Is the war on RCS actually an argument that texting Android users *should* suck?

Wesley Hilliard is a cool guy who I often agree with, but his latest for AppleInsider is begging for a response: RCS & encryption haven't fixed the green bubble problem

In Messages on iPhone, you can now use SMS, RCS, end-to-end encrypted RCS, and iMessage. Sure, sending media to Android is better, but everything else is more confusing and frustrating than ever.

This is where I ask you, dear reader, has texting people gotten more complicated for you since RCS rolled out? Maybe if you care deeply about whether messages are RCS or SMS, and maybe you're surprised when it's SMS when you were expecting RCS, but I'm not sure what confusion he's referring to. I'm Apple tech support for most of my family and friends, so when something is weird in Apple world (Apple Photos, a hit of liquid glass, etc.), I hear about it. I've not heard a single complaint about RCS since its roll out.

The simple act of texting has become a divisive and sometimes irritating aspect of using a smartphone. Whether you care about technology or not, if you're an iPhone user, you've at the least subconsciously reacted to a green bubble text.

This is where I remind iPhone users that this is a one-way annoyance. iPhone users are annoyed by green bubbles but Android users aren't. Apple fans never want to blame Apple for any of this but it does give big ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens vibes to it.

RCS is the bastard child of internet protocol messaging that is still somehow tied to carriers. It is a dumb idea that climbed to the top of dumb ideas and won out as the most suitable dumb idea.

The idea this won out compared to a bunch of options or why it's a dumb idea is not defended in this piece.

The thing is, it only made things more complicated and frustrating for the end user, especially for those on iPhone.

Now, not only do you need to pay attention to what kind of message it is, green or blue, you have to know if it's SMS or RCS. iOS 26.5 throws in another wrinkle — end-to-end encryption.

You literally don't have to think about any of this. If you've been sending green bubble SMS messages for 20 years on your iPhone, you literally have to change zero about your behavior to go to RCS or encrypted RCS. If you're someone like Wesley or me who finds protocols interesting, then you may notice at the top of your screen that it says RCS instead of SMS.

Not only that, but this "beta" feature for E2EE seemingly breaks RCS chats for some users. This is likely out of Apple's hands and more of a carrier/device issue.

When using RCS, you have to consider the device each person is using, the software version, the carriers in use, and whether or not end-to-end encryption has been enabled.

You don't have that problem with iMessage. It just works.

One, it's beta for Apple, not everyone else. Two, it would be nice to link to some viral post about how encrypted RCS was breaking chats, which I have not seen. Three, there is the "this surely isn't Apple's fault, the only platform where this is an issue". Four, again, you simply don't need to care about any of those things…that's a core value of the Messages app. Five, iMessage usually works, but I think a lot of people have experienced sync issues or lack of basic features like editing which Google and other messaging apps have had for many years. Six, ah, this is an argument for closed messaging systems.

Google has its messaging app, sure, but it doesn't compare in features or implementation to Apple's.

It isn't as if Google didn't have the money and engineering talent to build a killer universal chat app. It just chose not to for whatever reason.

A couple things here. I guarantee you 100% that if Google did have Duo or Hangouts or any of it's iMessage-style closed messaging apps take off, Apple fans would be avidly against it and would be writing similar posts about how bad it is compared to Apple and why you don't want your messages owned by Google. Also, the reason we need a good, universal standard for messaging that isn't owned by a single mega-corporation is that we need a good baseline to send messages back and forth. iMessage is cool, WhatsApp is nice, but I think there should be a standard that goes cross platform and does not lock someone into one platform. This appears to be something Wesley and I just don't see eye to eye on.

I wanted to link to this article not to go too hard on Wesley but because I think it illustrates a common thing I see in discussions around RCS. At the end of the day, most of them are arguments that iMessage is the only true messaging platform anyone should use. They refuse to use Meta's solutions, they refuse to use Google's, they refuse to use cross-platform solutions. They don't want iMessage to come to Android. They don't propose a better system for communicating between iPhones and Android phones, they think SMS sucks, and the only way to make messaging between platforms better is to give up and just wait for everyone in your life to buy an iPhone. Making those green bubbles better in any way is seen as counter to the real goal, which again, is to get everyone to just buy an iPhone.

It's also complaining without suggesting any solutions. Ok, you don't like RCS, what is your suggestion for making communication between iPhone and Android users better? You brought up WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, but those are already solutions and it doesn't sound like you're using them. Somehow I doubt the message here is "we should embrace Meta," right? So what is it? What standard should Apple be using in Messages to make communication with Android users as good as it can be? What's the RCS alternative they should have chosen? Or are you actually saying that green bubbles should have continued to suck even more for longer? It kinda feels like that's the real argument here most of the time.

And finally, I can not stress enough how these "the RCS experience isn't good and it's not Apple's fault" are entirely people complaining about things bad in the Apple world, not in the Android world. This is like when I say that Gmail sync isn't good in Apple Mail or Calendar, when it's outstanding in literally every other email and calendar app I use, but Apple fans tell me it's Google's fault. Again, ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

My opinion on RCS remains the same as it has for years at this point: it's not as good as iMessage, but it's better than SMS in meaningful ways, from read receipts to higher quality media attachments to typing indicators to better threading and now to encrypted messages. Given the simple fact I'm not going to get everyone I interact with to switch to an iPhone, I want the experience of messaging my friends and family to be as seamless as possible, and RCS gets me a better experience than SMS ever did.

I also truly believe that there must remain a standard for messaging between phones that doesn't reside with a single company. My iMessage account is tied to my Apple account, my WhatsApp account is tied to Meta, and if I leave those companies behind, I leave my messaging behind as well and need to start over. In the US, thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 I own my phone number and can take it with me if I become unhappy with my carrier (I've taken my current number from Verizon to T-Mobile to Visible, and could go somewhere else in the future if I want). Unless someone is going to argue for a truly open messaging system, and these articles always argue for more centralized control over messaging, I'll take the best option available. Is RCS perfect? No, but I'm not out here letting perfection be the enemy of the good.