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Comment by zadjii | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people in the comments are wondering how this could possibly compete with WhatsApp, but I don't think competing with WhatsApp is the goal at all here. While WhatsApp is super prevalent across Europe, in the US, most folks are still just using SMS with whatever their phone's default messaging app is. For iPhone users, that's iMessage, and for Android users that's Android Mwessages. There's just far too much inertia on SMS for that to change in the US - everyone's already got a cell phone number that can be used to send SMS messages to, but WhatsApp accounts are few and far between.

And I gotta say, when the person you're chatting with is also on Android Messages, the silent upgrade to RCS has been great. It finally feels like texting in the 21st century. So if Google can start rolling this out as the default experience for US-based Android users, it's gonna make a lot of people happy without them ever realizing it.

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I think we can reasonably assume RCS is used by Google to attack on both fronts: iMessage in the US and other countries with high iOS penetration, Whatsapp and other cross-platform messenger services in the rest of the world.

But while carriers and Android OEMs might be on board, I don't really see why Apple would bother, short of being forced. Maybe that's part of the strategy.

I see Apple adding RCS eventually without a whole lot changing. RCS messages will still remain green and Apple will continue to offer iMessage specific features that they won't add on the RCS side.

This absolutely sucks when you switch OSes and can't participate in your groups anymore.

With imessage pirating OSX will let you connect again (although it's a major pain, and you have to go generating serial numbers and trying to log in.) Is there something like that for Android? Or do you just not get to talk to your friends if you take the sim card out of your old phone.

What are you talking about? SMS has groups.

To be pedantic MMS has groups, not SMS. A distinction I recently discovered when switching to the pinephone which curreently supports the latter but not the former.

mms are also often not included in flatrates and riddled with security problems. noone i know uses them.

no.

what you have probably mistaken for is send to multiple destinations and reply-all.

MMS has groups but imessage and the new android messenger don't use MMS when everyone in the group has the same OS.

So when you switch OSes you get kicked out of the group.

For some reason there are a number of people on hackernews that are really struggling with this idea and I'm kind of surprised it's so difficult to understand. I thought the last guy I talked to was just particularly dense but maybe I'm failing to communicate it effectively? Maybe it's harder to understand than I thought it was? I'm not sure.

My experience with iMessage has been that the group text continues to function as an MMS group if a member switches OS, even if it was an iMessage group beforehand. Or sometimes someone even sends a one-off MMS at a time that they have cellular reception but no data, and the messaging app still seems to know which group text to put it into.

So I guess my experience is that you don't get kicked out of the group.

> This absolutely sucks when you switch OSes and can't participate in your groups anymore.

imo the best reason to abandon every chat service that does not have an opensource client.

Sounds the main issue lies in using iMessage/Android Messages for long-lasting permanent group conversations, which seems like a bad idea. Impossible even, since what social group uses the same OS universally?

I use iMessage for what it works well — short temporary conversations. But if one wants to maintain a community there are far better options. Like Rocket Chat, Slack or Discord.

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