Google exec says Apple is ‘holding back’ customers who text

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On Saturday, Hirohi Lockheimer, the boss of the Android operating system, accused Apple of using peer pressure and bully as a way to sell products, after a Wall Street Journal report revealed how US teens have turned Apple's iMessage into a social status symbol that locks out users.

Lockheimer said Monday that they are not asking Apple to make iMessage available on the phone. We want Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging in iMessage, just as they support the older standards.

We are not asking Apple to make it available on the phone. We want Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging in iMessage, just as they support the older standards.
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Hiroshi Lockheimer wrote a post on January 10, 2022.

Apple is holding back the industry and the user experience for their own customers by not incorporating RCS, says Lockheimer later in the thread.

It is still a big accusation, but one that pulls the conversation back into familiar territory: will Apple accept the olive branch from Google to make iMessage more compatible with Android, or will it continue to use lock-in to sell more phones?

There is no question about Apple's motivation. The world has seen confidential emails between Apple executives that show the company is withholding iMessage in favor of lock-in. Craig Federighi, Apple's executive vice president of Worldwide Product Development, wrote in April 2013 that he was concerned that the iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids a phone.

In March of 2016 Phil Schiller forwarded an email from Ian Rogers about how he missed a lot of messages from friends and family after he moved to iMessage.

It is not clear if Apple has any reason to sign on to the next-gen replacement for text messages, called RCS. It is likely that the peer pressure is created by Google.

We are not holding our breath because The Verge asked Apple if it would support RCS for years. We made the moral case that a company that claims privacy is a human right has a duty to bring encrypted messaging to the world, not just its own customers, and we wrote about the personal plight of dealing with Apple's inaction. I am writing this post because we are on vacation, and we are not supposed to be on a socially distanced beach somewhere.

Maybe now that Apple is a three-trillion dollar company, and it is under lots of regulatory scrutiny, and its dirty laundry has been aired in front of the world, and its employees are speaking out, and pieces like the WSJ's.

Dieter tells me that Apple replied to our requests for comment on RCS. Their reply was not a comment. I am sorry for the error.