Beeper Mini is back

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-mini-is-back

by erohead • 3 years ago

1064 1230 3 years ago

blog.beeper.com

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

I have a feeling they're not going to stop being a thorn in Apple's side for quite a while...

res0nat0r2• 3 years ago

They're either going to keep getting their access cut, or sued into bankruptcy. You can't really piggyback off another companies service in violation of their TOS without things working out poorly for you IMO.

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

Yeah, not the point. The point is to prove that it's possible and relatively simple, and the only reason Apple operates this way is to lock people into the ecosystem.

PrimeMcFly8• 3 years ago

Except what they are doing is specifically legal under the DMCA, and protected under the EU SDA. Under the EU SDA, Apple might even have to assist them.

kernal4• 3 years ago

sued into bankruptcy

Good luck with that. I'd like to see this play out in court with a technically inclined judge. Be careful what you wish for.

goodluckchuck2• 3 years ago

There’s no piggybacking. Beeper’s messages never hit Apple servers.

smt882• 3 years ago

They only thorn they're creating for Apple is forcing them to do anticompetitive things while they're being investigated for anticompetitive practices in places like the EU.

In terms of technical problems, Apple will likely be able to keep up their end of the arms race with less than 1/2 of a single developer's time. The cost to continue patching Beeper out of their systems will be a fraction of a rounding error for them financially.

hamandcheese10• 3 years ago

I doubt that this can be done that easily without recklessly endangering the experience of their 1+ billion users.

Beeper on the other hand has far fewer users, who by now likely expect a bad experience. Beeper can be way more agile.

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

How are they funding development?

not_your_vase2• 3 years ago

So what's the big idea? Keep playing whack-a-mole with Apple until Apple changes their TOS and sues their pants off, or until they run out of open holes? Or is there a bigger end goal?

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

Force Apple to either allow or implement iMessage interoperability via competitive tactics, not regulatory means.

not_your_vase2• 3 years ago

They don't implement it exactly due to their competitive tactics...

(It was exposed in a recent courtroom hearing that Apple has seriously considered making it available on Android, but they decided that having it Apple-only is a serious benefit for them)

richwater2• 3 years ago

I don't want millions of Android phones being able to spam me on iMessage, thank you very much.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

So what's the big idea?

It's now an ongoing PR stunt, since Eric and Brad were rewarded handsomely in attention for the first hack.

Laaas• 3 years ago

What grounds would Apple have for suing?

ethanbond16• 3 years ago

"No reverse engineering" is a pretty standard TOS item.

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

I suspect the end-game of Beeper is to explicitly set a legal precedent or at the very least a highly publicized fight over adversarial interoperability, something no other company dared to do (because most tech companies nowadays themselves make money out of interoperability restrictions).

I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that is willing to fund it.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

As an Apple customer, I applaud their tenacity. Every time Beeper's protocol hacks are fixed, Messages gets more secure.

radlad4• 3 years ago

By what metric? Arguably, users are less secure since "fixing" Messages (i.e. breaking Beeper) means Apple and Android users lose a secure communication channel.

Beeper isn't "hacking" Messages... they've implemented the protocol.

chewmieser2• 3 years ago

I don't think the parent is that concerned with Android <-> Apple communications with that statement.

Reverse-engineering a closed protocol and distributing an Apple Binary (IIRC correctly) are a bit more than just "implementing a protocol."

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

Arguably, users are less secure since "fixing" Messages (i.e. breaking Beeper) means Apple and Android users lose a secure communication channel.

If you hack a secure communications channel so that unauthorized client software/hardware can pretend to be authorized software/hardware, how does that make the channel more secure?

fkyoureadthedoc• 3 years ago

To lose something you'd have to have had it to begin with. Users aren't gaining an additional secure messaging channel would be a more accurate description.

I personally won't waste my time trying to be an early adopter of this. I suspect the upcoming RCS support will be the only "apple native" way to have non-shit tier messaging between android and iOS, and Apple will keep breaking Beeper if they can.

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

Beeper is not exploiting any kind of vulnerability. The user is voluntarily providing their Apple ID credentials (or doing the SMS verification process to prove ownership of their number), just like they would on an iPhone.

sgerenser• 3 years ago

What’s the over/under on how long before Apple blocks it again?

oldandboring4• 3 years ago

I would give it up to 48 hours. It's important for Apple to architect their fix carefully so that they don't break the world for legitimate users.

For my part, I had fun using Beeper Mini last week while it lasted but I cancelled my subscription and I'm likely not going to use it again due to the risk of incoming messages getting dropped on the floor when Apple blocks it again.

odiroot2• 3 years ago

Happy user of normal Beeper, have no skin in this particular game though.

Still, I'm glad they brought it back, and hope will continue this route.

Anything that helps break the high walls of that garden.

nickvec• 3 years ago

Over or under on 24 hours until they are "not back" again?

solardev7• 3 years ago

We’ve made Beeper free to use.
Our Play Store ranking dropped precipitously on Friday.

Really have to wonder what their play here is. What did they think would happen?

Isn't it always going to be a cat and mouse game with Apple? Who would want to use a messaging service that works some days but not others, much less pay for it?

radlad4• 3 years ago

It seems clear to me that Beeper is playing a game of chicken with Apple. If Apple continues to cut off Beeper's access, it makes an antitrust argument stronger (a la https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/06/eus-imessage-antitrust-invest...)

solardev7• 3 years ago

In the event Apple loses in Europe, I wonder what would happen. Would they really open up iMessage worldwide? Just in Europe? Shut it down there altogether since WhatsApp is already so popular there anyway, and their US market is bigger?

And what does this do for Beeper, anyway? If they open it up, wouldn't Google and Samsung just integrate it into their first party messaging clients?

It seems as precarious a position as Trillian was back in the day: only usable if the source protocols don't shut them out, but only valuable if those protocols don't open up completely. The moment either happens, they die.

fooey• 3 years ago

The Beeper vs Apple battle is already getting the attention of US legislators

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/10/senator-warren-calls-out-a...

mike_d7• 3 years ago

If Apple continues to cut off Beeper's access, it makes an antitrust argument stronger

I'm not sure why everyone thinks it is an antitrust issue when it isn't. There is no legal obligation to support your services and software on third party platforms.

okdood642• 3 years ago

The comment from the author's original post is quite the non-answer.

"Side note: many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?’ To be honest, I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client. The internet has always had 3rd party clients! It’s almost like people have forgotten that iChat (the app that iMessage grew out of) was itself a multi-protocol chat app! It supported AIM, Jabber and Google talk. Here’s a blast from the past: https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759

What did they think was going to happen? Who knows? But I guess they thought it was no big deal.

dbg31415• 3 years ago

Doesn’t this push traffic that didn’t pay Apple through Apple’s infrastructure? These guys should know better than to waste dev hours on a business problem. Apple isn’t going to allow this. No amount of shady spoofing or reverse engineering will change that. If you want to send an iMessage just get an iPhone. Pretty basic requirements.

martinky242• 3 years ago

These Beeper folk sound a bit entitled. As was repeatedly mentioned in the other thread [1], building production applications on top of an undocumented and unsupported (in terms of backwards compatability, etc) API is a nightmare that should be avoided. Apple has every right to change their API, if they do Beeper will go down, and Beeper will blame Apple. I understand Apple's incentives to not want to be in this situation.

I don't buy their "Beeper unequivocally makes things secure story" either. For one, I do not want to have my Apple ID login routed through a third party. I trust an established, trillion dollar company far more with that sensitive info than I do a fast-moving, eager-to-break-things startup. And the list goes on.

It's an impressive engineering effort, but I really don't believe they're entitled to parasite off the undocumented iMessage API.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38574888

campbel• 3 years ago

I think they are rightly calling out that iMessage as part of Apple's moat building is both bad for their customers and people their customers interact with. And while I agree with you, and I won't be using the service, I think from their POV it is the correct messaging.

richwater2• 3 years ago

Apple's moat building is both bad for their customers and people their customers interact with

I bought into the ecosystem exactly because of the quality and functionality of iMessage. There's absolutely no spam, everything works and the ecosystem is tight-knit.

micromacrofoot3• 3 years ago

I think it's valid feedback from Beeper, but to insinuate that this gives them to right to force Apple to run their reverse-engineered access is where things go a bit too far for me. Apple's customers are not Beeper's customers. They have completely different incentives.

I guess the approach is to try and force Apple's hand or push some legislation for interoperability, but Apple is working on RCS so it's not like they've been completely ignoring criticism...

echelon• 3 years ago

Apple is at a scale in smartphone dominance that they're anticompetitive. There are only two vendors. They control everything about one of the most essential functional pieces of modern society.

A smartphone is essential. Apple and Google tax 30%, control when and how software can be deployed, control browser tech (Apple), prevent web downloads of executable software (Apple) or scare and confuse you about it (Google). They control the payment rails and increasingly enforce using their identity and customer management, so they can sink more claws into business and innovation. They're partnering with governments to be authoritative identify providers. They're usurping payment rails to become the entire payment ecosystem of the future.

The devices are user unfriendly. Can't repair them, can't use third party components, can't replace the battery. Unofficial pieces break core features due to unnecessary cryptographic locks. Updates obsolete old hardware.

Nevermind the petty bullshit about green and blue bubbles giving children (and even adults) fear about their image and reputation. Being bullied for not buying the latest and greatest.

This is scary shit and we're letting them do this.

Nevermind all the fluff of them owning movie studios and music and the arts to keep eyeballs locked.

Car companies wish they had it this good. They'd love to charge you for third party accessories, or to charge McDonalds a fee every time they drive you there. That's essentially the deal Apple and Google are getting.

This is all at once worse than Standard Oil, and comes with heavy Orwellian vibes.

We need more than two vendors, and we need different companies to own different parts of the stack. As it stands, these two companies own everyone and everything these people touch.

solardev7• 3 years ago

As a Google Android user using a Google Pixel and Google's RCS on Google Fi, the messaging system is a total clusterfuck. There's no way to reliably send or receive messages, and sometimes my images will be degraded silently, group messages to other Fi users often don't work before several retries, reactions are totally hit and miss...

IMessage is a much much much better experience. It's not at all bad for their customers. It's a huge plus of that system over Android and other platforms that still try to piggyback off SMS or haphazardly support RCS.

matsemann• 3 years ago

When did HN get so anti-consumer, anti-hacker, anti-freedom, pro-proprietary?

Them taking the fight with Apple should be applauded. A walled down proprietary message platform only a few can use is stupid to fight in favor of.

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

There is nothing quite as hard as making a man understand something that his paycheck depends on him not understanding.

chewmieser2• 3 years ago

I think we can commend their efforts and call out their entitled messaging at the same time. These are not mutually exclusive.

distortionfield• 3 years ago

When the VC money got tangled in the roots.

misnome17• 3 years ago

It isn’t anti-freedom and pro-proprietary to have a view on what you think the law says and what you think Apple’s right to respond is.

The original kid who reversed: Great hacking, I think we can all applaud. This is a for-profit (VC funded?) company charging users by piggy backing off of servers they don’t own or pay for (and using apple binary blobs?).

If they used the protocol they reverse engineered on their own servers that’d be completely different. But that wouldn’t be profitable for them.

vineyardmike2• 3 years ago

A walled down proprietary messaging platform is so common as to be unremarkable. Google has probably 5 in the works right now. Meta has a few, and there’s dozens of others to choose from.

It was really cool news when they reverse engineered the API. It was less cool when they sold paid access to this unofficial API. Beeper is barely pro-consumer because again, they’re charging for something open sourced by a 16yo kid which has no official support.

The green bubble blue bubble story is really tired. Yea it’s real, but it’s not a technical problem it’s a social problem. Haven’t we learned that you can’t out-hacker a social problem?

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

Hackers do things because they can. Apple is entitled to gatekeep their own technology until it is regulated as a utility. To me the anti-hacker spirit is a company thinking just because they did something they subjectively think is good that Apple is then obligated to keep it running.

In what world is Apple obligated to keep a service running which allows unauthorized security related behavior? Such a hole in a service is usually called a security vulnerability and is patched away asap.

jamiek882• 3 years ago

Hacker news is the public arm of a hyper capitalist venture capitalist clan.

It never has and never will be a ‘free spirited hacker place’ despite the name.

Someone1234• 3 years ago

If through magic they were able to make a replacement that didn't utilize Apple's servers/resources (e.g. Point-2-Point), I think you'd find the attitude different.

The inherent problem right now is that they want to create a commercial product using another company's servers/APIs without that company's permission, ultimately leaving Apple picking up the bill (inc. additional support ticket volume, like when iMessage gets locked on a given AppleId).

Is iMessage part of Apple's moat? Absolutely. Is it good for consumers for iMessage to have a hardware lock? No. But even if that is true, this seems like something regulators should be involved in solving.

Plus there is nothing anti-proprietary or pro-freedom that Beeper Mini is doing.

kcb• 3 years ago

Pro-Apple

Workaccount22• 3 years ago

People tasted the fruit in Apple's garden noticed that it tasted really good. So good in fact that it made them go "Is this walled garden actually that much of a bad thing? Because man, I do love eating this fruit."

dev_tty01• 3 years ago

Beeper is trying to build a business based on unauthorized use of another company's servers. Apple customer's pay the Apple premium for their phones and get iMessage at no charge for the life of the device. Beeper charges its customers for a service that is paid for by Apple. How is that ok?

> "only a few can use"

There are about 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world.

As far as proprietary services, the world is full of them. Google, Meta, X, Instagram, .... Apple built a service to provide advanced messaging services to their many customers. It comes with the phone. Should Apple be required to freely give iPhone cameras to people who don't buy their phone? How about the Touch ID module?

There are plenty of cross platform messaging apps available on iOS. The only thing that could be considered anti-competitive is the inability to change the default messaging app on iOS. Apple has fixed this for some of the other built-in apps, but not messaging yet. I would agree that that should be fixed. However, Beeper is not offering an alternative messaging platform, they are selling access to Apple's platform.

stefan_• 3 years ago

You think an E2E encryption messenger is best served by a proprietary, single vendor implementation, with the added bonus of being able to subvert the client at any moment for individual devices?

There are some very weird takes around security on this to somehow twist it into an "Apple good" scenario. No, like literally every other time in history, closed & controlled does not make it more secure.

martinky242• 3 years ago

Isn't Whatsapp a proprietary, single vendor implementation? Isn't Signal a single vendor implementation? I'm confused on your point.

theshrike793• 3 years ago

Like Signal?

To my knowledge, you can't make a 3rd party Signal client and connect it to the official Signal instances.

KerrAvon2• 3 years ago

Giving your Apple ID to a third party is an incredibly bad idea for your security, full stop. Do not ever do this. Any argument that this helps user security because your messages are now E2E is completely undermined by the risk to your identity for literally all of Apple's other services, and that someone could now impersonate you in Messages. But it'd be encrypted!

barnabee2• 3 years ago

No. Apple given their scale and position in the market should be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard for messaging. iMessage should no longer allowed to be proprietary and stay part of Apple.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

Apple given their scale and position in the market should be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard for messaging.

You mean like SMS and MMS right now, and RCS next year? https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

upon_drumhead3• 3 years ago

Why stop there? Why not force every iOS app to support running on android?

haswell21• 3 years ago

If the only thing Beeper does is continue to make Apple look anti-competitive, they've succeeded as far as I'm concerned.

I'm deep into the Apple ecosystem and don't see myself getting out anytime soon. But I think their stance on iMessage sucks, even while understanding the strategic reasons they're doing it.

I don't see this as "leeching off an undocumented API" as much as demonstrating that iMessage is already in a state that allows 3rd parties to interact with it, documented or not. Every time Beeper starts working again, it shines a light on the fact that iMessage was never so locked down to begin with. It also puts pressure on Apple to answer the growing # of their own customers who are frustrated by the limits. These are good things, IMO.

Apple may have every right, but that doesn't make their stance good for the ecosystem or good for consumers. This is pretty clearly about forcing people to switch ecosystems and not about security. If security was the only issue, Apple could easily provide supported iMessage APIs that make it clear that the other user is not a verified Apple user, while still allowing interoperability.

robertoandred2• 3 years ago

Imitating a first-party user isn't the same as being a third-party user.

madeofpalk5• 3 years ago

What's anti-competitive with what Apple does with iMessage? iMessage's lack of popularity everywhere else in the world is proof that competition is able to flourish. Apple is under no obligation to make an Android app, and it's silly to pretend not making an app for another platform is somehow anti-competetive.

The market simply chosing a preference is not anti-competive. iPhone and iMessage is able to compete on it's own merits without competition being artificially hindered.

Pulcinella2• 3 years ago

Someone "hacking"[0] into my bank account shines a light on the fact that my bank wasn't so locked down to begin with, but I still don't want people doing it.

Keep in mind, iMessage also relies on a server component. It's not some peer-to-peer protocol. Apple has to pay for the costs of sending messages, high resolution videos and photos, audio recordings, and supporting iMessage apps[1]. You can argue that this is included in the price of the iPhone/iPad/Mac but obviously is not for random android devices. Personally it doesn't bother me if Apple has to just eat the costs, but it is a cost, and probably a not insubstantial one.

[0] Social Engineering.

[1] Ok how many people actually use these? Still, they are part of iMessage.

mlindner9• 3 years ago

That's a strange argument... It sounds like you're making the claim that every single chat application should be mandatory legally required to have completely open APIs for any clone that wants to pop up and get access to their network.

What chat apps using a centralized server owned by a single company have open APIs that let anyone use them?

bigstrat20032• 3 years ago

Apple has always been anticompetitive to an extent that would make Bill Gates blush, at least as far back as I can remember. They are one of the most toxic tech companies in that regard. I hope that they are forced to open their walled gardens (app lockdowns in particular), but I have no doubt they'll find another way to be anticompetitive. It's just in their company culture.

albelfio• 3 years ago

Devil’s advocate: does Beeper opens up iMessage to spam bots?

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

This is addressed in the announcement, beeper is happy to add a pager emoji to the message metadata to allow for identification.

mareko2• 3 years ago

Spam bots can already use the Mac version of iMessage. I doubt Beeper will change spam levels for iMesssage users.

xd19362• 3 years ago

Your Apple ID login is not routed through a third party when you use Beeper Mini. You don't have to input your Apple ID at all.

Edit: Should have read this new post more closely. They are now requiring an Apple ID, when they weren't before.

mattl• 3 years ago

Phone number registration is not working yet. All users must now sign in with an AppleID.

PrimeMcFly8• 3 years ago

They are not entitled at all, they are filling a void in the market that Apple doesn't want filled. As I understand it this is explicitly legal under the DMCA and the EU DSA,

glasshug• 3 years ago

Anyone have some detail on the copyright law connection here?

wvenable5• 3 years ago

Apple has every right to change their API, if they do Beeper will go down, and Beeper will blame Apple.

They can blame whomever they want, what difference does it really make.

For one, I do not want to have my Apple ID login routed through a third party.

As long as you don't use the service, then you're fine. I don't see why you should even care if other people want to use this service.

duped2• 3 years ago

I don't know where you're getting "entitled" from. They clearly don't care what Apple does, they have plans and designs to work around it.

Beeper isn't "blaming" Apple for being Apple. They're saying that Apple is full of shit when they claim that Beeper hurts the security and privacy of their users.

sigmar• 3 years ago

edit: guess I was wrong

misnome17• 3 years ago

Bad news! This is now Beeper mini works now _according to the very article to which your comment is attached_.

mullingitover• 3 years ago

The part that's wild to me is that Beeper is collecting revenue from their users for this.

Apple doesn't charge for iMessage, and instead that service is funded by device purchases. Beeper is charging people who haven't purchased devices to help them parasitize the infrastructure of the service, and instead of contributing to Apple's operational expenses, they're pocketing the money.

There's no scenario where this stands, even if iMessage came to non-Apple devices Apple is probably going to charge users if they're not buying Apple devices (I can't imagine it being an ad-driven service).

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

The marginal cost of an extra user on the APNS server is extremely small. Hell I bet the overall barrage of spam push notifications across the iOS landscape causes orders of magnitude more load than Beeper users, and Apple doesn't complain (despite push spam being against the App Store rules).

Of course, Apple is welcome to start charging a reasonable fee for the service.

BD103• 3 years ago

That was the point I wanted to make. I don’t see Apple letting Beeper make money off of a service they don’t run. If the app was open sourced and free then Apple wouldn't really be able to stop it. Apple can definitely sue them as a business, though.

eredengrin• 3 years ago

Beeper is charging people who haven't purchased devices

Do you have numbers for that? Sure, some of the users haven't purchased devices, but many of them have an apple device or two and just want access to the network across all the devices they use.

afavour3• 3 years ago

The way I see it Beeper are deliberately poking the bear. They knew Apple would block their implementation (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had this replacement ready to go). You don’t have to trust them, if you don’t want to use the service then don’t.

They’re highlighting the closed nature of Apple’s messaging system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I support them in doing that.

theklr2• 3 years ago

Only question is what’s the endgame? It’s not like they’re going to gain meaningful followers from this. This happens every 3-5 years with something Apple does and all that happens is Apple hardens even more, the little guy gets some press for a month and then disappears into the ethers

mlindner9• 3 years ago

They’re highlighting the closed nature of Apple’s messaging system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I support them in doing that.

Every major chat app is closed though? For example, I use LINE regularly, there's no way to access that chat system through anything but LINE apps.

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

I do not want to have my Apple ID login routed through a third party

Then don't use Beeper.

I trust an established, trillion dollar company far more with that sensitive info than I do a fast-moving, eager-to-break-things startup. And the list goes on.

Thankfully, you don't necessarily have to trust them since the entire process runs on your device.

I really don't believe they're entitled to parasite off the undocumented iMessage API.

Do you also believe it's "parasitism" for a tool manufacturer to create a screwdriver that fits another manufacturer's screw shapes? That's more or less exactly what's happening here - they made a tool that fits the existing proprietary API and interacts with it.

misnome17• 3 years ago

You do have to trust them - you have to trust both apple and beeper not to harvest your messages and personal/contact info.

And stupid analogies help nobody. Which part of your screwdriver is costing the original manufacturer money every time you turn a screw?

I_Am_Nous3• 3 years ago

This is more like a 3rd party releasing a tool that unlocks a proprietary security shroud so you can plug in a wireless router to an ISP POP. You aren't authorized to unlock that shroud or rebroadcast that internet, just like Beeper Mini is not authorized by Apple to use their authorization-required iMessage service.

If I sold internet off that wireless router and the next OSP tech that gets into that POP (rightfully) unplugs it, why should I have any right to call my ISP and chew them out because people gave me money for that internet access?

fimdomeio• 3 years ago

Did apple had any right to hijack sms, feels a bit entitled. When I first got an iphone I didn't really understood what was going on with me messages, and why they were different for some people. The interface is so subtle that most people think they are sending sms.

kernal4• 3 years ago

building production applications on top of an undocumented API

Sort of like how Apple builds their apps?

oefrha3• 3 years ago

Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis, typing status, read receipts, and all modern chat features.

There are numerous chat apps with those features, so I can’t see why people were “desperate” about it at all. Better yet, those existing chat apps aren’t likely to stop working tomorrow.

SpaceManNabs8• 3 years ago

iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together

is also laughably false lol. iPhone users just want android users to get an iphone.

theshrike793• 3 years ago

...in the US.

The rest of the world uses Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal.

This blue/green bubble SMS but not SMS -thing is a 100% an American issue.

hu32• 3 years ago

iPhone users just want android users to get an iphone.

That's what Apple wants. So they maintain arbitrary limitations to incentivize their customers to also want it.

"Android? You're buying it wrong"

_gabe_3• 3 years ago

It’s false based on what? Your own anecdotal experience? I have a friend group that has iPhones and Androids. We went on vacation and had to jump through so many hoops just to share our pictures. We don’t care what devices everybody uses, because why the heck should that matter?

The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple wants their walled garden benefits nobody but Apple. So your claim that this is laughably false is easily refuted by my anecdotal evidence.

People that are friends or family with differing devices do exist. I know, it’s shocking. And it would be nice to have something as simple as messaging just work without all these stupid UX downgrades for no reason at all.

standardUser4• 3 years ago

Yes, because Apple has very successfully manipulated iPhone users into thinking this. It's both impressive and depressing how effectively Apple has achieved this marketing goal.

mrlatinos3• 3 years ago

Facts. US iPhone users are so incredibly entitled, the suggestion that they're going to move to a third party app to accommodate Android users is laughable.

s3p4• 3 years ago

No we don’t! Consider this. I want to send a picture to my friend. If iPhone, I can iMessage it to them easy, no compression and fully encrypted. If android, I can text them but MMS will degrade the quality. I can send it over instagram or Snapchat but that will also degrade the quality. I can send it through google photos but wait!! That also degrades the quality. Not to mention none of these methods are e2ee. The only lossless option is email. No one in college is emailing me photos btw. So if they don’t have an iPhone generally I’m out of luck

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

None of the existing chat apps have established themselves as viable alternatives

Meta has trashed their privacy image so FB Messenger/WhatsApp non-starters for lots of Americans. Signal, telegram don't have enough PR, 90% of Americans have never heard of them. Kik was popular but died due to their financial trouble. Discord/Groupme have found success by marketing themselves towards particular niches, but people don't really think of them as general-purpose messaging apps

venusenvy474• 3 years ago

I'm curious why privacy issues of WhatsApp and Facebook are only a concern for Americans. Does the rest of the world know that WhatsApp has been owned by Facebook for 10 years?

andrewmcwatters• 3 years ago

I like that this is happening, because Apple will want to prevent it from being possible, and they'll dig their own regulatory grave doing it.

bsenftner2• 3 years ago

This is subtle and much bigger issue than it looks. Marketing people have a real issue with the inability for a single messaging solution, and paying the Apple tax. And unless you did not realize, marketing kind of run/control a lot, far more than it appears.

ciabattabread• 3 years ago

Who gives marketing their phone number? Email or bust.

bsenftner2• 3 years ago

Why do you think two factor authentication with phones got so popular? To get your phone number!

jimsimmons• 3 years ago

Crazy that Apple gets to ship a proprietary messaging app as the default

hu32• 3 years ago

Apple is lucky that iMessage usage in EU is irrelevant.

Otherwise this kind of thing would have been regulated already.

See what's happening to Safari on iOS. Took a long time if you ask me.

everfree• 3 years ago

Google does it too, with their proprietary messaging app that extends the RCS protocol.

robertoandred2• 3 years ago

What's proprietary about SMS?

LordKeren• 3 years ago

I think one of the underlying issues is that many are now going to be hesitant to even bother with Beeper Mini anymore. I don’t think there is going to be a high tolerance for this game of cat and mouse from the end user perspective

I also don’t think goading apple is going to do much here either. Regardless of the current feelings around apple’s walled garden, they are not going to suddenly keel over and give up on locking out these commercialized attempted to bypass their security

philomath_mn• 3 years ago

Yeah I was super excited to try it out last week, but then it went down and I didn't receive important messages from my wife (didn't even realize the app was down).

I probably won't try it again until it has a few months of uninterrupted service.

SparkyMcUnicorn• 3 years ago

Right now Beeper Mini only works without registering your phone number, and I'd be ok if that's all I ever got. In fact, I hope they make number registration optional if they do get that working again.

I still have my Macbook if/when Beeper is cut off again.

wvenable5• 3 years ago

It definitely might be better at the moment without registering your number as then you won't have messages disappear into nothingness if the service goes down again.

I missed a few messages when I switched from iPhone to Android because I hadn't deregistered my number from Apple.

I don't think I'd use my existing Apple ID for this -- probably easy enough to create a new one with a new email.

lxgr18• 3 years ago

Number registration is and always was optional on Beeper Mini!

graphe4• 3 years ago

iMessage is reliable, ‘free’ and encrypted. Beeper mini is unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn’t recommend it anymore to my Android friends.

unshavedyak7• 3 years ago

Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?

oxguy3• 3 years ago

Read the post; they've made it free now. They said they'll consider charging again if/when things stabilize.

seanp2k2• 3 years ago

All Apple needs to do is send a few scary C&D letters from their army of lawyers and this will be done. If they run the infrastructure for imessage, I'm sure there's something in a ToS somewhere that talks about spoofing device IDs and unauthorized use of their services blah blah Apple's sole discretion.

In theory I love it but in reality it'll be dead soon as Apple has too much to gain from the walled garden they've spent decades and billions building and defending.

mmastrac• 3 years ago

A $3T monopolist sending scary C&D letters tends to get the attention of the government.

mrajcok• 3 years ago

I've been on the receiving end of this - as an individual maybe, but as a committed startup not necessarily. Rooting for them!

sneak6• 3 years ago

Beeper isn’t using Apple services (at least not in Beeper Mini, their new e2ee iMessage client), and thus is not subject to any Terms of Service from Apple.

They’re publishing client software, which is protected expression provided it’s original and doesn’t infringe any trademarks or copyrights.

The end users are the ones potentially violating the ToS by connecting to Apple APIs.

Apple has no basis to tell Beeper to cease and desist from the publication of software that it is legal to publish.

turquoisevar• 3 years ago

Apple doesn’t even need to do that. They can send the DOJ after Beeper.

Many people hear about a reverse entering exception in the DMCA and call it a day. But it’s not that simple.

Reverse engineering is allowed for a very narrow case, namely interoperability between two software programs (for which you have a license granting you legal permission to use), as defined in paragraph 4 of Section 103(f).

The DMCA decidedly does not permit you to use reverse engineering to package someone else's software or service and sell it.

Jurisprudence also established that EULAs that explicitly prohibit reverse engineering supersede the exception granted in the DMCA, see Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, 320 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2003)[0]

Apple has explicitly forbidden reverse engineering in their macOS license agreement[1], the iOS license agreement[2], and the Apple Media Terms of Service[3].

Agreement with those terms is necessary to reach the parts that need reverse engineering.

There’s also the matter that the pypush repository seems to include Apple’s proprietary code, which wouldn’t fall under reverse engineering.

Worst of all, even if reverse engineering was allowed, it still doesn't allow you to connect to other people's servers. The Computer Fraud Abuse Act of 1986 explicitly prohibits unauthorized access to computer systems, and the DMCA exception doesn't supersede the CFAA.

A lot of states have criminal statutes that mirror the CFAA.

So, at this point, it wouldn’t be inconceivable for Apple to try and get the DOJ involved.

0: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/320/320.F3d...

1: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSSonoma.pdf

2: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS16_iPadOS16.pdf

3: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/

Beached• 3 years ago

let's be honest. it isn't for security. security is just the hand they wave to prevent people from tapping their walled garden.

pathartl2• 3 years ago

I'd be willing to put up with it if it were free, like the good ol MSN messenger / AIM days.

Miner49er14• 3 years ago

It is free

m4jor• 3 years ago

"We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on ."

ehsankia2• 3 years ago

I agree that right now, most people shouldn't give this a try. But at some point it will reach a steady state.

Either Beeper manages to make a client that is truly indistinguishable from old iPhones, and gets to exist for a few years, or Apple somehow manages to patch all existing iPhones in a way that makes it impossible to spoof (not sure if that's possible with old hardware that don't have a secure enclave).

okdood642• 3 years ago

But at some point it will reach a steady state.

I highly doubt that these guys will win. I would bet 5 AAPL on it.

kickofline• 3 years ago

If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini users.

Why would they not just shut it down if Apple asks, wouldn't that just do the same thing (beeper users can't send messages)

kbf2• 3 years ago

I'm guessing they think Apple might consider an opt-out (or more likely opt-in) setting to allow messages from other platforms.

qrohlf• 3 years ago

I’m curious what their best-case outcome is here. It’s fully transparent at this point that Apple has no appetite for a third party iMessage client on any platform and will take whatever technical steps needed to prevent this from happening.

I’d wager heavily that even if Beeper plays cat-and-mouse to the point where they’ve exhausted Apple’s budget for blocking them and somehow managed to avoid Apple’s legal team putting a stop to things via other channels (very unlikely), Apple’s next move would likely be to release some kind of official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of the space to Beeper.

It’s easy to read this as a pure publicity stunt on Beeper’s behalf, but that’s not what I’m getting from the tone and content of these announcements. And I also don’t think the market for a paid all-in-one chat app is large enough to justify the expenditure that this iMessage for Android project represents, if the endgame is ultimately a PR stunt.

They seem too smart to realistically think that Apple is going to just shrug and let them continue unbothered after a few rounds of back-and-forth, so what are they playing at?

starkparker• 3 years ago

Best-case outcome is that Apple decides engaging in an arms race with a motivated competitor isn't worth the time or effort and they enable some (probably limited) interop.

I can imagine a "blue-green" type of message that's encrypted but not from an Apple device; Apple keeps their status symbology and users on both ends get E2E encrypted messages to and from Apple device users without Apple users switching to a third-party app.

Apple's never had to confront this because nobody's had this much success smashing the walled garden on iMessage before. If Beeper is persistent and good enough, they'll have the first foot in the door of such an outcome.

Worst case is Apple keeps escalating the fight knowing that Beeper can't outlast them. Everybody loses in this situation; Beeper and Apple both burn a bunch of money with no benefit to anyone, iMessage users see people popping into and out of chats because Apple keeps blocking them, and most non-Apple users continue sending unencrypted SMS messages because Apple users won't switch off iMessage.

Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage's "blue bubble" is by far the most arbitrary. Allowing strictly controlled interop with non-Apple devices doesn't change how good iMessage is, it only dents the ecosystem's most superficial status symbol.

I'm rooting for the better outcome but expecting the latter.

wvenable5• 3 years ago

Worst case is Apple keeps escalating the fight knowing that Beeper can't outlast them.

I feel like this is in Apple's DNA. Perhaps Beeper is lucky that Apple needs to support a lot of legacy devices and they might not be able to fully plug this hole without creating a big support nightmare.

microtonal8• 3 years ago

Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage's "blue bubble" is by far the most arbitrary.

100% I have been an iPhone user since 2009, but for me the most likely reason to go to the competition is not if it gets iMessage (I don't live in the US). The most likely reason is that Apple has become utterly boring when it comes to innovation. I recently purchased an iPhone 15, coming from the iPhone 13, I can honestly not say what has changed or improved besides the camera, the underused dynamic island, and USB-C [1]. And USB-C is nice, but pretty much a letdown because they capped it to USB 2 for market segmentation and it still has excruciatingly slow charging. At least on the Android side, for better or worse, interesting stuff is happening: from Fairphone's phone that is repairable with a single screwdriver, foldables (finally a phone that is small and big), Samsung S-Pen, to Nothing's slightly whimsical back LEDs. Also, pretty much every phone above 300 Euro has a good OLED screen with 120Hz, whereas I am still looking at 60Hz (because segmentation).

At any rate, Tim Cook will fight this nail and tooth. By now it's very clear that he has a blind spot where he thinks Apple is entitled to some things and is not sensitive to different viewpoints in other cultures/legislations. He thought Apple is entitled to a 30% cut. But he pushed it so far that the EU will regulate them. Now they have to offer side-loading and open the iPhone to alternative app stores. This will lead to segmentation of the platform, because some apps will only be available in app stores with better terms for the developer.

Ideally Apple would stop Beeper in its tracks by releasing an Android client themselves, because then they could dictate their own terms (orange bubbles, feature segmentation, etc.). Now they open up themselves to the risk that regulators in some regions will require opening up iMessage.

[1] Of course, the spec sheet contains more improvements, like a better SoC, but it is barely noticable.

deergomoo• 3 years ago

To be honest, given Apple has already committed to adding RCS support next year, the market for this thing is limited anyway. Apple has said they won't implement Google's encryption extension, but your average person doesn't care much about that anyway. They just want to be able to group chat and send media to their friends.

mlindner9• 3 years ago

Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage's "blue bubble" is by far the most arbitrary. Allowing strictly controlled interop with non-Apple devices doesn't change how good iMessage is, it only dents the ecosystem's most superficial status symbol.

I've said this before and I'll say it again here. No Apple device user I've ever met thinks of the blue bubble as a status symbol. This is only something that Android users for some reason covet. In fact I've never heard it mentioned by any Android user in real life. This is only an internet thing that a tiny segment of people, like those who post to hacker news, seem to care strongly about.

I personally couldn't care less if Android got iMessage or not as long as it doesn't force any changes on the Apple side of things. It doesn't prevent me from communicating with Android users in any way currently. I also don't want to see any spam start to appear via iMessage, as there is currently none of it.

altairprime• 3 years ago

I think they’re a lawsuit startup, as in funded in service of the speculative opportunity of favorable court case and/or political outcomes stemming from their intentional behaviors. Think Uber being funded to set case precedent versus taxis, in order to pave the way to deprecating humans taxi drivers in favor of robots. VCs love speculation and Beep’s PR has been quite effective at riding the coattails of pre-existing beliefs to push for their desired legal outcomes, from which they would profit.

lacker• 3 years ago

The best case outcome is to get publicity leading to US and EU antitrust regulators to file a lawsuit against Apple, both of which Apple loses. The conclusion of this lawsuit is that not only must Apple allow access to iMessage, they also must allow changing the default for every component of iOS - messaging app, browser, app store, let you replace Siri with other voice assistants - and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%. Same rules apply to Android.

Okay, that might not be likely, but you did ask about the best case outcome.

misnome17• 3 years ago

US? When has that ever happened in the last 30 years? I’d buy the EU stepping in to mandate interoperability though. I’d welcome that!

But… shouldn’t mostly everyone here view needing the EU to force the behaviour of a US company kind of against the entire supposed benefit of the US system and the purpose of the domain this forum is hosted on?

pb72• 3 years ago

If we’re talking best case outcomes, then why settle for 10%? 0%! Free distribution for everyone.

dexwiz• 3 years ago

Apple is THE consumer tech company in the USA. Its their darling. The only way the USA will rule against Apple is that if they are losing them money elsewhere.

dimitrios1• 3 years ago

The actual best case outcome is consumers become increasingly educated on these issues and use the market to not reward Apple for these practices, rather than relying on the coercive apparatus of the state that easily falls victim to corruption and regulatory capture, until such the time where we can have an actual functioning government again that isn't strangling small businesses, close the revolving door and get money out of politics and, yeah.. pigs flying and all that.

jwells893• 3 years ago

I would hope that this “best case outcome” also comes with regulations to keep other giants (mostly Google) from marketing and cross-promoting their way into dominance on iOS, creating monopolies in the process.

For instance, Google apps shouldn’t be able to drive Chrome installs by presenting a sheet offering to download Chrome every time I tap a link in them, as they do currently.

sircastor3• 3 years ago

and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%.

In danger of being an Apple apologist, the app store fee for the vast majority of sellers is 15%.

mmanfrin• 3 years ago

Ironically, if Google were ever allowed to replace siri on iPhones, I would probably never buy an android again.

snakeyjake2• 3 years ago

How is this an actionable anti-trust issue?

iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the minds of most users globally.

In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms.

Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service?

The purpose of anti-trust is to increase competition and prevent unlawful monopolies. Apple is a flea on the tail of an ox when it comes to messaging, as capable of influencing the market as I am.

zffr• 3 years ago

Let's say that Apple is forced to allow third parties to use iMessage. Can't Apple just make the cost prohibitively high?

vhold• 3 years ago

That's the best case for most of us, but probably not Beeper Mini, since the cat-and-mouse game is their killer competitive advantage. With the barriers gone the space will be totally flooded with options, not to mention just normal Android integration.

hjkdgshkdfjhg• 3 years ago

Best case outcome for who? Super happy user of Apple here, I would hate that outcome.

Apple shit just works, I like my wallet garden, don't want third party trash or getting spammed from android clients.

kanbara• 3 years ago

this might be the “best outcome” for some nerds or android users, but it certainly isnt the best outcome for most consumers.

iOS has resisted a lot of the crap and cruft of windows and android because of its opinionated nature. sure, siri could use improvement, but at least iPhones never fail to call 911.

GeekyBear3• 3 years ago

While they are at it, can they file an antitrust action against Google for making changes that break ad blockers and third party clients for YouTube?

idonotknowwhy• 3 years ago

Reminds me of how bleemcast made game console emulators officially legal

mlindner9• 3 years ago

A lawsuit to do what exactly? Require Apple release an iMessage client on Android for free? That'd get thrown out pretty quick anywhere with a functioning legal system.

The only antitrust comparison I can see was Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer, but that doesn't really work because that was Microsoft preventing other competing chat clients from accessing the wider internet, not Microsoft's own servers. There has never been an antitrust lawsuit won anywhere that forces a company to open its own servers that its paying for open to anyone who wants to access them.

kernal4• 3 years ago

How many ways does Apple have of blocking Beeper interoperability without major changes to their protocol that breaks existing functionality? They've already exhausted 1 of them without much delay.

rany_2• 3 years ago

Apple’s next move would likely be to release some kind of official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of the space to Beeper.

You say this as if it's a bad thing, I think that would be mission accomplished for Beeper... tbf, though I suppose their moment would be over by then.

theultdev• 3 years ago

Right?

For all Android users this would mean there's now an official client.

For Beeper devs this means there's less RE needed for their client.

Even if Apple released an official app, Beeper is still useful for aggregating other services, something Apple will never do.

I see noone but Beeper winning in this game barring legal skirmishes.

fragmede• 3 years ago

Define "over". Opera the web browser earned $80 million on $380 of revenue and I don't know anybody that uses it. If Apple releases an Android iMessage client, but Beeper still has enough paying MAU so they can pay their employees and investors, is anything "over" just because there's competition? It isn't a winner-take-all like a game of football or something.

summerlight• 3 years ago

Apple’s next move would likely be to release some kind of official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of the space to Beeper.

This looks like a great outcome?

ankit2193• 3 years ago

I think they ignored a rarely talked about but important aspect. iMessage is free for Apple users because it comes bundled with all Apple products. The cost to run iMessage and deliver millions of messages daily must be a significant number.

With beeper, they are enabling the functionality for android. That is every android user signed up with beeper will end up costing Apple some money to send messages to iphone (or to send messages to other android users using the same thing).

In my opinion, next step for Apple is to mandate having an apple device to be able to use an Apple ID as part of their TnC. They will keep closing loopholes in the meantime, but don't think Apple will let beeper win this, purely because of the can of worms it opens up.

gruez2• 3 years ago

I'm sure most android users would be happy if iMessage-on-Android was included as part of the $0.99/month icloud subscription.

blitz_skull2• 3 years ago

It’s actually really surprising to me (from a technical perspective) that this wasn’t already the case. Based on what I’ve read they’re basically spoofing the fact that they’re an iDevice which seems like it should be much more difficult than Beeper has made it look.

danaris6• 3 years ago

Based on my understanding, Beeper is using false or duplicate Apple device credentials in order to authenticate with Apple as "being a legitimate iMessage endpoint".

There's no need to take the—rather draconian—step of locking out all Apple users who are using Apple IDs through the browser; all Apple needs to do is ban the false device IDs and possibly close the loophole that allows Beeper to create them.

Any time you see something that looks like a jailbreak, at its heart is a vulnerability in the device or service that is being jailbroken. That is, fundamentally, a security flaw, and fixing that security flaw is all that's necessary to prevent the jailbreak. The fact that this one is with one of Apple's services, rather than with iPhones or other Apple devices, means that they don't even have to push out some software/firmware update and hope everyone applies it: all they have to do is update their own servers, and Beeper will be locked out again.

microtonal8• 3 years ago

This aspect is ignored, because it's clear that Apple blocks third-party clients to maintain its dominant position in the US (social unacceptability of green bubbles among teens).

If cost was the problem, they could offer a subscription.

pinewurst• 3 years ago

"exhausted Apple's budget for stopping them"

Is this "THX1138"? Is this the Manhattan Project?

It's Apple management asking a messaging lead to spend a few minutes figuring out how Beeper is masquerading and submitting a fix.

lxgr18• 3 years ago

Beeper seems to be masquerading as an Intel Mac. These don’t have any hardware attestation, and many of them aren’t receiving software updates anymore either.

This might be extremely hard for Apple to fix.

standardUser4• 3 years ago

I'm just glad to see Apple's proprietary gatekeeping being challenged and this app has helped bring "green bubble bullying" to the fore. A lot of Apple fans seems to applaud Apple for acting ethically (at least relative to other big tech) and I hope they now view this marketing tactic by Apple as unethical and demand it be stopped.

Sephr2• 3 years ago

It isn't generally illegal to publish software that interoperates with third party platforms that don't wish to be interoperated with.

If this uses copyrighted keys then it will be a bit more tricky (although fair use could still come into play).

jejeyyy772• 3 years ago

we've seen this play out so many times. It's over.

foxhill• 3 years ago

the optics are already less than ideal for apple. beeper mini dismisses the any technical challenge apple may claim a hurdle to android having iMessage.

i don’t doubt this will also get shutdown in the near term, but i’m 70% confident in a surprising acquisition & continued support from apple in the longer term.

it will be hard for apple to continue to claim they are pro-user when they appear to be this hostile toward android users.

jkubicek3• 3 years ago

I'm 0% confident in a surprise acquisition by Apple. Beeper doesn't seem to offer anything that Apple couldn't do themselves.

hamandcheese10• 3 years ago

With that logic you would expect Apple to never make acquisitions. They've got the money in the bank to do just about anything.

roamerz3• 3 years ago

> it will be hard for apple to continue to claim they are pro-user when they appear to be this hostile toward android users.

They are pro user - for Apple ecosystem users that is. And I’m good with that.

Disclaimer: Yup I’m an Apple user. I pay good money to keep the riffraff out - or at least ID them by not being blue.

haswell21• 3 years ago

They are pro user - for Apple ecosystem users that is. And I’m good with that.

I don’t really agree. The interoperability impact means that I’m affected as an iPhone user too. I’m only not impacted when I communicate with other iPhone users.

And it matters to me that my choice of device impacts the users I interact with. Apple just knows that their lock-in is strong, and the impact is disproportionately felt by non-Apple users.

This is not the same as being “pro Apple user” IMO. They’re just able to get away with it with their own user base because they’re less aware of the impact.

modeless11• 3 years ago

Acquiring Beeper would paint a giant target on the iMessage team. "Reverse engineer iMessage to make an Android app and get a payday from Apple, guaranteed!" 0% likelihood of that.

It would make more sense for Google to acquire them, and start the inevitable court fight with the best legal team money can buy instead of whatever Beeper can afford right now. But Google would probably prefer to stay out of it, so it remains a David and Goliath fight as long as possible.

haswell21• 3 years ago

For sake of argument, if they acquire the Beeper team and continue supporting it, there is no further incentive for more Beeper-like apps to emerge.

Apple would at that point have a leg to stand on when they go after non-native apps, and I think this would actually be a deterrent for copycat attempts and not something that encourages the behavior.

hcurtiss2• 3 years ago

Honestly, I just want the ability to add and remove Android users from group chats without having to start an entirely new thread. If RCS fixes this, then I'll be thrilled.

garysahota932• 3 years ago

Feedback for the Beeper team if they are reading: there is a non-zero amount of us that own Apple devices (like MacBooks or iPads) and not iPhones. For those it applies to, what if you leveraged the legitimate devices we do own as the spoofed devices used by Beeper Mini to register?

Don't know if that would solve the Phone Number registration part, but thought I'd throw this out there

ibeckermayer• 3 years ago

That’s how standard Beeper does it, or at least used to do it: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/pebble-founder-launches-be...

garysahota932• 3 years ago

Beeper cloud used the device as a relay mechanism. I'm suggesting the same on-Android-device implementation, but rather than randomly generating an apple device to send to Apple's registration servers, they use a device I legitimately own.

No relays (so preserves security) & harder for apple to identify (because to them it'd be as if I'm just using my iPad)

modeless11• 3 years ago

I believe that this already works. If you register your phone number to your Apple ID on an iPhone, then Beeper Mini (and/or Cloud) should be able to receive and send messages using your phone number in iMessage just as, say, your Mac can.

SushiHippie• 3 years ago

You can self-host this matrix bridge which is developed by beeper.

So you can host this on your mac, and then you can join that bridge using matrix.

I've used this once for whatsapp, and it worked quite well, also stuff like polls and reactions worked. Though I don't know how good the imessage bridge is feature wise.

mholm• 3 years ago

If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini users.

Presumably this would only be if Apple agreed to allow the beeper mini users by default? I appreciate Beeper's stance on all of this, and hope they can continue operating.

shazzdeeds• 3 years ago

It’s also either naive or a troll. If that did become the handshake it would be reverse engineered and spoofed by bad actors just the same.

1231232131231• 3 years ago

The point isn't to prove that it's beeper sending the message, the point is that Apple could give users an option to ignore Beeper's messages.

Either way, I doubt Apple would come to an agreement and would most likely continue to play the cat and mouse game (like they do with people who jb)

solarpunk• 3 years ago

props to these guys for intentionally getting into a cat and mouse game with apple over this.

surely there's security implications to all this, if you've got a chat app where there's some internal belief that it can only run on certain platforms, also controlled by your company, there may be some assumptions made about how things work... can't help but imagine beeper itself opens up more vectors for stuff like the recently-in-the-news push notification mass surveillance

i have been wondering if theres other outcomes i'm missing between the two obvious results: 1) a more tightly controlled, locked-down iMessage ecosystem 2) some kind of explicitly supported third-party api

turtlesdown112• 3 years ago

3) loss of access to tools that worked for the hackintosh community. But who cares about the true hackers here?

zer0kool• 3 years ago

I'm always a proponent of rooting for the underdog. But, in this scenario I am finding it hard to justify doing so. Beeper isn't doing this for some mystical enthusiasm for hacking and exploiting or sticking it to the man. It's motives are purely incentivized by profit which makes it hard to for me to root for. If this were a small time hobbyist providing a solution for an existing problem, sure I'm all game for that.

felixguilherme• 3 years ago

how long will it last this time?

jessekv• 3 years ago

Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure. That is a fact.

It seemed like it would make spam and scamming over iMessage worse. At least it requires an Apple Id now.

sudosysgen• 3 years ago

It was possible to send automated iMessage messages from Macs forever, and it's not exactly impossible to jailbreak iPhones, either.

Kuinox2• 3 years ago

Tried to use the app. 2FA error, and can't connect to iMessage, so I can't use the app :|.

Kuinox2• 3 years ago

An update fixed everything.

gormandizer• 3 years ago

Beeper on main(ish)stream media.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/12/11/apple-shutters-new-app...

madeofpalk5• 3 years ago

Messages App is the default chat app for all iPhone customers. Not only is it the default, iOS makes it impossible to change the default chat app. In the US, where the majority of people have iPhones, this means that the easiest way to chat is by tapping on your friend’s name in your contact list and hitting the ‘message’ button.

This is not true. On iOS - iOS has APIs for third party messaging and voip apps to intergrates natively into the system where they are presented as equal peers to iMessage and default phone app.

When I view contacts in the first party Contacts app, it presents message & call as the top options for my contacts. The first time per-contact it'll prompt you which you want to use, with third party options getting equal billing compared to first-party, but after that it'll remember.

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

Default option is still usual phone call/iMessage in a lot of places - in some you can long press and select another option, but not all.

Also, merely opening a separate app doesn't really help. How about instead of having 5 different apps (that the system one sometimes generously allows you to open), you had one app that can seamlessly speak all protocols?

You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from different providers) and it'll seamlessly merge them in the system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same for messages?

tinus_hn4• 3 years ago

You wonder how anyone survives in all of the world where nobody uses iMessage (which is everywhere except the US). How do people even manage to open WhatsApp? How do people survive this horror!

haswell21• 3 years ago

You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from different providers) and it'll seamlessly merge them in the system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same for messages?

And on top of this, other voice apps are merged with the list of incoming calls, e.g. discord calls show up in the same list as phone calls.

This really highlights the intentional degradation of chat behavior. From a pure user experience standpoint, Apple’s own product does not meet their own philosophy and guidelines applied to other categories of app.

rezonant18• 3 years ago

Or just one app that spoke a single protocol that all phones implement, like SMS used to be. That way you wouldn't have to install and juggle 20 apps to cover all of your friend's preferences, and manage which type of messenger they prefer over time.

robertlagrant• 3 years ago

why can't we have the same for messages?

I wonder if e2ee makes this difficult.

dwaite8• 3 years ago

You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from different providers) and it'll seamlessly merge them in the system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same for messages?

Because there are standards there - SMTP and MIME and HTML for email, vCard for contacts.

For the contacts app, whatever fun graph or RDF or whatever format you use for contacts, your extension has to provide contacts via the surface of the SDK, which luckily had vCard to influence it. That may mean that the contacts app cannot support round-trip edits of those contacts, and you need to go back to whatever source to change things.

Same with calendar events - applications can expose a calendar, but this is typically not editable and you need to go back into the application to change things (e.g. to remove a session from your calendar, go into the conference app and say you no longer intend to attend it).

The message apps typically have none of this. They don't have commonalities in terms of identifiers (and may all claim authoritative use of say a phone number, with no approval of the carrier). They have no consistency in formatting. They have a varying set of additional features, none of which are designed to be compatible (e.g. person-to-person payments in Facebook Messenger vs in iMessage). They may also support extensions by third parties, business accounts with custom routing and workflow, etc.

XMPP and later Matrix tried to create standards around this, and for XMPP there was a brief time we thought there'd be buy in by larger parties like Google and Facebook. I'm very curious to see if we see uptake in ActivityPub, or if the same product/market forces make its popularity transient as well.

mlindner9• 3 years ago

you had one app that can seamlessly speak all protocols?

There's nothing that does that though so this seems a bit of an odd statement.

MitchellKnight• 3 years ago

Isn't this a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or other US laws? Doesn't the fact they are trying to make money off of this negate any ethical hacker arguments?

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

Beeper doesn't "hack" anything though, it uses the exact same authorization mechanism as a real iOS device and grants the user access to no more than a real device would.

I agree that the CFAA can be abused to try and prosecute this (as well as the DMCA), and I suspect Beeper is intentionally hoping for (heavily publicized) litigation to settle this once and for all and set a precedent.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

it uses the exact same authorization mechanism as a real iOS device and grants the user access to no more than a real device would.

And a hacker that social engineers someone's bank password is entering just like the account owner would. "Hacking" doesn't have to involve exploiting a technical vulnerability. It's just unauthorized system access, regardless of methodology

nkcmr• 3 years ago

Yeah, I am not expecting this to be a protracted game of cat and mouse. Apple will just sue them in the end; that'll put a REAL quick stop to this.

I wish things had more interoperability, but Apple is under no obligation to implement it or be okay with it. And honestly, I believe them when they say that this is a security/privacy risk; even if it does serve their anticompetitive tendencies.

haswell21• 3 years ago

Tech journalists have noted that this kind of reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is specifically covered (allowed) by applicable laws. I’m not well versed in the related laws, but it at least seems on the surface that lawsuits may not be the end here.

If it’s a security issue, that’s on Apple’s architecture. They can cat and mouse this, but the more times they catch the mouse, the worse this looks for Apple because it effectively means that iMessage was never secure to begin with. Only time will tell how effectively they can address this.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

Sue them on what grounds?

wanderingmind2• 3 years ago

And what if Beeper open sources their client? How is Apple going to stop that?

knowald• 3 years ago

It might be a controversial topic, but this post had some oddly rapid upvotes for HN.

I'm trying to understand what the target of this hacky iMessage spin-off of Beeper is. The whole idea of subscription-based monetization. Rather no way of Apple not patching quickly, dealing with this as soon as it raises attention.

But maybe that was the intent of a hack they found? A clever marketing strategy, to gain some rapid traction with the controversy, highlighting their project?

xd19362• 3 years ago

For me, it's less about craving a specific service, and more about watching tech drama and idealism at war.

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

I saw the announcement on Twitter and came over here to talk about it. People are really excited about Beeper.

meowtimemania• 3 years ago

I’m not excited about beeper but am excited about the drama around beeper!

standardUser4• 3 years ago

Gatekeeping iMessage has become one of the most despised facets of Apple's many gatekeeping techniques, primarily because of widespread bullying.

mrlatinos3• 3 years ago

Bingo. I was excluded from a group chat of ~15 people because I was the only one without iMessage.

Eventually they included me. I showed one of them the chat in Google Messages and he was amazed at how nice it looked, since Android supports Apple reactions. They're also jealous of all the emojis I can react with (and I admit I do it just to rub it in their face).

macinjosh• 3 years ago

"Moat" is SV buzzword that means monopoly as a goal. These people want to own the thing and not let anyone benefit from it other than themselves.

The fact that Beeper Mini is possible in the first place categorically proves Apple is making a decision here to restrict interoperability. If we have regulators for anything it should be for things like this. At Apple's scale it is completely unacceptable behaviour.

The whole iMessage things lost me as a 23 year customer of Apple. I just don't care about them anymore because they clearly don't care about their customers. Plus they've release the same goddamn phone for the last decade. Tim Cook has been coasting on Job's legacy and times almost up for them being on top.

spullara• 3 years ago

I'm glad that at least you need an Apple ID for this to work. Apple probably closed the spam hole.

resters4• 3 years ago

Apple/Google/Microsoft/Amazon do a lot of extremely petty things that should disgust us and give us a glimpse at how this pettiness and adversarial conduct might escalate in a GAI world:

- Amazon does not carry Google branded products. ([edit] they do now once again, whew!)

- Search in GMail is nearly completely broken when you have too many messages, yet Google (ostensibly a search company) can't deliver good email search at scale so they don't bother.

- Apple allows lots of customization of push notifications and notification behavior (lock screen, badge icons, etc., etc.) yet does not simply let the user turn off push notifications that are advertisements or promotions.

- Google does not let parents choose third party whitelist "experts" for kids content recommendations. The status quo is that most kids either have parents who spend hours curating or they get to watch all the generative content garbage that Youtube hosts.

- Google Maps contains significant glitches and confusing navigation suggestions even though there must be terabytes of data showing that they routinely result in wrong turns and rerouting.

These are all examples of market failures that are fostered/continued by various anticompetitive aspects of the markets these firms operate in.

Not sure why anyone would expect Apple to allow Beeper Mini when clearly iMessage is meant to secure a competitive advantage at the expense of apple customers convenience and freedom.

odiroot2• 3 years ago

- Amazon does not carry Google branded products

What do you mean? I just searched on Amazon UK and can easily buy Pixels, Home Nest etc.

resters4• 3 years ago

Ahh they seem to have become available again. That's a step in the right direction.

endisneigh2• 3 years ago

How can this be taken seriously when basic facts are wrong. Go on Amazon and check for Google products.

Apple has no way of telling you what an advertisement or promotion is, and it’s inherently subjective.

resters4• 3 years ago

As noted in the comment, Google products are once again available on Amazon. They were removed for several years not long ago.

Ads are subjective? Apple has many criteria for rejecting app store submissions, why not add "misleading push message content not labeled as advertising"

wrboyce2• 3 years ago

Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.

From (section 4.5.4 of) the App Store Review Guidelines. GP is incorrect on many points.

sergiotapia• 3 years ago

Sprinkle some seasoning on these guys, cus they're cooked.

There is no path forward for integrating with Apple unless Apple opens up imessage. Fat chance. These guys took years and years and years to switch to a non-idiotic charging port! :(

I wonder how viable their business is without imessage integration. They are still aiming for all-in-one chat app - but that's not new and has been done at least a dozen times before.

How is this VC scalable?

kernal4• 3 years ago

Why are Apple users so upset about this? It's almost as if they don't want interoperability with Android users. And please spare me the spam excuse.

theklr2• 3 years ago

Why do android users want something they have everything else ahead? I don’t want interoperability. If I did I’d use the other messaging apps that are far beyond apple’s. The only value I see is stubbornness with older family as many see iPhones as a simpler device

globular-toast2• 3 years ago

I'm going to go with a combination of Stockholm syndrome, crabs in a bucket and snobbery. Apple users like to think they're in a special little club.

wrboyce2• 3 years ago

Speaking as one Apple user, I don’t think of myself in a special club - I just like that my shit works. What I don’t understand is why Android users are so vested in ruining it for me.

Can’t have nice things.

foobiekr• 3 years ago

Spam. And you knew that.

dabinat• 3 years ago

I don’t really understand the long-term purpose of Beeper. Apple has already announced RCS, which will fix most complaints about text messaging interoperability.

There is still the question of encryption, which Beeper is strongly pushing, however Apple has announced it wants to develop an RCS encryption standard, so it sounds like it will be solved at some point in the next few years.

At that point, all Beeper becomes is a service to turn a green bubble blue.

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

Group messages. RCS doesn't have a good solution for this.

foooorsyth• 3 years ago

At that point, all Beeper becomes is a service to turn a green bubble blue.

This is a bigger deal than encryption itself to most people using Beeper. Beeper requires you to divulge your Apple ID password to Beeper anyways, so arguing for security is quite strange. People literally just want blue bubbles on their Android — that’s the main appeal.

jonplackett2• 3 years ago

I’m really curious how this is possible.

Why wouldn’t every iMessage sent be tied to an Apple ID?

If Beeper can do this, wouldn’t that mean anyone else with the same technique could basically spam iMessage users across the world?

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

A friend of mine got her Apple ID compromised years ago and cloud sync brought back the spam that the attacker was sending. iMessage spam is not new - whether it will increase remains to be seen.

jonplackett2• 3 years ago

It just seems like an insane way to set things up. I must be missing something because Apple is not usually a crazy company.

mareko2• 3 years ago

It's interesting to see how polarizing this topic is. I'm curious if people are just reacting according to the "party line" so to speak, ie based on whether they are iPhone or Android users.

We can do a poll to confirm this without revealing your phone preference.

Just respond with "Affirmative" if you are an iPhone user and dont like this OR you're an Android users and like this. Likewise, respond with "Negative" if you're in the opposite camp.

misnome17• 3 years ago

I think you are mixing up what you are calling “the party line” with a mixture of - people cheering for the world they want (EU yet again forces a US company to change behaviour), and people who view the chances of this (at best interpretation legally grey) gamble working without that as extremely unlikely.

mrweasel• 3 years ago

It's not really that simple. I'm an iPhone use, who thinks Android is kinda pointless, but I don't understand why Apple hasn't opened up the iMessage protocols years ago, or at the very least made their own Android application

mlindner9• 3 years ago

I'm surprised people are defending these guys. This is paid-for illegal breaking into systems.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

I’m hoping Apple find a perm shut down solution. A proper iMessage client for android can’t come from a hack.

I do applaud them for getting a home run in PR for themselves

sentientslug• 3 years ago

Without phone number registration working isn't this far less useful?

flycatcha• 3 years ago

Surprised this doesn't have more upvotes, without phone number registration Beeper Mini isn't actually back.

faeyanpiraat• 3 years ago

I got my first iMessage spam from an email address ever. I wonder if this whole thing is related..

neilv• 3 years ago

I get why many people might want this, but open standards are the way to go, and this seems to be playing into the hands of proprietary in some ways.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

Beeper's ultimate goal is to promote the Matrix protocol, and bridge proprietary networks to the open protocol

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

Beeper has caught a ton of media attention in recent weeks but I truly do not understand it. The SMS protocol has been around for decades and works perfectly fine with iPhones. If you want rich media and other bells and whistles, use WhatsApp. How often does someone whine so loudly about insisting on using the closed, Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends need to pay a monthly subscription for a third party interop app?

duped2• 3 years ago

If you want rich media and other bells and whistles, use WhatsApp.

People in America don't use WhatsApp. There's no reason for me to switch when none of my friends/family/contacts have it.

How often does someone whine so loudly about insisting on using the closed, Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends need to pay a monthly subscription for a third party interop app?

Enough that people don't date people who use Android

jay-barronville5• 3 years ago

SMS is fundamentally insecure. I don’t want to use WhatsApp.

yoavm• 3 years ago

It's a USA thing. No ones uses WhatsApp. Everyone has an iPhone. If you're using Android everyone knows it and they'll shame you for it.

UmYeahNo• 3 years ago

I tell you what, if you're a young person you can be publicly shamed for having the wrong color bubble, or outcast by being excluded from a group chat. To you and I that probably doesn't make sense, but for a big portion of the young, phone using population being unable to participate in the iMessage ecosystem is a huge deal socially. You are essentially excluded from the friend group, you're excluded from conversations, and it carries over into real life because you've been excluded and that carries an impact -- you're an outcast. It doesn't have to be rational to be true.

Being excluded from a group chat has a huge social impact for younger people.

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

Those young people are probably doing themselves a favor by disassociating from peers who are shallow and prejudiced enough to exclude someone for, of all things, not using a specific (proprietary!) chat app.

Workaccount22• 3 years ago

I've experienced this first hand, even as an adult (well 20 something). I'd be left out of group chats because MMS breaks everything. I'd even missed events because it was all planned in the group chat, and assumed someone would mention it in person to me.

misnome17• 3 years ago

If you are a young person you can be publicly shamed for literally anything. If not this then a million other things.

dkjaudyeqooe5• 3 years ago

The SMS protocol has been around for decades and works perfectly fine with iPhones.

It's not that simple, you get discriminated against for having a different color bubble and using up people's SMS allocation.

We should whine about (communication) interoperability, it's critically important for everyone. Purposefully or negligently creating incompatibilities is anticompetitive and generally toxic.

vips7L2• 3 years ago

you get discriminated against for having a different color bubble and using up people's SMS allocation

It's really not about either. It's about UX. SMS and MMS message UX is terrible.

julesallen2• 3 years ago

So many reasons not to use SMS: No indicators that the message was actually received (2023 and SMS is still flaky on deliveries), no read receipts, no presence notifications, no typing notifications, no encryption in transit or rest, no escaping group chat spam... that's just the high points.

lopkeny12ko3• 3 years ago

All those real-time features are antipatterns that do nothing but create anxiety and a false sense of urgency. We use Slack at work, and the typing indicators/presence detection/etc. drive me (and many others) downright insane.

I agree that encryption in transit and rest are important, but there are open and verified solutions like Signal. It seems like extremely poor security hygiene to take Apple's word that their closed-source chat service is actually secure as they claim for it to be.

grishka8• 3 years ago

No indicators that the message was actually received (2023 and SMS is still flaky on deliveries)

Long time ago when I was actually sending SMS messages to real people, then-current phones had a "delivery notifications" setting you had to turn on. Then you would receive a notification when your message has been delivered.

maratc2• 3 years ago

Living in the country where absolutely no one uses iMessage, the whole kerfuffle about the colour of the message bubble leaves me completely flabbergasted.

I mean, probably the curvature of the Earth is involved, but from here this looks like a very small hill to die on.

fullstop3• 3 years ago

It's not the color of the message, for me. If an Apple user sends me a video it comes through as an extremely low resolution and highly compressed video. Look at the unwanted grackles at my mom's bird feeder: https://i.imgur.com/7gBt22i.png

Fantastic, right?

badwolf• 3 years ago

Because it's sent as MMS. Apple implementing RCS next year will mitigate that.

RKearney• 3 years ago

iMessage is not about the color of the bubble. While the color is what's most noticeable to the end user, a non-iMessage chat means:

  1. Unable to rename group chats
  2. Photo sharing quality is lowered  
  3. Video sharing quality is abysmal
  4. Messages traverse carrier networks in plain-text
  5. Loss of undo send and delete
  6. Loss of inline replies
  7. Loss of typing indicators and read-receipts (if enabled)

Just to name a few.

maratc2• 3 years ago

I won't doubt the fact that you know that other cross-platform messaging apps exist.

misnome17• 3 years ago

I’d add that photo and video sharing might not be free as even today it depends on your carrier plan.

… So it’s an extremely useful signal to tell you to use a different messaging app with this person. Glad we sorted that out!

throw3108225• 3 years ago

Me too. But rather than the colour of the bubble, what leaves me flabbergasted is the fact that there is a country where people seem to associate a stigma to owning a phone of a brand perceived as being "less luxurious", and even take some pleasure in inflicting some annoyance on those in the outgroup. And all this because, hear, iMessage is the default app. Not because of some choice, or because alternatives aren't available. No, because default.

jay-barronville5• 3 years ago

I’m a former Android fanatic turned iPhone user. I still own Android devices, but my primary device is an iPhone. I haven’t had something excite me as much as this Beeper Mini situation in years—I love that they’re doing this.

One of the things that got me to switch to the iPhone a few years ago was the fact that it seemed Apple was actually doing a lot of the right things when it came to privacy and security. Obviously, I was still pretty skeptical of them, but compared to Google, Apple’s track record seemed a bit more trustworthy.

The way Apple tries to lock you in though while stifling competition is extremely disappointing. They’re on the wrong side of history.

kulahan• 3 years ago

They're on the wrong side of history.

Say that to their market cap. Seems a lot of people appreciate what comes with that drawback. Revealed preferences can be a sonuvabitch.

freedomben9• 3 years ago

yep. And GP themself is an example of why this works. Their practices sold an iphone and converted a fanatic Android user!

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

I will say that to their market cap. Such an insane capitalization on digital sales can only be achieved by extinguishing the alternatives your platform can host. It's a regressive featureset that can (apparently) only be reversed through legislative demands a-la Digital Market Act.

Many, many companies have had huge market caps while funding anti-humanist or exploitative processes. Given Apple's scale you almost have to assume that they're abusing something lucrative.

joshmanders3• 3 years ago

Yep, this is an unpopular HN opinion, but I actually like Apple's walled garden. It's safe, it's friendly and I don't have to worry.

shepherdjerred3• 3 years ago

SMS is spammy enough -- I don't want to see spam via iMessage. These third-party clients make spam much more viable.

I love open standards, open source, whatever, but I want some things in my life to just work well without caring about the details. My phone is one of those things.

ceejayoz21• 3 years ago

it seemed Apple was actually doing the a lot of the right things when it came to privacy and security

Isn't this one of them?

A security hole existed that permitted Beeper to pretend to be your Apple device. In this case, it was being used for non-nefarious purposes, but that doesn't mean everyone would. Apple's fixing that hole seems in-line with your desired "privacy and security".

jay-barronville5• 3 years ago

Isn't this one of them?

I don’t believe so. Beeper Mini uses Apple’s protocols the same way the native iMessage uses it; they didn’t exploit a security hole (unless you classify the device faking part as a security hole—I don’t). They maintain the E2EE flow.

gkbrk8• 3 years ago

A security hole existed that permitted Beeper to pretend to be your Apple device.

_An_ Apple device. Not _your_ Apple device.

endisneigh2• 3 years ago

The way Apple tries to lock you in though while stifling competition is extremely disappointing. They’re on the wrong side of history.

Fascinating that you say this when you literally switched to iPhone yourself.

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

How is it fascinating? Apple exerts pressure on customers to buy their products, and then further pressures to keep them integrated with Apple's ecosystem. Here, a customer gave in to the first pressure and is disappointed by the artificial friction Apple uses to upsell their customers.

So... are we shocked that iPhone customers don't de-facto agree with everything Apple does? Or the fact that OP would be willing to criticize something they paid for and supposedly identify with?

It's really not fascinating at all. It reads like a perfectly level-headed and candid criticism of an ecosystem by someone who isn't invested in the success of one particular company. It's almost too lucid for HN.

misnome17• 3 years ago

while stifling competition

How? Lock-in, sure - but unless you do a lot of market gerrymandering (which Epic tried but got laughed out of court), how does anything apple do stop people competing?

It’s not e.g. paying google large sums of money to avoid making its own competitor. Being big isn’t itself anticompetitive.

And on this exact topic - there is a whole ecosystem of messaging apps that exists. They just have to build their own userbase.

colordrops2• 3 years ago

If you want privacy a de-googled android phone is far better than apple.

jay-barronville5• 3 years ago

I believe this to be true, but to be honest, back when I made the switch, I was also considering the convenience factor.

knd775• 3 years ago

Yes, but a truly de-googled Android phone is a huge pain. Many apps rely on play services, and the open source alternatives still don't fully work.

DeIlliad• 3 years ago

This is some ways like Youtube and adblock. Apple is completely within their right to try to kick Beeper to the curb but I also enjoy watching a scrappy company like Beeper try to circumvent Apple's attempts to shut them out.

Because of how likely it is to be killed though I don't think I shall be adopting it personally.

supermatt• 3 years ago

Apples response:

These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.

Didn’t it recently come to light that apple have been “exposing” that metadata to government agencies for years? Maybe they should stop exposing metadata rather than blaming others for replicating their implementation!

How does a 3rd party implementing their API mean there will be “unwanted messages, spam and phishing attacks”? Are they accusing the 3rd party of doing that, or do they believe 3rd party software is inherently inferior to their own (which constantly needs security updates).

averageRoyalty4• 3 years ago

Because by abusing an older style auth method, they skip a lot of the checks required to start iMessaging people currently.

This methodology can be abused by SMS scammers, phishers, etc to easily target the iMessage network that users may often feel has a higher default level of trust.

WendyTheWillow• 3 years ago

You can't imagine how exposing a new, automatable interface might increase spam?

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

There is no doubt that Google will refund every single customer that asks (they are way more flexible about refunds than Apple - I've known people who were able to get substantial amount of IAPs from games refunded just because they didn't like the results they got). I suspect those refunds will be net negative for Beeper.

nikanj• 3 years ago

I wonder how far I would have to dig before I found the way Google is funding Beeper Mini. They are a sacrificial lamb, getting lead to slaughter so Google can ask EU regulators to stop Apple’s anti-competitive actions.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

Considering beeper is coming after Google's closed chat networks too, I doubt it.

ur-whale• 3 years ago

Try as you may, you will not escape the village

https://youtu.be/op7IgFbT8l0?t=194

bentt2• 3 years ago

The whole green bubble thing with Android SMS on iPhone is a problem, but the solution is to get everyone to use a different chat app. Apple will never give this up.

Google could be leading that charge and providing a world beating chat app that works across all phones and all desktop devices. They have every reason to provide the best chat app in the world and yank iPhone users over to it. Instead they have given up on chat. The Google Hangouts/Meet chat situation is a disaster on iPhone and on desktop. They don't even try. It's proof that they are lost.

JeremyNT2• 3 years ago

The whole green bubble thing with Android SMS on iPhone is a problem, but the solution is to get everyone to use a different chat app. Apple will never give this up.

There are so many competitors in this space, you really can't claim it's for lack of trying.

Defaults are powerful, especially for Apple users.

microtonal8• 3 years ago

It's not just that defaults are powerful, it's the network effects. When WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook, there was a strong movement in Europe to move to other messengers. But it never really got off the ground because everyone is on WhatsApp. Trying to live without WhatsApp in some European countries only leads to social isolation (a bit like trying to live without iMessage in the US).

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

but the solution is to get everyone to use a different chat app

And how do you do that?

bentt2• 3 years ago

Google could just leverage the very popular Gmail app and start piping people into chat from there. They don't even try. Their Hangouts/Meet app on iPhone is a withered husk.

kevincox2• 3 years ago

Google could be leading that charge and providing a world beating chat app that works across all phones and all desktop devices.

The tried, many times. Google Talk, Hangouts, YouTube Chat, Allo, Google Chat and probably others that I missed.

RCS may be their most successful attempt yet in the US by hijacking SMS which I guess is fairly popular.

unstatusthequo• 3 years ago

They sure are trying hard to get sued.

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

I suspect they are hoping for it and have a rich benefactor who's willing to see this fight to the very end, in hopes of setting a precedent.

exabrial• 3 years ago

Apple is writing their own death sentence here. Beeper Mini's case will definitely be used against them when their anti-monopoly case inevitably comes about:

1. Forcing a monopoly when they force-migrated their users to iMessage

2. Maintaining said monopoly by keeping third parties out

Best thing they could do is put third party clients into a MFI like program and loads of red tape.

freedomben9• 3 years ago

Why do you think an anti-monopoly case will ever come? Europe has dropped it, and US pretty much everyone in power (and all their families/friends) is an iphone user. They're probably completely unaware that there's a problem, and even if made aware they have positive vibes for Big Gray

microtonal8• 3 years ago

The EU hasn't dropped it. The consultation period is still ongoing, the news was that the EU is only tending towards not regulating iMessage, but it is not set in stone yet:

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/imessage-will-reportedly-g...

It is very much possible that the current kerfuffle has some bearing on future regulation.

That said, iMessage is not really big in Europe, Whatsapp is, so it's more interesting for the EU to regulate that.

tinus_hn4• 3 years ago

A case against a monopoly with a minority market share. Good luck with that!

jvolkman• 3 years ago

As far as I know, Apple has the majority of the market in the US where iMessage matters most.

mlindner9• 3 years ago

1. No one is "force-migrated to iMessage". Have you never used an iPhone before?

2. Requiring an application made by the company to access the servers owned by a company has never in history been called a monopoly before. The precedent that'd set would be pretty laughable. It'd basically make it law that everyone has free access to private servers of any company if they can reverse engineer the protocol. You could say goodbye to anti-cheat systems that block third party clients from online games.

biorach• 3 years ago

How is it better than, e.g. Whatsapp ?

znpy• 3 years ago

I just wish Apple to get into another anti-trust case, ideally by the EU, over this.

sarahintampa• 3 years ago

fwiw, updating the existing app didn't work. I had to uninstall/reinstall. After authenticating with Apple vis Beeper Mini, my iPhone says a "Mac now has access to iMessage." (via https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-ope...)

malwrar• 3 years ago

Relying on the assumption of an “authorized client” is fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism, as this Beeper saga demonstrates. A curious 16 year old casually figured out how to make a client be “authorized”, and a motivated party just demonstrated basic interference from Apple can’t stop it from continuing to practice guerrilla interoperability. Apple might be able to sue Beeper out of existence, but lets not pretend this approach is any meaningful defense against spam.

misnome17• 3 years ago

Do we know that beeper wasn’t cut off by e.g. an automated spam algorithm?

I saw lots of technical discussion in previous threads that stated that they were using the same faked hardware ID for all messages… that would seem an obvious red flag.

freedomben9• 3 years ago

I'm dying to know the technical details, but I wouldn't advise Beeper to disclose because it will just make it easier for Apple to block them.

modeless11• 3 years ago

Beeper Cloud was running for years before, and Apple released a statement at the time they blocked Beeper Mini. This was not automated.

lxgr18• 3 years ago

The only thing this really demonstrates is that non-update-able software DRM doesn't work and Apple didn't introduce a robust hardware attestation mechanism early enough.

hn_throwaway_99• 3 years ago

Relying on the assumption of an “authorized client” is fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism, as this Beeper saga demonstrates.

That's fundamentally false given how Apple is a hardware company, and going forward they can ship a cryptographically secure hardware attestation mechanism. The issue is simply that older Apple devices were shipped without this capability, and Apple doesn't want to break them to prohibit Beeper.

But make no mistake, in a few years when those older devices are fully deprecated, there is nothing preventing Apple from shipping essentially uncrackable hardware attestation.

wnevets• 3 years ago

edit: nm, their help page explains it.

averageRoyalty4• 3 years ago

We—of course—expected a response. What we didn’t expect was 1984-esque doublespeak. The statement is complete FUD. Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure. That is a fact.

Is it? Their argument about a potential increase in spam (by removing the existing annoyance barrier of signing up to iMessage with a phone number before getting full access) is valid. And from their perspective, a third party app could be doing anything with the messages once unecrypted, despite Beeper's claims to the contrary.

Don't get me wrong, it's obvious Apple went looking for the first 'valid' reason to kill Beeper Mini. I also own a ~~Beepberry~~ Beepy, so I am a fan. But this isn't FUD at all, this is a potential risk to their userbases' privacy (as well as their bottom line).

mike_d7• 3 years ago

If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini users.

As an iPhone user I would love for them to do this so I can not communicate with these users. The green/blue bubble gives me an indication of the encryption being used, and presenting a blue bubble while the messages are being MITMed (how Beeper works) is something I want to be aware of.

modeless11• 3 years ago

Beeper Mini does not MITM messages. E2EE is maintained throughout. More so than iMessage actually, which sends all your encryption keys to Apple in the most common configuration (iCloud backup). Where's your concern about that?

mike_d7• 3 years ago

That is not true. iMessage content is encrypted in iCloud with keys stored in your keychain only accessible to your devices. When you add a new device to your account it learns the keys from one of your existing devices and requires touch/face ID approval. In an "all devices lost" situation the keychain is backed up to iCloud but encrypted using a key stored in an HSM that requires authentication using things only you know but are never transmitted to Apple using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protoco...

arilotter2• 3 years ago

Beeper Mini does not MITM messages - it's a reverse engineering of how iMessage works, and runs entirely on-device, without putting messages thru Beeper's servers. It talks directly to Apple and pretends to be an iPhone.

You're thinking of Beeper Cloud, which does iMessage thru a Mac Mini in the cloud.

mike_d7• 3 years ago

Even if it is done on device, the Beeper app is an effective MITM on what should be communications between official clients. It could have security issues, be logging everything to disk, or include a third party analytics SDK that is snarfing data for marketing. Like I said, if they want to flag the communications as being from an unofficial client I am ok with that.

Shekelphile2• 3 years ago

Beeper Mini does not MITM messages - it's a reverse engineering of how iMessage works, and runs entirely on-device, without putting messages thru Beeper's servers. It talks directly to Apple and pretends to be an iPhone.

It doesn't matter. It's closed source and not easily audited - they could easily just be doing a naive solution and piping every message back to themselves after it's decrypted by the client.

xyzzy_plugh• 3 years ago

The underlying connection method is open source, for anyone to review.

SSPL sure isn't open source and I'm certainly not reviewing this. At best it's source available. I'm all for separating the meaning of the term from OSI's opinions but this usage misses the mark.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

Final result: Apple releases official iMessage client for android, but messages sent from it show up with a little green android icon in the corner. :)

g0atbutt• 3 years ago

The funniest outcome with this whole “Apple vs. Beeper” saga would be if Apple said, “Fine use the iMessage protocol. We won’t break interoperability and you can even have full feature parity…

BUT… Any messages sent this way will still show up as the dreaded “Green Bubble”.

(I hope Eric and the Beeper team can pull through!)

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

If the green bubble (or teal bubble or whatever) works with iMessage, I will be happy. It's about the functionality, not the status symbol.

For many people, it is about not looking like a brokie to their peers, and that's what apple counts on.

kbf2• 3 years ago

Messages sent via SMS or iMessage already look identical to the recipient, the only distinguishing feature is a small header at the top of the conversation that says either "Text message" or "iMessage".

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

SMS doesn't support emoji reactions, read receipts, typing indicators, high quality pictures/video, or groupchats over 10 people. These are deal-breaker for anyone that texts regularly

riedel• 3 years ago

Got myself a apple ID for fun but cannot sign in, as SMS second factor fails in Beeper Mini. Wonder if they found another way again to detect the 'fraud'.

oldandboring4• 3 years ago

You're way ahead of me then. Out of curiosity I tried to register a new Apple ID to use with the updated app and the registration page throws 400 at me no matter what I input.

issafram2• 3 years ago

At what point does Apple start a lawsuit? I hope they don't, but I can't see them ignoring this.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

What grounds can they sue them on?

issafram2• 3 years ago

That it's a proprietary system and Beeper reverse engineered it

k310• 3 years ago

There ARE alternatives, as posters have noted. In an iMessage to an Android user, I shared some information. Android user said that I could share the info with third user if I were on WhatsApp, but I choose not to use apps owned by companies built upon surveillance capitalism, and soon, using customer data to train AI. (Which may include Apple). Hmmmmmmm.

Guess what? Signal locks out non-Signal users, WhatsApp locks out non-WhatsApp users (AFAICT, I don’t use others, and Signal is refusing to work on my systems for reasons I don’t know, and I can actually live well without it)

The bubble with bright white text on a bright green background hurts only ME, the Apple user with old eyes, and I have offered old Apple gear to friends so we can FaceTime, a nifty way to reuse rather than recycle gear.

magnio• 3 years ago

Not living in US so it's fun to see people poking at big corporations like the mouse-and-cat chase of ad-blockers and anti-ad-blockers. Unfortunately, in the end, it is usually the big companies that have both the moral and technical high grounds, just like YouTube and Reddit did.

Also funny to see HN trashes on Google for their Web Environment Integrity while Apple pulling off the biggest attestation scheme in history (they even shipped attestation in Safari for a year before anyone noticed).

TeMPOraL4• 3 years ago

This clearly isn't going to be solved through technical means. It makes me wonder - if Apple were to stop obstructing interoperability, how much the resulting market for competition to iMessage and other parts of the walled garden be worth? A couple billion dollars? With today's valuations, probably closer to trillions.

Why then VCs aren't willing to spend a fraction of that - say a couple billion - to invest into a crack team of lawyers and sue the shit out of Apple over this issue? When at least one side of the suit is a corporation, my understanding is that American justice system is basically the game of who can outspend whom. Surely enough VCs could outspend Apple on this while still securing some probable profit in the end?

Why is this not happening?

Nextgrid31• 3 years ago

So much of the current tech companies derive at least part of their profits out of restricted interoperability. A legal precedent allowing adversarial interoperability would be the death of any "engagement"-based business model, aka most of tech nowadays. Alternatively clients would pop up left and right that will strip out all the "engagement" nonsense (as well as the spyware/malware), and those will no longer be stoppable by legal trolling.

Such a move would completely kill off VC's (already sick) golden goose. They would lose more than what they'd win.

grishka8• 3 years ago

In some countries it's already legal to reverse engineer software for the purpose of interoperability.

NelsonMinar• 3 years ago

Some useful history, the AOL/MSN chat wars: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/

AOL finally "won" that one by making a buffer exploit in their own client part of the required protocol. Later a court required them to allow messaging interop (as part of the Time Warner merger). They never implemented it.

altintx• 3 years ago

That story has been playing on loop in a dark corner of my brain the last few days. It's as close to an identical circumstance as I can imagine.

jorvi3• 3 years ago

Did AOL really win in the end though?

My youth was in the late 90s and 2000s and I don’t know a single soul that used AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo. I imagine all of them must have been hoping for the reverse at that point, access to MSN.

hattmall2• 3 years ago

Everybody was on all three for me. That being AIM and ICQ then later MSN. I don't remember much Yahoo messenger usage, just gaming on Yahoo, but everyone was on ICQ.

chankstein383• 3 years ago

Yeah, what? I grew up (in the same era) using AIM and Yahoo, ICQ was a little before my prime. Everyone I talk to about those days used them as well. MSN was fine but AIM and Yahoo were where it was at for the bulk of my early years of instant messaging with friends. At one point a friend even made me an AIM account because I was using MSN and they wanted to chat with me but didn't want to do it through MSN.

Obviously just 1 anecdote but I just wanted to share that my experience and your experience were dramatically different.

manmal• 3 years ago

My friends were all on ICQ and MSN, ca 2001-2007 was when I heavily used those.

doublerabbit6• 3 years ago

Y!M was used by niches as is Telegram to Discord, I found.

Unless you actually sign up you tend not to find anyone using it. But when you do, it all appears out of nowhere.

Same as when you buy a car and suddenly everyone has the same colour/model.

I used Y!M for NeoPets stuff when I was 14, and MSN for school but never ICQ or AIM.

Those time's were specially magical.

aflag• 3 years ago

In the US everyone used AIM, in Brazil everyone used MSN. Never met anyone using yahoo. ICQ was big before that (mid-90s).

nerdix2• 3 years ago

You must have been very young in the 90s because AOL dominated the late 90s. And it carried over into the early 00s with AIM even as people started to drop AOL as an ISP.

MSN was more of mid-00s thing. The 90s were all AOL though. I knew people who used ICQ (it was definitely more of a nerd thing) and Yahoo Messenger too.

doublerabbit6• 3 years ago

Thank you. I've been needing to read something retro like that for a while now. You scratches that itch.

Sephr2• 3 years ago

Clients could probably hook/trap a fake buffer exploit for protocol compatibility without the security concerns. This ends up becoming a game of cat and mouse resulting in even more intricate technical workarounds and hacks.

nojs• 3 years ago

That would be pretty hard in general because you’d have to read the code they sent and figure out what’s safe to execute.

js23• 3 years ago

Messages will be sent and received via your email address rather than phone number. [...] Even worse, when iPhone customers added an Android phone number to an existing iMessage secure encrypted group chat, the Messages app would by default switch the entire group chat to using unencrypted, unsecure SMS.

These two Messages features combine to create a terrible UX. When someone starts a group chat in Messages and includes a single non-Apple device, it converts the chat into a group MMS at which point anyone in the group who was added by Apple ID email address starts receiving the messages via email with text messages arriving as text attachments to those emails.

The from/to addresses look like 2345678901@domain with domains such as mypixmessages.com, mms.att.net, mypixmessages.com, icmms1.sun5.lightsurf.net, etc.

It doesn't matter if you have a phone # associated with your Apple ID in addition to an email address. If the person who starts the chat accidentally uses your email address (which Messages makes both very easy to do accidentally and very difficult to notice because Messages hides the actual address behind the contact name) and there's a single non-Apple device in the group, you get to be on the receiving end of a barrage of emails from which you cannot unsubscribe.

When Messages converts a group to MMS, it really needs to make it obvious which recipients are email addresses and which are phone #s... it should either not hide the information behind the contact name and/or for cases where a contact has both a phone # and email addresses, it should favor the phone #.

ElijahLynn• 3 years ago

Sounds like a great UX to me!!!

/sarcasm

bdavbdav• 3 years ago

I almost forgot that you could MMS to email addresses. Crazy times of old.

wutwutwat2• 3 years ago

You can also usually send a SMS by sending an email to your provider, ie 9495551212@vtext.com, which is the poor man's way to wire up alerting to text the on call if you've yet to implement or afford a solution with proper sms/twilio support

https://www.verizonwireless.com/pdfs/user_guides/How_To_Txt_...

98codes• 3 years ago

Spammers haven't, that's for damn sure

pathartl2• 3 years ago

When I was in high school and not allowed to have a cell phone, I had to use email via Gmail in my PSP's web browser in order to message people. I relied on these addresses so heavily and many people gave me weird looks for "oh btw, I need to know which carrier you have so I can get the right email address"

hornban2• 3 years ago

From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved. They want the experience to suffer when somebody outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to create social pressure for the outsider to change.

The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be forcing Apple into supporting RCS to fix the situation, Google has resisted every effort to extend RCS to their own Voice platform.

It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile, because they really could be a real middle ground for the rest of us that just want interoperability.

judge20202• 3 years ago

Let's imagine it is an engineering problem; how do they solve it? Give a disclaimer that "your communications are not encrypted" and turn the bubbles maybe light green?

kergonath4• 3 years ago

From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved. They want the experience to suffer when somebody outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to create social pressure for the outsider to change.

This makes no sense. What’s the point in degrading the UX without telling the user 1) why the UX is degraded, 2) what they can do about it? If the point is to steer people towards iDevices, why is it degrading the UX specifically for these people? Honestly, this sounds like a knee jerk reaction where you are convinced that Apple is bad and are looking for confirmation instead of trying to actually think rationally.

It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile, because they really could be a real middle ground for the rest of us that just want interoperability.

They could not. They were neither here nor there in terms of platform use and applications availability and poured tons of money into it for no result. Nothing in their behaviour at the time showed that they even understood the problem they were trying to solve.

wharvle3• 3 years ago

From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved.

I'd be sure this was why, if Google hadn't once tried to get me to use a combo SMS/MMS + some-other-Google-messaging-service app on my phone (by replacing the normal SMS app on OS upgrade—this was on a Nexus phone) that was so broken and janky it was unusable.

Like, it is for-sure the case that a rich, huge, "smart" company can fuck this up a lot worse than Apple has. iMessage is easily good enough that I haven't had to go find some alternative SMS app, at least.

TheKarateKid• 3 years ago

The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be forcing Apple into supporting RCS to fix the situation, Google has resisted every effort to extend RCS to their own Voice platform.

Google Voice has been in maintenance mode for years. It's unlikely that Google resisted adding RCS, but rather there's been no effort to actually do it.

lallysingh• 3 years ago

Shh don't mention Voice. Google obviously forgot that they still had it turned on. If they remember it'll get killed.

perryizgr8• 3 years ago

It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile,

Nokia's Lumia phones were so good at one time. The hardware was top notch (including cameras). The software was smoother than android and more intuitive than iphone. It was just a solid platform.

I would buy one in a blink if it was available today in the high end segment. I'd not even be bothered about google's anti competitive behavior wrt youtube and other apps.

Massive shame we lost Nokia and windows phone both due to the de facto duopoly that has taken hold in the market.

go_prodev2• 3 years ago

WhatsApp is that middle ground in some parts of the world.

Upon moving to Europe we discovered that WhatsApp is the preferred way to connect with friends, employees, social groups and schools. It was actually the driving factor in me conceding and setting up a FB account.

dontlaugh7• 3 years ago

It hardly matters, almost everyone on earth uses WhatsApp for group chats.

mardifoufs2• 3 years ago

I'm not American and I've never seen anyone use WhatsApp. I only use it to text my family back in Morocco. Facebook Messenger is even more universal than WhatsApp in my experience

javawizard• 3 years ago

Source? Of the many group chats I'm involved in, exactly one of them uses WhatsApp.

(I'm American, for context.)

lxgr18• 3 years ago

Well, the most and third most populous countries on Earth don't.

beacham• 3 years ago

I am in the United States. I’ve never used WhatsApp a single time. I’m involved in a number of different group chats across many different organizations and groups.

dbbk• 3 years ago

I live in the UK and have not seen an MMS conversation in about 15 years. This is crazy.

alickz• 3 years ago

even SMS is seen as outdated here i feel

kccqzy• 3 years ago

Whenever Apple tries to add significant new functionality to an already existing app, they screw it up. The combination of SMS/MMS and iMessage never made sense. Neither did the combination of purchased music and Apple Music. Or the traditional phone call with FaceTime.

spdustin• 3 years ago

"We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage."

They never addressed that part of Apple's statement. I don't see how they can survive without doing so.

etchalon• 3 years ago

At some point, Apple is just going to send them a cease and desist.

dlivingston• 3 years ago

From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people.

These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

shmatt• 3 years ago

Every consumer facing tech company with a paid product (physical or digital) I've worked at had Android as <10% of conversions. This includes just retail browsing from their phone shopping. Android users make no one money

Unless they're trying to join iOS group messages I guess

erohead• 3 years ago

Our conversion from download to paid subscription is hovering around 50% fwiw

shawnc• 3 years ago

Really shows to me why so many developers end up focusing so much more on the iOS versions of their apps. I would have expected the same.

mvdtnz• 3 years ago

I don't believe for one microsecond that those numbers would qualify as the "fastest growing paid Android application launch in history". I do believe that their numbers are that low - I don't know a single person who would pay to... what, have text messages appear in a different colour on other peoples' phones?

zulln• 3 years ago

Edit, forget what I said. I missed the keyword 'paid'.

Threads earlier this year apparently got 70 million user signed up the first 48h. I would assume this leads to at least >1m Android users?

First example I came to think about, might be much better examples out there. Regardless, something with "more than 100,000 people" in 48h is probably not the fastest growing Android app.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/07/tech/meta-social-media-do...

lambda• 3 years ago

Note: "paid."

tedivm• 3 years ago

If it was a free app sure, but in the paid category those numbers drop quite a bit.

sammyteee• 3 years ago

Anyone got a referral code?

MuffinFlavored7• 3 years ago

As far as I understand, in order to talk to Apple iMessage services/backend (and all auth pieces) you need a "legit" Apple ID and legit Apple hardware model #s / serial #s

If you don't have that, how are they able to get auth tokens / send messages around without basically "exploiting a hidden hack that might get patched"?

beatboxrevival• 3 years ago

The hackintosh community has tools to generate those #s. e.g. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/i...

MuffinFlavored7• 3 years ago

But why is it Apple's responsibility to accept a non-legit/unknown serial #?

arilotter2• 3 years ago

AFAIK they are using a reverse-engineered Apple binary that does the real iMessage - and since Apple doesn't update apps outside of iOS updates, Apple can't, in theory, patch it without also breaking iMessage on older iPhones.

zeven75• 3 years ago

I'd have assumed there'd be something more going on in iMessage, like each device has a private key that needs to sign the messages, and Apple can ban any private keys that leak -- but in theory couldn't they even be prevented from leaking by secure enclave?

I'm just speculating on what would have made sense, but I'm guessing that's not how it's working since Beeper Mini exists. It begs the question: why isn't that the way they do it?

grishka8• 3 years ago

Maybe they generate legit-looking fake device serial numbers, that just happen to match real devices most of the time?

MuffinFlavored7• 3 years ago

How does Apple not know a database of real serial #s that match products it has sold? Why would an API that goes to the lengths of expecting a serial # not validate and instead accept a fake "real-looking" serial # instead of a known- matched-in-the-database real serial #?

criddell• 3 years ago

I wonder why Apple lawyers don't go after Beeper with the CFAA?

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

Maybe they will… but, also, I bet they can change their systems faster than the court system.

MuffinFlavored7• 3 years ago

CFAA

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)

dishsoap• 3 years ago

It would be a mis-use of the act.

rpmisms15• 3 years ago

That's not quite correct. You need a binary blob that's generated by some kernel level stuff I don't fully understand.

kevinsync2• 3 years ago

Maybe this came up in the earlier threads (announcement, outage) so I apologize if it's been discussed ...

This project is fantastic. The hacker spirit is in full force, and I love a good David and Goliath story. However, all the comments about demanding interoperability and protocols keep confusing me -- I don't consider APNS a protocol (like TCP anyways), it's also not incidental, extra header space to stuff data into in an existing message being transported (ala early SMS), and it's not an open relay for everybody to use. It's Apple's private message delivery system!

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

I'm not licking boots over here, just genuinely curious. I wouldn't want to set up a mail server and then foot the bill and assume liability for whatever the hell goes through it from random people on the internet.

And trust me, I'm all for civil disobedience and sticking it to the man with clever technical solutions, but given the (probable) massive costs of operating APNS, Apple's got every right in the world to close any gaps in their system and keep kicking Beeper out.. and Beeper can keep trying to get back in.. but I just can't wrap my head around making the assumption that APNS access is somehow a fundamental right that we're all being denied.

grishka8• 3 years ago

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Network effects.

nine_k2• 3 years ago

This would be "enticed", not "entitled". What a user is entitled for is listed in the ToS; who did not accept them, is not entitled. Not necessarily forbidden or blocked, but any bets and guarantees are off.

wutwutwat2• 3 years ago

Uhhhh, what does APNS have to do with any of this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people want iMessage to be an open protocol. You're talking about APNS, the "apple push notification service", which is something completely different than what beeper is doing and what folks are asking for. The message schema, format, types, encoding, max length, delivery guarantees, etc, like jabber/xmpp [1]. Push notifications are sent for iMessage, but that isn't what people want to be turned into an open protocol

[1] https://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc6120.html

ranie93• 3 years ago

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/how-imessage-sends-...

ddoolin• 3 years ago

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

rezonant18• 3 years ago

APNs is used as the backbone of iMessage, it's not an optional component. It is not just used for the push notifications you see on your phone, but for the actual delivery of the messages.

maxwell• 3 years ago

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Vertical tying.

ksherlock• 3 years ago

Apparently, blue bubble envy is a thing people have. The beeper home page mentions blue bubbles 9 times (and not being a green bubble twice). WSJ reported in August that 87% of teens have an iPhone so anybody with an android or a green bubble therefore stands out and is a loser.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/why-teens-hate-androi...

dawnerd2• 3 years ago

It’s not just about that. I want to be able to use my Apple message id on other devices.

artyn• 3 years ago

I think people wouldn't mind the green bubble if it had a good contrast ratio.

fatnoah• 3 years ago

My son had an Android phone. I don't think anyone considered him to be a loser, but he did get very sick of everyone why he had a green bubble.

carstenhag• 3 years ago

On the Beeper website it sayss they use "blue bubble" to refer to iMessage.

babl-yc• 3 years ago

Selfishly I'm most excited about this project as a demonstration that secure and reliable communication across platforms is pretty straightforward. The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.

If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise.

And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with enough permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage alternative.

oneplane3• 3 years ago

Don't WhatsApp and Signal already do exactly that?

applecrazy• 3 years ago

If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise.

yeah that protocol exists. it’s called RCS and it is coming to ios soon. imo apple is allowed to gate imessage behind ios-only if RCS support is a thing

gorjusborg• 3 years ago

The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.

This is my main source of excitement around this project. The existence of this project shows that there is no technical reason it can't exist. So, what is the reason it doesn't exist? Exactly what you said: Apple thinks it is in its best interest not to.

GeekyBear3• 3 years ago

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

I hereby demand that Google stop making changes to YouTube that prevent ad blockers from working.

Or more to the point, I should have the right to sell hacked access to Microsoft's Office 365 servers to end users and Microsoft must not take any action that interferes in those user's access.

That's reasonable, right?

ehvatum• 3 years ago

I hereby demand that Apple stop supporting email interoperability with non iCloud users. The current situation, where the iCloud email users enjoy first class communication with gmail users, is tantamount to theft.

That’s reasonable, of course.

hamandcheese10• 3 years ago

I am an Apple user. I've owned more iPhones and MacBooks than I can remember.

I am the one who foots the bill for iMessage and APNS.

I want to be able to message my friends with Androids with the same ease as I do my friends with iPhones.

I also would like to be able to access my messages when I run Asahi Linux on my MacBook.

dotBen• 3 years ago

Use Signal. Get your friends to do so. What you are describing is a multi-platform ecosystem so don't rely on one of the platform vendors to enable something for everyone else.

enragedcacti4• 3 years ago

Yep, its really a lose-lose for everyone except Apple. Apple could even release a client that doesn't allow Android<->Android iMessage and I doubt many Android users would care. Personally, I just want a decent messaging experience and I would be willing to jump through the extra hoop of downloading another app even if my iPhone using contacts aren't willing to.

waynesonfire• 3 years ago

It's Apple's private message delivery system!

In the US, where democratic principles govern and capitalism drives the economy, the regulation of corporations emerges as a necessary practice. This approach rests on the understanding that while corporations are essential for economic growth, they must operate within a framework that prioritizes the public's interest.

In a democracy, every entity, including corporations, should answer to the people. Corporations wield significant influence and power, and without oversight, this power could be used in ways that harm the broader society.

Corporations should reflect the values of the society in which they operate and not undermine social, environmental, and ethical standards set by the democratically elected government. Regulation of corporations is not about impeding economic growth but about guiding it in a direction that is beneficial for all members of society.

vlozko• 3 years ago

This is a wonderful speech full of noble platitudes. None of this actually answers the question of why Apple (or really anyone) should let anyone have free and open access to something they paid and keep paying a lot to create, deploy, maintain, and iterate on. It’s their stuff, not the public’s. Nobody should expect corporations to be charities.

nine_k2• 3 years ago

OK! Let's assume you've built a water delivery system, a series of pipes. You attach anyone who buys a licensed faucet, and collect a modest monthly payment, as a typical utility would do. You use these funds to cover the operation costs of the pipe system.

Your pipes use a standard threaded connector.

If somebody attaches to your pipes without buying your licensed faucet and without paying, just due to the interoperability of threaded pipes, do you have the right to disconnect them, and rework your pipe connectors in a way that prevents unpaid connections in the future? If not, why?

beejiu• 3 years ago

It's my understanding that in the European Union, the new Digital Markets regulations will require interoperability. It's still not 100% what it will cover, but it could become a requirement.

oneplane3• 3 years ago

As far as I could find, the text suggests that only applies to market giants (i.e. Meta with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger). iMessage is not even breaking the top 5 in the EU. It's not even in the top 5 world wide, and even in the US it's only somewhere in position 4 or 5. If they go for absolute numbers (i.e. X million users) instead of market share that might be different, but it's unlikely to really be relevant to the EU considering from a user's perspective it's already interoperable (messages sent on one device end up on the other device, even if it's technically a mix of SMS, MMS and iMessage - that part is not really relevant).

I think the only source of all this iMessage this that and the other comes from parts of American society where they value the color of a chat bubble. Ironically that value has nothing to do with iMessage and just to do with "this persion I am chatting with can afford an iPhone", which in turn is what people appear to value.

In countries where iMessage is not really used, it doesn't matter at all. I would be surprised if most users would even know about different chat bubble colours and what they mean.

danaris6• 3 years ago

It's already been made public that iMessage will not (currently) be covered under this.

realusername3• 3 years ago

iMessage is pretty much dead in the EU though so I doubt the EU regulators will ask for interoperability.

phonon2• 3 years ago

You could say the same thing about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)

fahhem• 3 years ago

Samba is a protocol, Microsoft doesn't have any costs associated with more users of it. GP is asking about APNS, which involves Apple servers and therefore costs Apple to handle more requests, however minimal per individual request/message

macNchz• 3 years ago

I think Samba was my first introduction to the idea that using a non-official/reverse-engineered implementation of something to piggyback into a closed ecosystem may not actually be preferable to either shunning that ecosystem entirely, or just buying into it. I loved it in concept, but in practice not so much.

segasaturn2• 3 years ago

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked into Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any other reason.

This language about "entitlement" feels like when Google complains about people using adblockers on YT - I don't care because they're both $2T corporations, and the only "entitlement" I see is the way Apple and Google think they're entitled to my money and my data.

bogantech• 3 years ago

Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked into Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any other reason.

You can't do that now with SMS and a plethora of other messaging apps?

rezonant18• 3 years ago

Yes! All I hear when entitlement comes up is "Why do you feel entitled to text message your iPhone friends if you don't use an iPhone?"

raydev3• 3 years ago

Why are you entitled to use Apple's messaging servers without paying for access?

whycome6• 3 years ago

Apple hijacked SMS. You can't CHOOSE to send SMS. If your phone is tied to a computer for a shared imessage account, if you're outside with your phone alone (while computer is online) the phone cannot receive text messages. (The sender ios device presumes 'success' in sending the message because it is received by the computer. It does not have the ability to send just sms).

So, i'm all for anything that shakes up messaging and maybe returns some of it to users.

marvy• 3 years ago

you can choose; there's an option buried in settings somewhere

jmkni• 3 years ago

I mean you can literally just set the iMessage toggle to 'Off' on your phone

It's not even buried. Settings -> Messages -> iMessage == Off

jb19912• 3 years ago

You can't CHOOSE to send SMS

You can turn off iMessage and force sms unless you are referring to something else.

lotsofpulp3• 3 years ago

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349

goodluckchuck2• 3 years ago

It's Apple's private message delivery system!

It's not!

Note: Beeper Cloud’s new Oct 2023 iMessage bridge never used Mac relay servers and still does not today. It uses a similar method to Beeper Mini, but runs on a cloud server.

rezonant18• 3 years ago

I think you misunderstand that quote. Prior versions of Beeper Cloud hosted Mac Minis in data centers and used genuine Apple hardware and software to automate iMessage in order to function.

This quote simply says that Beeper Cloud is using the same direct implementation of iMessage that Beeper Mini does. It does not indicate that Beeper Cloud & Mini do not communicate with Apple's servers (they do).

paulddraper• 3 years ago

It's the same as XMPP/etc vs proprietary chat protocols.

"Slack chat is only for Slack customers."

"Google chat is only for Google customers."

And so on.

Well....if you say it is, then it is.

But the supporters of interoperability would like to...interoperate. So non-Apply customers can send messages to Apple customers and vice versa.

kelnos• 3 years ago

Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I don't look at it as "being entitled to use Apple's services". I look at it as closed, non-interoperable systems as being fundamentally bad for people and for the internet. I hesitate to call them immoral, but I feel like I could argue that competently as well, if pushed to do so.

So if Apple isn't willing to allow interoperability with their messaging service that is used by hundreds of millions (billions?) of people, then I support every effort to "sneak in" and make that happen anyway. And if that means using some Apple service that isn't intended for use outside the Apple ecosystem, that's just how it has to be.

On the other hand, I would frankly just prefer that non-interoperable systems die, instead, and be replaced by functionally equivalent, but more open, systems. So I am also uncomfortable with Beeper Mini pushing more people into Apple's closed ecosystem, even if overall (in the short term, at least) it will mean a better, more secure experience for both iOS and Android users. (It's gross that Apple talks about the security and privacy afforded to users of their products, but at the same time forces their own iPhone users to send unencrypted SMS/MMS messages to anyone who doesn't have an iPhone, because keeping non-iPhone users off iMessage is a competitive advantage for them.)

FridgeSeal3• 3 years ago

Oh yeah because this went so well last time.

It took them what, a lazy few days to kill it off last time, bets on about the same, along with a “don’t make me do this again” warning?

stillwithit2• 3 years ago

Stuff like this feels petty by all parties.

Use an app that’s already universal if users are so desperate.

Playing whack a mole back and forth over a chat app as if it’s some high minded fight for speech when countless options exist is melodrama for the sake of melodrama and engagement farming

Beeper real goal is like everyone else in tech; get rich. It found the perfect marketing meme, the old David and Goliath story, to piggyback its business goals on.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

I had to purchase an iPhone solely to use iMessage. Believe me, I would have loved to use any other internet-based chat app. But I just can't move my entire social circle to a different app. The network effects and friction are too high.

The only thing end users really have control over is their own client. I don't know if they'll succeed in the long run, but I'm really rooting for beeper

krick• 3 years ago

Are you saying everyone in your social circle willingly vendor-locks themselves by using an app that is available only on a specific device? That sounds just comically bad. Where is that? USA? I just checked, the iPhone market share appears to be around 57% in the USA, which is sure a lot, but still it means that every second person does not have the ability to use this app. So how comes it ends up being inconvenient for normal people, and not for iPhone users? Weird.

Seriously, I'm struggling to imagine that. It suddenly reminds me of when Microsoft had to offer users to choose something other than IE because of anti-monopoly legislation. What you are telling me about iPhones sounds way, way worse than that. After all, it's not like people had to use IE before that, they just didn't know better. There was no network effect and vendor-lock with IE.

Also, what's even so special about this app? I maybe could understand that, if it was unique. But come one, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, plain old SMS after all… And I'm not even talking about older VoIP/messengers (Skype, Jabber), community-centered apps (Discord, Slack, MS Teams) or some fringe messengers nobody uses even though they are clearly better than everything else (Matrix). By no means there is a shortage of messaging apps and protocols…

stillwithit2• 3 years ago

But those effects are not universal.

Not everyone is locked into iMessage.

Of course you’ve hardly been forced into hard labor in the gulag.

Can we use government for something more universal than saving you from your social groups choices?

_rs• 3 years ago

Was really hoping to read about what Apple changed to break things, even if they won't explain how they worked around it

rewgs• 3 years ago

Man, what an absolute waste of engineering talent.

I don't understand those in this thread celebrating the "hacker spirit." The real "hacker spirit" would be something like, I don't know, building a better alternative to iMessage. This is just a game of whack-a-mole, destined to lose.

smoldesu5• 3 years ago

Making a competitive alternative to iMessage is a game of whack-a-mole that you will always lose, too. Apple would never give a third-party the same level of control they have to integrate with iOS.

So, Beeper's approach here at least makes sense to me. They aren't representing the "hacker spirit" like Torvalds or Stallman, but they are highlighting how arbitrary some software limitations can be. Their efforts here, wasted or not, will be cited when iMessage finds itself in court next time. And to Beeper, a company founded on the idea of unifying all messaging clients, that may be a worthwhile business investment.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

iMessage isn't dominant because it's "better". It's dominant because it's the default. Doesn't matter how good a chat app is, iMessage users aren't going to switch

mrlatinos3• 3 years ago

I really want to use this but it just seems unrealistic. I don't want to start new iMessage group chats with friends, explain to them how it's possible, only for it to break 3 days later. I knew this would happen the first time which is why I didn't subscribe. And now I don't want to create an Apple ID only to have it banned and messages lost.

I love that you're pursuing this and taking on Apple, but at the same time your marketing has felt misleading and you've put a lot of users at risk by listing on the Play Store with a subscription model.

boiler_up800• 3 years ago

If nothing else it’s a fun game of cat and mouse in the most David vs Goliath way possible, to mix metaphors.

Is it likely that Apple just has an engineer working on reverse engineering Beeper to find and patch the latest method?

nikolay2• 3 years ago

No, it's not. I don't get the 2FA code. It never worked before for me. Never worked with Beeper proper either.

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

Do you get 2FA codes when logging in from am actual Apple device? Because it might be an issue with how your apple account is set up to do 2FA that has nothing to do with beeper

nikolay2• 3 years ago

Yes, I do. I only have issues with Beeper and Beeper Mini. In fact, months ago, when I tried to set up Beeper, my Apple ID got into an "account lock" endless loop for over a month - every few minutes, I would get a popup that my account is locked, I go through the unlocking process, and a few minutes later, the whole thing repeats meanwhile asking me to rest my password.

In the past, I tried creating an app password as well, but it didn't work either. Now, it fails to create an app password, but you still can't log in with an app password.

hattmall2• 3 years ago

Is it possible to install macos in a virtual machine and use iMessages?

jejeyyy772• 3 years ago

not anymore

heyoni• 3 years ago

Yes it is. Hackintosh users have no problem using iMessage or FaceTime.

2233• 3 years ago

how is it legal to use private apis of another company in your product? does it not count as cyber attack or potential dos?

quantumsequoia14• 3 years ago

Interestingly, in the groupchat I'm in (N=67, mostly software engineers in the Bay Area), I've noticed a high correlation between people taking Pro-Beeper and Pro-Palestine stances, and those taking Pro-Apple and Pro-Israel stances

Der_Einzige• 3 years ago

This would be for socioeconomic factors but it maps to my experience.

Downvoters are simply butthurt that others are noticing this connection. Getting downvoted here is evidence that you’re speaking truth to (apple) power

leoxiong• 3 years ago

Why are people obsessed with “breaking into” Apple’s walled garden? There are already secure cross platform messaging services like Signal or WhatsApp that has feature parity with iMessage. This is a solved problem that doesn’t need another solution.

cubefox2• 3 years ago

US Americans love iMessage, nobody knows why.

sircastor3• 3 years ago

Lots of Americans have iPhones, iMessage is the default messaging on the platform, and it's actually quite a good messaging system.

emmet• 3 years ago

Holdover of them being obsessed with SMS for some reason too.

I remember having to pay 20c per SMS and 50c per MMS before IMs on phones became a thing. Wasn't hard for literally everyone to want to change to the first available client which for most people was WhatsApp, 2 years before iMessage was even released. Guess messaging was so cheap in the US that they didn't have a good enough reason to hop on the IM train for years.

sircastor3• 3 years ago

Some people are finding themselves excluded from their social group because of platform choice - basically not being able to use iMessage (sometimes) means people don't want you in the group chat (because mixing iMessage and SMS messages makes a bad experience.)

It is incredibly difficult to get a social group to change messaging platforms, especially if that social group's shared interest isn't "using a good messaging platform"

The easiest solution is to conform to the existing messaging platform in the group. In the case of a bunch of iOS users, that might mean leaving Android for iOS. People don't want to do this (For a variety of reasons.) So being able to participate as a first-world-citizen of the platform has its appeal.

jug• 3 years ago

He mentioned their reason in the blog — that Messages is the default messaging app on iPhone and that it is also not a replaceable default.

nani8ot3• 3 years ago

tl;dr

Most people in the US use iPhones. They also like to use the default messaging app, which most of the time is iMessage. Some people like to use Android phones (privacy, cost, freedom), but still want to message their peers who use the Apple-only iMessage.

pixelmonkey2• 3 years ago

This is the best and most concise summary on the thread.

The equivalent would be if Microsoft, when they had the largest market share of email clients in the US in the late 1990s with Outlook Express (OE), decided to make it so OE-sent group rich text emails with attachments could only be received by other OE users, whereas non-OE users only received plain text emails with image thumbnails and downscaled video attachments. People would have lots of good reasons to use a different email client, like forthcoming Thunderbird, Gmail, or Apple Mail clients. But they'd find they couldn't communicate well with Microsoft OE users.

If Microsoft had made this change early enough and also made it so non-OE responses were color coded with a green background to indicate they are "lesser emails," we'd be in a world of Microsoft Outlook Express users would wonder why everyone doesn't just switch to Windows (the majority OS, at that moment) to make everyone's lives easier. And friends/family would exclude non-Windows users from an email thread as not to "degrade" the thread.

Communication via text with friends and family should be an open standard. Barring the availability of such a standard (e.g. RCS), at a minimum, the chat clients to communicate with friends and family should be x-platform (like Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and LINE all manage to be).

Ergo iMessage should, at least, have an Android app, even if such an app requires an Apple ID.

wanderingmind2• 3 years ago

Because its the Hacker ethos. People need to be able to modify any software to suit their requirements and not have to blindly follow the prescription of a company whose interests may not align with yours.

838583727748• 3 years ago

Your view on iMessage depends on your social network. If your social network uses other messaging apps, this whole exercise seems pointless. Many of you outside of the US fall into this category. Many of you technically-savvy commenters also fall into this category. But if you are a teenager in the US, 85%+ of your social network uses an iPhone, and you will not convince everyone you know to switch apps for you. The green bubble causes real problems, and Apple does this intentionally to coerce teens and others into buying their phones. It’s anti-competitive and immoral for a company of that size.

lawgimenez• 3 years ago

Time should be well spent by creating meaningful apps that can solve world hunger, poverty, water shortages and all that shit. All this circus for a blue bubble is just so hard to comprehend.

jagged-chisel• 3 years ago

If we’re going to solve all hunger, poverty, water shortages and all that shit before we ever do anything more, then we’ll never do anything more.

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

...that can solve world hunger, poverty, water...

Ah, but no profit there. Not being cynical, have witnessed ngo's first hand in war zones.

locusofself• 3 years ago

iMessage is possibly the most effective vendor lock-in I've ever personally experienced. I resent it, but I don't have time to fight it. Maybe 1 of the 20 people I regularly text with use Android. The amount of video/photo sharing my wife and other family members have done throughout the years is via iMessage is downright incredible.

nelsondev• 3 years ago

One thing I’m not seeing discussed in the battle of client apps, is that Apple is still paying to run the backend servers. Considering the ubiquity of iMessage, this ain’t cheap.

When Beeper charges customers subscriptions for the client app, do they kick back any money to Apple who provides server side support for iMessage?

cdchn2• 3 years ago

Totally tangental but now that iPhone users are using RCS the chances of successfully sending them a message feels like its dropped by half to me-- that is about half the time my messages aren't getting through, to multiple individuals.

endless1234• 3 years ago

iPhone is not using RCS yet. It has only been announced, to be launched some time in 2024. See eg https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2023/11/17/appl...

cdchn2• 3 years ago

Weird, I'm getting the RCS bits in Android from some iPhone people. I don't think they're using a different messenger than iMessage.

chagaif• 3 years ago

Just got a notification that it's working again and I could log in

whywhywhywhy• 3 years ago

Wild the Apple pundits who were weirdly angry about this app acting completely disgusted someone would do this. So strange to see that attitude from the Apple community when some of us are old enough to remember when Apple wasn't in a position of power and we absolutely relied on these sort of projects to exist and work in a Windows dominant world.

nektro• 3 years ago

should've stayed dead

fennecfoxy• 3 years ago

Lmao Apple.

Time for the EU to step in. They don't get everything done but they certainly force a lot more out of companies than other organisations.

Beeper Mini is back

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