Edit: NOTE, I am the receiver of the texts.

So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end.

Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.” She is texting from her phone number using her texting app. That’s what’s going to happen.

Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone? If it’s just a messenger app why not make it available for Android?

I’d use it.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
    2·
    4 months ago

    SMS/MMS has really low file size limits, and iPhones may downscale a little more aggressively than required.

    Just pick an internet based messaging service. I like Signal, but they all work.

  • lnicothecerit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    3 months ago

    @geometry dash the RCS is not something Apple does. Your messages are currently unencrypted and of worse quality; however, this will be rectified shortly. In the meantime, you are better off using a different messaging software.

  • bobo@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    Keep a stock message on your phone to cut and paste whenever an iPhone user sends you a potato-quality video. This is mine:

    Please don’t send video to me via iMessage from your iPhone. In fact, you really shouldn’t send video via iMessage at all. Video sent by Apple looks terrible on non-iOS phones. This is not a shortcoming of other phones, this is entirely Apple’s fault and is their explicit intention. If you want to send a video from your iPhone, you can open the Photos app, tap the share button, and select “share as an iCloud link”. That will enable All users to view your glorious video of your cat/kids/dinner/vacation/rant/whatever in the high resolution that your overpriced phone is capable of. Another option is to send the video using a messaging app such as Signal or WhatsApp. Alternate messaging apps are what most of the world use in lieu of sms/mms text messaging.

    This is a form letter response and you will get it every time you send me video from your iPhone via iMessage.

    P.S. I love you

  • Zak@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end. Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.”

    Assuming using a third-party messaging app is “weird”, then she can’t send you video with acceptable quality. That’s how it is.

    She can’t fix that. You can’t fix that. None of the readers here can fix that unless they work at Apple. This may improve in the future when Apple adopts RCS, but there’s a lot that real-world implementations of RCS do that isn’t in the standard, so the full details of interoperability are uncertain until we see it in the wild.

    Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone?

    Because Apple doesn’t want you to. Apple wants situations like this one to pressure people to buy iPhones because that’s apparently easier for some people than agreeing on a messaging app.

  • ninjaturtle@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Its due to compression of the video in order to fit on a MMS message, which is very small. Android uses RCS as a new message standard that can send bigger files but Apple has yet to add it to their OS. Its similar to how Apple uses iMessage to do the same, however this is not a standard and is locked to only apple devices.

    Apple is supposedly adding support for RCS during the new iOS update but until then you can use a different messaging app to send better/larger files.

    I recommend Signal as it is easy to sign up and start using while also being private.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    It’s because Apple has refused to adopt new messaging standards like RCS (not that Google is doing that much of a better job), but it’s purposefully broken interoperability to force people into buying into product ecosystems (iPhone vs. Android) to make you stick with one and get stuck on it.

    It’s stupid anti-competitive and I freakin’ hate it.

    Literally doesn’t have to be this way, it’s a choice (mostly by Apple, but once again doesn’t mean Google is better).

    https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/15/24178470/apple-rcs-support-wwdc-announcement-android-imessage

    Apple was largely forced to support RCS in response to the mounting pressure from global regulators and competing companies. That may help explain the somewhat disgruntled approach to announcing its rollout in iOS 18.

    https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to-switch-on-rcs-messaging-in-ios-18

    Here’s a walkthrough to ensure RCS is enabled on your wife’s iPhone, once iOS 18 drops in the next month or so.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Samsung had support before Google and Jibe… but they have abandoned their own RCS support. Simply because Google’s works on all of their devices and they don’t need to do any development to support it going forwards. Why pay for development and support for a system you don’t have to and get nothing from? No one is buying a Samsung phone for the Samsung Messages RCS capability.

  • Roopappy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    The real reason: Apple intentionally doesn’t support the open protocols that send pics and videos to non-Apple devices. These protocols are a decade old and work great. They use a proprietary protocol instead, which they will not share with other phone manufacturers.

    What the average iPhone user thinks: Apple is better than Android!

    It’s pretty dumb.

    • smackjack@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      The thing is, Apple phones do support these things, but only if they change the default messenger app, and most Apple users won’t do that. IPhone users are worse than Windows users when It comes to changing their default apps.

      • Roopappy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Unless I did a really poor job researching it, you cannot change your default SMS/MMS application on an iPhone.

        You can use other messaging apps like Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram, or AIM. But if you want to use SMS, you have to use iMessage.

        Maybe this is US-specific though. Europe often forces Apple to do things they don’t do here.