iMessage is pretty great, there’s no denying that, but adding RCS support to the app would make a better user experience for everyone – iPhone users and Android users alike. While Apple seems unlikely to ever add support willingly, if Apple has the courage to put user experience just a bit ahead of monetary decisions, RCS would be the first step.
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As we spotted in November and following the latest push for RCS support on iPhone earlier this month, Google Messages is starting to roll out iMessage reactions in beta for Android users.
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Over the past year, Google has publicly pressured Apple to support Rich Communication Services. The latest salvo this weekend was the harshest yet, but RCS on the iPhone is not the panacea to Google’s historical messaging woes, nor will support lead to a transformatively better experience for Android users when interacting with their iPhone counterparts.
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Messaging is a core part of any smartphone, and it’s something that Apple has really nailed with the iPhone and iMessage. Googlers have voiced their frustration recently over how Apple uses iMessage as a tool for lock-in and while Apple’s resistance to RCS and other cross-platform standards is certainly annoying, the context of Google’s countless failures in messaging don’t really help the company’s case.
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The latest update to Google Messages prepares for a new way to handle the annoying iMessage reaction messages often seen in mixed group chats.
Update: This feature has already begun rolling out for some, allowing us to see it in action.
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Epic’s lawsuit against Apple has revealed quite a bit about iMessage for Android, including how platform lock-in is one reason it doesn’t exist. New filings today revealed that Apple executive Eddy Cue made the case for iMessage on Android to stop Google from owning messaging.
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Android users have long wanted an iMessage app to use the popular messaging service on non-Apple devices. Epic’s lawsuit against Apple has now revealed and confirmed that lock-in is the reason why iMessage for Android does not exist.
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The popularity of iMessage in the US continues to grow, and the infamous “green bubble” can leave Android users out of group chats or even turn off potential relationships. Since Apple won’t bring an iMessage client to Android, Samsung has put together a collection of GIFs that its users can send as a comeback to iPhone users who complain about their “green bubble.”
Yeah, they’re super weird.
Google’s Project Zero often discovers flaws in the software of other companies and gives 90 days for those flaws to be fixed before revealing them to the public. Today, Google has taken the wraps off of a flaw with Apple’s iMessage which would cause iPhones to repeatedly crash. Thankfully, Apple has already fixed it.
Over the years, we’ve seen a few developers try to bring iMessage to Android devices using a variety of workarounds. Today, another attempt at bringing iMessage to Android has emerged, but like other efforts in the past, we don’t expect this one to last…
Prior to WWDC, a report emerged claiming that Apple would at long last unveil iMessage for Android. Seeing how Apple had made its streaming music service available on Android, many found this report to be somewhat plausible. As you’re probably aware of by now, however, iMessage for Android was nowhere to be found at WWDC this week. Now, we’ve gotten a little bit of insight into Apple’s reasoning for not bringing its messaging service to Google’s smartphone platform…
According to a report from MacDailyNews, Apple will announce that iMessage is coming to Android at Monday’s upcoming WWDC 2016 keynote.
Such an announcement, which MacDailyNews claims to have obtained from “a source familiar with the company’s thinking,” would go a long way towards making it simpler for users to shift between the two competing platforms. But what would be Apple’s motivation for making such a change?
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A new open source project called PieMessage enables cross-platform iMessage support, allowing Android users to communicate using Apple’s iPhone messaging platform.
In the video below, we get a short look at the PieMessage app in action with a still unreleased prototype version of the app.
Google made its commitment to RCS (Rich Communications Services) clear last year when the company acquired Jibe, but now things are getting even more serious. The GSM Association today announced that it, more than 15 global mobile operators around the world, and Google, have finally struck a deal to actually make bring RCS to widespread adoption. And Google says that an Android RCS client is in the works, being made in collaboration with several Android OEMs and the aforementioned mobile operators…
Voxer is a relatively popular messaging app for Android and iOS, and has long been considered one of the best solutions available for those looking for a great PPT (push-to-talk) experience on mobile. It received a ton of funding a few years ago, and while it never really took off in the mainstream, it’s still being updated even today with new fixes and features for its dedicated group of users. It has somewhere between 10 and 50 million Play Store installs.
George Kola, a software engineer that was most recently Chief Technology Officer of the company for more than a year, has now joined Google according to his LinkedIn profile. While it’s of course possible that Kola could have joined Google on his engineering merit alone and could be working in just about any department within the Mountain View company, it’s still worth asking: Could Google possibly have its eyes on bringing some walkie talkie features to Hangouts?..
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a report examining three dozen messaging services and ranking them based on what it deemed are seven “security best practices.” While Apple scored the best among what the EFF called “mass-market options”, it along with Google and others didn’t do as well when compared to all 36 messaging services included in the report. Specifically, EFF noted Google’s services “lack the end-to-end encryption that is necessary to protect against disclosure by the service provider.”
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Former Android head and Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra has apologized to owners of its smartphones for “any concern caused” by collecting contact data from address books without permission.
A recent […] report by F-Secure raised privacy concerns by stating that Xiaomi devices are sending phone numbers to Xiaomi’s servers. These concerns refer to the MIUI Cloud Messaging service. As we believe it is our top priority to protect user data and privacy, we have decided to make MIUI Cloud Messaging an opt-in service and no longer automatically activate users […]
We apologize for any concern caused to our users and Mi fans. We would also like to thank the media and users who have been sending us feedback and suggestions, allowing us to improve and provide better Internet services …
Apple says it’s resolved an iMessage server issue that was affecting former iPhone users who switched to Android and other mobile operating systems. This is all good and well, but Apple’s text message woes don’t end there. The company is currently working on another SMS intercepting issue, according to Re/code. Apple is struggling to keep track of phone numbers that used to be linked to its iMessage platform. This is causing some ex-iPhone owners’ text messages to be absorbed by the company’s servers before reaching their intended contact.
An iMessage notification sent to Glass
Adam Bell (@b3ll), a well-known developer for many software platforms, has figured out a way to route all notifications from an iOS device through Google Glass. The implementation, even in its early stage, seems to work quite well. Bell notes that all notifications, such as iMessages and Tweets automatically are shown via the Google Glass interface. Video and more details below: