to anything discussed prior to them joining.

A “channel” that shows all participants the entire history seems more like a private forum thread than a “chat”, and should probably be distinguished separately.

Whatever you want to call it, if we're having a conversation, say, planning a birthday party for Bob, and we forgot to invite Alice to the conversation, through the magic of computers, instead of us having to start the conversation from the beginning again when every new person joins, they can just read the scroll back.

If you're the type of person having conversations about people that you wouldn't want them to hear, maybe you shouldn't be having them?

I understand the pros and cons, I just think there should be a clear demarcation of which is which. I can see a chat app deciding to keep this feature out if they think it would make the app too confusing for its audience.