Apple hasn’t adopted RCS. They see iMessage as a useful lock-in tool for Apple consumers, preventing them from switching to Android devices. Apple’s “blue bubble vs green bubble” experience is intentional, and they’ve been happy to let that divide – and all the consumer negativity behind it – fester. Most of that impact (and related vitriol) is aimed at Android users by Apple users. Stories run rampant of Apple teens kicking Android teens out of friend groups, or iPhone users not dating someone who texts back with a green bubble, and of a general condescension towards Android users. Apple’s done a great job of making this all look like Android’s (and Android users’) fault.

But under the surface, there’s a simmering frustration with Apple among their own users about this topic. Apple Support pages run deep with people begging them to fix iMessage – so that they can see videos of their friends that aren’t teeny-tiny, so that they can escape group text threads with ex’s from years ago, and so on. Apple is intentionally creating a sub-par experience for its own users, and they’re noticing and complaining. Even worse, Apple is exposing their users to harm by keeping this model in place. When iOS and Android users text one another, iMessage downgrades the communication to the SMS (Short Message Service) standard – the original texting standard from 1992. SMS lacks much of the modern texting functionality expected today, including end-to-end encryption, meaning the privacy of all of these cross-platform texts is in danger.