Google appears to be working on an editing feature for the Messages app. The feature is hiding in the latest beta.
This sounds like a nice step towards modernizing texting, but it's a shame that Messages doesn't have an open RCS API to encourage broad adoption across messaging apps.
will only hurt their attempts to make Apple interoperate...this will only hurt adoption on the long run.
Any interoperating from Apple will be minimal and begrudging, at best. Google should not hold themselves/their tech and their users back for the distant hope that Apple will be cooperative (because Apple won't regardless).
Ans yet Apple expects all others to to just accept what they want or Apple walls off everything. It goes both ways, Apple doesn't get to control everything.
Have you looked into running your own RCS server or connecting to existing RCS servers? As far as I can tell, it's proprietary infrastructure built on top of an open standard.
RCS just lets the servers talk to each other, and there is no reference implementation for a server. On the off chance that you do manage to write your own implementation, it's unlikely that Google or Samsung's servers would be willing to talk to yours unless you're a telecom.
The better solution is to move away from proprietary messaging apps altogether. Simplex Chat, Jami, Session and signal all support both Android and iOS.
Signal has third party apps like Molly. iMessage only works on Iphones and is utterly proprietary and locked down which makes it a bad option for most people.