kirklennon

That’s like saying they made the lightning port as a protest to USB standards, nah they just want their proprietary shit.

They wanted a new, compact, durable, reversible plug for their mobile devices. There was no industry-standard option that met their requirements, so they made their own. If USB-C had existed at the time, they would have used it (though as a physical connector, Lightning is still just plain better).

OK, I finally read the original allegation and this is grossly irresponsible reporting. We can put our pitchforks down. The plaintiffs never even claim that the automakers can access your text messages in the first place. This is entirely about the car’s hardware locally caching the messages it displays, some of which could possibly then be read from the cache using specialized and not commonly available equipment.

Is it something to be aware of? Sure. Is something the average person should be concerned about? Not really.

I'm short of time so I haven't found the original complaint but according to the appeals court ruling, the plaintiffs never claimed any actual damages. The heading of the law in question is "Violating right of privacy—Civil action—Liability for damages."

Is this a privacy violation? Yes. Did these people suffer any actual damages under the law? Evidently not.

When called out on it, you’re doubling down.

I pointed out sloppy, inaccurate writing that hints that the writer maybe doesn't have a good grasp of the subject matter. There's nothing to "call out"; I was pretty clear from the start what I was criticizing.

it’s sent over carrier networks and the carriers decide whose infrastructure to use.

The carriers never bothered to implement RCS; they just outsourced the whole thing to Google.

RCS is an open standard

That nobody uses.

it is the industry standard for SMS.

It's meant as a replacement for SMS. It's not just some new version of SMS that Apple hasn't upgraded to, which is what you were basically saying earlier.

It’s literally why every other non iphone can send high quality pictures to each other.

It's a messaging service used exclusively by Android phones. iPhones all support iMessage; Androids (mostly) all support RCS. All of those iMessages go over Apple's servers; all of those RCS messages go over Google's servers.

For what it's worth, iPhones have supported sending full-quality pictures to everyone over a legitimately open protocol since launch day. It's called email.

Apple not adopting it is anti competitive.

Google's attempts to legally force Apple to adopt its proprietary platform is transparently anticompetitive.

You’re forgetting the most important thing it is to users: an app.

iMessage is not an app. It has never been an app. It is one of the ways a message can be sent/received in the Messages app. And yes, users of the Messages app are extremely aware of the distinction between sending an iMessage versus an SMS or MMS.

The user is using the Messages app, which launched with support for SMS and MMS. Years later, Apple added iMessage as a third protocol to the app for use when messaging other Apple devices if they both turn iMessage on. If you message with an Android user, it remains with the default SMS and MMS. Nothing is being translated or downgraded; it's just the original, default functionality of the app.

Basically Apple hasn’t adopted industry standard SMS improvements. There’s a whole campaign to try to get them to.

This is an advertising campaign to get Apple to adopt Google's proprietary version of RCS, which is not the SMS standard. It is, functionally, Google's own version of iMessage, running Google software on Google servers.

Again, protocols are core to the discussion, and from the user's perspective which protocol they are using is very obvious (which, again, is core to the discussion). This isn't some trivial detail to get wrong. If they author can't carefully distinguish themselves and educate their audience, why are they even writing about it in the first place?

Google's astroturf campaign for "RCS" promotes encrypted messages but RCS has no support for this. Google wants to force people to use its proprietary extension, which runs exclusively on Google's servers.