Apple will use it's dominant position to create lock in like how they did with iMessage instead of cooperating with other platforms on a common standard.
Oder friends and family are surprised when they want to video call over Facetime and find it hard to believe other people's phones don't have Apple apps.
The app allows iPhone users to create an event. Anybody on any device or browser can RSVP. The event can be shared as a link. Making an event invite app that only works for users on one platform would be pointless.
Also - non-Apple users have been able to join FaceTime calls via. A link for several years.
Not that I personally cared, as i see it as an Apple flaw, but in joining a work iMessage group I had people whining about image quality and whatever other features were disabled between iMessage users while I was present.
They will use the iMessage protocol if supported by all clients. If not, they fall back to the next best thing supported by all clients whether RCS or SMS/MMS. In your case (possibly before iPhones supported RCS) the "next best thing" was apparently SMS/MMS.
This is the correct behavior.
I think you're also falling into the common trap of automatically thinking whatever Android supports is like, the correct and open standard.
In reality, RCS's history was an absolute mess of incompatible implementations, pushed and owned by some of by Apple's direct competitors. It's really not any more the "correct" standard than iMessage is and it does not support E2EE outside of Google's proprietary implementation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services#De...
Which would be perfectly reasonable if they allowed clients on other platforms. It just happens that the only clients are the ones that require buying Apple hardware. If the iMessage ptotocol is so great (I don't know enough about it to say), then great - either release an app for Android, or let others do it. Until then it's not a standard, open or otherwise.
If the iMessage ptotocol is so great (I don't know enough about it to say),
I would hope that anybody on HN considers that rather important.
Silicon Valley and engineers in general have really fucking changed if having a large portion of the phone-using population getting automagical E2EE is no longer a big deal.
Until then it's not a standard, open or otherwise.
E2EE is not exactly trivial to make "open" because somebody has got to manage the key exchange. This is true for Signal, etc.... Signal handles the key exchange.
I would have a problem with Apple's conduct here if they locked you out of alternatives.
But I think their approach is correct. You get a default E2EE experience that works between Apple devices. But you are not prevented from any other messaging network you might want to use.
In some ways this is admittedly like Microsoft enforcing their web monopoly by making Internet Explorer the default browser back in the day, but I think it is different in crucial ways and I think E2EE is a worthy and necessary goal.
Yes, obviously it's better than SMS. That's a 40-year old standard. I don't think I've sent an SMS to a human in over a decade. I mean is it better than other modern messenger protocols.
> Are you holding Google to this same standard? RCS is open-ish, but the E2EE extensions are proprietary and the key exchange is managed by Google. They are not opening that up, or at least they have not said that they are.
My objection to iMessage isn't that it's proprietary. It's that it's closed, and restricted to one platform.
> But I think their approach is correct. You get a default E2EE experience that works between Apple devices. But you are not prevented from any other messaging network you might want to use.
There is no way to justify restricting it to Apple devices aside from vendor lock-in. They say they care about E2EE, but then make it impossible to work with conversations with most devices in the world.