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Beeper – Moving Forward

• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• maipen 3y ago
  The iMessage “social pressure” is mostly a USA problem. Europeans use whatsapp and some eastern use telegram. Which is not surprising since iphone is and always was one of the most expensive phones to get.
• Terretta 3y ago
  That Apple "lock customers into using Apple’s official app for texting" is a lie. I use several different SMS texting (some also voice call) apps on my iPhone, in order to keep SMS numbers as required by various segments of digital life apart, as well as to serve as the "mobile" number for SMS on my contact info. For a decade my iPhone's primary voice and SMS line were even an original "Grand Central" number before it was acquired by Google Voice. If your preferred number is stuck on your iPhone, you can port it to any app backed by a service that supports porting, then keep using your number not just on that iPhone but anywhere you run the app.
• spsesk117 3y ago
  I would love to have been a fly on the wall at the Beeper offices over the past few weeks. I've had a hard time guessing their intent. To some extent all of this Beeper Mini stuff seems to be almost an elaborate marketing stunt. I don't say that to diminish the impressive work of the team of anything like that, but it seems self-evident that Apple would hate this and I've been a bit surprised by the tone of the company throughout the past few weeks. The tone feels a bit like they've been surprised by Apple's response? With all of that said, I'm kind of selfishly happy they seem to be returning their focus to Beeper Cloud. I've been a very happy user of it for a while now and I don't particularly care about the iMessage functionality. I'm very impressed with what they've been able to achieve and overcome when taking on Apple here, and I'm really interested in where they'll go next.
  • andwaal 3y ago
    Totally agree, it has been fun to follow, but I really don't hope that this stunt destroys for the awesome product Beeper Cloud is. As an European user I couldn't care less about blue and green bubbles, all of my communication goes through FB messenger or Snap, only exception is the occasional SMS from old relatives without other platforms.
  • tedunangst 3y ago
    I'm increasingly of the belief that the plan was to become a nuisance so that Apple buys them out, to be accompanied by an incredible journey blog post, so proud of what we've done, excited about what comes next, etc., and then quietly dissolve the whole operation.
    • SnorkelTan 3y ago
      For those who missed the incredible journey reference: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
    • striking 3y ago
      I don't think the founders need any more money.
      • chihuahua 3y ago
        There are many people who "don't need any more money" but are still working day and night to make more money. For example, Satya or Tim Apple.
        • striking 3y ago
          Judging by their current projects I'd make the argument that Brad and Eric are working day and night to make things they find cool, even if it loses money.
          • Grustaf 3y ago
• Invictus0 3y ago
  It was a bad idea from day 1
  • gardenhedge 3y ago
    Exactly, beeper has no credibility
• COGlory 3y ago
  Eric's not an idiot, so I'm thoroughly confused by what he was hoping to accomplish, here.
  • ycombinatrix 3y ago
    someone had to do it. i thank him for his service.
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
      Do what?
      • MBCook 3y ago
        Break into iMessage to free Android users from the oppression of… I don’t know. This has all been weirdly performative.
      • Nextgrid 3y ago
        Call Apple's bullshit and prove that there is technically no reason why iMessage can't work on Android. The only reason it doesn't work is because Apple doesn't want it to, not that it's technically impossible or has security concerns. Considering the media coverage and that there are now bipartisan calls for an antitrust investigation I think they've succeeded very well.
        • rootusrootus 3y ago
          > The only reason it doesn't work is because Apple doesn't want it to How many people thought otherwise? If they thought about it at all? I feel like HN users vastly overestimate the amount of thought the average user puts into things like this.
          • Nextgrid 3y ago
            Apple really pushes the snake-oil that locking out Beeper is because of security and not vendor lock-in & business interests. They wouldn't do so if nobody believed it.
• bko 3y ago
  It's good they are open sourcing it. That's where it belongs. It's incredible how effective open source adblock software has been for years. You can't build a business on a hacky work around. And being centralized gives apple an edge in responding. Some businesses were built on hacks. Airbnb is the prime example where a huge percentage of listings out in the open were illegal, but the adversary there was government so slow to respond. And I think Plaid basically scraped data using user credentials which was obv insecure and against terms of use. But again, banks aren't super agile and the UI isn't exactly a huge value add. Regardless, not a great business model
  • pants2 3y ago
    It does have some hope yet as open source software. YouTube has been trying to kill yt-dlp for years but the community is always one step ahead.
    • sharkjacobs 3y ago
      Seems categorically different though, right? YouTube doesn't control anything about the endpoint which it is streaming video to, it just has control over how their servers respond to different requests But Apple does control both ends.
      • beeboobaa 3y ago
        That's an excellent argument for an apple anti trust case
        • rootusrootus 3y ago
          It would be if they had a dominant market position. Just controlling the endpoints doesn't mean that much by itself.
          • SeanAnderson 3y ago
            https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-ha... Seems pretty dominant to me.
• wnevets 3y ago
  Am I the only one who finds its humorous that the within roughly the same week you were able to download & install Beeper on an Android phone without using the Play Store, Apple breaks it but it was Google that was found guilty of abusing its position?
  • madeofpalk 3y ago
    It's not an anti-trust violation to patch holes in a closed API.
  • theshackleford 3y ago
    Yes, I find it humorous that more than one of you seems unable to comprehend the basics of the situation.
• gunalx 3y ago
  If they really wanted to, they should go the opensource route. Maybe they could succeed like unblock origin. They basically based their product on a 12yo's solution so why not let others contribute as well.
  • smashah 3y ago
    They did open source it.
  • remram 3y ago
    They did, here's the link from the article: https://github.com/beeper/imessage https://github.com/beeper/imessage
    • dingusdew 3y ago
      [dead]
• LeafItAlone 3y ago
  > “Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. It’s unsustainable,” Beeper writes. This was my feeling from the first time I saw it on HN. I am in the Apple ecosystem, so I had no need for it anyways, but I didn’t expect a product to last when it relies on Apple not restricting something they clearly want to restrict. It clearly got them a lot of press, attention, and recognition. But also indicated, to me, that they are just not reliable. The team seems very intelligent and capable. I truly hope they find something to do next that doesn’t rely on such a fragile bridge.
  • intrasight 3y ago
    > The team seems very intelligent and capable They (founders/team) will be fine. Young, ambitious, and now well-known.
  • JoblessWonder 3y ago
    This is what I have been saying every time this is posted! There is no way they had the runway to continue this and alienating their customers by being unreliable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649081
  • barbs 3y ago
    From a marketing point of view, I agree - for a paid product it's not exactly reliable. If you take away all the marketing fluff though it's a pretty cool open-source project, like yt-dlp or adblock origin.
    • willseth 3y ago
      And I doubt it would have gotten killed, or certainly not as swiftly, had it been an open source community based project, e.g. Hackintosh. But obviously that wasn't the point.
  • Aloha 3y ago
    I still think Apple has a missed opportunity with iMessage - dual platform support 10 years ago would mean no WhatsApp, which is universal is much of the world. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.
• plarkin13 3y ago
  Mad respect for trying. Maybe there will be some sort of litigation on their behalf?
• andrewmutz 3y ago
  Apple's behavior on messaging is terrible and they should be taking more heat than they are on this. Apple seems to want to be seen as the good guy on many issues (like privacy), but on this one they are clearly the bad guy. They need to do better.
  • _justinfunk 3y ago
    Could you explain why you think apple is the bad guy? They support SMS as the standard carrier-supported messaging protocol (in the states, not sure globally). They also have a private protocol for apple devices which they fully own and control. And they have now announced that next year they will be supporting RCS, the next-gen carrier-supported protocol. I think it's fair to say that Apple has been slow to adopt RCS - but I don't think that makes them the bad guy. (SMS is insecure, iMessage is a lock in that they use to their benefit, RCS has been on Android forever, etc etc etc)
    • andrewmutz 3y ago
      > iMessage is a lock in that they use to their benefit This is why I think they are the bad guy. They aren't passively benefiting from an iPhone network effect, they are actively and aggressively prevent workarounds that users can do to get around their lock-in. During the 90s, Apple was the victim of similar behavior by Microsoft, and most tech people correctly vilified Microsoft for this behavior. Now Apple is acting as the villain and we should call that out.
      • hraedon 3y ago
        Apple restricting a free service to Apple's own users is not even remotely the same as Microsoft's various forms of skullduggery and I don't know how you can make the comparison seriously. It has never been easier to switch platforms, and the gulf between iOS and Android has never been shallower. Android users not having access to one also-ran messaging service is not some sort of fundamental injustice, and Apple is not a villain for building features that they think will appeal to their customers. It's sort of their whole business!
      • 3y ago
• standardUser 3y ago
  I'm glad their efforts raised awareness of the Apple's closed messaging system and the "bullying" and social friction it causes. A company in Apple's position abusing it's power to make people, mostly young people, feel bad until they buy an iPhone is about as vile of a marketing tactic as I can think of.
  • hraedon 3y ago
    This is such an insane take to me. Apple hasn't done anything but provide a feature that some subset of their customers in a single digit number of markets finds compelling. Do you really think that teenagers in America wouldn't be bullying the outgroup—to the extent that they actually are frequently ostracizing their peers over this, which is not at all clear—over something else if all the bubbles were blue?
    • Der_Einzige 3y ago
      Making it harder for bullies to bully is always good. Yes, there would be a small net reduction in bullying if apple stopped being bully enablers. Stop defending their evil practices.
      • hraedon 3y ago
        This is what I mean! "You, as someone who isn't an Apple customer, can't use this one service" is not evil, for fuck's sake.
      • nickthegreek 3y ago
        Making cars illegal would make it harder for bullies to bully. Your logic dictates that this is always good.
    • kcplate 3y ago
      Growing up as a teenager in a time where there wasn’t iPhones it was tennis shoes. My kids dealt with it too—specifically backpacks (if I recall correctly). Point is, after we got out of high school it didn’t much matter and we got on with our lives in our off the rack shoes and no name backpacks. We didn’t need special intervention that made all shoes Nike or all backpacks JanSport.
• this_user 3y ago
  What did they expect would happen? Apple's reaction was more than predictable. Why waste money and time on this?
• neither_color 3y ago
  For me the desktop version worked fine for months until Beeper Mini got announced here. Too bad they weren't able to keep it low key. In my use case Im already fully invested in the Apple ecosystem. I have a mac, an iphone, and ipad. Beeper allowed me to extend my chats to two Windows machines that I have to use.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    This was the mistake; it could have been a whispered feature that those in the know could let others know, but it became front-page news and got killed.
    • MBCook 3y ago
      I don’t know, it’s too big a story. As soon as any tech journalist became “in the know“ there would be a very strong chance that it would become news anyway. It certainly would’ve lasted longer than putting out a press announcement though.
      • axus 3y ago
        Move fast and break Terms of Service.
    • actualwill 3y ago
      That someone has iMessage on android without the remote device work around would have blown up regardless.
  • hamandcheese 3y ago
    Has Beeper classics iMessage integration been impacted as well?
    • starik36 3y ago
      Works fine for me.
• whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  It's so strange they came to this fight with only the energy for 2 counter moves
  • chewmieser 3y ago
    They really thought that Apple couldn’t block it when they originally announced it. Obviously that was not accurate…
    • MBCook 3y ago
      I always thought that was weird. Apple controls every single device that accesses the service as well as the design of the service itself. They have effectively infinite latitude to change it to block unauthorized access. Even if it took Apple a month or two to respond every time, how many times does it take before basically everyone gives up on Beeper anyway? I can get why they did it the first time for the PR value and raising the issue in public consciousness but I can’t see any value in continuing to fight past that first block.
  • athorax 3y ago
    Why? Its clear after 2 attempts that Apple is serious about continuing to break their business model, so why keep fighting a company with unlimited resources that has their sights set on you?
    • dmitrygr 3y ago
      The way you phrase this makes it sound like “ why would I work so hard to break into this house if the owner is clearly more resourced than I am, and insists on breaking my business model of using their stuff for free” Apple owns those servers and has every right to control how they are accessed.
      • athorax 3y ago
        I can't help if that is how you interpreted what I said, but I fully agree apple is well within their rights to block this type of usage.
• hcurtiss 3y ago
  Just in case Eric sees this -- We're an Apple household, but I have to use a PC for work. Beeper has allowed me to extend iMessage elegantly to my work computers and works MUCH better than the alternatives. Their new solution works well for me as we have a Mac Mini always on at home. Using the registration code with Beeper's servers makes the whole thing more performant than any other alternative. I'd gladly pay them for the service.
  • unshavedyak 3y ago
    I've been waiting for the dust to settle, but i imagine i'll do the same. Are you able to automate that registration process? Does it require anything manual? I'm also curious to find out how it works for multiple users on a single computer. edit: I also wonder what the cheapest mini i can get is. Probably some used market? Hmm
    • hcurtiss 3y ago
      I believe Beeper cloud running on the Mac handles the renewals automatically, but I haven't seen it yet (nor would I?).
    • phatskat 3y ago
      I don’t know if there are any minis up on the site, but Apple has a refurb store that is usually pretty solid on price (or was last time I looked). Pawn shops aren’t a bad idea either - typically heavily marked down electronics, and if you find little ones tucked in next to bodegas you can find some unexpectedly good electronics.
  • rsync 3y ago
    This is interesting… Would it be possible for you to ssh into that Mac mini and generate imessages from the command line ? You wouldn’t need beeper for that, would you? Genuinely curious…
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• endisneigh 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    This has been a bugbear for Android users since practically the launch of iMessage and I have never understood it at all, especially since now we're simply drowning in messaging services that are free, E to E encrypted, and incredibly feature rich oftentimes even outpacing iMessage itself.
    • turquoisevar 3y ago
      The typical counter to this is that they’re bullied by Apple users (and some go even as far as to claim Apple pushes users to bully non-users, which is of course ridiculous). The answer to the bullying is to end relations with people who are childish like that. And where it pertains children, you need to seek the solution elsewhere. Children bully each other not just for bubbles, but also for clothing, toys and other stupid stuff that doesn’t have an easy scapegoat to blame instead of employing solid parenting and teaching.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Blah blah our best interest, it’s a for profit company same as Apple. No one I mean no one will keep looking at the source code and to make sure the one on the phone and the code is 1:1, it’s not a security guarantee.
  • Lienetic 3y ago
    What do you suggest they do instead?
    • nickthegreek 3y ago
      Find a business model that doesn't depend on the unauthorized access of a private API would be a good place to start.
      • ItsABytecode 3y ago
        By “private API” do you mean undocumented public API?
        • nickthegreek 3y ago
          yes.
          • beeboobaa 3y ago
            HN is accessed via an undocumented public API that you are using every time you visit this site.
            • tedunangst 3y ago
              And I would suggest it's a bad idea to base your entire business off using that API.
          • nabakin 3y ago
            I've used 'private API' exactly how you did and some pedant told me it wasn't a real term so I empathize
• SamuelAdams 3y ago
  > Beeper Mini is beautiful, fast and fun. Our main goal with the app is to upgrade chats between iPhone and Android users from unencrypted green bubble SMS to encrypted, fully featured blue bubble chats. Can someone help me understand a big question about iMessage? What makes iMessage so special that it needs to run on android? There are plenty of other cross platform applications for messaging that fit the quoted needs. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram are a few examples. If end users care about “upgraded chats”, they can simply use one of those and ask those whom they message to also use those apps. Am I missing something? What makes iMessage so special?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • jmondi 3y ago
    It is the default message platform on iPhones, that is what makes it so special.
  • chewmieser 3y ago
    The US uses SMS/MMS, that won’t change. SMS has limitations, which is why iMessage and RCS were created. When newer functionality is used, the experience between Android and iOS is poor - like poor media quality or stickers not appearing where they’re stuck, etc. Other issues are limitations by the OS, like Apple doesn’t let you change the group name for non-iMessage groups. Or Apple doesn’t let you replace the entire messaging app, so you’d need multiple apps to cover multiple channels. The issues and OS limitations leads to things like kids bullying green bubbles (as silly as that sounds). I don’t think Android users have a right to iMessage but I can understand the need to properly interpolate with each other here and it sounds like RCS will be just that when Apple adopts it. I think that both Google took too long playing with new messaging apps and Apple took too long to actually want to make this experience better for Android-iPhone communication (which they’ve been pretty clear they’d only do due to pressure, since it helps them sell phones). The pressure is great. Maybe we’ll actually have a good experience with RCS, but we will see…
    • marcellus23 3y ago
• _justinfunk 3y ago
  > They control more than 50% of the US smartphone market, and lock customers into using Apple’s official app for texting (which, in the US, sadly, is the default way people communicate). Beeper is on the iOS App Store.
  • somethingsidont 3y ago
    Apple ships iMessage in the default messaging app. A large portion users are probably unaware what "iMessage" even is, just that blue bubbles are "better." Microsoft got dinged for shipping IE by default, and so should Apple. Maybe you can argue Apple's not big enough yet, but I reckon we just need to wait a few years (87% of US teens use iPhones [0]). [0] https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-habits https://www.axios.com/2021/10/14/teen-iphone-use-spending-ha...
    • etchalon 3y ago
      Microsoft didn't get dinged for shipping IE by default. They got dinged because, to promote IE, they engaged in a lot of fairly nefarious things, forcing their OEM partners not to install other browsers, for instance. It wasn't just "you can't have a default web browser in IE", and reducing that case to that is ahistorical.
      • somethingsidont 3y ago
        You literally cannot install another default messaging app on iOS with SMS integration. There are no OEM partners to speak of on iOS. If iOS reaches 90%+ market share, why shouldn't it be treated the same as Microsoft?
        • turquoisevar 3y ago
          It seems you’re missing their point. MS was prosecuted because they pressured OEMs into not installing a different browser by making that a requirement to be able to buy Windows licenses. The alleged illegal act here was the combination of them 1) leveraging the power they had over OEMs to 2) prevent them from installing a different browser in an effort to 3) kill competing browsers. It was never just about having a default browser, it was about the combination of 1, 2 and 3. There were some other incidents other than the browser that involved elements 1, 2 and 3, but the logic behind it was similar. I say “alleged” because MS won on appeal and the DOJ decided to settle. Apple on the other hand, just has a default messaging app. They’re not using their power to block other messaging apps with the intent to kill them, nor are they pressuring other parties to do or not do an act to protect their default messaging app. The only thing that comes closest to the MS case is that Apple told carriers that they can’t have their bloatware preinstalled from the get go with the first iPhone. The problem however is that Apple, when they imposed that restriction, had no power over carriers, they were just entering the phone market after all. If anything the carriers had power over Apple, but they still choose to play ball despite this restriction. I’d they’d tried to do that now, then it’d be a different story, because now Apple has quite some market dominance and it could be an antitrust issue. That’s why carriers are free to impose limitations on certain functionality like hotspot use, because if Apple would force carriers, especially in a heavy handed way, then it could be explained as abusing their power. Apple is mainly lucky for always having done Apple things, even when they were small in the respective market. A lot of what Apple does, Apple has done from the beginning when they were insignificant in the context of a market. They couldn’t do introduce many of those things now while they’re so big. So for all intents and purposes Apple is treated the same as MS.
• sublimefire 3y ago
  I might be a minority here who thinks this was a useless waste of effort and money. Who paid for it? Whose problems does it solve? I doubt if many who use non ios ecosystem would pay for it in the first place, not to mention the fact that you need to rely on Apple to be friendly. It was destined for failure IMO. For the reference my household has multiple different devices and we fall back to text messages or some other app.
• okdood64 3y ago
  Don't forget the hubris from just 2 weeks ago: > Side note: many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?’ To be honest, I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client. The internet has always had 3rd party clients! It’s almost like people have forgotten that iChat (the app that iMessage grew out of) was itself a multi-protocol chat app! It supported AIM, Jabber and Google talk. Here’s a blast from the past: https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759 To now: > As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a cat-and-mouse game with the largest company on earth. I really do wonder what they genuinely thought was going to happen...
  • erohead 3y ago
    I think those quotes still stand for themselves. Normalize 3rd party clients!
    • mattgreenrocks 3y ago
      Adversarial interoperability needs to be explicitly legalized. The fact is these clients never face much in the way of market fitness tests, as they often use the threat of legal action to deter any other clients. This is not what computing should be. We've pretty much just let every rando user who doesn't really give a care about how this stuff goes down decide things for us.
  • beeboobaa 3y ago
    What's the supposed hubris that you are talking about?
    • okdood64 3y ago
      Perhaps the wrong term, but it seemed rather dismissive of the rather valid concern that Apple won't take kindly to what they're doing and try to stop them.
  • deleted 3y ago
• aresant 3y ago
  "At this stage, Apple’s actions to block Beeper Mini look increasingly hard for them to defend." That is 100% accurate from the technical perspective. As an iPhone mobile / windows desktop user I would love an interoperable protocol so I could respond to texts from my desktop But from the business side Apple's decision is totally defensible and clear The blue bubbles are a luxury item / luxury signal that let's apple differentiate their products I assume an internal assessment of that "brand" value from blue bubbles is in the many billions of dollars
  • willseth 3y ago
    Not really? iMessage isn't a peer-to-peer network. It's dependent on Apple's massive global messaging service. Beeper Mini simply doesn't work without co-opting Apple's servers. Unless you start from the premise that it's okay for one business to siphon off resources from another one without authorization or compensation, then Beeper Mini's solution is technically infeasible.
    • regularjack 3y ago
      Beeper says in the article that they'd be willing to pay Apple for use of their resources.
      • sgerenser 3y ago
        If I broke into your house and started sleeping on your couch, would you be OK with it as long as I promised to pay you rent?
        • seizethegdgap 3y ago
          If my house was the size of twelve Tesla Gigafactorys stacked on top of each other, every other door was locked, I could track your movements throughout the house, you had your own private door and couch to sleep on, and I was worth 3 trillion dollars, sure.
        • pcthrowaway 3y ago
• quarkw 3y ago
  I've been using it for a few months, and even if iMessage gets removed from Beeper (cloud) I'll keep using it, alongside the Messages app. And this is coming from an almost-exclusive mac-iPhone user. Having all my chats in one place have helped me better keep in touch with friends and family.
• hcurtiss 3y ago
  Just in case Eric sees this -- We're an Apple household, but I have to use a PC for work. Beeper has allowed me to extend iMessage elegantly to my work computers. Their new solution works well for me as we have a Mac Mini always on at home. Using the registration code with Beeper's servers makes the whole thing more performant than any other alternative. I'd gladly pay them for the service.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• hnlmorg 3y ago
  The comments in here are weird. HN is normally an advocate for open protocols (like Mastodon, XMPP) and has been highly critical of services closing their integrations with 3rd party clients (like Reddit and Twitter). Yet the moment it’s an Apple protocol, suddenly none of the above matters. I remember the late 90s / early 00s when we had MSN, AOL IM, ICQ and others. People got so fed up with different people using different services that a whole slew of 3rd party clients were available that supported everything. Like Pidgin, libpurple, Bitlbee (an IRC server that supported IM protocols), and Trinity (or something named like that). Now we are stuck with vendor lockouts and crappy 1st party apps that are usually little more than a web container. It’s weird how open source has taken over the world and yet our messaging protocols have gotten more proprietary than ever.
  • chewmieser 3y ago
    There’s a ton of open protocols that could have been the messaging standard. But beeper took a always-closed protocol and tried to open it. I’m not in support of Apple here but it’s pretty obvious which way this would go.
    • hnlmorg 3y ago
      Beeper doesn’t have any control over the protocol Apple implement. They do have control over whether they reverse engineer that protocol.
      • chewmieser 3y ago
        Beeper could have come up with a new messaging app for iOS. They didn’t have to reverse-engineer iMessage.
        • hnlmorg 3y ago
          > Beeper could have come up with a new messaging app for iOS. But the point of Beeper was to bring iOS compatibility to non-Apple devices. There’s a literal XKCD comic about creating new standards. > They didn’t have to reverse-engineer iMessage. Sure. But that’s not a reason not to do something. The literal same remark can be used against Apple too: “Apple didn’t need to break support for Beeper” “Apple didn’t need to make iMessage proprietary” Etc For what it’s worth, I’m not against Apple per se. In fact I’m typing this on an iPhone. I’m just commenting about how locked in messaging has become and how it’s weird that people are ok with that (or more precisely, only ok with it when it’s an Apple protocol).
• nkcmr 3y ago
  This whole fiasco is hogging US Congress' antitrust attention is, IMO, a huge fail. Chat apps is largely represented by iMessage, but dwarfed by WhatsApp. But for the most part there is _some_ competition. And Apple requiring that you _purchase_ their product in order to use its services is not harmful to consumers. Been crazy watching people do mental gymnastics trying to make that sound like a huge problem. Meanwhile, Google has effectively sterilized all competition in the browser market and is definitely, willfully using their market share to push around other companies and make purely self-interested, consumer-hurting choices. _This_ is where antitrust scrutiny needs to be aimed at.
  • twism 3y ago
    how so? firefox exists ... and you can't run (real) chrome on ios
• WendyTheWillow 3y ago
  I actually read a whole book on the weaponization of human rights, and how some groups portray their cause as “noble” to get around the sticky questions such as motive and self-benefit. I’m not saying this exactly that, but there’s a lot of, “we’re doing this for you!” speech here that’s a bit out of line with the stakes of the problem…
  • mrtksn 3y ago
    Apple is doing it for our security and save the environment. If Apple can do it, others should be able to do it too. After all, the whole SV is trying to make the world a better place, make humans interplanetary species, protect freedom of speech, democratise stuff etc.
    • batch12 3y ago
      I really can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, I can read it both ways. Is it?
      • mrtksn 3y ago
        It is. The intent is to demonstrate that motives of the Beeper developer are not better or worse than those of the rest of the industry.
    • WendyTheWillow 3y ago
      I opt in to Apple’s work, whereas Beeper Mini was done on my behalf, which is the striking difference.
• TradingPlaces 3y ago
  Why is Apple obligated to support iMessage for people who aren’t customers? This seems to be at the root of the discussion, not this silly blue bubble thing. The costs of iMessage are included in the high price of Apple devices. Why should Apple customers subsidize non-customers?
• endisneigh 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
    From what I understand, it's annoying for iPhone users to text Android users and vise versa. When an Android number is in a group chat it degrades all of the iPhone users' experience. Likewise, as an Android user myself, whenever an iPhone person texts me a picture or video it's always a potato. This makes me not want to text iPhone users. I wonder if there are any studies on how this causes people to subconsciously exclude Android users.
    • endisneigh 3y ago
      Even if iMessage were available for android that situation wouldn’t be fixed because iMessage can be disabled on iPhones and you’d have to use the iMessage app anyways, but if you’re willing to do that, why not just use one of the dozens of apps already available? I honestly find it baffling you would even care what phone the other person has to the point you’d avoid texting them because they have an iPhone for example.
  • ItsABytecode 3y ago
    I think iMessage is a great example of “Embrace, Extend”. Apple didn’t build a standalone chat app because everyone (in the US) was already using SMS on their phones and “hey if you happen to be SMSing another iPhone user you get these extra features”
  • robust-cactus 3y ago
    At this point, I'd pay for iMessage on Android. There's a lot of conversations android users are not a part of because of iMessage.
  • Miner49er 3y ago
    Yes, Android users do suffer without it, which is why so many were willing to pay for it.
• spogbiper 3y ago
  This whole Beeper situation has increased awareness that the limitations of "green bubbles" are created by Apple, not by Android devices. At least in my small social circle there seems to be a change in perspective about the problem.
  • riscy 3y ago
    Google's RCS encryption extensions are proprietary and not standardized. The limitations of "green bubbles" also apply to Google's actions. Apple has at least announced that they plan to develop a standardized end-to-end encryption extension of RCS with the GSMA. It'd be great if Google also worked together with Apple to put this nonsense behind us.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    Yet another example of how much more easily and quickly lies travel than truth does.
• ComputerGuru 3y ago
  I guess I’m the only one here that remembers BBM. That was before WhatsApp, Signal, RCS, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, or any of the other options we have today. It was also one of the few ways to message someone internationally without paying for international texts. People wanted to be on BBM, but you couldn’t without both a BlackBerry and having BBM services activated on your cell plan (often for a premium). Iirc, BB Messenger was centralized and managed all accounts (email, sms, BBM) and could upgrade sms to BBM if contacting another blackberry user. RIM was sitting on a gold mine but they didn’t use it right and then released BBM on Android (and iPhone, I think) only after the world had moved on and no one cared.
  • mvdtnz 3y ago
    Why would you think you're the only one who remembers that?
  • paxys 3y ago
    Blackberry thought BBM was their moat, and for a while it did seem that way. Teenagers worldwide were buying what had been a boring business phone just to get a BBM ID. Then some shinier phones came along and turned out no one really cared about which app they used for texting.
  • dfox 3y ago
    BBM on the BB devices used efficient transport separate from the normal IP support of the network, which is why it was viewed as premium service by the carriers. iOS does something similar as a transport for APNs (and thus iMessages) with two important differences: Apple has somehow managed to convince most carriers to not bill that as premium service and can sidestep the carriers that would want to bill that as a premium service (that is the core of what the “Additional rates may apply” message in the iOS activation/onboarding process refers to, it involves few round-trips to Apple servers over SMS). BBM on Android did not do any kind of these optimizations and thus was somewhat of a battery hog (that would not fly on iPhone, so I assume it used APNS there).
    • madeofpalk 3y ago
• sambull 3y ago
  Apple blackholed my SMSs from certain people for years. I'll never forgive them for that. From the very beginning they decided to be hostile to users.
  • reaperducer 3y ago
    Apple blackholed my SMSs from certain people for years. Are you sure it's Apple? I had a similar problem for years, and it turned out to be AT&T. I mentioned it to an AT&T rep when I was on the phone correcting a billing error. He was able to do something on AT&T's end, then send a signal that actually rebooted my iPhone remotely (!), and ever since then I get every SMS perfectly fine.
• FriedPickles 3y ago
  Sweet, they open sourced their iMessage connector. I was shocked to see that Apple is using Hashcash in their oauth header! (I see now hashcash.js when I login on the website too). I assume this is to make password testing more expensive, and probably explains why I've never had to bother with a captcha when logging into an Apple ID. https://github.com/beeper/imessage/blob/2c45fc5619cbc33f2441cb07fedb3ca18604ee89/imessage/appleid/hashcash.go https://github.com/beeper/imessage/blob/2c45fc5619cbc33f2441...
  • gorkish 3y ago
    Thanks for pointing out the use of Hashcache. Since there are many projects apparently using this name, for anybody else like me wanting to search it up, it's the proof of work one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
  • manmal 3y ago
    For anyone interested, mCaptcha is a drop in solution: https://mcaptcha.org/ https://mcaptcha.org/
  • khaki54 3y ago
    It looks like beeper published most of the code at this point. Would be funny if Samsung or Google built it into the native messaging app. They have the resources to continually torture apple. The problem is Samsung and Google have deep enough pockets to try to sue.
    • rootusrootus 3y ago
      > They have the resources to continually torture apple Why is this something we should want? And what gives Samsung and/or Google any sort of high ground position against Apple?
      • ljm 3y ago
        It's fascinating that this boils down to the US market using the iPhone's default message app and social status being assigned to the colour of your bubble. Everywhere else you'll have people on Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram and FB Messenger. I don't have a single friend in the UK or Europe that uses SMS or iPhone messages. The default message app is basically just a spam bucket for automated texts and 2FA codes.
• toddmorey 3y ago
  I've always figured one of the driving motivations behind corporate blogs is to generate interest in your company and product. I'm fascinated why so many companies blog on substack or similar with no links to their own website. I actually wanted to learn about Beeper but couldn't find any links to their site. There are a ton of links to learn about substack.
• k310 3y ago
  I offer old Apple gear to friends so that they can iMessage and FaceTime. If I were mainly on linux, I'd do the same with open messaging apps. (admittedly, not mobile ones. YET) Except that I already gave away all my old PC hardware. There's actually a benefit of using software that's not tied to a phone number, a drastic decline in spam. I really don't intend to apply for a laborer position in Alameda. And let's face it, the unreadable white type on a bright green background punishes only the Apple users who have to squint at it. (Will rose-colored sunglasses work?).(pulls out No. 25 photographic filter) YES!
• batuhanicoz 3y ago
  It's sad to see how Apple behaved here. Kudos to Beeper for fighting the fight, their entire team spent sleepless nights to find solution after solution. Although personally I thought Apple wouldn't try to block them because it might look bad with with a potential antitrust case, this is sort of why we haven't tried moving to Windows or Android at Texts.com I'm glad to see Beeper getting back to focusing trying to make the best chat app in the world, we aren't Apple but we'll fight like Apple for that claim ^^
  • comradesmith 3y ago
    It’s apple’s own private system and infrastructure and they’re within their rights to control content delivered using that system. It’s not free for them to operate. I have seen lots of comments like “well we need some kind of solution to this problem, whether it’s Apple launching an android app or a 3rd party”, and to be honest with you, I don’t even understand the problem. Maybe it’s cause I’m not from the US and can’t wrap my head around the social implications of message bubble hues?
    • sbrother 3y ago
      It's not about the button color, other than the fact that a green bubble means your group message is degraded and a bunch of expected functionality stops existing. It's hard not to feel some annoyance if someone is added to a group and that causes the experience to be degraded for everyone else. I use Whatsapp for all my European friends, but getting Americans to adopt a different messaging platform is as unlikely as getting the Dutch to start using iMessage... So we're left with this situation, and it will continue until Apple/Google adopt RCS and cross-platform messaging becomes as seamless an experience as iMessage.
      • FridgeSeal 3y ago
        > that a green bubble means your group message is degraded and a bunch of expected functionality stops existing …because the functionality is a paid product feature that exists on their hardware and software? Because it’s a…product feature??
• jdjdjdjdjd 3y ago
  I see iMessage as simply the default texting app that comes with apple. It can text to any other type of phone and any other phone can text to it. It does have other features/perks that are only available to apple users, but why do android users feel they have the right to this too? It's not like apple only allows iphone to iphone texting.
  • nerdix 3y ago
    No one on Android really cares. It's actually iPhone users either complaining or excluding Android users from group chats. It's iPhone users creating the social pressure to use iMessage.
    • anonporridge 3y ago
      I'm an Android user who cares. Not necessarily for myself, but more generally for the damage Apple is doing to society by creating a divisive wedge between people for the sake of luxury signalling. Like you say, there are lots of iPhone users who pressure and exclude outsiders to try to force them to get iPhones. Android doesn't do anything like this.
      • confd 3y ago
        > the damage Apple is doing to society by creating a divisive wedge between people for the sake of luxury signalling. Would you be able to elaborate on this and provide some examples, please. With respect to iMessage, that is.
        • FridgeSeal 3y ago
          Some people are apparently so torn up about their text message bubbles being a different colour, they’ll apparently wage a holy war for it in the comments. Spoiler alert everyone: if you want the product feature, buy the product.
  • ryandvm 3y ago
    Android users do not want iMessage. What they want is their friends to stop telling them to buy an iPhone because Apple ignores the RCS standard and does a purposely shitty job of integrating SMS group chat into iMessage. I'm generally pretty laissez faire about technology, but when it comes to things that have achieved high market adoption, I am more sympathetic to the EU's position of enforcing standards. I have no idea why people support corporations creating these weird little walled garden fiefdoms that are actively user hostile. This seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. Imagine how stupid it would be to have to have an Apple phone to call another Apple user. Or to have to go to a Ford gas station to fill your car. Or if you could only send/receive email with other Gmail users.
• CharlesW 3y ago
  Since Beeper has stated that they're done if Apple doesn't like their latest solution, what are other options? Two I know of are AirMessage¹ and Texts², both of which seem to support this in a way that doesn't bother Apple. ¹ https://airmessage.org/ https://airmessage.org/ ² https://texts.com/ https://texts.com/
  • KomoD 3y ago
    bluebubbles
  • jaywalk 3y ago
    AirMessage requires you to run a server on macOS, and Texts only supports iMessage on macOS. That's why Apple doesn't mind, because neither of those services is hacking iMessage itself.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• tempodox 3y ago
  > …made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple… What a brazen characterization. They try to take a free ride on someone else's infrastructure by a process akin to breaking and entering, charge their own users for it, and when Apple fends them off, they call it interference. I'm speechless.
• m00x 3y ago
  Apple is such a shitty organization. They make excellent hardware, but everything they do is just an attack on its customers. They want to keep people in their walled garden so bad, that they'll transparently attack attempts to make things better for everyone.
  • graftak 3y ago
    Google is doing the exact same with RCS that has their proprietary e2ee layer on top that no one is allowed to use besides Samsung and themselves. On top of that they’re acting like spoiled children used to getting their way, pointing fingers, because they ‘lost’ the instant messaging war.
    • m00x 3y ago
      Google has tried to get everyone on board with RCS for years https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883609/google-rcs-message-apple-iphone-ipager-ad https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883609/google-rcs-messa...
      • graftak 3y ago
        Google made a e2ee extension on top the standard that deviates from the RCS spec thus it might as well be considered another spec all-together as it’s no longer able to communicate with adopters of the plain RCS protocol in a meaningful way. Their extension is proprietary and unavailable to anyone except themselves and Samsung. This means that Google is making a bad faith argument as they’re not advocating for RCS, but their own incompatible version of it. https://www.phonearena.com/news/rcs-support-on-iphones-what-does-this-mean-for-you_id153093 https://www.phonearena.com/news/rcs-support-on-iphones-what-...
        • jvolkman 3y ago
          RCS is extensible and allows for capability discovery. Adding an E2EE extension doesn't really "deviate" from the spec but rather builds on top of it. Google's client can still communicate with other Universal Profile clients; the messages just aren't end-to-end encrypted. And Google has said that they plan to switch to MLS [1]. Releasing their own E2EE spec more widely at this point would be pointless. [1] https://security.googleblog.com/2023/07/an-important-step-towards-secure-and.html https://security.googleblog.com/2023/07/an-important-step-to...
• binkHN 3y ago
  I'm sorry to see them pull the plug so quickly, but it was mostly expected. As a developer of a "companion" communications app, I understand Beeper's frustration all too well. I really look forward to a world of interoperable instant messaging one day; email is amazingly ubiquitous and it's because of open standards. There are pros and cons to this and, sadly, the biggest "con" is one can't completely control this to monetize the hell out of it (although Google did a pretty good job with Gmail?) and that's why IM is so siloed. Google is pushing the hell out of RCS, but there is still no API on Android for developers to hook into this. Why am I not surprised?
• Arch-TK 3y ago
  >If Apple wants to accuse us of being insecure, they need to back that up with hard evidence. No, as history has shown, apple can just make up and spread arbitrary FUD about your business, and a lot of customers will believe them. Apple lobbyists will then use the FUD to push laws which put your business at risk.
• tenebrisalietum 3y ago
  Reminds me of this: Go all the way back to 2009. The Palm Pre spoofed USB ids (I guess) so it would work with iTunes. Apple updated iTunes a time or two to block it. Palm gave up. https://www.networkworld.com/article/758811/palm-gives-up-latest-webos-update-for-the-palm-pre-lacks-itunes-support.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/758811/palm-gives-up-la...
• poisonborz 3y ago
  With all the drama surrounding this, isn't the actual root of the problem that most US Apple users just can't be bothered to simply install another messaging app?
  • danShumway 3y ago
    Pretty much. There are other messaging protocols that do basically everything iMessage does (and outside of the US, they're fairly ubiquitous). A better resolution to all of this would have been for everyone to just switch to Matrix/Signal -- heck even WhatsApp would be an improvement. It seems to be a uniquely American problem that I can't get any of my contacts (on Android too, by the way, users there are just as apathetic) to switch to secure cross-platform messaging services. In a better world all this talk about RCS and SMS bridges wouldn't matter because we'd all have already abandoned SMS entirely.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    For every 10 people I chat with, maybe 1 ends up falling back to SMS. Why do I want to tell the other 9 that we should all use Facebook? And how can I with a straight face suggest they are actually better than Apple? Your argument works pretty well when the hate for Apple is greater than the hate for Facebook. In my experience it's mostly the other way around.
• system2 3y ago
  What did anyone expect? They did all this to get attention to release their Beeper App. They knew how it would end from the moment they came up with the idea.
• Hortinstein 3y ago
  Does anyone have a consolidated timeline of the counters by Apple and patches by beeper with technical details? It would be fascinating to read
• thomastjeffery 3y ago
  > Just one year ago, Tim Cook had this to say about RCS: "I don't hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point. […] Buy your mom an iPhone.” He said the quiet part out loud, and no one did anything about it. That moment (or any time before then) is when the battle was lost. If our governments had any sense of justice, Apple would be facing anti-trust enforcement over that statement alone.
  • turquoisevar 3y ago
    What would be the cause of action in this hypothetical antitrust case you speak of?
    • thomastjeffery 3y ago
      Apple is using the vertical integration between its software business and its hardware business to prevent competition with both.
      • turquoisevar 3y ago
        Vertical integration through internal expansion is not a cause of action under the Sherman Antitrust Act nor the Clayton Antitrust Act. Even vertical integration through merger isn’t an antitrust issue per se. I can’t think of any abusive act that prevents competition, I do see them not going out of their way to facilitate competition with themselves, but they have no positive obligation to do so.
• _8j50 3y ago
  The antitrust angle makes no sense. Every device, even android and windows have defaut apps but to allow competition replacement apps are tolerated. Regardless of size, no company owes users or the public free service using their servers. Fairness always cuts both ways. As an iPhone user, I demand apple provides me iMessage and ensures non-imessage clients can't message me. Beeper can make a chat client and compete, they can advertisr in the appstore and elsewhere. Internet Explorer and now Edge are default on windows but Chrome is the number one browser (despite edge using chromium). Why can't beeper do the same? This whole "eat the rich" crap needs to end. People like apple products the way they are. You succeed by figuring out why that is and competing. I used signal on iphone for a couple of years and then got rid of it for example. Didn't like the ui as much as imessage, can't import backups and lost all message and contact history I built on signal over many years. Similarly, i have had a lot of bad experience with usb-c but lightning has been great in every way for me but thanks to this same anti-capitalist attitude my choice was taken away. My problem is not that the biggest company on earth is being treated unfairly and will lose chump change. My problem is that I am being affected! My choices and preferences are being taken away in an undemocraric and anti-capitalist way. I didn't have a vote on usb-c, to the contary I paid apple a lot of money for their product to show support. Same thing with I message, why donmt the voices mine and the majority who use iphones' voices not matter here? What is apple doing to prevent beeper from creating a chat client that does things just like imessage and then have other better features? Of all the chat clients I have used, imessage has superior ui and reliability, that's why I use it. They make it sound like iphone users don't know how to search the appstore for better chat clients. Outside the US, even on iphone people use whatsapp as a default for example, because that's what they prefer (international calling friendly) and most americans haven't even heard of viber. Clearly othere have demonstrated that you can compete with default apps and even beat imessage in some markets outside the US by competing fairly. Now what is the reason you all have your torches lighted and pitchforks sharpened so that mine and iphone user's choices get limited once more?
• xg15 3y ago
  I didn't really believe the Apple fanboy effect was real before, but I'm honestly just blown away by this thread. If they were up against any other company, I'm absolutely certain this thread would be rooting for Beeper hard, with all the usual arguments about interoperability, open source, the right to control your own devices and own your data. Only for Apple, suddenly all of that falls out of the window and the most blatant anticompetitive behaviour is ok because of "security".
  • invig 3y ago
    Perspective shift, there's an axis of responsibility: Hacker - It's my stuff and I'm responsible for how it works. User - I'm using this and it's the suppliers job to make sure it works. Where you sit on this spectrum from Hacker to User defines your opinion on this. Neither end is wrong, they just want different things.
    • xg15 3y ago
      But how is the user of an iPhone being compromised if someone else can use the iMessage protocol?
      • invig 3y ago
        The sender is trusting that Apple isn’t capturing the message content in the iMessages app after it gets decrypted so it can be shown to the receiver. In a closed system the sender trusts Apple and the person they’re sending to. If you are sending to someone receiving in some other app, you have to trust the receiver, Apple, and who ever makes the thing that is being used to display the decrypted message. You don’t even know what app you’re trusting as the sender. The further you go down this rabbit hole the more ergh it all feels, but actually being able to trust the whole chain from your mind to someone else’s over the internet is quite hard.
  • midtake 3y ago
    I have nothing against open standards but I see this more like an attack on private property. Why should Apple be disallowed from creating a walled garden? It's suddenly not valid to control which devices can participate in your network? Device control is integral to the iMessage service as an offering because it improves the user experience, and people are willing to pay for it.
• epolanski 3y ago
  Serious, why people use iMessage so much in the us? Nobody does in southern Europe, not even iOS users do, everybody just uses WhatsApp.
  • DHPersonal 3y ago
    iMessage probably just came first for enough people with enough other people using it that it just stuck. I think most often in other countries the iPhone was too expensive so a cheap Android was the only option, with alternative messaging apps therefore being much more useful for those people.
    • epolanski 3y ago
      That's nonsense. Even on early iPhones you still had to communicate with friends with Androids, Sybians, Windows Phones, Blackberrys. Those all had Whatsapp, but iMessage was unique to iOS.
  • rsanek 3y ago
    You could ask the same thing -- why does everyone use WhatsApp?
    • epolanski 3y ago
      It was the first messaging application that worked on every smartphone out there. Blackberry, Android, iOS, Sybian, Windows Phone. It connected everyone. The answer's obvious.
  • maratc 3y ago
    Historically, the US had (rather expensive by the RoW standards) "unlimited" plans very early on, so most of the US users would not bother to think about the cost of SMS before sending a message. The rest of the world at the time was mostly on pay-per-SMS plans. Then WhatsApp appeared, with an offer of $1 per year for an unlimited amount of messages. As can be seen, the value proposition of that was tremendous in e.g. Europe, but non-existing in the US, as it just was $1 over what the US users already had. Most of the world got sucked into WhatsApp pretty quickly. The US never followed suit.
• winterqt 3y ago
  > Beeper Cloud has always been free to use. This isn't true [0], unless you count "always" as meaning "always [after the time that the new iMessage bridge was introduced]." [0]: https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-is-now-free https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-is-now-free
  • halJordan 3y ago
    Yes, that's essentially the whole post. They lambast the dec9 Apple statement with all of the things they've done post-Dec9. Acting as if they weren't forced into all these things and acting as if their product has always been the way it is now. It's pretty bad
• ynx 3y ago
  AGPLv3. Nope, not touching that one.
• tetrisgm 3y ago
  Two weeks of trying and building in public. Excellent ROI in terms of marketing.
  • binkHN 3y ago
    Yep; everyone likes a David vs Goliath story. Then again, Y Combinator invested in the seed round for Beeper, so there's that. ;)
• notnmeyer 3y ago
  i’m pretty tired of hearing about beeper. i find their arguments pretty disingenuous. unless they’re dumb as rocks they knew this was the end game and this whole thing was a marketing stunt.
• wutwutwat 3y ago
  Knowing nothing about how beeper provides its services, does it require that they are given your icloud login credentials so they can login on your behalf and broker your messages to all your clients? If so, why would anyone be willing to do that? I hardly trust Apple with my stuff, and have advanced data protection enabled, and use icloud services as little as possible outside of iMessage. I'd never hand over icloud access to another party regardless of what nice to have feature they are taping over on Apple's behalf.
  • whatever1 3y ago
    No they needed just your phone number in the original iteration of the app.
    • wutwutwat 3y ago
      They can access all of a person's iMessage using only a phone number? So they are registering it on your behalf then, and keeping all of the credentials for themselves. You all are nuts using that. What are they doing about people using someone else's number to gain access to all their messages?
• nickchuck 3y ago
  Shoot, I was hoping they'd keep going :/
• nojvek 3y ago
  Open sourcing their code is the biggest fuck you to Apple. While I like Apple, their iMessage shenanigans is classic monopolistic bully behavior. I firmly believe that if the large tech behemoths were broken down into smaller focused companies, they would create much more value for everyone. The professional managerial class is optimizing for rent seeking at top levels.
  • bigallen 3y ago
    > if the large tech behemoths were broken down into smaller focused companies, they would create much more value for everyone. Is this a “true right now” statement or a “true now and always” statement? I have a tough time seeing smaller, focused companies coming up with the original iPhone. And is there a good way all those small companies decide how to integrated their offerings? Xkcd’s “now there are 14 industry standards” comic comes to mind…
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    > their iMessage shenanigans is classic monopolistic bully behavior. These "monopoly" accusations are pure nonsense. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the smartphone market, they don't even have a majority market share (less than 30% globally, in fact). And Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly in the (secure/rich/whatever) messaging market. In most countries, WhatsApp is vastly more popular than iMessage, even on iPhones. Saying that Apple's behavior here has anything to do with a monopoly is like claiming WhatsApp has a "monopoly" on sending WhatsApp messages, or Facebook has a monopoly on publishing Facebook posts.
    • gnicholas 3y ago
      > And Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly in the (secure/rich/whatever) messaging market. In most countries, WhatsApp is vastly more popular than iMessage, even on iPhones. From an antitrust perspective, this is the whole point. The antitrust argument would be that Apple is leveraging its dominant position in smartphones/smartphone OSes to gain market power in the messaging market.
      • 3y ago
• andrelaszlo 3y ago
  KakaoTalk is used by almost all smartphone users in Korea. Their protocol has been reverse-engineered [0] but using a third-party client can get your account banned [1]. I think WeChat does something similar. Wouldn't it be "fun" if Apple did this, too!? 0: https://src.miscworks.net/fair/matrix-appservice-kakaotalk.git https://src.miscworks.net/fair/matrix-appservice-kakaotalk.g... 1: https://kakao.com/talksafety/en/policy/stability/abnormalusage https://kakao.com/talksafety/en/policy/stability/abnormalusa...
  • wanderingmind 3y ago
    Ban who people in Android or close an Apple ID? You could always create a new one with a new card using privacy.com I guess.
• mproud 3y ago
  Maybe don’t share your Apple ID password with a third-party in the first place, just saying.
• bitsoda 3y ago
  I admire the Beeper team’s effort, but this post playing the victim card is deranged. Beeper was trying to turn a profit piggy-backing on Apple’s servers and Apple curbing access is construed as “interference”, lol. I don’t know if it would’ve made a difference, but charging a subscription out of the gate and poking the bear by claiming Apple would have a difficult time blocking access doomed this project from the start. Again, I admire the hacker spirit, but what were they thinking?