Tim Cook responded to a journalist’s question about RCS text messaging at the 2022 Code Conference by suggesting they buy an iPhone, according to The Verge.
When asked how Apple could improve communication between iPhone and Android users, he said “I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy into that.”
When the journalist replied that he couldn’t send certain videos to his Android-using mother, Cook joked “buy your mom an iPhone.”
This is sure to fuel the debate over a standard smartphone messaging format. Google has long promoted RCS (Rich Communications Service) as a way to improve interoperability between iOS and Android users, even publicly shaming Apple about it last month.
This could help to eliminate the dreaded “green bubble” that iPhone users experience when receiving a text message from an Android phone.
According to internal documents obtained during the Epic trial, Apple considered offering iMessage to Android users but quickly abandoned the idea.
Former Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller famously stated that bringing iMessage to Android would “hurt us more than help us,” and another former Apple executive stated in an email that “iMessage amounts to serious lock-in.”
Tim Cook did say that Apple isn’t addressing RCS “at this time,” but he didn’t completely dismiss the idea. In any case, the green bubble problem is largely limited to the United States, as users in other countries prefer non-SMS apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal.