By René Garzke
THIS is a real surprise: Apple is stopping its blockade – and will be bringing a new chat function to ALL iPhones next year. The technology giant announced this on Thursday evening.
Specifically, it’s about the RCS messaging standard, the successor to SMS. This is intended to make communication between Android and iPhone users easier.
Apple has so far relied exclusively on its in-house chat tool iMessage, which sends messages over the Internet. Conversations with Android users in the same messaging app currently take place via SMS. You can tell the difference by the color of the speech bubbles: blue for iMessage, green for SMS.
But the golden cage should be opened a little. Although iMessage remains. But if you write with Android users, the RCS standard should be used in the future.
Advantage: This makes it easy to send pictures and videos. Until now, this was only possible via MMS – which is often quite expensive (usually 39 cents at Telekom). This means: RCS does NOT replace iMessage on iPhones, but only SMS or MMS. The latter remain available as a fallback option if you are not connected to the Internet.
How secure is the new standard?
In the past, Apple had always advertised the secure encryption of all iMessage messages. The fact is: messages sent via RCS are also encrypted.
Nevertheless, Apple states that the standard is less secure than its own chat platform. Possible reason: The iMessage encryption source code is not publicly visible. This makes it more difficult for attackers to find vulnerabilities. On the other hand, this also prevents well-intentioned people from discovering such gaps and reporting them to Apple.
Apple had previously refused to support RCS. This triggered criticism from Google, among others: According to industry circles, the Internet giant did not rule out a complaint to the EU.
With the U-turn, Apple could also respond to the requirements of the new EU law Digital Markets Act (DMA), which stipulates a greater opening of platforms. With the iPhone 15, Apple gave in to pressure from the EU – and replaced the in-house Lightning port with the universal USB-C.