Hacker News Reader

Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

My biggest gripe is when iPhone users share video or images, they are grainy nonsense. If Apple just moved to RCS this would be solved, but they refuse simply because they know it handicaps their competitor. The react thing has largely been fixed by Google on newer versions of messenger. It's impossible to fix the video stuff. People outside the US don't get it. They say everyone should switch to Whatsapp, etc, but getting millions of people to do that across tons of fractured messaging apps when there is one protocol that everyone can use...isn't easy or even viable at this point.

View on HN

Apple hasn't moved to RCS because it's not an actual industry-accepted standard, despite what Google will trick people into believing. The version of RCS that's on Android is Google's own fork of RCS and is primarily routing messages through Google's own servers. And therein we have the reason why Google keeps pushing these smear campaigns about how Apple isn't "getting on board with the new standard," -- Google wants to become the new standard. If Apple did what Google wanted, Google basically gets to be in the same position they are with controlling web standards with the Chrome near-monopoly.

Yep. And when I see Google running ads [1] around RCS it signals to me not to touch it with a 100ft poll. If it were a good protocol you wouldn't have to run ads (like USB-C).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/09/google-new-campaign-pressu...

> They say everyone should switch to Whatsapp

Anyone who advises me to switch one of my most important phone functions over to Facebook instantly loses a great deal of credibility. I can appreciate that the network effect makes it look very appealing when you're stuck inside, but if you are not already stuck in that garden, why do it? Just go back to SMS. It is the only standard that is universal.

> if you are not already stuck in that garden, why do it?

Because SMS is a nightmare for international messaging and travel due to existing carrier policy?

I used to agree with you. Then I moved from the US to the UK, and now my phone's messaging is a fractured mess. International texting is expensive, but my parents and siblings are on Android and I'm on iPhone, so we can't bypass SMS by using, e.g., iMessage. As a result, I use Google Voice for my US phone number, which lets me send messages over a Web services instead of using SMS.

But my wife is here with me on an iPhone, like me, so I use iMessage with her, and I get SMS from, e.g., delivery companies.

People over here in the UK mostly use WhatsApp, so I have that for communication with people in the UK. This is also free, and I can use it with people who have foreign phone numbers!

It's equally frustrating for iPhone users. iMessage sends and receives and full, beautiful quality. Meanwhile an Android user will send a photo and it comes through with about 10 pixels total. Don't even bother with video it's not worth trying, impossible to watch.

just wanna point out here, there are limitations to the size/length of videos and even the pictures sometimes get downscaled to the other imessage user

But apple seemingly purposely sends 100x100 px videos to non iMessage contacts. The phone can handle more. My step mom once sent me 50 full pictures in one legacy EMS message. It worked just fine. Apple is purposely handicapping things and I don't believe for a single second any of their excuses. The rest of the phone industry has no problem texting videos and pictures.

I wouldn't doubt it... I think EMS message size limitation is higher than MMS, but iPhones decode it differently. Even iPhone <> iPhone compresses the image/video

To be fair, received videos from iPhone are extremely low resolution and blocky. Pictures are better, but still downscaled.

Google Messages has worked around this issue a bit by allowing links to videos in Google Photos to be sent instead of some sort of pixelated MMS garble.

It will be interesting to see if the day eventually comes when legislation is introduced to mandate an open messaging standard. They did it for USB-C chargers.

> People outside the US don't get it

Oh we get it. It's like trying to get everyone off WhatsApp to Signal.

The privacy argument has helped move some of my friends over to Signal, but yeah, we'll be putting up with multiple messaging apps for some time longer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com