As we already saw on Monday, in the WWDC 2024 opening keynote, iOS 18 arrives loaded with new features, some specific to the operating system and its applications, and others included in Apple Intelligence and Siri, which mark the update of Apple’s operating systems and applications in the field of artificial intelligence. As we recalled in the review of the first ones, Apple told us the news that will come to all its OS, but given that iOS is the third most used in the world, only behind Android and Windows (in that order), the iPhone was undoubtedly the most anticipated.

The long-awaited announcement regarding iOS 18, specifically the Messages app, there was no opening presentation. Now, as we expected back then, the announcements that were made are the most important according to the criteria of Cupertino, but this does not mean that they are the only news that will make it to the operating systems and that will start to reach users at the door. . next fall

And today we already have a clear example of this, because, as we can see on the page that the company itself published as a preview of the future version of the operating system, Apple confirms that RCS messages will arrive on iPhones with iOS 18. In the brief description of this news we read: «Rich Communication Services (RCS) messages provide richer media and delivery and read receipts for non-iMessage users.

It’s no surprise that Apple has finally relented and is about to adopt RCS, they actually talked about it at the end of last year, and shortly after that we also learned how Apple would separate iMessage and RCS messages in the Messages app. At the time, yes, it came as a big surprise, because until then the only official position expressed by the company was the still remembered «Buy your mother an iPhone from Tim Cook to journalists.

This was without a doubt a position that made no sense, as RCS does not come as an alternative to services like iMessage (although that was one of its intentions in the beginning), but as a more than necessary replacement for SMS/MMS messages. And we must remember that SMS messages are today the only native message communication system for exchanging this type of communication between Android and iOS, the first and third most used operating systems in the world, respectively. And in this case, Google has been trying to fix this situation since the last decade, so it is undeniable that in this case, it is Apple that refuses to evolve.