Tim Cook responded to a journalist’s question about RCS text messaging by suggesting they buy an iPhone, The Verge reports. When asked how Apple could improve communication between iPhone and Android users, he said, “I don’t hear our users want us to spend a lot of energy on this.” When the journalist told him that he couldn’t send certain videos to his Android-using mother, Cook said “buy your mom an iPhone” and made everyone smile.
Discussions about a common smartphone messaging format have been going on for some time. Google has long been promoting RCS (Rich Communication Service) as a way to allow better interoperability between iOS and Android users, and it even called Apple last month about it. Doing so could help eliminate the dreaded “green bubble” seen by iPhone users when they receive a text message from an Android phone.
Apple continues to offer iMessage to Android users. Former marketing chief Phil Schiller said that porting iMessage to Android would do more harm than good to Apple. So Apple’s intention to abandon iMessage for its iPhones isn’t much, at least for now.
Cook says Apple hasn’t considered RCS “at this point,” but hasn’t completely ruled out the idea, either. However, we must admit that the issue is not a priority, as the vast majority of users prefer non-SMS applications such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal.
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