Apple says it will improve the green versus blue texting experience

Starting next year, it should be less frustrating for iPhone and Android users to text each other.

Apple says photos and videos sent between these devices will be of higher quality. Group messaging will be more reliable and users will also be able to enable read receipts and send their location in SMS threads.

The changes will come once Apple adds support for a technology called Rich Communication Services, also known as RCS, next year, the company said. RCS is like the more modern cousin of the short message service or SMS.

Green message bubbles indicate they are from an Android or other non-iPhone user. But they are associated with an unpleasant texting experience for iPhone users, whose messages are blue to indicate they were sent via iMessage. However, the green bubble has become indispensable: it indicates when RCS is in use.

The technology “will work together with iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users,” Apple said in a statement.

Until now, Apple had shown no desire to make the changes.

When was asked during the Code Conference last year about a participant’s texting technology that had difficulty sending videos to the participant’s mother, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded, “Buy your mother an iPhone.”

The turnaround may have been driven by pressure from competitors such as Google and Nothing, a mobile technology company, and the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.

“Apple is really the only major company that hasn’t adopted the RCS standards yet,” said Caitlin Seeley George, campaign manager and director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights nonprofit. The group pushed Apple to adopt the technology.

“We think it’s a good sign that Apple is making this move and a sign that they may be listening to the public,” she said.

Ms Seeley George said enabling SMS technology would also allow users to see if someone is typing and if their messages have been received.

Googling RCS adopted years ago, and the company has been trying to pressure Apple to do so ever since.

Google started a campaign last year called Get the messagewhich contained a video which mocked an Apple product release video and added a pager with features such as “outdated messaging technology,” “texting nightmares,” and “broken group chats.”

“By not including RCS, Apple is holding the industry back and hindering the user experience for not only Android users, but also for their own customers,” said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s senior vice president. wrote on social media last year.

In a statement, Google said it was “pleased to see Apple take the first step today by joining us in embracing RCS.”

“Everyone deserves to communicate with each other in a way that is modern and secure, no matter what phone they have,” the statement said.

Apple also faces burgeoning competition from Nothing, the mobile technology company.

Nothing recently introduced Nothing Chats, which allows non-iPhone users to send iMessages as if they were iPhone users. Nothing Chats, which is in beta mode, replaces the green bubbles with blue ones and enables group chats, voice notes, high-resolution media sharing and more between these devices.

“If messaging services divide phone users, we want to break down those barriers,” the company’s website says.

Apple’s announcement also comes before Europe’s Digital Markets Act comes into effect in 2024, which could lead to increased scrutiny of its messaging system.

The law will apply to so-called gatekeeper platforms, including Apple, and aims to force these companies to loosen their grip on the market. For example, Apple may need to allow alternatives to its App Store.

Ms. Seeley George called Apple’s announcement a “pretty big shift in a new direction.” But there was still important work to be done, she said, namely on end-to-end encryption.

Messages sent between iPhones are encrypted, but messages between iPhone and Android users cannot be encrypted without RCS, she said. Fight for the future also pushed Apple and other companies will embrace encryption.

“This is a major concern for a number of vulnerable communities that are often under surveillance or targeted by law enforcement,” said Ms. Seeley George, pointing to a teenager in Nebraska who was sentenced to 90 days in jail in July after police learned of her Facebook posts about plans to terminate her pregnancy.