Beginning subsequent 12 months, it must be much less irritating for iPhone and Android customers to textual content each other.

Apple says pictures and movies despatched between these gadgets will likely be of upper high quality. Group messaging will likely be extra dependable, and customers may even be capable to activate learn receipts and ship their areas in texting threads.

The adjustments will come as soon as Apple provides assist for a know-how referred to as wealthy communication companies, often known as RCS, subsequent 12 months, the corporate mentioned. RCS is just like the extra trendy cousin of quick message service, or SMS.

Inexperienced message bubbles sign that they’re coming from an Android or different non-iPhone person. However they’ve come to be related to an disagreeable texting expertise for iPhone customers, whose messages are blue to point that they’ve been despatched by way of iMessage. The inexperienced bubble is right here to remain, nonetheless: It’s going to sign when RCS is in use.

The know-how “will work alongside iMessage, which is able to proceed to be the very best and most safe messaging expertise for Apple customers,” Apple mentioned in a press release.

Till now, Apple had proven no need to make the adjustments.

When requested ultimately 12 months’s Code Convention in regards to the texting know-how by an attendee who expressed difficulties with sending movies to the attendee’s mom, Tim Cook dinner, Apple’s chief government, responded, “Purchase your mother an iPhone.”

The about-face could have been set off by strain from opponents, resembling Google and Nothing, a cell know-how firm, and the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.

“Apple is admittedly the one main firm that hasn’t, till now, adopted RCS requirements,” mentioned Caitlin Seeley George, the campaigns and managing director for Battle for the Future, a nonprofit digital rights group. The group has pushed Apple to undertake the know-how.

“We predict it’s a very good signal that Apple is making this shift and an indication that perhaps they’re listening to the general public on this one,” she mentioned.

Ms. Seeley George mentioned that enabling the texting know-how would additionally enable customers to see whether or not somebody is typing and whether or not their messages had been obtained.

Google adopted RCS years in the past, and the corporate has tried to strain Apple into doing so virtually ever since.

Google began a marketing campaign final 12 months referred to as Get the Message, which included a video mocking an Apple product launch video and included a pager with options resembling “outdated messaging tech,” “texting nightmares” and “damaged group chats.”

“By not incorporating RCS, Apple is holding again the business and holding again the person expertise for not solely Android customers but additionally their very own clients,” Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s senior vice chairman, wrote on social media final 12 months.

In a press release, Google mentioned it was “joyful to see Apple take their first step as we speak by approaching board to embrace RCS.”

“Everybody deserves to speak with one another in methods which can be trendy and safe, it doesn’t matter what telephone they’ve,” the assertion mentioned.

Apple additionally faces budding competitors from Nothing, the cell tech firm.

Nothing not too long ago launched Nothing Chats, an app that enables non-iPhone customers to ship iMessages as if they’re utilizing iPhones. The app, which is in beta mode, replaces the inexperienced bubbles with blue ones and permits for group chats, voice notes, high-resolution media sharing and extra between these gadgets.

“If messaging companies are dividing telephone customers, then we need to break these obstacles down,” the corporate’s web site reads.

Apple’s announcement additionally comes earlier than Europe’s Digital Markets Act goes into impact in 2024, which might result in higher scrutiny of its messaging system.

The regulation will apply to so-called gatekeeper platforms, together with Apple, and is aimed toward forcing these firms to loosen their grip available on the market. Apple, for instance, could have to permit alternate options to its App Retailer.

Ms. Seeley George referred to as Apple’s announcement a “fairly massive swing in a brand new route.” However there was nonetheless vital work to be completed, she mentioned, particularly on end-to-end encryption.

Messages despatched between iPhones are encrypted, however messages between iPhone and Android customers can’t be encrypted with out RCS, she mentioned. Battle for the Future has additionally pushed Apple and different firms to embrace encryption.

“This can be a massive concern for numerous susceptible communities which can be typically underneath surveillance or focused by regulation enforcement,” Ms. Seeley George mentioned, pointing to a teen in Nebraska who was sentenced in July to 90 days in jail after the police obtained her Fb messages about plans to finish her being pregnant.