I wish they had stayed under the radar. I paid $120 for Beeper back in 2022 because it provided one thing that was absolutely game-changing for me: the ability

I wish they had stayed under the radar. I paid $120 for Beeper back in 2022 because it provided one thing that was absolutely game-changing for me: the ability to access Apple Messages through the web. I use an iPhone, as do the vast majority of people I communicate with regularly. Our conversations are stuck in the locked Apple ecosystem. But I spent my days (happily) using a Chrome OS computer that is (unfortunately) disallowed from running Android or Linux applications. I find it super annoying to have to use my phone for messages, especially if they're longer conversations. And when someone sends me a link, or I want to send them one, it is a tremendous hassle where I often have to e-mail it to myself. Beeper fixed this perfectly. I could sign in on their (technically unsupported but has always worked fine for me) web version and do all my messaging from the broswer on my computer. It was all fine until they made a big splash and tickled the dragon. Now it's ruined for everyone. I don't care that 99.9% of commenters on these Hacker News (and elsewhere) threads are just saying "why would anyone want this?" or "serves 'em right" or whatever. You don't have to understand it. It had a use case, I got a lot out of it, and I would gladly have paid an ongoing subscription. P.S. Advice as to what I should just do instead of what I want to do is not desired.