The big news of the week is undoubtedly the news involving Apple and its adoption of RCS next year as the default messaging for conversations between people who don’t both own an iPhone. We’re talking about iPhone-to-Android messages that should no longer be such an awful experience, with modern features between the two, like high-resolution media shares, typing indicators, improved group chats, messaging over WiFi, etc. It’s all good news here and Apple should be given at least a slight head-nod of approval for making this move.
But there was apparently one question people needed to see answered more than any – what will the color of the messaging bubbles be when messages are sent and received over RCS? I thought this would be obvious, although apparently not because we’re now sharing the news. The bubbles will remain green, folks.
The crew at 9to5Mac, who broke the RCS news, have confirmed with Apple that the colors of bubbles between an iPhone and a non-iPhone will not change. That’s not surprising because Apple is simply upgrading the fallback technology for non-iMessage conversations to RCS from SMS. In other words, the color is an indication that an iPhone is messaging a device that isn’t an iPhone, so Apple is making it clear. Blue bubbles will remain when it is an iPhone-to-iPhone or iMessage-to-iMessage connection.
The big question now is whether colored bubbles will matter that much once RCS arrives in Apple Messages? I know that there is the obnoxious bullying surrounding the color of bubbles between the most insecure garbage humans on Earth, but my understanding is that the original complaints started because green bubbles meant that group chats and other features didn’t work and frustrated iPhone owners. With RCS, we’re hoping those issues are somehow fixed to make the color of the bubble less important. Although, this is Apple we’re talking about, so don’t expect them to all of a sudden treat non-iPhone owners with respect. Apple knows the power of iMessage.
Is there any chance Apple does this properly?