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The 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

The 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 ago
  Everyone 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 ago
    Android users or fallacies?
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Fallacies.
      - sbuk 3y ago
        There are five in the GPs post: - Strawman - Ad Hominem - False Dilemma - Hasty Generalization - Appeal to Emotion One more for free; Begging the Question...
        PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        > Strawman He isn't arguing against a strawman, i.e. a misrepresented argument, he's saying the issue is not what OP claims and saying the issue is something else. > Ad Hominem He isn't using insults in place of an argument, he is including insults with his argument, so it's not an ad hominem. > False Dilemma He isn't falsely reducing the choices down to two or a few, he's just asking why Apple's customers don't act a certain way or have a problem with something. > Hasty Generalization What is it you think he is incorrectly generalizing to support his overall argument? > Appeal to Emotion He might be including emotional language, but he isn't relying on people feeling a particular way to agree with him at all. There is no appeal to emotion. > One more for free; Begging the Question... What question do you think he is ignoring/assuming to have been answered in making his claim?
  - shreyansh_k 3y ago
    While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people. Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days. "Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users." The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      > While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people. It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard. > Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days. How so? What similar case? > "Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users." How is OpenAI punishing people using alternatives to ChatGPT? > The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently. I don't see the example you gave as matching at all, but I look forward to your clarification. I'm not being sarcastic either, I know it sounds like I am.
      - sbuk 3y ago
        > It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard. Nope. SMS and MMS were still present, and as they were at the time iMessage was introduced, the only global messaging standard. Apple has also commited to bring another standard to the platform in RCS. The notion that iMessage is a standard is wrong. It's an unpublished/private API. To call it a protocol would also be wrong.
  - superb_dev 3y ago
    They aren’t “crippling” anything?
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Sure they are. That's why iPhone users dislike texting with Android users.
MBCook 3y ago
Personally I like Apple not allowing other companies who hacked into their infrastructure to using it without permission. That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me. “I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!” People want iMessage open, or at least available on other platforms. That’s fine. I get it. This is NOT how you do that. As a customer I would find it weird and disconcerting if Apple said “You found a way in? Congrats! Start setting up camp!”
- hn_acker 3y ago
  > That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me. >> “I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!” Beeper's arguments are about the benefit of encryption to phone users, not about who reverse-engineered the iMessage service. The main benefit is giving agency to Android users to send and receive encrypted messages from iMessage users, and the secondary benefit is letting iMessage users send and receive encrypted messages from those Android users. (Why don't both parties use a cross-platform E2EE messaging app? Beeper Mini requires only the Android user to alter their own messaging setup.) Beeper Mini tricks Apple into giving the Android user a private key on the Android user's behalf. In order to achieve this setup, Beeper Mini needs to stand in for the Android user and pretend to have an Apple device (requires a fake serial number - fake credentials - if MuffinFlavored is correct). That's the only fake part. There are two overarching security issues at play. 1. Apple doesn't reliably distinguish between real and fake devices. That's an important problem but has no impact on iMessage encryption. Apple may have a right to shut out Beeper Mini, but Beeper Mini isn't in the wrong solely for utilizing a bug Apple missed. Otherwise, the acts and applications of reverse-engineering in general would be wrong, and that seems to be the opposite of the hacker spirit to me. 2. Beeper Mini supposedly doesn't give Beeper access to the private key for decrypting iMessage messages. Supposedly. The code isn't free software, so an Android user has to choose between trusting Beeper Mini's code or not using Beeper Mini. If you don't trust Beeper to give only you the encryption key then Beeper is a bad idea. (In that case, you can inspect the source-available iMessage implementation proof of concept called pypush by JJTech0130, or you could install a Signal/Matrix app instead.)
nixgeek 3y ago
I give Apple a good amount of my personal money every year precisely because Apple works well with Apple, and because when you switch on all the features like Advanced Data Protection and Lockdown Mode their vertical integration across hardware, software and services gives them a strong security story. I have Signal and WhatsApp for talking to people on other platforms, and I’m personally fine with Apple maintaining strong control over iMessage and introducing things like Contact Key Verification [1] to further enhance security within that closed system (things like Signal have alternatives to this, too!). That is to say: there’s plenty of competition in cross-platform messaging already, this is good, many of those alternatives have hundreds of millions of users. We’re really not at the point where we need regulators to step in and force Apple to open up iMessage! [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213465 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213465 You are obviously free to spend your dollars as you wish, but don’t conflate the lack of interoperability with Android as “making the life of its own customers miserable”, it’s really the opposite: everything Apple works well with Apple and that’s a real upgrade for me and likely others over the piecemeal, fragmented, and harder to secure ecosystem that is Android. Your opinions likely do vary to my own and that’s why it’s good there are options and competition.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Arguably, messaging life is somewhat miserable due to the existence of various closed systems that force people to install and use multiple messengers concurrently (outside of the US) or fall back to SMS (US). I, as a mostly happy Apple customer, would lose absolutely nothing and in fact gain quite a lot of convenience if Apple were to allow an Android iMessage client. Sure, running servers isn't free, nor is spam moderation and servicing law enforcement data access requests, but I'm convinced that if they actually wanted to do this, they'd find an agreement that works for every stakeholder financially in no time. This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line.
  - sbuk 3y ago
    > "This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line." I'm unconvinced. Like I said further up the thread, the evidence to the contrary of the 'misery' of using other apps is abundant, especially given the standing of iMessage on the global scale.
averageRoyalty 3y ago
> 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. I don't think most users do either of these things. Most people don't care - they either find a common messaging platform, or their socioeconomic or cultural relationships lead to compatibility anyway.

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 ago
Everyone 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 ago
  Android users or fallacies?
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Fallacies.
    - sbuk 3y ago
      There are five in the GPs post: - Strawman - Ad Hominem - False Dilemma - Hasty Generalization - Appeal to Emotion One more for free; Begging the Question...
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        > Strawman He isn't arguing against a strawman, i.e. a misrepresented argument, he's saying the issue is not what OP claims and saying the issue is something else. > Ad Hominem He isn't using insults in place of an argument, he is including insults with his argument, so it's not an ad hominem. > False Dilemma He isn't falsely reducing the choices down to two or a few, he's just asking why Apple's customers don't act a certain way or have a problem with something. > Hasty Generalization What is it you think he is incorrectly generalizing to support his overall argument? > Appeal to Emotion He might be including emotional language, but he isn't relying on people feeling a particular way to agree with him at all. There is no appeal to emotion. > One more for free; Begging the Question... What question do you think he is ignoring/assuming to have been answered in making his claim?
- shreyansh_k 3y ago
  While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people. Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days. "Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users." The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people. It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard. > Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days. How so? What similar case? > "Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users." How is OpenAI punishing people using alternatives to ChatGPT? > The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently. I don't see the example you gave as matching at all, but I look forward to your clarification. I'm not being sarcastic either, I know it sounds like I am.
    - sbuk 3y ago
      > It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard. Nope. SMS and MMS were still present, and as they were at the time iMessage was introduced, the only global messaging standard. Apple has also commited to bring another standard to the platform in RCS. The notion that iMessage is a standard is wrong. It's an unpublished/private API. To call it a protocol would also be wrong.
- superb_dev 3y ago
  They aren’t “crippling” anything?
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Sure they are. That's why iPhone users dislike texting with Android users.

MBCook 3y ago

Personally I like Apple not allowing other companies who hacked into their infrastructure to using it without permission. That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me. “I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!” People want iMessage open, or at least available on other platforms. That’s fine. I get it. This is NOT how you do that. As a customer I would find it weird and disconcerting if Apple said “You found a way in? Congrats! Start setting up camp!”

hn_acker 3y ago
> That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me. >> “I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!” Beeper's arguments are about the benefit of encryption to phone users, not about who reverse-engineered the iMessage service. The main benefit is giving agency to Android users to send and receive encrypted messages from iMessage users, and the secondary benefit is letting iMessage users send and receive encrypted messages from those Android users. (Why don't both parties use a cross-platform E2EE messaging app? Beeper Mini requires only the Android user to alter their own messaging setup.) Beeper Mini tricks Apple into giving the Android user a private key on the Android user's behalf. In order to achieve this setup, Beeper Mini needs to stand in for the Android user and pretend to have an Apple device (requires a fake serial number - fake credentials - if MuffinFlavored is correct). That's the only fake part. There are two overarching security issues at play. 1. Apple doesn't reliably distinguish between real and fake devices. That's an important problem but has no impact on iMessage encryption. Apple may have a right to shut out Beeper Mini, but Beeper Mini isn't in the wrong solely for utilizing a bug Apple missed. Otherwise, the acts and applications of reverse-engineering in general would be wrong, and that seems to be the opposite of the hacker spirit to me. 2. Beeper Mini supposedly doesn't give Beeper access to the private key for decrypting iMessage messages. Supposedly. The code isn't free software, so an Android user has to choose between trusting Beeper Mini's code or not using Beeper Mini. If you don't trust Beeper to give only you the encryption key then Beeper is a bad idea. (In that case, you can inspect the source-available iMessage implementation proof of concept called pypush by JJTech0130, or you could install a Signal/Matrix app instead.)

nixgeek 3y ago

I give Apple a good amount of my personal money every year precisely because Apple works well with Apple, and because when you switch on all the features like Advanced Data Protection and Lockdown Mode their vertical integration across hardware, software and services gives them a strong security story. I have Signal and WhatsApp for talking to people on other platforms, and I’m personally fine with Apple maintaining strong control over iMessage and introducing things like Contact Key Verification [1] to further enhance security within that closed system (things like Signal have alternatives to this, too!). That is to say: there’s plenty of competition in cross-platform messaging already, this is good, many of those alternatives have hundreds of millions of users. We’re really not at the point where we need regulators to step in and force Apple to open up iMessage! [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213465 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213465 You are obviously free to spend your dollars as you wish, but don’t conflate the lack of interoperability with Android as “making the life of its own customers miserable”, it’s really the opposite: everything Apple works well with Apple and that’s a real upgrade for me and likely others over the piecemeal, fragmented, and harder to secure ecosystem that is Android. Your opinions likely do vary to my own and that’s why it’s good there are options and competition.

lxgr 3y ago
Arguably, messaging life is somewhat miserable due to the existence of various closed systems that force people to install and use multiple messengers concurrently (outside of the US) or fall back to SMS (US). I, as a mostly happy Apple customer, would lose absolutely nothing and in fact gain quite a lot of convenience if Apple were to allow an Android iMessage client. Sure, running servers isn't free, nor is spam moderation and servicing law enforcement data access requests, but I'm convinced that if they actually wanted to do this, they'd find an agreement that works for every stakeholder financially in no time. This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line.
- sbuk 3y ago
  > "This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line." I'm unconvinced. Like I said further up the thread, the evidence to the contrary of the 'misery' of using other apps is abundant, especially given the standing of iMessage on the global scale.

averageRoyalty 3y ago

> 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. I don't think most users do either of these things. Most people don't care - they either find a common messaging platform, or their socioeconomic or cultural relationships lead to compatibility anyway.