I love Apple but that was pretty shady. Apple's control and lack of desire to work with RCS/others is eventually going to bring about a downfall. It might take 5-10 years, but there is a reason China and the EU have started regulating Apple so strongly is because they are pretty terrible to work with outside of the Apple device platform.

We can thank the EU for usb C and China for RCS support. China only requires 2.4, so if that is the real limiting factor then Apple probably isn't in a hurry for 2.7.