It's that time of year again, folks. As the tech world has sights set on the latest Apple event that is producing the new iPhone 16 as we speak, we all know we'll be seeing slightly improved phones, some impressive specs, and a few 'innovative" or "magic" new features from Apple. For me, however, the...
“Shoving RCS down their throats” is like saying they’re “shoving phone calls down their throats” or “shoving SMS down their throats”.
As for the mess of chat apps, we’ve had apps like Pidgin before and with Beeper Mini we will have them again. Beeper Mini started out as a way to get iMessage on Android, but their plan has always been to mirror Beeper in that they want to collect different chat protocols in one single app.
Barring that, the EU’s DMA is forcing the most important chat apps to interoperate at the very least, though full support (including calling and such) isn’t mandatory until somewhere in 2027.
Yeah, no. Pretty bad argument.
When you buy a phone you know it will have calls and SMS - it’s what you bought the phone in the first place. You bought them because of that. RCS is still just a fancy alternative.
And you’re missing the point again - a company doing a multi IM service app, like Beeper Mini, is not the same that a group of volunteers doing a multi service IM app, like Pidgin. They’re still going to be closed source and they will not guarantee to give support for platforms people need. Beeper mini on desktop? Beeper mini on Linux/BSD? Forget it.
You know it’ll call and SMS because those are telecom standard. The same is true for RCS. RCS is made by the same people who made SMS and basic voice calling.
The 4G spec people made RCS services optional for carriers. The Chinese government made it mandatory. Even Chinese dumbphones are going to support RCS once they start putting 5G in them for better coverage.
Beeper Mini is mostly closed (there’s a source dump out there but that’s not maintained) but it has bridges for all the major chat services, all completely open source, based on Matrix bridging. You’re free to take that code and make an app yourself if you want to rip out the Matrix dependency.
Personally, I’m waiting for MLS and MIMI to be taken up, but that’s still a work in progress.