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So Beeper is piggybacking off Apple’s servers that facilitate iMessages and is charging $1.99 per month to users and they thought Apple would be okay with this?

• layer8 3y ago
  You could make a somewhat similar argument about an email provider sending emails to iCloud email addresses, thus “piggybacking” off Apple’s iCloud servers. Granted, Beeper probably doesn’t prevent it being used between two Android users, but the primary function, and why people would pay for it, is to communicate with Apple users. The primary difference is that in one case it’s a closed proprietary protocol and in the other an open protocol. But who pays for what is not the main concern. Apple would still disagree even if Beeper would be willing to share an appropriate part of their revenue.
  • alistairSH 3y ago
    But the user with the iCloud address is (probably) an Apple customer. Similarly, with plain SMS, the cellular provider owns (some of) the infrastructure, but the user is a customer. With Beeper, the customer is paying Beeper, but Beeper is using Apple's infrastructure (without paying for it).
    • layer8 3y ago
      I don’t understand your point. The user with iMessage that the Android user wants to communicate with is an Apple customer as well, and arguably pays Apple to be reachable via iMessage. And in the iCloud Mail example, the non-Apple user who is sending an email to the iCloud user also is not an Apple customer and doesn’t pay for Apple’s iCloud Mail infrastructure.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • alistairSH 3y ago
        I was thinking two non-Apple users could use the iMessage protocol through Beeper. Maybe that's not possible?
        • layer8 3y ago
          I had addressed that aspect in my original comment (“Granted, …”).
  • riscy 3y ago
    > You could make a somewhat similar argument about an email provider sending emails to iCloud email addresses No. They don't work the same way. Your email provider has to maintain a mail server to send and receive emails on your behalf. Your email client connects to that email server to do all its work. Beeper Mini directly connects to Apple's Push Notifications servers to do all send/receive. People arguing for an open iMessage system like email are completely forgetting how much spam and bad actors have ruined the openness of email. It use to be the case that you could run your own email server, but due to spam, many major email providers like Gmail will reject emails from untrusted IP addresses, for example.
    • tadfisher 3y ago
      Why does the Messages app have a "report spam" button, if it's free from spam and bad actors?
      • riscy 3y ago
        I never said the Messages app was free from spam or bad actors, only you did. SMS and iMessage spam that is handled by the Messages app are considerably less of a problem precisely because they’re less open protocols. They’re not at all comparable; the vast, vast majority of email is spam.
      • pxmpxm 3y ago
        SMS?
• Spivak 3y ago
  That's not really the issue at play here, it's at what point does forbidding 3rd party clients to your service become anticompetitive. Right now the answer is basically "never" but I think the technological landscape would be healthier if the bar was significantly lower.
  • giantrobot 3y ago
    Why won't you let my SSH into your systems and do what I want? Blocking access to them is anti-competitive.
    • Spivak 3y ago
      That's not the same and you know it. The real situation is that you've granted me SSH access to your server but block anything than the OpenSSH client and I would like to use Go's crypto/ssh. And it's one thing when they're two OSS implementations but when those alternative clients are your competitors it starts looking anticompetitive.
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        You giving me SSH access to your machine gives me the ability to use your infrastructure and resources for my purposes. Make the example instead you giving me access to an internal API. You're focusing on the mechanism of my example rather than the effect. Apple hasn't given Beeper (or me or you) free access to their infrastructure. Shutting down Beeper using an exploit is well within their rights.
    • iAMkenough 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        [flagged]
    • i5-2520M 3y ago
• CharlesW 3y ago
  The "paid" aspect is seemingly not the problem. Automattic does what Beeper does (without unauthorized access to Apple services) and charges $15/month. https://texts.com/subscription https://texts.com/subscription
  • joshmanders 3y ago
    So if Automattic does it without violating Apple's ToS and doing it unauthorized, why exactly can't Beeper?
    • CharlesW 3y ago
      My feeling is that Beeper leadership saw the kid's hack and adopted it without thinking it through. They could've designed it in a way that didn't depend on unauthorized access to Apple services.
    • mrj 3y ago
      It looks like their service only works on MacOS, which means they're probably just using the local iMessage db like others have done. They're not integrating with the API or providing access for other platforms, it's a totally different (and limited) solution. If you have a Mac sitting around, airmessage.org has made this work cross platform for a while now.
• barnabee 3y ago
  Or: Apple's servers are serving APIs on the public internet and which clients a user chooses to connect to them with is no concern of Apple's, and any attempt to block certain clients is clearly anti-consumer and anti-competitive…
  • JoshuaRogers 3y ago
    Your argument encompasses the whole of User-Agent filtering, no? Edit: grammar.