Callum Jones
iPhone users will be well aware of the frustrating technology measures that are still in place in 2022 when they are texting friends and family who have an Android phone.
Texting between iOS and Android can mean buggy group chats, poor quality pictures and videos, and messages from Android users to iPhones displaying in hated green bubbles.
That doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon though, as Apple CEO Tim Cook has seemingly rejected the idea of introducing new messaging protocols that could make it smoother for iPhone and Android users to communicate.
Speaking during Vox Media's Code 2022 event on Wednesday (7 September), Cook said regarding the potential change: "I don't hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point.
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“I would love to convert you to an iPhone.”
The person who asked this question, LiQuan Hunt, complained to Cook that his mother could not see videos he was sending her as she does not have an iPhone, to which the Apple boss replied: "Buy your mum an iPhone."
As it is aware to many, Apple uses its own iMessage service, this allows users of iPhone's to send pictures and videos to a high quality, but that disappears when an Android user comes to the party.
Android phones use RCS - which stands for Rich Communication Services.
RCS is a messaging standard that is used by Google and other telecommunication companies that supports group chats, read receipts, lets users send high-quality photos and videos, amongst many other features.
It is essentially very similar to iMessage, however, Apple blocks RCS from all of its devices.
This means that when an Android users sends an iPhone user a text message, it appears as an SMS or MMS message.
SMS - which stands for Short Message Service, allows phone users to only send text messages of no more than 160 characters, something more common in the early days of mobile text messaging.
Multimedia Message Service, or MMS for short, built on them limitations by allowing users to send a photo or short video - but these were sometimes pixilated.
RCS was released by Google for Android phones in the UK in 2019 and the company have taken a few swipes at their competitors since then.
Android launched an astonishing PR campaign where they took aim at Apple for not introducing RCS.
On its website, Android claimed that 'Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other'.