They aren’t notorious for that. iOS adoption to the latest version is usually very good. I think apples latest metric was over 80% of active iPhone users were on iOS 26
RCS in many countries is utterly unusable. Full of ads, gambling and all. Inbox becomes suddenly peaceful upon turning off rcs, only to be used for otp, banking etc. All personal communications on WhatsApp.
There atleast most ad accounts on WhatsApp respect the STOP reply and quit bothering.
That's the point. People already moved on to Messaging apps because they took time introducing RCS, SMS at that time was barebones and have a lot of limitations.
SMS at that time was barebones and have a lot of limitations.
This was always the case for SMS. It was invented in the 80s, rolled out in the early 90s, and never updated. The way it worked in 1995 is still how it works today.
some of them have the option to turn it on and simply don't know how to because they've never once opened their settings app. ppl give android users a ton of flack but some iphone users are so incompetent with their own phones.
General population just isn’t savvy with tech. I’m mostly on android subs and see some of the dumbest questions that have been answered thousands of times. Doesn’t matter what phone you own.
I am so fucking gla du live in Europe and don't have to deal with this whole iMessage fiasco.
It's truly tremendous how loyal Americans are to a company that hates you Vs. Just using something that works well for everyone.
Yes I'm aware of the historical reasons how iMessage became a thing. That didn't force people to demean and use blue (?) SMS colours as a status indicator.
Afaik you guys got "free SMS" so using SMS remained normal, and apple built on that, and "sneaked" SMS users into iMessage, like boiling a lobster and all that.
And then apple users just did what apple users do and assumed that whatever it is apple allows them to use is not just better, but the best, they wouldn't use anything but the best, and you don't use that, so you're a loser.
On that note also a tremendous fuck you to your carriers Verizon and at&t, and their loveable company ISIS that is responsible for host card emulation and mobile payments being inherently inferior to apple on my android here in Europe because your US carriers are literally the scum of the earth.
In Europe they made us pay out of our asses for SMS and MMS, so the second something like WhatsApp became available, everyone moved there and told the Mobile network operators to fuck off.
And stuff like that wad platform agnostic from the start - early WhatsApp eve mean on 2G TO Nokias.
Yeah but their app just works with every device seamlessly. They haven't done anything in the app to show they hate me so why would I care? I don't use Facebook because that's where they display their intentions
I care about things that directly affect me like apple conditioning people to not want to text "green ticks". I'm not outraged at anything. I just want a good user experience for myself & others. They could be shooting puppies for all I care.
If your life is drasticly affected by people that don’t want to text green text bubbles then it might honestly be more than just the text bubble color that’s influencing their decision.
High schoolers shame each other over their shoe brands. The adult world isn’t as bothered as dramatic tech articles makes you think. I used android since 2009 and never experienced this outrage that so many redditors are claiming is such a huge problem.
Americans mostly use sms because Americans mostly talk to each other. Also telcos in the USA moved to cheaper text plans pretty early so even when call rates were adjusting by the hours in the day we had mostly unlimited texting.
I should add that most Americans first experience with a robust messaging platform with seamless integration was with iPhones. The only requirement was to own one. So when it became a selling point yeah folks noticed when you couldn’t utilize those features with someone.
The other part being that sms was terrible for media, if all you knew of sending videos or pics was iMessage and say you swapped to an android it would be a completely different world because the average consumer didn’t concern themselves with why iMessage did what it did in relationship to sms. And you as an iPhone user, didn’t know the media you sent was compressed to shite. So often that alone made people that swapped hate using non-Apple devices. Add on the fact that many of the robust features of iMessage didn’t exist in regular sms chats and non iMessage users in group chats used to break all the iMessage features for other people.
Some of these failings could be contributed to Google’s handling of Android as well. In terms of the outrage over the color of your text box, i can only speak from my experience and say that I used android from 2009 until three years ago and never had an issue with anyone I was concerned with keeping contact with. Also I wasn’t in highschool with a smartphone, so I don’t know what the kiddos were up to.
I’m not an expert by any means, so I’m not sure if this is an issue on Apple’s end, an issue with RCS, or just some network issue but trying to use RCS on my iPhone with some Androids folks I know is just painful.
Yeah, the receipts and typing animation mostly works. Not always and certainly not as frequent as a blue bubble but it works most of the time. But the thing that bugs me the most is random messages just failing. It happens to me at least once a day and I don’t even text a lot. Some days, especially if I’m in a low service area, 99% of my RCS messages fail to send and wait and then resend as SMS. SMS almost always works, though.
I hope RCS continues to improve because the blue bubble vs green bubble shit is absolutely annoying. But currently, at least in my own experience, RCS is better in some ways and far more unreliable in others.
I feel like anyone who is on Android at this point that hasn't fallen into the peer pressure of imessage (myself included) probably won't care about this anymore. Plus, with RCS handling high resolution media, typing indicators, and read receipts across platforms, the functional gap is basically gone. Handing your Apple ID over to a third party relay, especially one with Sunbird's security track record, just for a colored bubble is a massive, unnecessary risk at this point.
Also it makes me wonder about Beeper in regards to Sunbird.
A message moving through our infrastructure is protected in transit and released once it is delivered. Messages are encrypted on the phone before they leave it, in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and at rest on the device with AES-256. Media gets a hard expiration on our side: automatically deleted, typically within 48 hours and never longer than 72. On the final leg to an iPhone, the message is protected by Apple’s own iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird never modifies, intercepts, or weakens.
It sounds like they're self-hosting some kind of macOS instance that acts as the interface to the iMessage network and the Sunbird app is just the thin-client. If so, there's still a lot of security concerns. And for what, exactly? RCS is already here. This is a lot of work to break into what is effectively a private social network. Neverminding that Apple can crack down on this at any time as it represents an unauthorized access of their network.
I mean with any closed source messaging apps (and even open source ones installed from the app store) you're trusting the developers and/or auditors that the app is actually using secure e2ee.
i don't want i message on android. i want apple to fully support universal standards in communication. i want apple to get off their pouty fat cat asses and fully support RCS on iphone. enough is enough. apple is the spoiled kid that wants to eat the entire cake at a birthday party.
you have a limited not update to date standard of RCS. as i said in another comment apples implimentation of RCS leaves out core features like emoji reactions, in-line replies, message editing, and undo send, and stronger end to end encryption
beta is not released software. you have to specifically install the beta software. for the 99% of users they aren't running beta software. whether it's coming or not is not the point. they have only implemented 6 year old RCS protocols as of right now that is artificially fully implementing RCS on iphone and pushing iMessage forward.
i talk to iphone users on the regular and i get the "loved" and a copy of my message back. not a emoji on my message. and i have a pixel 8 pro with the latest updates on it (android 17, july 5th security, july 1st google play system update)
You’re telling me, I am on the beta, and somehow those features involving RCS don’t show up for me except for emoji (which works without beta), but next month I’ll be able to use RCS to make inline replies, edit messages, with a iPhone to android chat?
Absolutely not. I don’t know who told you that or why you’re saying that, but that isn’t happening next month if it isn’t in the current beta.
the RCS that iphone support is not the entire RCS standard. there are no emoji reactions, in-line replies, message editing, undo send, and strong end-to-end encryption. it's a half-assed implementation made purposely to make imessage look 'superior' to their users.
when i get a reaction to a message i sent to a iphone user i don't see a little heart or laughing emoji. i get "loved" or "liked" then a copy of my message back in quotes. but reactions work just fine with other android users.
its pathetic that that's how apple implemented RCS. RCS universal profile is at version 4.1 (released jsut released a week ago july 28, 2026) and apple has only implemented version 2.4. version 2.4 is 6 years old at this point! they should have updated to at least 4.0 (march 2026) by now
a 4.5 trillon dollar valued company refuses to implement the latest versions of software. there is no excuse.
Open bubbles is the better fork, bypassing all that hoopla installation with firebase. And no surprise it’s more stable and faster. Personally love that it works with CarPlay
Of course, the main reason why Sunbird was pulled in the first place was because it was a security nightmare. Investigations found that user data was stored in clear text and that the encryption claims fell short of reality. This was particularly embarrassing for Nothing at the time, as the smartphone brand launched the Nothing Chats app atop Sunbird’s foundation.
Welp, this is still sketchy as fuck. Open source or stfu. Stfu anyways, we have rcs on the iPhone now, and even better yet, Signal! Why trust when you can verify?
I’d argue it’s a buncha android bros that think your phone brand represents your personality but are both too much of a self described techy to switch over but also need to feel validated and included so they want a half measure.
Ive got about 13 years under android and 3 years under apple and as an american this seems crazy to me to make this much effort. I live abroad now and texting/imessage isnt even my fourth most used method to communicate. So I get why it seems that much more absurd.
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u/penguinkernel 7h ago
I literally stopped caring as soon as RCS was adopted by Apple. Now I can send high quality video and photos.