7 ms·

PieMessage: iMessage on Android

83 points by mikeflynn 10y ago

wmichelin 10y ago
How well does this work?
- collias 10y ago
  Doesn't look like it works very well. It requires a device running OSX to proxy the iMessage stuff through, and apparently the OSX client itself is unreliable.
  - toxik 10y ago
    I wouldn't call the OS X Messages app unreliable -- it does what it says on the box. That said, I'm not sure it's a good fit for the method used in this project.
  - raddad 10y ago
    Bottom of the page it reads: >Since I've moved onto other projects and haven't had time to finish this,
Analemma_ 10y ago
You should probably brace yourself for a C&D and/or DMCA takedown request from Apple, regardless of the actual legality of what you're doing. They won't like this.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Yes, I remember having seen something very similar before several years ago that was promptly forced to shut down by Apple. I believe this was it: http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-now-available-for-android-but-theres-a-catch/ http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-now-a...
  - landr0id 10y ago
    piemessage proxies through your own Mac though -- not some sketchy server in China. I'd imagine Apple shut down the one you linked to protect their users.
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    that was promptly forced to shut down by Apple I think we'd need a citation for that – AFAIK that app was pulled because of honking great security problems.
- conradev 10y ago
  I went through Apple's DMCA requests sent to Github and the only one that is remotely similar is this: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-11-04-Apple.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-11-04-Apple.... But even then they weren't claiming it was reverse engineered material, but instead material ripped directly from Apple's copyrighted and confidential docs. I think both Apple and Github understand the boundaries of the DMCA pretty well. According to Github they haven't attempted to take down any of the following: https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/nst/iOS-Runtime-Headers https://github.com/nst/iOS-Runtime-Headers https://github.com/brutella/hc https://github.com/brutella/hc https://github.com/KhaosT/HAP-NodeJS https://github.com/KhaosT/HAP-NodeJS https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge https://github.com/lisimia/piMessage https://github.com/lisimia/piMessage https://github.com/stefanesser/dumpdecrypted https://github.com/stefanesser/dumpdecrypted https://github.com/comex/imaon2 https://github.com/comex/imaon2 … etc
  - toxik 10y ago
    It is relieving to see that this information is available to the general public. Chilling effects and whatnot.
- Angostura 10y ago
  Unless it starts cocking up Apple's own systems - overloading servers, or generating significant numbers of support queries, for example I doubt they will have any problem at all
finnn 10y ago
Lots of .class files, the author should check out .gitignore files and avoid committing binary files.
- cgsmith 10y ago
  Perhaps open a ticket or PR to address this?
quaz3l 10y ago
I've always wanted to implement this process (sending to mac, and through imessage) into the core sms sending service of android. Have the service check the number, if it is on imessage use that, otherwise do sms. Would this be feasible? Ignoring the reliability of the system.
Gaelan 10y ago
Just out of curiosity, why has nobody reverse-engineered iMessage to create an open-source client? I presume it is quite hard (the seems like an obvious thing to attempt, iMessage has been available on the Mac where things like disassembly should be pretty easy for years); where does this challenge come from?
- zachlatta 10y ago
  IIRC, Apple issues unique keys to every iOS/OS X device they produce. This key is used to subscribe to APNS (which iMessage uses for data transfer). Without the key, you can't do much of anything.
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    It appears you can generate a key, and that Apple doesn't check whether the key corresponds to a piece of hardware they've sold: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_imessage_working_on_10102_generating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_...
camhenlin 10y ago
Cool! Very nice project. I wrote some similar iMessage related clients here: https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient - this is a terminal based one that works over ssh https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient - this is a web based client that I used to do iMessages on a windows phone for quite a while And I have some more iMessage related projects on my GitHub as well. Hopefully these projects give you or others some more ideas for iMessage related stuff
- gruez 10y ago
  both links are 404.
  - camhenlin 10y ago
    Fixed thanks!
- superdaniel 10y ago
  I'm guessing the imessageclient project doesn't work on El Capitan yet? How does your iMessageModule[0] get around it? [0] https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule
  - camhenlin 10y ago
    I had someone tell me that they were able to get it working on El Capitan by disabling some security settings, but I've resorted to running services (https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot specifically) on a VM with a genuine Apple device SN running Yosemite, and that works very nicely.
suchitpuri 10y ago
There are so many players in the market for chat, the only goo reason for someone using imessage on android will be to chat with people on iphone's and mac.
- treve 10y ago
  In fact, this is probably the only reason, but a pretty significant one.
  - soylentcola 10y ago
    It's the reason my friends and I all use Hangouts. Basically there are plenty of IM/chat options but Hangouts is the default app on about half of our phones (those who use Android). The ones who use iOS can still install Hangouts and we can all use it in our Gmail browser tabs at work. It could've easily gone the other way. I definitely favor Android in daily use but if there was an official iMessage client for Android I'd have been fine installing that and letting the iOS users run their default. But since Apple never did open that up we default to Hangouts. We could run some other app instead but at least this way some of us don't need to install "yet another IM client".
malka 10y ago
would be interesting if there was no need for an OSX device.
- discordance 10y ago
  Or perhaps it could be a cloud service where a VM running OSX is spun up per user to route messages?
herman5 10y ago
This is great - I switched from iOS to Android last week, and my biggest annoyance was the lack of iMessage
- skrowl 10y ago
  I've heard the same from a lot of buddies that have upgraded to Android in the last few years. What is it about iMessage that you miss? For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If so, why? Worst case of course, all of your iMessage contacts can be contacted over plain old SMS (Via Messenger, Hangouts, or any of the hundreds of Android SMS clients). Now that the era of Apple being "cool" is officially over and we'll see more and more people moving to Android, I think the appeal of the iMessage "hey you can talk to anyone you want as long as they're on an iPhone or a Mac!" walled garden will collapse.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    > For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If so, why? It's not surprising that people use what comes on their phone and computer by default.
bboyairwreck 10y ago
Hey guys! Eric, developer of PieMessage here. Happy to answer any questions you gifts have :)

83 points by mikeflynn 10y ago

wmichelin 10y ago

How well does this work?

collias 10y ago
Doesn't look like it works very well. It requires a device running OSX to proxy the iMessage stuff through, and apparently the OSX client itself is unreliable.
- toxik 10y ago
  I wouldn't call the OS X Messages app unreliable -- it does what it says on the box. That said, I'm not sure it's a good fit for the method used in this project.
- raddad 10y ago
  Bottom of the page it reads: >Since I've moved onto other projects and haven't had time to finish this,

Analemma_ 10y ago

You should probably brace yourself for a C&D and/or DMCA takedown request from Apple, regardless of the actual legality of what you're doing. They won't like this.

mdorazio 10y ago
Yes, I remember having seen something very similar before several years ago that was promptly forced to shut down by Apple. I believe this was it: http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-now-available-for-android-but-theres-a-catch/ http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-now-a...
- landr0id 10y ago
  piemessage proxies through your own Mac though -- not some sketchy server in China. I'd imagine Apple shut down the one you linked to protect their users.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  that was promptly forced to shut down by Apple I think we'd need a citation for that – AFAIK that app was pulled because of honking great security problems.
conradev 10y ago
I went through Apple's DMCA requests sent to Github and the only one that is remotely similar is this: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-11-04-Apple.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-11-04-Apple.... But even then they weren't claiming it was reverse engineered material, but instead material ripped directly from Apple's copyrighted and confidential docs. I think both Apple and Github understand the boundaries of the DMCA pretty well. According to Github they haven't attempted to take down any of the following: https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/nygard/class-dump https://github.com/nst/iOS-Runtime-Headers https://github.com/nst/iOS-Runtime-Headers https://github.com/brutella/hc https://github.com/brutella/hc https://github.com/KhaosT/HAP-NodeJS https://github.com/KhaosT/HAP-NodeJS https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge https://github.com/lisimia/piMessage https://github.com/lisimia/piMessage https://github.com/stefanesser/dumpdecrypted https://github.com/stefanesser/dumpdecrypted https://github.com/comex/imaon2 https://github.com/comex/imaon2 … etc
- toxik 10y ago
  It is relieving to see that this information is available to the general public. Chilling effects and whatnot.
Angostura 10y ago
Unless it starts cocking up Apple's own systems - overloading servers, or generating significant numbers of support queries, for example I doubt they will have any problem at all

finnn 10y ago

Lots of .class files, the author should check out .gitignore files and avoid committing binary files.

cgsmith 10y ago
Perhaps open a ticket or PR to address this?

quaz3l 10y ago

I've always wanted to implement this process (sending to mac, and through imessage) into the core sms sending service of android. Have the service check the number, if it is on imessage use that, otherwise do sms. Would this be feasible? Ignoring the reliability of the system.

Gaelan 10y ago

Just out of curiosity, why has nobody reverse-engineered iMessage to create an open-source client? I presume it is quite hard (the seems like an obvious thing to attempt, iMessage has been available on the Mac where things like disassembly should be pretty easy for years); where does this challenge come from?

zachlatta 10y ago
IIRC, Apple issues unique keys to every iOS/OS X device they produce. This key is used to subscribe to APNS (which iMessage uses for data transfer). Without the key, you can't do much of anything.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  It appears you can generate a key, and that Apple doesn't check whether the key corresponds to a piece of hardware they've sold: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_imessage_working_on_10102_generating/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_...

camhenlin 10y ago

Cool! Very nice project. I wrote some similar iMessage related clients here: https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient - this is a terminal based one that works over ssh https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient - this is a web based client that I used to do iMessages on a windows phone for quite a while And I have some more iMessage related projects on my GitHub as well. Hopefully these projects give you or others some more ideas for iMessage related stuff

gruez 10y ago
both links are 404.
- camhenlin 10y ago
  Fixed thanks!
superdaniel 10y ago
I'm guessing the imessageclient project doesn't work on El Capitan yet? How does your iMessageModule[0] get around it? [0] https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule
- camhenlin 10y ago
  I had someone tell me that they were able to get it working on El Capitan by disabling some security settings, but I've resorted to running services (https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot specifically) on a VM with a genuine Apple device SN running Yosemite, and that works very nicely.

suchitpuri 10y ago

There are so many players in the market for chat, the only goo reason for someone using imessage on android will be to chat with people on iphone's and mac.

treve 10y ago
In fact, this is probably the only reason, but a pretty significant one.
- soylentcola 10y ago
  It's the reason my friends and I all use Hangouts. Basically there are plenty of IM/chat options but Hangouts is the default app on about half of our phones (those who use Android). The ones who use iOS can still install Hangouts and we can all use it in our Gmail browser tabs at work. It could've easily gone the other way. I definitely favor Android in daily use but if there was an official iMessage client for Android I'd have been fine installing that and letting the iOS users run their default. But since Apple never did open that up we default to Hangouts. We could run some other app instead but at least this way some of us don't need to install "yet another IM client".

malka 10y ago

would be interesting if there was no need for an OSX device.

discordance 10y ago
Or perhaps it could be a cloud service where a VM running OSX is spun up per user to route messages?

herman5 10y ago

This is great - I switched from iOS to Android last week, and my biggest annoyance was the lack of iMessage

skrowl 10y ago
I've heard the same from a lot of buddies that have upgraded to Android in the last few years. What is it about iMessage that you miss? For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If so, why? Worst case of course, all of your iMessage contacts can be contacted over plain old SMS (Via Messenger, Hangouts, or any of the hundreds of Android SMS clients). Now that the era of Apple being "cool" is officially over and we'll see more and more people moving to Android, I think the appeal of the iMessage "hey you can talk to anyone you want as long as they're on an iPhone or a Mac!" walled garden will collapse.
- jonknee 10y ago
  > For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If so, why? It's not surprising that people use what comes on their phone and computer by default.

bboyairwreck 10y ago

Hey guys! Eric, developer of PieMessage here. Happy to answer any questions you gifts have :)