Apple’s Update Decision—Bad News Confirmed For Millions Of iPhone Users

As hundreds of millions of iPhone users update their devices to iOS 18, colorize their home screens, and navigate the new Photos app, the reality is that this update is more about what’s missing than what’s released. There’s no Apple intelligence — at least not yet, and another major omission has also been confirmed.

This bad news affects RCS — the biggest non-AI update coming with iOS 18, which brings rich messaging features to iPhone messaging on Android for the first time, but the Washington Post warns that “chats with Android friends still [come with] security and other compromises.” Something Apple could have avoided.

There’s still plenty of excitement over the launch of the all-new SMS v2 text messaging update. “We’ve known it was coming for nearly a year, but today is the day we’ve been waiting for,” says Android Police. “SMS’s position among the default messaging apps for Android and iPhone is getting a major upgrade… Now that Apple has made iOS 18 official, iPhones can finally use the dedicated protocol to replace SMS and MMS.”

But those annoying green bubbles are still there; it’s not a magic solution. “The drama has been going on for so long that we need to be aware of the little things that add up to a better texting experience,” Gizmodo explains. That includes writing bullet points, reading receipts, and sharing blurry photos. But with Growing Pains, it seems to depend mostly on the generation of Android phones the messages are being sent to, network conditions, and the seamless cross-platform experience we’ve come to expect from other apps.

But the bigger problem remains hidden. “In some important ways, Apple’s Messages app is still stuck in the flip-phone era, compromising messaging security for everyone,” the Washington Post says. While Gizmodo says, “We have to admit that iOS users will have a different experience texting their iPhone friends than they do on Android. The version of RCS Apple uses is not encrypted, unlike iMessage.”

So was this inevitable and unsolvable? No, not at all understandable. “Apple largely blames the limitations of the technology that integrates the messaging apps on iPhone and Android,” The Post explains. “It’s an incomplete explanation. Apple’s own choices also make conversations worse on Android devices.”

What this means — as I’ve explained before — is that Apple and Google have collaborated on a secure API between their messaging programs to fully secure content, to better compete with Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or texting in their own walled gardens. Or Apple could have introduced an iMessage app for Android.

Instead, it doesn’t really compete with the cross-platform security of overhyped messaging platforms. It bypasses some of the other annoying compromises that came with SMS V2 as well as a dedicated cross-platform app.

While RCS was promoted via a Google-managed push across the Android ecosystem, it did so via a proprietary client that adds a fully encrypted layer alongside other updates. RCS itself doesn’t include full security, which is the limited protocol that Apple adopted for the iOS 18 update. Apple has said it will work with mobile industry standards setters to push for an improved protocol. But that won’t happen anytime soon. In the meantime, these concessions remain in place.

Ultimately, Apple’s iMessage update gives users in Europe, Asia, or Africa—where apps like WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, and others dominate—no reason to switch, and in the United States, where WhatsApp is hugely successful, it supports a relentless privacy campaign that Meta has been running all year.

What makes this even more interesting is Telegram and the recent ordeals of its founder and CEO Pavel Durov. Telegram’s problem has always been the disconnect between its marketing and its reality. The messaging app plays it safe but also doesn’t fully encrypt its messages, like a remote control system. Telegram’s real game has always been its refusal to cooperate with authorities—so far, one assumes, its secrecy—which facilitates greater user anonymity.

Durov’s arrest has left many of Telegram’s billion users wondering who will now have access to messages on Telegram’s servers, which are protected only by the platform’s encryption (to which it holds the keys) and its voluntary policies.

There are other tradeoffs with the new remote tethering on iPhone and Android, which is unsurprising, given that tethering is based on a cellular protocol in exchange for more customized cross-platform integration. If Google and Apple had decided to provide a less cumbersome and more secure messaging experience between Android and iPhone, none of these issues or compromises would have affected millions of users now.

While the initial launch of RCS is disappointing because of these glaring omissions, there may be some good news. The GSMA, the mobile standards body, published a blog post on Tuesday following the release of iOS 18.

“Today, we celebrate a significant milestone in the evolution of messaging with the launch of Rich Communications Services (RCS) support on iPhone,” said GSMA CTO Tom Van Pelt. “This represents a step forward in bringing feature-rich RCS messaging to more users on iOS and Android.”

While Van Pelt noted updates to existing features, “such as typing indicators, read receipts, high-quality media sharing, and improved group messaging,” the real purpose of the message was much bigger.

“The next major step is for the Universal RCS profile to add important user protections such as nested end-to-end encryption,” he announced. “This will be the first time that unified, operational message encryption has been deployed across different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically strong group membership.”

Given Apple’s focus on security and privacy, it was surprising to see Google hype it up first, before Apple, but RCS on the iPhone has always seemed more important to Google than it was to Apple. Users often felt that Apple wouldn’t have taken this step if it could have been avoided. That’s why this change was so surprising when it was first announced last year. I’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the GSMA’s news in light of the iOS 18 release.

“We’ve been proud to offer end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Google Messages with RCS since 2020,” Elmar Weber, head of Android and business communications, posted on LinkedIn. “We believe E2EE is a key component of secure messaging, and we’ve been working with the broader ecosystem to bring cross-platform E2EE to RCS conversations as soon as possible. Google is committed to providing a secure and private messaging experience for users; we remain committed to making E2EE the standard for all RCS users, regardless of status.”

The real question is why are we doing this as an update to the standard RCS protocol rather than a simpler, more powerful API between Google Messages (the primary messaging software for Android) and iMessage (the primary messaging software for iPhone), which would be technically simpler and more powerful, and would also offer better security from start to finish. Beyond those two platforms, the feature-rich RCS is now less interesting, especially in light of Samsung’s decision to switch to the Android standard.

The other question is how long it will take, and when users can expect an update that brings RCS closer to other current platforms. That’s unlikely to happen anytime soon — and even then, challenges remain.

Samsung explained why it’s ditching its own platform in favor of Google’s: “Even though messaging apps follow the RCS standard, availability may be limited depending on which app the other party is using. That’s why we’ve decided to make Google Messages the most common messaging platform, allowing Galaxy users to communicate “more freely. It also allows the messaging app to respond more quickly and efficiently to changes in the RCS standard.”

In general, the more transparent and fully encrypted platforms (Signal and WhatsApp are my picks) don’t suffer from any of these issues, but keep in mind the metadata shared if you use WhatsApp. But I see no reason for anyone to switch their daily messaging app to iMessage or Google Messages. It’s simply not worth the tradeoffs or risks.