The lede is quite cleverly buried here. Key sentence is "We will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association"
So no end to end encryption and the bubbles will most still likely be green.
Even with the mutterings about improving security etc it's unlikely that the GSM Association will ever sign off on any encryption scheme that isn't weak or backdoored.
To be clear, based on what I've read: "no end-to-end encryption" simply means that Apple is not going to either a) develop their own, proprietary E2EE system for RCS, or b) pay Google for theirs.
And good grief, get over the bubble color thing. Of course RCS isn't going to have blue bubbles; those specifically indicate an iMessage message. Maybe they'll be green, or maybe they'll be purple, orange, or red, to differentiate them from SMS. That's all the different colors are for: a useful indication of what messaging system that user is currently using.
If Apple didn't color the bubbles differently, you'd see people moaning and complaining that there's no way to tell who you can and can't make a group chat with, or whether you can send them stickers and reactions.
Personally, I have no experience with it—but I don't doubt that it exists for some people.
What I object to is people insisting that the "status thing" some people have going on with it is Apple's responsibility to fix by removing useful indicators of who's using what messaging services, or that Apple is deliberately and maliciously making people not using iMessage somehow look worse.
(On the other hand, I think there's a perfectly legitimate argument that Apple could and should open iMessage, and is choosing not to do so for relatively selfish reasons. I don't have a strong opinion on that one either way.)
So no end to end encryption and the bubbles will most still likely be green.
Even with the mutterings about improving security etc it's unlikely that the GSM Association will ever sign off on any encryption scheme that isn't weak or backdoored.