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Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: 'We took steps to protect our users'
- notyourwork 3y agoIn other words, Apple wants to control who enters their garden. Not surprised and not sure I disagree. Why is it that Beeper, or anyone else that isn’t Apple gets to decide who uses iMessage?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Why is it that Beeper, or anyone else that isn’t Apple gets to decide who uses iMessage? Beeper doesn't decide that, it only enables.
- notyourwork 3y agoThat’s saying the same thing.
- wutwutwat 3y agoNot defending Apple but this question makes no sense. They created iMessage and they own the services that provide it. Why would they not get to decide who can use their service the same as any other company with a TOS and any brick and mortar store who can refuse service. I don’t understand the logic around this that people feel they are owed access to shit they dont own or operate. I’m all for open protocols and would like to see that here, but Apple doesn’t owe you anything and they don’t become one of the biggest companies in the world by shooting themselves in the foot. It’s the only way they would do this, just look at their track record and set your expectations accordingly. Apple won’t do anything that would remotely hinder sales even a small amount. iPhone sales are dropping because it’s the same shit every year, they won’t be giving open access to iMessage and hurt those numbers now more than ever.
- MBCook 3y ago“I figured out how to stream HBO Max without a subscription! What do you mean I can’t give other people free access? That’s my right!” I agree. It’s weird. This isn’t about if/how iMessage should be available on other platforms. It’s about if Beeper should be able to sell/give access to an Apple service by fiat against Apple’s will.
- throw310822 3y agoThe question is not why Apple should give access to their messaging system to third parties- they have the full right of doing whatever they want. The question is why the customers don't give Apple and its pathetic excuses the middle finger- and instead praise the wisdom of the company and whine about Android users not buying iPhones. This in the face of a perfectly clear example of Apple making the life of its own customers miserable in order to milk more money from the general populace.
- sbuk 3y ago> "The question is why the customers don't give Apple and its pathetic excuses the middle finger- and instead praise the wisdom of the company and whine about Android users not buying iPhones" Likewise, Android users "whine" about being not let in an use all sorts of logical fallacies to make their case. The solution, which the rest of the Android and iOS using planet has come to, is to simply use another cross platform product. There are plenty of them. Some closed, some open. All have similar features. They integrate into the respective OSs nicely. For instance, WhatsApp and Signal contacts appear in share sheets in-between iMessage contacts in iOS, so sharing things like websites is simple. No, Messages being the default does not give Apple any advantage, again as demonstrated by the rest of the world. That isn't to say iMessage isn't used at all, but it is very much an also ran in the significant majority of markets.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoEveryone uses phones. One phone manufacturer shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other phone manufacturer, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users. > Android users whine about being not let in an use all sorts of logical fallacies to make their case Name 5.
- sbuk 3y agoAndroid users or fallacies?
- 3y ago
- xinayder 3y agoI have a thousand reasons to hate apple. But I totally disagree with the MO Beeper adopted. They pretty much announced in public that they were going to follow this model of breaking the ToS for every major IM service because they managed to get it working with iMessage. I pointed it out on the HN post about Beeper's blog post on the topic that this will only be harmful in the end, specially for those that self-host Matrix bridges.
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoI've asked this 3 times across the various threads on this, and have yet to get a 100% confirmed "you are right" answer because I don't know the specifics and I haven't come into anybody who has taken the time to research the answer: When you log in to iMessage and the various underlying protocols/services, you do it with an Apple ID. Is that Apple ID tied in a one-to-many (but you need at least one) fashion of registered, active, non-flaged-stolen, checked-for-legitimacy hardware IDs/serial #s? If it isn't, why doesn't Apple do this? Don't they have a database of every device they've sold? Why would their APIs that handle auth accept something that looks a real serial # instead of an actually real validated serial #? Why don't they check "is this device sitting on a shelf un-sold or does it belong to this account, activated"?
- crazygringo 3y agoIt's a good question. On a previous thread, someone here mentioned that it allows for Hackintoshes. As long as the people using fake serials are a small group of hackers, developers, etc. who are hardcore Apple fans in the first place and merely building things for personal use, I can see Apple intentionally turning a blind eye. But once that starts getting abused to build a consumer product at scale, it becomes a whole different story. And I have to imagine it becomes difficult when dealing with old devices, 99% of which have long since been thrown out or recycled, and those serial numbers are ripe for re-use, but there are still people using 10-year-old iPads.
- unshavedyak 3y agoI’ve had this same question. I use beeper because I’m an Apple user and want access to what I pay for. I’m confused by the pathway where paying apple can be skipped.
- georgespencer 3y ago> want access to what I pay for You do not pay for this. You would like to, I’m sure.
- 3y ago
- snailmailman 3y agoiMessage is just about the only form of communication that I’ve NEVER received any spam through. I get spam SMS all the time and spam calls all the time. I get spam emails 24/7, and even spam DMs on any social media platform that has DMs. There is no iMessage spam. Apple has it tightly controlled and locked down. I can kinda see why Apple wants to preserve their ecosystem. But also, there are so many other options in this space. Signal, WhatsApp, etc. Apple is even finally adding RCS support. I don’t understand why so many people want iMessage on other platforms? It’s not that different.
- notyourwork 3y agoI agree, Apple has no interest in fighting spam from users onboarded by Beeper. That’s likely the biggest issue with this and more generally opening iMessage to wider audience.
- crazygringo 3y agoIt's not zero. I receive a few spam iMessages a year. But it's definitely orders of magnitude below SMS/calls.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>But it's definitely orders of magnitude below SMS/calls. SMS and call spam are big annoyances but can also be dealt with. On my Android, the Google messaging app is really good at stopping them. I doubt that Apple doesn't have the tech competency or the money to either build, license or acquire a really good spam filter. Heck, they can acquire every single spam filter company and start-up in the world and their money pile would barely dip.
- zappb 3y agoThe Messages app supports filtering extensions. I use a free one called Bouncer where I configured some regular expressions to auto-junk things, but there are far more sophisticated extensions available.
- 3y ago
- amelius 3y agoMy comment/joke wasn't so far off, after all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38575731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38575731
- lol768 3y agoThis isn't a technical problem. Nobody really uses iMessage enough in the EU, but in the USA where people seem to shun use of third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp, the solution would be to deem Apple a "gatekeeper" under legislation equivalent to the Digital Markets Act and force interoperability via regulation given Apple's market dominance. The regulatory process has worked with side-loading, and EU citizens will be better off as a result once the functionality is made available, in the same way as not needing to buy a pointless proprietary cable.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoAlmost 80 million users of whatsapp in the US (330m pop) vs 120 million users in all of Europe (746m pop) kind of undermines that line of reasoning? If anything, the US uses whatsapp way more than Europe. If we were looking at true third party messaging platforms that aren't owned by trillion dollar mega corps that can push their products onto every phone, then... maybe? The US barely uses Telegram compared to Europe, and signal's website sees about as much use from the US as it does from only Germany. But if the argument is about the US using iMessage more because they don't use other messaging platforms, then no, the numbers do not bear that out at all.
- adaml_623 3y agoSorry a quick Google suggests your figures for EU users is very inaccurate. Do you have a source?
- TheRealPomax 3y agoThe same Google.
- AlexAndScripts 3y agoAs I understand it different regions of Europe use different messaging apps, but none use SMS, though the UK uses it more. As far as I know Telegram is particularly popular in Eastern Europe.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI really hope this goes to court and Apple loses. It would be quite entertaining.
- LordKeren 3y agoWhat law do you think Apple is breaking by preventing beeper usage?
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoNone. I didn't imply I thought they were breaking any law. I think Apple might try to sue Beeper though.
- blehn 3y agoSeems easier to just break Beeper's implementation a few times. No one wants to use a messaging service that works sometimes.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI wonder how long they can keep that up for though.
- alephxyz 3y agoBeeper or Apple?
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoApple.
- politelemon 3y agoApple: we took steps to protect our users. HN comments: they took steps to protect their users.
- Erratic6576 3y ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoPrivacy is a human^W^W an iPhone user right.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- LanzVonL 3y agoYeah I have problems getting dates too, also because of my Android colored text bubbles.