or, it isn't easy being green
Overnight, I installed iOS 18's 3rd developer beta (see The Verge's helpful instructions here) – actually, I've had been on 18 for some time, so as to take advantage of Apple's extremely successful implementation of carsickness prevention.
Seriously, I'll have to come back and write about this, it's very very good. Did a whole roadtrip and actually let my wife drive for awhile, and only got ill playing Elden Ring on the Steam Deck lol.
But today, I'm here to talk RCS! Upon install of Beta 3, I noticed that my chat with my (awesome) landscaping contractor had little RCS indicators:
And sure enough, the promised benefits of RCS/iMessage intercompatibility were present!
Full resolution images:
Read receipts:
Typing indicators:
I didn't try sending video to dear Andy, but I bet that would have worked too!
So, Apple did it, right? They stopped behaving in user-hostile fashion and creating a poorer experience for you when you talk to that one uncle with a Samsung, yeah?
I think the answer there is... mostly? For one thing, as of yet, iPhone RCS messages aren't E2EE – end-to-end-encrypted. However, there are indications that they are working toward this in device-agnostic fashion, and probably it's worth believing them until they prove otherwise. And for another, I'm not sure there was anything stopping Apple from doing this last year, or the year before – they certainly didn't hurry to make this happen.
But, there is an interesting choice visible in those screenshots above, that I'm sure you've already noticed, and that gets my product instincts twitching.
THE BUBBLES ARE STILL GREEN!
In the pre-RCS regime, the green bubbles arguably had utility – if you saw a green bubble, you knew that it would be pointless, futile, frustrating to send a video to that recipient, as it would be compressed to the size of a postage stamp and render at .5 frames per second, seemingly. Plus, photos would lose massive resolution, as well. Tim Apple's legendary "Buy your mom an iPhone" moment held true for our family – my brother-in-law purchased an iPhone largely so that our extremely active family group chat could have full rez images and photos.
But now, given the enhancements described above, and given that Apple claims to be working on E2EE, there is (or will be) practically no difference between an iMessage discussion and an RCS one. So, why leave the bubbles green? At first, I thought it was because if RCS fails, that chat will fall back to plain ol' bad SMS. But, this is true of iMessage as well – if my coverage is very poor, those bubbles turn green after a few minutes.
I think Apple would tell you that it's because all the fancy, fun iMessage stuff still won't work in RCS – stickers, Apple Pay, message animations, plus, in iOS 18, you can format individual words with italics, bold, underlining, and even animations. Sure, I guess a green/blue distinction is a quick way to surmise how much fun stuff you can do in a given thread.
However, I think it's at least in part because Apple derives value from the blue/green distinction. At least in the states, green bubbles have all sorts of socioeconomic implications, given the relative cost of Android devices, and the memes about not dating green bubbles abound. Apple has clearly decided that while some combination of fear of EU regulation and public opinion is enough to motivate them to roll out these changes, Apple still wants you to know which of your friends are Android people, and perhaps keep continue to drive people to buy their moms iPhones.
From a product perspective, it's sort of evil genius – Apple gets to freely expand on iMessage functionality, leaving "green bubbles" in the dust, and theoretically still avoiding regulatory action. But make no mistake – these are not the actions of a company interested in interoperability. Obviously, keeping the walls of the garden high remains key to Apple's business plan.