And that’s totally fine.

It runs over IP and it’s designed in a way that allows implementers to have their own adaptations within their walled garden, like End to End encryption in Google messages.

Also important to note that Apple is not discontinuing iMessage as a result of supporting RCS. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d imagine that within the next 5-10 years, Apple will either be moving iMessage to RCS, or to some other common platform along with the rest of the industry. It’s just not going to be worth their effort to maintain and update iMessage while also maintaining compatibility with RCS. They may even make improvements to the standard that allow them to make more features within a walled garden.

iMessage is legit the only thing tying me to iPhone. My wife and her family just can’t be bothered to use any third party apps (except Facebook Messenger for a couple of them, and I downright refuse to use that). So, as we exchange pictures and video a lot, it’s just easier.

Apples real secret sauce is its tight vertical integration between software and hardware. Because they have full control over both, they can squeeze out a ton of optimizations for a very limited selection of hardware. How that software interacts further up the stack…I think Apple will eventually realize that that juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

Edit: proofreading and realizing that both the Apple puns were completely unintentional.