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Beeper's esoteric fix for iMessage access suggests why it's pushing politically
- haltist 3y ago[flagged]
- reisse 3y agoIt's not fiefdom, as the market is competitive as hell. One misstep from Apple affecting large enough user base, next minute everyone will be in WhatsApp/Telegram/FB Messenger/whatever.
- oneplane 3y agoDepending on where you live, almost nobody is on iMessage to begin with. Almost all of the noise around iMessage and beeper is US-centric yet even in the US most people are using FB Messenger and not iMessage. Yet we don't see Beeper supporting FB messenger. Or Beeper supporting WhatsApp. Because those networks don't allow third party clients either, which makes sense since the owners of those networks get to dictate their own usage rules.
- bogwog 3y ago> Yet we don't see Beeper supporting FB messenger. Or Beeper supporting WhatsApp. Beeper does in fact support those (and more), also through reverse engineering efforts. See: https://help.beeper.com/en_US/chat-networks https://help.beeper.com/en_US/chat-networks They're trying to innovate in the space by building a single interface to multiple services, but anticompetitive action from Apple (and others, I assume) is preventing that from happening. It seems to me like an obvious thing to regulate. The benefit to consumers is obvious too.
- solardev 3y agoDidn't we already go through this whole era with Trillian?
- oneplane 3y agoExcept that those networks are listed to pad the functionality of the app, not because they actually work the way they should. FB for example: Stories/Reels/Posts Sharing: Not supported. End-to-end encrypted chats: Not supported WhatsApp: Will view only once messages feature work the same way like it does on WhatsApp? No. Currently we don’t track when users open media and hence cannot support it in a similar fashion. Such messages will remain on Beeper as any other encrypted message. In theory this could all be added later on, reverse-engineered later on etc. but in reality this is much more likely to become a niche or fail outright. Threema and the likes have survived for so long because they don't try to break into third party systems. It's not a new concept, and cat-and-mouse with third party servers has always been an unsuccessful avenue.
- bogwog 3y ago> cat-and-mouse with third party servers has always been an unsuccessful avenue. Hence the political efforts. If Apple can be forced to enable interop, everyone else can be too.
- oneplane 3y agoBut why? Why should anyone providing a service be forced to also allow others to represent that service? Shouldn't it be up to the service owner to figure out what they want to do with it? The only reasoning behind the whole iMessage thing seems to stem from a specific age band of Americans that value others based on the background color of their messages. This is a human problem, not a technology problem.
- bogwog 3y ago> But why? Why should anyone providing a service be forced to also allow others to represent that service? Shouldn't it be up to the service owner to figure out what they want to do with it? Why should service providers be forced to police CSAM and hate speech? Because it makes sense to weigh individual freedoms against the cost to society. (and keep in mind that Apple is a publicly traded company) The cost of walled gardens are that they harm consumers. Consumers need to spend more money to overcome artificial barriers designed only to increase the amount of money they spend without offering any value. Interoperability for commodity tech like this is an obvious win for the economy. > The only reasoning behind the whole iMessage thing seems to stem from a specific age band of Americans that value others based on the background color of their messages. This is a human problem, not a technology problem. If that's really what you think this is about, then you haven't been paying attention to any of the discussions on the topic. Or you're doing the thing internet people do where you're being disingenuous just to win an argument.
- charcircuit 3y agoNext will be hardware attestation to fully require the messages originate from an apple device. Beeper playing the cat and mouse game is going to ruin this for everyone else.
- haltist 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoThis comment breaks the site guidelines. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (Edit: also, please don't post like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703791 either. We're trying for something different here.)
- haltist 3y ago[flagged]
- dvngnt_ 3y agothey're solution is self hosting on a Mac like blue bubbles so it seems to be somewhat resistant. though anything is possible
- charcircuit 3y agoFrom the article it sounds like they are periodically fetching a token using a Mac, but they can send messages from a phone by just saving that token.
- crooked-v 3y agoThat would require cutting off a bunch of old devices as well, though.
- 3y ago
- zer00eyz 3y ago>>> ...a bi-partisan foursome of US lawmakers ... sending a letter to the Department of Justice regarding "Apple's potential anti-competitive treatment of the Beeper Mini messaging application. I'm sorry, but why did any one waste any effort on this. If you know the tech, or the law, or a bit of both you would understand why this "letter" is a waste. SMS works, you have choice (Signal, not happy with them for cutting off sms). Apple seems to be locking beeper out of its servers, and that is their right.
- criddell 3y agoIf I had a product I sold that involved cloud resources I certainly wouldn’t like the idea that anybody who can reverse engineer my protocol should be able to build and sell a product built on that infrastructure without permission or payment. I’m on Apple’s side on this one.
- 1231232131231 3y agoI believe that people have the right to reverse engineer things. On the other hand, I also think Apple has the right to lock anyone out of their servers.
- parl_match 3y agoApple using iMessage as a moat, and locking it to their platform, and including it as a built in, is pissing off a lot of other competitors. Microsoft got smacked for this kind of behavior in the 90s (albeit, they acted a lot more egregiously). Apple purposefully degrades major features of their chat app when SMS users are onboard. They will be adopting RCS, which will address a lot of this and probably take a lot of pressure off them. When you have that much of a market, it becomes way more complicated than "their servers, their devices, their rules"
- chongli 3y agoGoogle had the chance to solve this problem a long time ago. How many different chat protocols have they killed off? It’s not Apple’s fault that Google can’t sustain a product past one promotion cycle of the lead.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoThe article skirts around the edges of this, but it’s pretty clear that all Beeper is doing is defeating a cached hardware check by falsely representing itself as being the Mac device used for “registration data”. I expect that some change is in the works that will break it entirely, and unless regulators are interested in forbidding hardware checks entirely I don’t see what they would do to intervene here.
- beeboobaa 3y ago> unless regulators are interested in forbidding hardware checks entirely I don’t see what they would do to intervene here Simple, they tell apple: Open up. They don't have to care about any of the technical details. That's politics for you.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoOpen up what? If they write a rule that doesn’t specify technical details, it seems like the already existing functionality to send and receive SMS messages from the iMessage app would be sufficient.
- pseudalopex 3y ago> Open up what? The iMessage service. > If they write a rule that doesn’t specify technical details, it seems like the already existing functionality to send and receive SMS messages from the iMessage app would be sufficient. The app is Messages.
- Grustaf 3y agoThat rule would probably then apply to all message apps
- SpaghettiCthulu 3y agoWhich would be a good thing!
- ljm 3y agoAs far as I'm aware, no other messaging service offers interop any more. We used to have it with XMPP, which got embraced and extinguished. Back in the day you could use an app like Adium or a library like Pidgin which understood all of the protocols. It sounds to me like Apple could break out Messages from SMS and then Messages would just be another competitor on the market like FB Messenger, whatever the fuck Google is running now, WhatsApp, Signal, etc. FWIW Beeper's 'esoteric' fix is a gaping security hole. Their product relies on MITM and they're obviously not going to profit off of a minimal subscription fee if they're buying Apple hardware to make it happen.
- ryukafalz 3y ago> As far as I'm aware, no other messaging service offers interop any more. XMPP still exists. Matrix exists now and is similarly an open protocol.
- ljm 3y agoBut none of the mainstream providers support it anymore. Slack got to where it is through XMPP, for example, but that support was readily dropped. They've all silo'd up.
- ryukafalz 3y agoOkay, if you're only counting "mainstream" providers then... sure, but that's pretty subjective. Element has government agencies as customers and lots of open source projects have Matrix rooms. Webex seems to still support XMPP federation. (No, I don't particularly like Webex either.) Are these the market leaders in chat? No, of course not. Do they get some use? They sure do.
- solardev 3y agoWhat are webex and element?
- 3y ago
- SnorkelTan 3y agoAT&T fought tooth and nail to prevent telephones manufactured by third parties from connecting to their network, and eventually lost. Why should the major digital communication platforms fare any differently?
- bydo 3y agoThere was only one AT&T, and to connect a third-party phone to their network still required paying AT&T for access. There are dozens of digital messaging alternatives to iMessage, and Beeper doesn't appear to be interested in paying any of them.
- vlovich123 3y agoThat’s one interpretation. The other is that Apple doesn’t offer a way to pay for access. I would love to see legislation forcing the opening of protocols & force allowing compatible clients that aren’t abusive. I miss things like Pidgin/Trillium etc where you could just have the 1 app & not worry about what platform your friends were on. The current state of affairs is a major step back from the 90s/early 00s.
- zer00eyz 3y agoBecause AT&T was a monopoly... There are a zillion messaging clients... Signal, Slack, Discord (all of them work on iPhone)... Sms is a protocol, iMessage works with that (it is connected to the network)... As an aside, the old ATT phones were nearly indestructible. Everything that came after was a race to the bottom.
- eli 3y agoCell carriers did the same thing up until the iPhone. That wasn't quite a full and free market, but there were at least a competitors and they all did it because they could.
- aw1621107 3y agoIf anyone else is curious about this, it appears there are two relevant cases: - Hush-a-Phone Corp v., United States[0], in which the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that AT&T could not prohibit the mechanical attachment of a device to its phones as long as the device did not damage AT&T's phone or its network - The Carterfone decision[1], where the FCC allowed third-party devices to be electrically connected to AT&T's network as long as they did not damage the network [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone
- sharkjacobs 3y agoI gotta wonder what the Venn diagram overlap of Mac users and Android users is. I bet it's pretty small. But not as vanishingly small as the number of Android users who have a Mac user friend who will send them registration data every week.
- rpmisms 3y agoLots of devs use Android, because hackability.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoWhy would it be small? MacOS and Android are both open platforms, iPhone is entirely closed. I've always used Macs and have never considered buying an iPhone.
- Grustaf 3y agoBecause half the population have an iPhone, a tiny fraction have macs, and the overlap between mac and iphone owners is probably very large - if you like the mac you probably like the iphone. And there are benefits to getting both from the same ecosystem of course.
- promiseofbeans 3y agoYou get a lot of devs who prefer to work on mac, and then use android so they can pimp it out
- dnissley 3y agoI fit here. I just want to be able to install apps and not be locked to only getting software from an app store. That's it. Mac and android both fit the bill. iPhone does not -- they're super nice devices otherwise and if they enabled this ability I would probably switch right away.
- zik 3y agoI think it's not as small as you think. I have a macbook but mostly use Linux and an android phone. I think a lot of people just get what they want to use at the time and that means touching a variety of ecosystems.
- mdasen 3y agoPersonally, I wish Beeper would focus on everything other than iMessage. Apple is more curmudgeon about these kinds of things than most companies and what I really need is a way to get out of the half-dozen other apps everyone wants to chat on: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, Discord, Slack, Telegram, etc. If Apple stands alone, I can handle 2 things. I have trouble handling 7+ things. From my perspective, Beeper's iMessage efforts feel wasted. It looks like Apple will roll out RCS next year. Yes, it won't be E2E encrypted initially, but if I'm trusting a third party app I'm kinda loosing that E2E anyway. I trust Beeper, but their app (or an update to it) could start reading the messages on my device and transmit them back to Beeper (or transmit back some profile built from the messages). It also seems likely that the GSM Association will work with Apple on encryption that isn't Google-based for RCS. It might take a couple years, but it seems likely that will happen. I wish Beeper would focus its efforts where it feels like the big payoff would be. Instead, everyone is obsessed with blue bubbles like they're some sort of status symbol. Beeper has been wonderful for other services and it would be great to see them improve those capabilities even further. Instead, they seem to have pivoted to "omg, blue bubbles!" It's always possible that other services could similarly try and ban them, but Beeper hasn't seemed to have much trouble with the other services.
- tomtheelder 3y agoI’ll just say that personally the iMessage portion of Beeper is the only compelling offering for me personally. I do not care about centralizing my chats. I do care about being able to access my iMessage conversations on devices other than my iPhone- my only Apple device. iMessage is the only application I ever use, messaging or otherwise, that I cannot access from my computer. I don’t entirely disagree with your perspective, just want to point out that it’s not just about blue bubbles as a status symbol.
- danielodievich 3y agoAnybody else remembers the epic battle of Microsoft MSN messenger interoping with AOL and Yahoo Messenger circa 1999-2000? The whack-a-mole of "we fixed the client" vs "oh no they borked the protocol to block us". Fun times. Seeing it from inside of Microsoft at a time was something else...
- happy-dude 3y agoYou would love this article: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/ https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/
- CSSer 3y agoWas there any good or even gray faith there?
- bombcar 3y agoI’ve been getting iMessage spam (always copying multiple phone numbers) for the first time in forever.
- jjtech 3y agoTo clarify some points, though I'm sure all will become clear when this releases: + This is NOT hardware attestation. It's simply using a combination of things such as serial number and other device identifiers to prove to Apple you own the device + Because it is not hardware attestation, in the future this process might be improved, if someone reverses/emulates the (purely software) algorithm "proving" you have that device. Then it would only be a matter of asking the user to input a serial number, once. + Hardware attestation is implemented in the protocol. However, the 2019 iMac does not have a T2, so this cannot be enforced for a while yet. + Beeper Mini still implements the rest of the iMessage stack on-device
- TradingPlaces 3y agoWill someone explain why people who don’t pay Apple a dime have some right to use iMessage? That seems to be at the root of all this, and it makes little sense to me.
- the-rc 3y agoWhy would people who don't pay Apple a dime have some right to get their emails delivered to iCloud accounts? Why would people who don't pay Apple a dime have some right to look at public pictures hosted on iCloud Photos? Perhaps Apple will find a way to charge for all three.
- Grustaf 3y agoThey do charge for iCloud, they charge the person that put the photos there.
- orf 3y agoHey, I don’t pay for your computer or electricity but I’d like to run some programs on it to mine for bitcoin that I can sell for a profit. Please provision access ASAP, thank you.
- the-rc 3y agoYou can serve my browser some JavaScript and then consume my memory and CPU, right now. This is inherent in communication over the Internet: there are costs borne by both sides. But mining Bitcoin is quite different from routing messages anyway. That's a strained example. SMTP is a lot closer. And Apple will accept emails from Android, Linux or Windows systems just fine. HTTP is not as close, but still more so than Bitcoin. I don't know why people try to make an argument that even Apple, as far as I can tell, is not making. They stick to their usual "protecting the user" line.
- orf 3y ago> And Apple will accept emails from Android, Linux or Windows systems just fine. HTTP is not as close, but still more so than Bitcoin. No they won’t, not unless the emails are addressed to an active iCloud user. That has paid them.
- misnome 3y ago> “an easy target for Apple because thousands of Beeper users were using the same registration data," This really does make it sound like their initial block was literally hitting an anti-spam filter. This also makes it sound even more like “we reverse engineered the netflix API, registered one netflix account and are selling access to it, plz help us politicians”
- lloyds_barclays 3y agoSince the "green-blue bubble war" is almost only an US problem, they already shutdown 2G and 3G networks. What stops them to phrase out SMS and MMS entirely and replace it with RCS?
- ceeam 3y agoiOS ain't done 'till Beeper does not run™