Saying "this is a better SMS app" got people on-board and let them "upgrade" to secure messaging. That's why I started using it in the "TextSecure" days.
But, sadly, I agree with Signal's reasoning here. Mixing the two protocols was annoyingly complex. If someone stopped using Signal, messages you sent to them would never arrive - with no notification. And there's no obvious way to "downgrade" to SMS.
I was working on RCS a decade ago. I'm glad to see it is finally getting somewhere - but I'm sad it is at the expense of better and more secure protocols.