Because then SMS would never progress, and we’d all be stuck with 140 characters under the hood along with optional subjects and zero security.

There was no push for RCS until iMessage came along.

Internet Explorer introduced a lot of new capabilities to the web platform. Those features were highly innovative and we take them for granted today. But for many of those features they did not do the work to get them standardized, or under-standardized them. They did not work with other vendors to get them implemented. Apple's automatic replacement of SMS is similar and had the same result: vendor lock in.

Also it's worth noting that RCS originally launched in 2008, a year after the iPhone and iMessage launched in 2011. Many features we expect from both iMessage and RCS today were not present at the time, but a next-generation messaging spec was there- Apple chose not to engage with it- which is too bad because at the time Apple could have helped to defragment the implementations and make it a better specification. The carriers fumbled pretty hard on compatibility, also probably because they saw it as a way to produce vendor lock in for their customer base.

FWIW, my understanding was that Apple did try to engage with carriers, but there was't interest in turning RCS into what Apple wanted (for instance, adding E2EE). AFAIK 15 years later, RCS still hasn't started to define E2EE.

Interesting, I tried to find a reference to this online but was unable. If you can find a link to such a statement let me know.

What's kind of interesting about this to me is that Google was able to add encrypted messaging on top of RCS without the help of carriers (and it's not just because they develop/host Jibe, the most common RCS server side implementation-- E2EE messages can be sent over any RCS server/relay from what I understand). They just use a special mimetype and some base64 encoding and a custom identity server for exchanging keys. All things Apple could have done with RCS back in 2011.

Google's whitepaper on their E2EE: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf

I'm well aware! At this point I think everyone is, as it seems to come up in every sub thread!

That doesn't change anything about what I said.

What was also really revealing is Signal’s operational cost breakdown. Their biggest cost is activation texts, because providers have lost consumer SMS as a milk cow, so they’ve now started to charge insane rates for business texts.

With RCS or iMessage they cannot justify charging for these.

Both iMessage and RCS require carrier services to register phone numbers. In iMessage' case it is an activation SMS text.

Well that's their own fault for requiring a phone number. They could just support creating accounts with username and password and they would never have to send texts. It would be way better for user privacy too.

RCS existed as a concept, but was extremely flawed and underfunded. Carriers had zero interest in changing from SMS at the time. Apple tried, and gave up, instead choosing to build iMessage. You may recall that when it was announced, it was actually touted by Steve Jobs as an open protocol; that never materialized, largely because Apple realized how massive of a lead they had on every other handset maker because they weren't beholden to the whims of the carriers, who had decided not to move on RCS for many years.

I don't believe Apple ever said iMessage would be an open protocol. It was Facetime that Jobs announced as an open protocol (as a surprise to everyone else inside of Apple), and supposedly that never materialised due to patent BS.

You’re right. I stand corrected. There was discussion about it internally but I forgot that iMessage didn’t make it out as “open” by the end.

Those are just a bunch of unproven claims. An alternative theory is that Apple rejected RCS in favor of iMessage because vendor lock-in boosts their US profits.

I was alive and recall the reporting at the time? I don’t have the energy to find sources right now but my memory, while not perfect, is pretty certain this isn’t the Mandela effect.

I also worked at Apple in 2008, and recall the discussions then too.

Well, making it a standard would not have required capitulating to the admittedly terrible carriers.

If vendors were required to conform to standards, I suspect we would have had something like RCS a lot sooner.