The long-awaited day is here: Apple has announced that its Messages app will support RCS in iOS 18. The move comes after years of taunting, cajoling, and finally, some regulatory scrutiny from the EU.
Right now, when people on iOS and Android message each other, the service falls back to SMS — photos and videos are sent at a lower quality, messages are shortened, and importantly, conversations are not end-to-end encrypted like they are in iMessage. Messages from Android phones show up as green bubbles in iMessage chats and chaos ensues.
Apple’s announcement was likely an effort to appease EU regulators.
Steve Jobs loudly announced FaceTime would be made open source. Then they lost a patent lawsuit against https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20236114
Apple paid up and could keep using the patent, but could not just let anyone else use the tech they developed as it now needed a non-open license.