Opinion post by

C. Scott Brown

Update, September 16, 2022 (12:25 PM ET): The full video of Tim Cook’s statements on RCS is now available, which was not the case when we first published this article. We have slightly tweaked the original text below to reflect this change.

You may have heard about Tim Cook’s recent comments about rich content services (RCS) messaging. In an on-stage Q&A session last week, an attendee asked whether or not there were plans for Apple to adopt RCS, which would allow Android’s native messaging apps and the iPhone’s native messaging app to communicate without relying on SMS/MMS protocols. The Apple CEO’s response shot down any hopes: “I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy on that at this point.”