Let's assume Apple implements RCS, I wouldn't expect Apple to drop iMessage or the iMessage protocol and just use RCS. And I wouldn't expect Apple to change the color of RCS messages to match iMessage messages. So even if Apple switched RCS message would still have green bubbles and the judgement would continue.

As for the Android users I know and love. About 10% are super nerds that want to "have full control", they used to hack their phones but now they just brag that they could. The other 90% ended up with an Android because it was the cheapest or free option.

hahaha I would argue RCS is even less secure than SMS/MMS, because it provides a false sense of security. There is and never has been any expectation that SMS/MMS are secure beyond basic GSM/LTE/5G physical layer security (not end to end encrypted). RCS offer the false promise of end to end encryption, except it generally messages aren't end to end encrypted. The carriers can still peek inside the messages, assuming encryption can actually be negotiated between the send and receiver. This is ultimately just Google trying to change the rules to make It's piss poor messaging story not so piss poor. Google has proven time and time again they can't do messaging services.

As for RCS leading to no iPhones. Sounds like a you're having a wet dream or a stroke, it's hard to tell. For some of us the only reason to not get an iPhone would be if Apple stops selling iPhones. It's a dick move but I honestly don't care if I can "message" people with Android phones. I carry and use technology for my convince not the rest of the world's. If you're Android device can't communicate with my non-Android device, that's a you problem. If I need to communicate with you I'll call, schedule a meeting, or use a cross platform service.

If Google and/or the phone industry introduced a messaging spec that 1. provided true end to end encryption, with no way to disable it, 2. wasn't a massive marketing channel and 3. wasn't tied to a 140 year old technology (phone number). Hum... I don't made something like iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp, etc. etc. Then we can discuss moving all person to person messaging to it.

Agreed. We're not arguing for WFH or RTO. What I'm arguing for is choice and I think that choice should be made between the employee and their direct manager.

That's a fair argument. But we've lived in the other world where a rash of overly-social misanthropes who insist that everyone needs to see and talk to everyone all the time. And that means everybody should work the same way. The argument isn't for all or nothing. It's about choice, you can work how you work best and I can work how I work best.

Depends on where in the world you are. In America starting a success business is remarkably difficult and risky. While you're starting your business you're likely living without health insurance, retirement, or you're dependent on an external support (family, friends, investors). With as much noise is made about America being pro-small business, blah, blah, blah. The reality is the American system doesn't provide much help or support for independent small businesses. But it's super helpful and supportive of Fortune 500 companies.

I'm not looking for anything Marxist it doesn't work and is generally a bad idea. What I want is an environment that allows individuals the opportunity to build their dream business. It's my opinion that the government and society should be supportive of such small business by providing a basic set of services. And no the government shouldn't guarantee the success of a business, of any size. But some useful social programs, like health care and social security (retirement) would greatly improve the odds of success. Every business started would grow the economy. TLDR; Let's grow the economy from the bottom up instead of the top down.

I agree with your point about confirmation bias. But I think it's even more vague than that. Management doesn't, know, that an impromptu conversation changed anything. The data they have is, they saw person X talking to person Y and person Y suggested a good solution shortly after that. The manager can than assume it was the impromptu conversation that resulted in the suggestion. My team general has those discussions on slack in channels generally visible to our management. With all the important conversation happen over slack management actually has better visibility into team decisions and direction. But I've found most managers don't really understand what their team is doing and aren't interested in reading the threads.

hahahaha CEO's don't create accountability for themselves. They cover their ass. If this turns out to be a bad decisions the CEO will either pull the golden ejection handle before they have to deal with the mess or they will deflect the blame onto another C executive or a director down the org chart.

And that's part of the problem. Those managers aren't interested in what's best for the company or customers. Only what's best for their career. At least in the tech industry moving into management is often the only path for career development and ultimately higher pay. Sometimes it's called a "team lead" or "senior" whatever. The idea is simple, if you're good at doing a job then you should be good at managing people doing that job. And since you were so good managing people doing the job then the amount of work your team can accomplish should be multiplied by the number of direct reports assigned.

In every company I've worked for the first level manager is basically there to take roll and make sure the class is quiet and focused. Those first level manager are evaluated on 1. how good they are at "managing people" (are they good at controlling the class), 2. being seen and looking busy. Career advancement depends almost entirely on personal interaction with the layer of management above you. If you or they aren't in the office how can you advance. This style of management is poorly suited to remote work. Maybe managers should be evaluated on how well the tasks assigned to their team(s) are accomplished and management promotions should be tied to skill, proficiency, and merit instead.

In a company the size of Zoom the CEO should set the strategic direction, vision, and goals of the company. And no remote work policy shouldn't by a strategic direction, vision, or goals of the company. CEOs shouldn't be making decisions about detailed policy or day to day operations. If the people reporting to the CEO aren't achieving the CEO's goals or are creating bad policy then the CEO should replace them. Who should be making those decisions? Personally I think it should be left to each manager to figure out how their team works best. As a CEO you should empower your managers to empower their direct reports to make choices and decisions consistent with the goals and vision of the CEO and company.

I don't understand the push for a return to an old and outdated way of accomplishing tasks. Remote work is better for the company, the environment, and the worker. Decoupling the where from the work would allow employees to live in affordable areas which reduces corporate payrolls. It allows the company to better match employee talent to task, since the company isn't limited to employees in region or employees willing to relocate. Fewer in office workers means companies can reduce their real-estate expenses. Fewer commuters mean less traffic on the roads, so infrastructure lasts longer.

But to address your statement. The whining is about control. As an employee I want the agency over my work and where I can do my best work. My manager can't make that decision. Oh they can make me work from a specific location but that doesn't mean it's the best location for me or the task at hand. Making people feel empowered in their job and granting them some form of agency makes for a much better, happy, productive employee. This has been proven time and time again. Six Sigma or the Toyota method for example. Empowered employees feel connected to the task or project and it encourages employees to make better decisions about their work and company in general. "Is this good for the company?" Empowering employees, is good for the company, but often not great for management. Forcing employees into an office, generally isn't good for the company, but is good for managers.

haha In my company pre-pandemic no one wanted to walk across campus or even to a different floor in the same building. So everyone would book the closest conference/meeting/phone room and Webex or zoom in the meeting. We often had 3 people on a call, that were physically in the same building often just meters apart. Working remote just made that easier and more honest.

Longer rant.
Being a member of gen X, I general associate an event with a location. I watch TV on my big TV while sitting on the couch. I do my work at my office desk, etc. Watching my teenagers it's obvious they don't see the world that way. They watch "TV" where ever they are, and given the choice they would prefer to watch "TV" anywhere but on the big TV sitting on couch. The same goes for school work and activities. Work and activities happen where they are, not at a specific location. The only reason to go to a specific place to do a thing is if the thing you're doing physically can't be done online. To the point that my oldest kid's robotics team is putting in automated machines that they can monitor remotely so they don't have to drive 20 minutes to the school just to 3D print or CNC something. The next generation doesn't live a world of places the way we do, the "places" are on their phone, tablet, or computer. Where they're physically sitting is entirely up to them and often involves someplace very soft and comfortable.

Seems like Zoom would be in the perfect position to tap into that can dog food their way to the future. Seems like a hard sales pitch "You should buy our product so all your employees can work remote. But we can't use our software to work remote."

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think this is one of the big hold ups. Traditionally (in my experience), the public wants a single solution. We get our power from X. This isn't true and has never been true, but it is the simplification the public wanted. Nuclear is great for base load power generation and more investment will bring the cost down, assuming the nuke industry can standardize on reactor designs that can be manufacture repeatably at scale. No more one off reactors.

A standard factory built reactor should be cheaper to manufacture (after development costs), faster to produce, safer to operate as flaws found in one unit can be addressed across the fleet and in the design, and they should be cheaper to operate since all reactors are identical.

TLDR; Figure out how to manufacture, install, and operate reactors like servers in datacenter.

All of the those things happen with that. But for them to help we have to 1. use them, 2. stop using the other stuff. Number 1 is actually pretty easy and as a planet we're not doing awful on this front. The real problem is number 2. Instead of replacing the other stuff we've simply added solar, wind, batteries, nuke, etc. to the existing power infrastructure. Which helps a little but not enough. If we (the USA) switched off all our coal, oil, gas power plants in favor of wind, solar, nuke, and batteries CO2 accumulation would flat line very quickly and start to decline over the next 50 years. It's took us several hundred years to get here, no reason we should expect it to be completely 100% solved in less than 10.

The first step in saving a stabbing victim is to stop the bleeding. Then you can worry about replacing the lost blood.
The first step in saving the human species is to stop releasing CO2. Then we can worry about removing existing CO2 from the air.

Actually I want to see the exact opposite. Rich people want to make money, poor people want a more comfortable life. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. I believe distributing advanced technology throughout the world is a big part of the solution. The problem is the transition. We have workable technologies to address a lot of these problems but they introduce several new problems.

1. It costs money and rich people don't want to pay for it and poor people can't afford it.
2. Investing in the transition is a long term investment. Rich people can and will make a lot of money but it will take years. Remember that the 1% live off investments not wages. They want stable long term investments that pay a lot of dividends, which means the company invested in needs to turn a profit. Turning a profit takes time. And it takes time to move trillions of dollars from fossil fuels to not fossil fuels without loosing money on those investments or impacting the 1%'s quarterly income.
3. Some groups have latched onto the transition as a false binary choice. We can have modern life with AC and cars or we can't.
4. A lot of the advanced technologies being developed to address climate change aren't utility scale per se. For example if we changed local building codes to require single family detached homes to have enough solar panels to self power an average day and enough battery for several hours of runtime. This would be awesome for home owners by reducing interruptions to electric service and reducing monthly electric builds. It would be good for utilities since all those batteries would even out demand removing spikes and the solar reduces the number of massive coal, oil, or natural gas plants. But this has the huge downside of front loading a lot of electric costs, you can pay $100/m for ever or you can pay $10000 up front and recover that over the next 30 years.
5. Some groups/people see these changes as an affront to their identity. My father-in-law is an old school "car guy". Part of his personal identity is tied up in the sound and performance characteristics of internal combustion engines. It doesn't matter to him that electric car are faster, quieter, and more energy efficient. He's not concerned about millage, changing networks, or any of that. He only sees that the world has decided he personally is unimportant and being devalued because "traditional" cars are becoming less relevant and devalued.

It's not just that American's want trucks. The EPA emissions standards have made it advantageous for automakers selling in the US to sell bigger vehicles, its the SUV loophole. Making bigger vehicles allows the automaker to classify them as farm or work related which lowers the mpg requirements. So the automakers sell trucks and big SUVs based on truck platforms. It's a win win for them. Lower mpg requirements for a higher margin product. 40+ years later and the public has been trained to buy big vehicles. So now we have to have big EVs. I for one would love to have the Jeep Avenger (sold in Europe) or the VW ID.2All (sold in Europe) both are small light weight, with relatively small batteries but still get 200+ miles of range, for 25 - 30k. Still not cheap but way better then the 40 - 60k that most EVs cost.

hehehe

But in America we don't want the government to do anything. We find it much better for private businesses to provide such services, this is why we basically privatized our prison system and why there's a push to privatize our school systems. With the smart ass comment out of the way.

There is an argument to be made for a more distributed micro-grid approach. By requiring new construction (home and businesses) to install solar and batteries and be grid tied but making the public utilities responsible for code enforcement, grid interconnects, and routing electricity from low demand areas to high demand areas. But this will never happen since it appears to increase construction costs (it does raise construction costs but should lower energy costs over the lifetime of the building, so over the lifetime of the building I would expect it to even out) and it would completely collapse the for profit energy industry since a large number of homes and maybe some business would spend very little on energy.