Snippet: The European Commission Had Nothing to Do With Apple’s Reversal on Supporting RCS ☇

John Gruber:

Chinese carriers have been proponents of RCS for years, and last year, the Chinese government began the process of codifying into law that to achieve certification, new 5G devices will be required to support RCS…Shockingly, the Chinese government seemingly isn’t concerned that the RCS standard has no provisions for encryption. The little birdies I’ve spoken to all said the same thing: iOS support for RCS is all about China. […]

China, unlike the EU, seemingly knows how to draft effective regulations to achieve specific goals.

This is an interesting development, although not surprising. RCS hasn’t seemed to be something the EU is interested in, nor many of its citizens, so forcing Apple’s hand would’ve been weird. I’d argue that no provisions for encryption is viewed as a feature, not a bug in China. I’ll admit that I don’t follow the developments in China as much as I should, but requiring it on a compatibility level makes a lot of sense. In fact, I’d argue that if lawmakers want to make some changes, adapting the FCC approval process would be a better method than addressing companies directly.

There has been a lot of controversy over the EU’s decisions lately—a handful of US-centric folks seem to be weirdly defending everything Apple does as correct with almost a “how dare they consider regulating a &asymp$3T company!” It’s being approached with a different lens in a different regulatory environment and sometimes the decisions may be a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” situation. Even if we don’t agree with the methods or all the decisions, at least they’re trying to push for better? Likewise, we can also state that some of the things Apple does involving China are hypocritical, even if they have do it to play nice in that country.

I like a lot of Apple’s products, some things they do as a company, and the community around it, but I also think that they shouldn’t be above scrutiny. In fact, the scrutiny from people that enjoy Apple adds a layer of validity because there’s care involved. Personally, the current state of iPhone-to-Android SMS/MMS is terrible, so I’m looking forward to RCS—it’s not something my Android-using pals need to adapt to message me with other services or half-baked iMessage implementations. Is RCS perfect? No, but it’s a drop-in-place improvement over what we currently have.