Nothing announces iMessage for Android ... somehow

[NavyCobra1417]

4 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

I just dont want 100 accounts doing similar things on 100 different apps. for this instance google messages does literally everything i need. If someone needs a larger file then i email them.

Yeah I use Google Messages with RCS when I can, it's great. 

 

At this point in time, there is 0 reason for SMS holdouts to convert to a "universal" service like Whatsapp, as most people realistically already have their preferred communication apps and don't want to have yet another app to check.

 

Also whatsapp is hideous and owned by Facebook 

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, NavyCobra1417 said:

Yeah I use Google Messages with RCS when I can, it's great. 

 

At this point in time, there is 0 reason for SMS holdouts to convert to a "universal" service like Whatsapp, as most people realistically already have their preferred communication apps and don't want to have yet another app to check.

 

Also whatsapp is hideous and owned by Facebook 

Yes, hideous and owned by Facebook... Great reasons to not use it.

Instead, let's use the "open" standard owned and operated by... Google... Much better.

 

 

I think RCS had the potential to be great, but sadly Google and the GSMA dropped the ball on some very important things. For example, several features are not part of the standard. The biggest IMO is end-to-end encryption. So Google has rolled out its own extended version of RCS which supports it. Other features missing in the standard are things like reply support (tag a message as a reply to another specific message in the conversation), and reactions. Those things are all extensions that Google has added on top of the standard, so those features would not work unless everyone used Google's servers and "flavor" of RCS. This resulted in quite bad user experience back when Samsung's messages app relied on carrier implementations of RCS and Google's messaging app relied on Google's implementation. The end result was that different chats would have different features. Did you send a message between a Pixel and Samsung phone? Then they wouldn't be encrypted, and you couldn't do replies. Did you send a message between two Pixels? Then those things would work, but not if you sent them to a group chat... It was a mess.

Google still doesn't allow third-party developers to use RCS APIs either. It is exclusive to Google's own messages app. So third-party developers can't implement RCS into their apps. Want to use RCS? Download Google's official app (or use Samsung's app since it's a skin for Google's app).

 

 

In reality, the RCS that Google is pushing isn't open. For everything to work smoothly, everyone would need to use Google's app (no third-party apps allowed), and it would need to be hosted on Google's servers (no carrier-operated servers). At that point we just have the same setup as iMessage, WhatsApp, and every other Internet-based messaging platform.

[Dracarris]

9 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

I know it's sarcasm... But I didn't get it ...

I was eluding to the fact that the US uses quite a few technologies still that are considered heavily outdated in the rest of the (first) world

And don't get me started on imperial units..

[GoStormPlays]

W move from Nothing

[Obioban]

20 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Google messages with RCS turned on gives me all those additional things though. Also at no additional cost. And uses data instead of text cost. 

So i still don't see why you'd need to download something like whatsapp. 

Sure, but google will probably drop it in a couple months

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/

[Kisai]

23 hours ago, goodtofufriday said:

Google messages with RCS turned on gives me all those additional things though. Also at no additional cost. And uses data instead of text cost. 

So i still don't see why you'd need to download something like whatsapp. 

Cause some people pay per text message and have zero data.

[NavyCobra1417]

11 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Yes, hideous and owned by Facebook... Great reasons to not use it.

My own "reasons" for not using whattsapp aside, there is no network pressure for me (as an American) to use said service. Nobody I regularly converse with uses it, and frankly most of my non tech enthusiast friends/family have never heard of it.

 

It's a very US-centric PoV to whatsapp, buts it's the reality around here.

[RejZoR]

There's always a Signal tho... Not sure why Whatsapp is so highly used or pushed by everyone and this one so underused. It seems Signal is mostly used by privacy conscious users predominantly in Europe and to some extent by those in US of A who resist Facebook and Google's (And Apple's) dominance in messaging.

[Dracarris]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

There's always a Signal tho... Not sure why Whatsapp is so highly used or pushed by everyone and this one so underused. It seems Signal is mostly used by privacy conscious users predominantly in Europe and to some extent by those in US of A who resist Facebook and Google's (And Apple's) dominance in messaging.

Because WA was the first to introduce this type of messaging.. tied to your phone number but using cellular data. It back then also was not owned by Meta, however also not end-to-end encrypted.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Because WA was the first to introduce this type of messaging.. tied to your phone number but using cellular data. It back then also was not owned by Meta, however also not end-to-end encrypted.

And when it comes to messaging applications, the most important thing isn't who has the best tech. The most important thing is, what does the people you want to communicate use?

Signal might be great on a technical level, but if everyone you want to communicate with is on WhatsApp (since that was one of the first ones to offer such a service), then that's what you'll need to use. Sure you could try and convince some to change, but chances are those people has other non-overlapping friends groups that are also on let's say WhatsApp.

By saying "if you want to talk to me you need to use this special app, not the one you use to talk to everyone else" you run a very big risk of being excluded from conversations because it suddenly becomes a chore to include you in the conversation.

[saltycaramel]

https://9to5google.com/2023/11/18/nothing-chats-sunbird-unencrypted-data-privacy-nightmare/

and that kids is why you shouldn’t do this kind of stuff.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

https://9to5google.com/2023/11/18/nothing-chats-sunbird-unencrypted-data-privacy-nightmare/

and that kids is why you shouldn’t do this kind of stuff.

Wow...

That is laughably bad.

 

So not only have Sunbird (and Nothing through extension) been lying about messages being End-to-end-encrypted. Not only are they not end-to-end-encrypted, a lot of parts aren't even encrypted client-to-server.

And they also lied about things not being stored on their servers. A Sunbird employee could absolutely read your messages if they wanted to, and so can anyone else who intercepts your messages because they are sending authentication tokens in clear text. The authentication token can be used to query the database and download all your previous messages (that used the same authentication token).

[leadeater]

On 11/16/2023 at 9:11 PM, Dracarris said:

I was eluding to the fact that the US uses quite a few technologies still that are considered heavily outdated in the rest of the (first) world

And don't get me started on imperial units..

Japan massively has US beat on using, very widely, outdated technology.

[Quackers101]

On 11/16/2023 at 3:04 PM, GoStormPlays said:

W move from Nothing

oof, also to add to the comment below

12 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

https://9to5google.com/2023/11/18/nothing-chats-sunbird-unencrypted-data-privacy-nightmare/

and that kids is why you shouldn’t do this kind of stuff.

[crogers]

and its DEAD

 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/11/18/nothing-kills-imessage-bridge-because-it-profoundly-violated-user-privacy-security

 

[Dracarris]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Japan massively has US beat on using, very widely, outdated technology.

they‘re also still using cheques on a large scale? they also have no easy nation-wide unified system for bank transfers?

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

they‘re also still using cheques on a large scale? they also have no easy nation-wide unified system for bank transfers?

Yes, also contactless payment is very rare and often 3rd party non stand apps as well so no Apple Pay or Google Pay (limited places do support it but generally no). Also getting money in and out of the country is very hard, to your own bank account. Japan uses last name first and they reject so many transfer requests because "name does not match your ID", all sorts of stupid stuff.

 

They still widely use fax, floppy discs, miniDiscs, CDs, print literally every damn thing.

 

Corporate and bureaucratic Japan is literally stuck in the 90's, with elements of the 80's. Visiting Japan and living in Japan are different worlds.

[goodtofufriday]

On 11/19/2023 at 7:31 AM, leadeater said:

-snip-

Hell there are places that still require your family stamp to do anything. 

[hishnash]

On 11/19/2023 at 6:19 PM, Quackers101 said:

 

I wander if any engineers (or even slightly technically minding people) at Nothing were told about this before the press release..  There is no way it can maitn the end to end encrypted nature of iMessage form phone to phone given that this uses a Mac mini that receives (and decrypts) the messages before they are forwarded to the user.   Even if they had end to end from the mini to the user it is in plain text on a device the user does not controle and thus subject to attack and access from law enforcement etc. 

Turns out they did an even worce job however as rather then bothering to develop a backend of thier own they did the lazy `just use firebase` solution. I would not even be surprised if they screwed us ACL rules in that DB (rathe common with firebase) that would not only expose en-encrytped data but also data from other users. 

[hishnash]

On 11/16/2023 at 8:49 PM, LAwLz said:

The biggest IMO is end-to-end encryption.

The reason for this is clear that most of the member of the RCS board are companies subject to strict wiretapping laws that means it would be very difficult for them to adopt a true end to end encrypted messaging protocol.