Apple disallowing competition isn't a good reason to remove something useful for Android users.
> Apple disallowing competition isn't a good reason to remove something useful for Android users.
Nice in theory, but RCS breaks everything here.
You send someone at SMS in Signal, they reply but their client "upgrades" it to RCS. Signal never receives the reply (because the RCS android API is private), and now everyone blames Signal for "dropping messages".
I personally use 4 different ones at the moment (Signal, Messages(SMS+iMessage), LINE, and Snapchat) and lots of other people I know also use WhatsApp, Messenger, or one of the various Chinese messaging apps. I don't think I know anyone who uses just a single messaging app.
You could potentially send an unencrypted msg if you fat fingered the send button into a long press, a swipe, and then another tap.
Otherwise, people messaging you would just find themselves silently upgraded to encrypted messenging, because it was the default already on both phones. It was a boon for security overall, but allowed a.. Not a pitfall so much as a pit climb that could be a security let down.
The silent upgrade of everyday messages broadened signal from that platform people use to talk about black market stuff to that platform people use to text.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/02/24/new-whats...
The point was that the signal users are being fragmented, divided amongst those who do and don't mind inconvenience to hide their messaging. At the time they are pushing the social media features like stories, groups, and payments, it doesn't make sense to tamp down on android's network effect.
Politicians don't have to worry about their staffers uninstalling the app but forgetting to tell the campaign.
SMS-only users will be left in the cold. It used to be that if you use SMS you were a pariah on iOS with low quality MMS etc. Pretty soon SMS users will be a pariah on both iOS and Android. Not to mention how things change if/when the EU forces Apple to support RCS.
Furthermore RCS is adding encryption. So Signal users who communicate via SMS are missing out on that possibility to improve their use of encrypted communication with users who don't use Signal.
The narrative of the Signal+SMS silent upgrade is also falling apart. As RCS support continues to roll out, you are actively downgrading a user's experience if you install Signal as their SMS client.
Frankly I don't see these facts support SMS in Signal being worth any developer effort. And if literally anything in the SMS stack results is a security breach of a Signal user, Signal gets all the egg on their face. It just does not make sense for SMS to exist in Signal.
On iPhone Signal never support SMS in the first place. Just sounds like they're smartly keeping it consistent that all messages are secure rather than intermixing non-secure and secure messaging, which was a dumb idea from the get go.