Zak Doffman has covered security, surveillance and privacy on Forbes since 2018. His focus includes the latest updates from the world’s largest tech companies, staying safe on smartphones and social media, and the dangers of AI.
As hundreds of millions of iPhone users update their devices to iOS 18, tinting their home screens and navigating their new Photos app, the reality is that this update is more about what’s missing than what has been released. No Apple Intelligence—at least not yet, and another gaping omission that has also been confirmed.
While RCS has been popularized by Google’s managed push across the entire Android ecosystem, it has done so with a proprietary client that adds a fully encrypted layer along with other updates. RCS itself doesn’t include full security, and it’s that limited protocol that Apple has adopted for its iOS 18 update. Apple has said that it will work with the mobile industry’s standard setters to push for an improved protocol. But that’s not coming anytime soon. And until then these compromises remain.
While the initial RCS go-live is disappointing with those glaring omissions, there is some good news—maybe. Mobile standards setter, the GSMA, published a“Today, we are celebrating a significant milestone in the evolution of messaging with the launch of Rich Communication Services support on iPhone,” GSMA’s Technical Director, Tom Van Pelt, posted. “It represents a step forward in bringing RCS’s feature-rich messaging to more users across both iOS and Android.
The real question is why do this as an update to the standard RCS protocol rather than a simpler and more effective API between Google Messages and iMessage , which would be technically easier and more powerful, and would also provide a better sense of end-to-end security. Beyond those two platforms, feature-rich RCS is becoming less interesting now, especially in light of Samsung’s decision to switch to Android’s standard.
And that’s the crux of this issue. One can’t help but feel this is GSMA and Google rushing to act as the gloss quickly fades on the iPhone RCS excitement as the reality sets in—it’s clunkier than WhatsApp, it’s less secure than WhatsApp. Not only is this coming from these who had been pushing Apple towards RCS rather than Apple itself, but it’s coming after the RCS-shaped horse has already bolted.
All of which raises the fundamental question here—why. Being painfully pragmatic, the danger for the expansion of RCS to iPhone is that it’s a solution searching for a problem. RCS launched three days ago, and despite receiving dozens and dozens of texts in that time, I have’t had a single RCS message. Here in the UK, no-one is even talking about it outside the tech community.
Iphone 16 Pro Upgrade Ios 18 Update Ios 17.7 Update Iphone Vs Samsung Iphone Vs Pixel Apple Vs Google Imessage Rcs Iphone Security
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