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Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening. It is a bit dicey when you're

• kmbfjr 3y ago
  You are allowed, you get to use your iCloud account.
• runnerup 3y ago
  I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that! I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interoperability, and many people who LOVE the concept and technical achievements will still post mostly critical things about the business model because it’s fairly clearly a very very challenging business model.
  • pilsetnieks 3y ago
    You're allowed to admire the technical implementation while denouncing the business model at the same time.
    • jorvi 3y ago
      Is letting our hearts bleed for trillion dollar companies really the best way to spend our finite compassionate bandwidth?
      • catach 3y ago
        Observing that a particular business model is very likely to fail because of the conflict with another business model that happens to have much more powerful backing requires no compassion spend. But also, it seems to me that compassion is an involuntary reaction.
        • WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
          > also, it seems to me that compassion is an involuntary reaction. Compassion is very much a quality that can be developed and nurtured.
          • catach 3y ago
            I believe you're talking about capacity for compassion, and I'm speaking of the triggering of compassion. I'd agree that both capacity and scope of triggers can be altered, but it seems to me that that's a process that takes some time and effort. Distinct from choosing in the moment "I am going to feel a certain way about this, right now".
    • AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      This is IMO the exact spirit we should have
    • lostlogin 3y ago
      Pretty much all Adtech comes to mind here.
    • pavel_lishin 3y ago
      Are we talking about Beeper Mini, or Apple?
  • toastercat 3y ago
    youtube-dl, NewPipe, and uBlock Origin exist solely for the purpose of empowering the individual, yet they are constantly attacked on HN as being tools used unfairly to harm Google's profitability. Open-source projects like Matrix, PeerTube, Mastodon, are built to be free and open-source for the benefit of end-users and lack of vendor lockin. Yet each is derided on HackerNews for not being enough like their corporate counterparts. Yes, there are those here who don't do that, but as cynical as it sounds, I do think this site's audience is mostly folk who like the status quos set by FAANG-types and don't really care about hackerism outside of toy websites.
    • aprilthird2021 3y ago
      I pretty much found out about all these from HN. I think most of their traffic / downloads comes from this site.
      • simfree 3y ago
        Reddit and other social media platforms almost certainly drive in order of magnitude more downloads of these extensions than HN.
        • rezonant 3y ago
          Reddit and other social media platforms are at least an order of magnitude larger than HN. That's a good thing honestly.
      • 55555 3y ago
        This is extremely false.
    • Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      The projects you listed are overwhelmingly celebrated on Hacker News! I'm sure you can find a critical post if you look hard enough—HN isn't a hive mind—but it's not a common sentiment.
    • oneplane 3y ago
  • _8j50 3y ago
    Hacking? Hacking means whining when what you are hacking fights back? I mean go for it, hack away! I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though lol
    • rezonant 3y ago
      Personally for me it's people who buy Frigidaire appliances. They are the worst!
      • _8j50 3y ago
        Appliances don't talk to other people's appliances. Beeper users on imessage would be unpleasant. I used android for like a decade, my takeaway is that you all can't stand other people not enduring the chaos with you.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
    • kelnos 3y ago
      > I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though What a bizarre thing to say.
      • _8j50 3y ago
        Well, I try.
  • dcow 3y ago
    > on adversarial interoperability In what world is interoperability adversarial? What the actual?
    • lolinder 3y ago
      It's adversarial because one party explicitly does not want to interoperate and can be expected to try to break interop. OP didn't coin the term, it looks like it comes from Cory Doctorow [0]. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
      • dcow 3y ago
        Cory is talking about it in the sense that the tech industry at large said “adversarial interop” is stupid and lobbied against it. It seems HN has lost the plot judging by the number of people on this thread defending Apple engaging in such a slimy practice. > Big Tech climbed the adversarial ladder and then pulled it up behind them. Anyway the comment I was replying to was implying that Beeper is the adversary which is not a correct use of the term.
        • lolinder 3y ago
          > Anyway the comment I was replying to was implying that Beeper is the adversary which is not a correct use of the term. You can't have a single-party adversarial system. Each party is an adversary of the other: party A wants to interop against the wishes of party B, and party B wants to lock party A out. OP wasn't implying that Beeper is "the" adversary and Apple is in the clear, OP was just saying that trying to build a business around adversarial interoperability is extremely difficult and the outcome is unsurprising. Noting that the results are unsurprising does not imply that we condone the system that makes such results nearly inevitable.
    • noirbot 3y ago
      Are you trying to ignore the state of what's going on? Beeper's business model was as interoperable with Apple as my neighbors cracking my wifi password to use for their household. The interoperability wasn't intended. Forcing someone to interoperate with you doesn't immediately make it all collaborative any more than a stranger walking up to me at lunch and declaring they're my friend now makes me want to invite them home after.
• pilsetnieks 3y ago
  The troll toll? > Just putting the thought out there. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
  • kurisufag 3y ago
    ratwiki is /literally/ a troll website. it has the same validity as encyclopedia dramatica.
• ribosometronome 3y ago
  >Of course, it's very unlikely Apple is doing that. Just putting the thought out there. Is making wild claims and then immediately trying to disavow them in the next sentences the hacker spirit? How does it at all follow that Beeper Mini is using encryption properly (or else it wouldn't work) but it's unlikely Apple is? How would Beeper have been able to reverse engineer it if Apple's not using it? Who did they model their correct implementation of Apple's protocol off of?
  • conradev 3y ago
    Is implicitly trusting authority the hacker spirit?
    • mirashii 3y ago
      And by implicitly trusting authority, you mean trusting the device manufacturer with billions of sales and intense scrutiny from security researchers and state actors spanning decades, right? You mean trusting the entire of the security industry to have managed not to miss this glaring and easy to detect invasion or privacy? This isn’t “it’s not happening because Apple promises it’s not”. This is one of the most scrutinized platforms in the world. Making wild claims and disavowing them immediately is lazy rhetoric, just as oversimplifying this as an appeal to authority is lazy rhetoric.
      • conradev 3y ago
        Going back to the original claim: > Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? The answer here is no. Yes, making a wild claim afterwards is lazy, but the fact remains: there is no system in place to get anywhere close to "proof". The best we have is researchers reporting trust violations when they find them, escalating those violations in the media, and sometimes forcing the company to change behavior. Relying on (ever more skilled!) unpaid volunteer work to verify the claims of the largest company in the world seems like an appeal to authority. It also doesn't scale as they make more claims and build more complex software. Yes, breaking E2EE for everyone is so large that it would be impossible to do at scale without anyone noticing. Breaking it selectively to target individuals (the threat people are actually worried about!) is much harder to detect, no?
• belltaco 3y ago
  It was the same when Apple banned Fortnite for daring to accept payments outside of their walled garden and the forced 30% cut. People falling over themselves to hate on Epic and defend Apple's forced cut and the total removal of developer freedom. If it was Microsoft the entire tone would be completely different.
  • tinus_hn 3y ago
    You wonder why the company with 95% market share is treated differently than the company with 40% market share.
  • simondotau 3y ago
    Does Epic Games give developers "total freedom" with Unreal Engine or will they insist upon their royalty when applicable? You can read their FAQ and there's literally a section titled "Why does Epic think it’s fair to ask for a percentage of a developer’s product revenue?" What's good for the goose, etc.
    • jocaal 3y ago
      5% Royalty past $1m for using the most high tech game engine in the world is a totally reasonable price. Just like 3% for using payment services is totally reasonable. But 30% for using a distribution service is just absurd. The only reason the app stores can charge that much is because of their iron grip on the platforms.
      • TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
        > But 30% for using a distribution service is just absurd. It’s the market rate. Almost all retail stores online and offline charge 30%.
        • simondotau 3y ago
          Boxed software at physical retail stores was more like 70–90% of revenues, split between the retailer, distributor, publisher, and manufacturing.
• xkekjrktllss 3y ago
  [flagged]
• dylan604 3y ago
  It has nothing to do with a lack of spirit. It's a 800lbs of reality crashing down. There's nothing wrong with trying to hack the Gibson. However, this wasn't just a hack, but a severe threat to Apple's walled garden. As long as they are allowed to have it, they will protect it at all costs. Thinking any differently is just naive. So of course this is the ultimate result.
  • martimarkov 3y ago
    It’s identical to a jailbreak which gets patched ASAP so not sure what is has to do with walled garden as much. I’ve played with the same idea of making an Android client but I would never build a product on that because I know the limitations on my side. As a company you are 100% allowed to break 3rd party client when they don’t have an agreement with you. It’s your product after all. Heck even with an agreement APIs don’t support old versions.
    • dylan604 3y ago
      > It’s identical to a jailbreak which gets patched ASAP so not sure what is has to do with walled garden as much Why do you think they don't want you to run a jailbreak? It's to protect the walled garden. If you can install apps other than their store, that's lost revenue. They claim security blah blah, but it's removing mouths from the teet. So, it has everything to do with the walled garden. How does that not make sense to you?
    • clnq 3y ago
      The jailbreak patches are for the walled garden, too. Security is not a concern for those who use jailbreaks. They want to get their devices in the insecure state and go to lengths to do it. It's similar to how OpenAI uses "safety" to make sure their LLMs don't get them in hot water, and PlayStation uses "safety" to make sure their consoles do not become associated with piracy and make publishers think twice. This kind of "safety" is about business interests. :) Some companies can say it openly that they wish to protect their business, as fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that. Others can't as that will bode poorly for their monopoly status and they will suffer (overdue) legal repercussions. So it becomes "safety". Notice how companies that argue against user freedom for "safety" are always in circumstances where bringing up business interests behind "safety" won't bode well.
• crazygringo 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. > Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll. Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac where you can use it as much as you like.
  • paulmd 3y ago
    It’s also at severe risk of ruining the fun for numerous other hacker-spirit communities like hackintosh or opencore. Apple can come down on this in ways that potentially make it much more difficult for hackintosh to operate, or for people to update their legitimate apple systems after the end of official support. Which was pointed out in those threads too. See also geohot taking some other PS3 exploits that were already published and combining them into a piracy kit that caused Sony to come down on them and patch the exploits, ruining it for the rest of the homebrew community. There’s a reason homebrew people try to keep it low-key, it doesn’t take many assholes to ruin it for everyone. Let alone turning it into an app on their own platform lmao. A decent number of other hobbies also involve some collective good-behavior and self-control lest the hammer come down for everyone. Doesn’t take many assholes doing donuts on quads before you’ll find motor access to that area removed or prohibited, etc. Drones also ruined in like 5 years what r/c airplanes had been safely doing for decades. Etc
    • leidenfrost 3y ago
      > it still puts the hackintosh and opencore communities in the middle as collateral damage. Hackintosh is already on a death march. Sooner or later Apple will remove support for all x86 OSX versions. Its life can be extended a bit by hackers who try to backport the software from ARM to x86. But you can't sustain the entire Apple ecosystem by volunteer work alone. Why spend resources trying to kill it when we all know it will die ln its own in a few years?
      • ungamedplayer 3y ago
• rvz 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening. You should not be surprised around the risk of depending on reverse engineered third party integrations which the provider can seek to cut you off of unauthorized interactions. > It is a bit dicey when you're charging for it, but since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist. That makes no sense for Beeper.
• SaberTail 3y ago
  Apple wouldn't even exist if not for this type of hacking. One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes[1] to play around on AT&T's telephone system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes Which didn’t scale because it doesn’t scale because the blue box stopped working. Sort of like Beeper.
    • lofaszvanitt 3y ago
      Beeper's true purpose was to show people that it's possible without an iPhone. What you don't know how many other clients like this worked and for how long...
      • latexr 3y ago
        > Beeper's true purpose was to show people that it's possible without an iPhone. What’s your basis for saying that? Honestly asking. Seems like Beeper’s true purpose could just as well have been to make money. Of course this is possible without an iPhone. Apple could build it anytime they want, they just don’t. Which I disagree with, but that’s a different argument.
  • epistasis 3y ago
    And the penalty for getting caught wasn't merely having your connection turned off, it was a trial. Selling a device that transgressed the boundaries doesn't mean they thought that no boundaries should exist, it just means they knew it was possible to do something technically interesting and would allow them to make money. If Jobs and Woz thought there should be now penalties for using blue boxes, my guess is that they thought the telco should merely implement a better system, not that everybody should get free access to it.
  • zer0zzz 3y ago
• Klonoar 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? The site is called "Hacker News" but it's predominantly existed over the years as a funnel for the business-centric Valley industry. Which is to say that I think you're trying to apply one specific definition of "hacker" when it doesn't really work that way.
  • lolinder 3y ago
    There's that, but I'm not an SV person and my reaction was still "well, duh!". An app like Beeper Mini wants to be something like NewPipe for YouTube: installable only if you know how to download F-Droid, maintained by a community of fans, used only by people who understand that Google can break it at any time and it might take days to weeks for it to recover. What Beeper did instead was build a startup and sell subscriptions to mainstream users, and now that it inevitably broke they come off as very whiny about it. It's not just Silicon Valley business types who see that and wince: it's offensive to old-school hackers too.
    • smeej 3y ago
      Know how to download F-droid? As in, "Google F-droid, click link to f-droid.org, click 'Download F-droid'"? I guess I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty alright with people building apps with the expectation that would-be users will need to know how to install apps.
      • lolinder 3y ago
        I didn't say it was a high bar, but it's enough of a barrier to drive off most of the entitled complaints when Google periodically breaks the app.
    • Nullabillity 3y ago
      Everyone deserves a path around vendor bullshit, not just "true hackers".
      • op00to 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• oneplane 3y ago
  iMessage is Apple's service, and they can do with it whatever they want. No other arguments are really relevant. As for whatever reasons Apple comes up with: that is probably also not going to be relevant as a multinational that is beholden to money is going to have the legal department and PR do that sort of messaging and not anyone on the technical side of things. Speculating as to why things are the way they are: Apple knows that people in some socioeconomic ecosystems value iMessage as-is, so we can expect their intent to be aligned with keeping that value. Reusing all in-house crypto and account management certainly makes it easier on the engineering side as well.
  • tcfhgj 3y ago
    They can't, if they have extreme market power, mich like Microsoft can't do anything they want with Windows
    • oneplane 3y ago
      And that's where that 'if' is important: iMessage isn't very relevant outside of the US. Worldwide it doesn't even reach the top 5. Inside the US, even Facebook Messenger is apparently used more than iMessage.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
• charles_f 3y ago
  I wouldn't take that as a lack of hacker spirit ; and honestly saying this was to be anticipated is not being an applogist. You could tell this would happen, notably because they were selling a product on top of a retro-engineered API, and it made quite the noise. Even if they hadn't closed it at a technical level, they'd probably have done it at a legal level. And to point out the obvious, Beeper was also closed source. I don't trust apple much, but I trust a random startup much less to believe that they're not either doing something dicey, or screwing up the encryption protocol and creating tons of security holes (esp. if it was retro engineered). Honestly, as you're pointing out the closed source character of all of that, I'd much rather use something like Signal.
• lxgr 3y ago
  > since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist. It uses a server for bridging APNs to GCM. Sure, that could be maintained on a donation basis, but it’s not completely infrastructure-free in any case.
  • rezonant 3y ago
    If you think about it, it's actually not even a technological requirement. It's plenty possible to use an Android system service which maintains a connection for Beeper Mini persistently from the phone. After all that's what GCM does too. Yes, it would require backgrounding permissions, but that is something pretty justifiable for a messaging app, and when using the right UI practices, you can explain this to the user before they grant it. So yes, it's absolutely possible for this app to be 100% client side and I wish Beeper would've done that to start, if for no other reason than to dispel the misinformation around that BPNs is somehow required for the core operation of the app. To be fair, they probably thought making this explicit in their How It Works article would be sufficient.
    • lxgr 3y ago
      Is this actually still possible without (or even with) a foreground notification? I thought Google clamped down on that practice a while ago, since it increases power, data, and memory usage.
      • thaumasiotes 3y ago
        > I thought Google clamped down on that practice a while ago, since it increases power, data, and memory usage. I don't really follow the reasoning. If saving on power, data, and memory usage were more important than the ability to receive messages, it would follow that you were better off carrying around a cinder block than a phone.
        • charcircuit 3y ago
          Having n apps all actively querying various servers all the time will waste resources. The solution Google provides is Firebase Cloud Messaging which is the blessed notification service on the system which handles querrying notifications for all apps. FCM even avoids waking up the system from idle if the notification received is not high priority and can wait until sometime in the future when the device momentarily stops idling to processing everything at once before idling again.
• Brian_K_White 3y ago
  There is a value to the iphone users, not just the android users, but neither Apple nor most iphone users will ever acknowledge that.
• midtake 3y ago
  Their house, their rules.
• brookst 3y ago
  Not much point in engaging with someone who sees all opposing views as “apologists” “crawling out”
• tinus_hn 3y ago
  You need a device key to use an iCloud account, and all Beeper clients were using the same device key. So unsurprisingly, it’s not hard for Apple to block. And this doesn’t mean they peep into the messages.
• righthand 3y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• justapassenger 3y ago
  [dead]
• geodel 3y ago
  Go support the hackers then. Here you seem to be heckling people who don't share your viewpoint.
• perryizgr8 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? Kind of silly to buy apple devices (especially iphone) and expect to be able to hack their services. Apple is the last place to look for hacker friendly products. Ffs you can't even run your own software on an iPhone. Spend your hacker energy somewhere worthwhile, on devices and platforms that welcome that kind of tinkering (or at least tolerate it). There are so many relatively open messaging services. Telegram has a rich API and bots framework. Much more hacker like to build something interesting on that. People trying to force imessage are just fighting a battle that is already lost. Why spend time and energy on something that will perpetuate closed ecosystems even if they succeed?
• tlrobinson 3y ago
  > Obviously Mini was using the encryption properly else it wouldn't have worked to begin with. Just want to point out this isn’t inherently true. For example an insecurely generated session key would work fine but not be secure. > Of course, it's very unlikely Apple is doing that. Just putting the thought out there. Apple is doing what? Not using encryption properly? What reason do you have to believe that?
  • silasdavis 3y ago
    > Not using encryption properly? They didn't mean that, they meant siphoning off data client side, for reasons, like CSAM. The point, which I agree with, is having to trust a single closed source implementation of a client is not so different to trusting the servers of a non E2E service.
    • simbolit 3y ago
      The BIG difference is that you have to trust the hardware and the operating system already, and as these are made by apple, you already have to trust them. "Trusting the servers of a non E2E service" is adding another trusted party. If you don't trust apple, you don't have an iPhone.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• code_duck 3y ago
  You can use iMessage on your MacBook, right?
• Bud 3y ago
  [dead]
• modeless 3y ago
  > Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? Actually it is documented by Apple themselves that they receive the encrypted messages and the key to decrypt them when iCloud backup is used (unless you and the person you are messaging have specifically enabled their "advanced data protection" feature). They have decrypted messages in response to law enforcement requests.
  • mlindner 3y ago
    You left off the point that that only true if you had iCloud backup of iMessages enabled. If you didn't have iCloud backup enabled then they've always been E2EE.
    • modeless 3y ago
      No, I mentioned that. > If you didn't have iCloud backup enabled then they've always been E2EE. Correction: if you and the person you're messaging both didn't have iCloud backup enabled. And also it's worth noting that Apple forbids you from using any cloud backup system other than theirs.
      • vezycash 3y ago
        >Apple forbids you from using any cloud backup solution other than theirs If this is true, how is that legal?
        • modeless 3y ago
          What would make it illegal, short of antitrust law?
          • flkenosad 3y ago
            I the the argument is that it should be in the law.
      • 3y ago
• HenryBemis 3y ago
  > siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? If you got iCloud backup enabled then they absolutely siphone everything that happens on your phone. And the disgusting part is that when enabling a new iphone it automatically has it switched on. I remember the case with some terrorists that Apple have to the US authorities everything on the dude's iCloud backups, but the authorities weren't content with only the backups and wanted to crack the phone - so backups have their keys managed by Apple.
  • Terretta 3y ago
    You mean the San Bernardino terrorist where Apple refused to break open the phone for the US government? And recently, they've released an updated version of cloud sync that doesn't even let Apple have your keys.
• keepamovin 3y ago
  I like/love Apple, but it's not really about hacker spirit. I think Steve and Steve were at the start, for sure. But then, it's like Steve figured out how to "evolve" hacker spirit into a business model. And not just any business model: but a totalitarian vertically integrated model. I mean, fabulously successful and don't let the negative political connotations of totalitarian offend you here, it's but a minor jab, because there are downsides to this model in the Apple-verse, for sure: the lack of "hackability" of their devices. But it's perhaps a momentary cultural variation in a sea of changing priorities for Apple. They have embraced right to repair: perhaps in future, "hacker spirit" evolves further to become, a "right" for all citizenry of the Apple-verse, backed by their tremendous business model. In the same way that you can conceptualize (again, without judgement or making regard as to truth or not), that "human rights" emerge not out of a vacuum, but out of what the infrastructure of state can conceive and provide. In other words, today's action may be but the anachronistic kneejerk of some poobah in the Apple bureaucracy. A vestige of the old guard, perhaps soon dying out. If that makes sense? :)
  • __loam 3y ago
    I love my iPhone but apple is a publicly traded corp lol. The only reason they're embracing right to repair is because of huge efforts of people outside the company to get bills passed that make them embrace it.
  • pjmlp 3y ago
    To be fair, all computing business from the 1980's was vertical integration, the exception being CP/M, the university folks porting the UNIX tapes into their vertical integrated mainframes, and Compaq getting lucky on how they reverse engineered IBM PC's. CP/M systems eventually died, UNIX startups created by some of those university folks were just as vertically integrated as the mainframes they replaced, leaving only the PC clones. Had Compaq not gotten lucky, and today's computing landscape would look much different, probably like the laptops and all-in-one PCs that are being pushed nowadays as the OEM margins cannot get any thinner.
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    Not just that but it is no longer Steve's company (If he were alive). It is now a multinational public company with shareholders, employees and 1000's of vendors (and their employees, etc...) It is all but required for a company of this size to take action in this way.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  The hacker spirit in relation to Apple was long gone when the Mac Classic was released. People that imagine otherwise haven't lived through those days.
• inquirerGeneral 3y ago
  [dead]
• wraptile 3y ago
  HN's obsession with Apple feels like some twisted mix of Stockholm syndrome, american nationalism and sunk cost falacy. Truly bizare to the point I wouldn't be surprised if we find out Apple is actively astroturfing this and many other topics. No other tech focused forum does this.
  • nerdix 3y ago
    No astroturfing needed. It's called the Apple Cult for a reason.
• Garvi 3y ago
  Apple customers are the fur wearers of the tech world.
• kelnos 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? I'm torn on this. Is it following the hacker spirit to get more people plugged into Apple's closed ecosystem? Maybe? Maybe not? Reverse engineering a proprietary protocol is certainly hacker-y. But building a business around that -- essentially charging people to put more load onto someone else's infrastructure, who have to bear the costs (even a rich behemoth like Apple) -- I'm not sure that qualifies. If we were talking about some open source project that was releasing this app to F-Droid, maybe it'd be more clear? > The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" I don't think that's Apple apologism, that's just "duh, obviously Apple is going to try to shut them down, and probably succeed". It's lame. It's just as lame as when AOL kept breaking Gaim/Pidgin's ability to talk AIM's OSCAR protocol. But acknowledging that Apple is going to pull something like that isn't apologism, it's just stating reality. (As for the AOL/AIM example, I think reverse-engineering OSCAR was actually hacker-spirit-y, as AIM was a free service open to anyone, just they didn't feel like supporting Linux users, as was the SOP of many companies at the time. Linux users were a fairly small percentage of users, so it wasn't a big thing. But there are tons of Android users; more than iOS users, globally, even. That's not really the same, to me.) In the context of the overwhelmingly saturated messaging space, I think it'd be a lot more hacker-y to bring something like Signal up to the usability standards of iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc., and evangelize the hell out of it to get people out of closed platforms. Even Signal isn't perfect there, since they refuse to enable federation in the protocol, and only release updates to their server-side software a long time after it's been running in production. But it's certainly better than getting more people hooked in Apple's walled garden.
  • methuselah_in 3y ago
    You need android an flash linageOs. Welcome to the club.
  • rezonant 3y ago
    > I'm torn on this. Is it following the hacker spirit to get more people plugged into Apple's closed ecosystem? Maybe? Maybe not? Agreed here. But I understand deeply why it's appealing for my fellow android users who are tired of being bullied into buying phones they just don't want by their friends who overwhelmingly drink the Kool aid. it's not great, and in the US the effect is very real. > I think it'd be a lot more hacker-y to bring something like Signal up to the usability standards of iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc., Good idea... what about an existing open standard that is already adopted by a billion devices and can be implemented by any mobile phone manufacturer and carrier network. Something that takes what's good about SMS and adds all those nice features. I bet we'd have to work together to make end to end encryption interoperable, and some of the fancier stuff is too new to be in the spec yet, but that's not too hard in the grand scheme of things. Oh, RCS exists.
• amelius 3y ago
  > how iMessage costs Apple money to run This assumes that Apple can periodically extract money from users after they bought the product.
• dijit 3y ago
  > Obviously Mini was using the encryption properly else it wouldn't have worked to begin with. I tried beeper before (not Mini though, so could be wrong about Mini) but it seemed to be running a VM somewhere and passing messages to the MacOS Messages.app via some kind of scripting interface. So beeper itself (the full version) was not “speaking” iMessage protocol at all.
  • djxfade 3y ago
    The old version indeed worked that way. Mini was implementing a fully reverse engineered protocol.
• viktorcode 3y ago
  > Where is the hacker spirit here? There was none to begin with. It was an attempt to build a business on top of a virtual macOS. Edit: sorry, confused them with a different service. This one used previously published research on reverse engineering iMessage to build the business.
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