Apple, Get The Message?
Apple fans stood in line overnight outside the New York City store in hopes of catching a glimpse of CEO Tim Cook as he opened the doors on the iPhone 15 launch day.
Despite all the hoopla around the launch, Apple’s popular mobile phone is getting a lot of pushback from one of its deepest rivals. Google this week launched another attack on Apple about it using an old messaging technology. The latest messaging technology, which would allow greater collaboration between Apple and Android users, is called rich communication services (RCS).
To mock it, the search giant created a fake video advertisement for an “iPager.”
The Android Google group created the campaign in collaboration with the agency DAVID Miami.
The ad takes a humorous ‘90s theme approach to clarify the struggle for iPhone users. The ad requests that Apple upgrade from SMS to RCS via the “launch” of the iPager, a parody device of an old pager.
RCS is a modern messaging with features like high-quality media sharing, read receipts, typing indicator and most importantly, better security.
Apps like Google Messages support end-to-end encryption, ensuring text message content is private and secure. When iPhones and Android users text each other, the conversation happens across SMS, which is less secure, according to Google.
If Apple adopts RCS, the company would join the rest of the mobile industry that is committed to upgrading the cross-platform messaging experience for everyone.
DAVID Miami is known for working with Burger King, HSBC, Activision, and Corona.
“iPager isn’t real, but the problems that Apple causes by using SMS are,” said Google in the video description on YouTube. “Let’s make texting better for everyone and help Apple #GetTheMessage and upgrade to RCS.”
But, hey, Google tells view in the ad, iPager has a belt clip.
The idea behind the ad it to help Apple get the message and upgrade to RCS, so the transition in messages—text, video, and images—between iPhone and Android devices is smooth.
Most carriers and phone manufactures have adopted RCS. Samsung claims it’s one of the first major device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It commercially launched in Europe 2012 and in the United States since 2015, according to the company.
On SMS’ 30th birthday, end-to-end encryption for group chats rolled out for Google Messages in beta, and went live in open beta in January 2023. By May, Google announced that 800 million people had access to RCS, and Google Messages was enhanced with Magic Compose, a new Google messages feature powered by generative artificial intelligence (GAI).
End-to-end encryption for group chats in Google Messages fully rolled out to all RCS users, and RCS is enabled by default for new and existing users—unless they have turned RCS off in Settings.
Google’s campaign span across online videos, influencers, and social media. 3D-printed mockups of the iPager device will also be sent to select influencers to remind them of the messaging issues they experience, and that they are caused by outdated technology used by Apple.
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