[HN Gopher] Beeper Mini is back
___________________________________________________________________
Beeper Mini is back
Author : erohead
Score : 717 points
Date : 2023-12-11 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.beeper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.beeper.com)
| rpmisms wrote:
| I have a feeling they're not going to stop being a thorn in
| Apple's side for quite a while...
| res0nat0r wrote:
| They're either going to keep getting their access cut, or sued
| into bankruptcy. You can't really piggyback off another
| companies service in violation of their TOS without things
| working out poorly for you IMO.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yeah, not the point. The point is to prove that it's possible
| and relatively simple, and the only reason Apple operates
| this way is to lock people into the ecosystem.
| Legion wrote:
| Is that really an unknown that anyone required proof of?
| ketzo wrote:
| > and the only reason Apple operates this way is to lock
| people into the ecosystem.
|
| Honest question: is there anyone who doesn't already think
| that? Even at, like, a legislative level?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Apple is pushing the whole security/privacy narrative and
| yet people are guzzling it even here, so I'd argue yes.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's probably my favorite part of HN, at this point. The
| reaction from people the other day when Google/Apple
| admit to cooperating with FIVE-EYES was priceless.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Expect another one of those once it gets revealed that
| marketing/analytics providers (whose spyware litters
| every single mainstream website & app) are _also_
| compromised by intelligence agencies.
| dwaite wrote:
| There are systems designed to be federated, like email,
| mastodon, matrix and SMS/RCS.
|
| Signal, WhatsApp, Slack, and iMessage are examples of
| services which were designed to be run by one company as
| part of their product. They _might_ have certain SDKs to
| extend that service (like bots for slack, or app
| extensions in iMessage) - but generally they aren't
| excited to shoulder the additional cost and support
| headaches of third parties using their infrastructure or
| arbitrarily interacting with the official software
| clients.
|
| I don't know exactly what you mean by "ecosystem" - I'd
| argue the first set form ecosystems, while the second set
| form products.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Thats the entire point of the Apple ecosystem. They want to
| control the entire user experience end to end, and it is
| why many people like Apple products so much.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > Thats the entire point of the Apple ecosystem. They
| want to control the entire user experience end to end
|
| I don't doubt that.
|
| > and it is why many people like Apple products so much.
|
| No. People like the quality and the refinement and
| polish. In most cases those things to not require (as
| much of) a closed ecosystem. Beeper is proof of that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The quality and refinement comes from the control. They
| don't ever have to support a device they didn't make
| themselves.
| skeaker wrote:
| I have seen this argument so many times and it has never
| made sense to me. There is so much quality software that
| is free and open and interoperable. It is more than
| possible to be both open in nature and of high quality,
| to me that is indisputable. Apple obviously has a
| financial incentive to be locked down, they're not locked
| down out of any sort of necessity or as a concession for
| the sake of quality.
|
| In the case of Beeper Mini, the proof is in the pudding.
| You have evidence right in front of your face that an
| Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now
| exists. Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to
| you?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You have evidence right in front of your face that an
| Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now
| exists.
|
| Sure, but I'm not the one who has to handle customer
| service for it.
|
| Apple can have a test suite that encompasses _every
| possible supported device_ (and OS combination). That 's
| much tougher if they want to support Android.
|
| > Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?
|
| No, but that's missing the point. If Beeper catches on,
| and all my Android friends install it, and some of my
| messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you,
| _that 's_ when I'd start to feel it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what
| have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
|
| Then you can blame their phone... just like you would now
| if your _SMS_ messages to them were getting lost.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If the iMessages fail, and give me the "try as SMS
| instead", I'm likely to blame iMessage.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends
| install it, and some of my messages start getting lost,
| delayed, what have you, that 's when I'd start to feel
| it._
|
| You realize that's been _Apple 's_ fault right,
| intentionally breaking Beeper?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > You realize that's been Apple's fault right,
| intentionally breaking Beeper?
|
| Sure, it's impossible that Beeper's app or services could
| ever just malfunction on their own. The first bug-free
| app!
| freedomben wrote:
| Oops, meant this to be a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38603599
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Same answer either way; Beeper could break things in a
| way that results in delivery failures, and Apple could be
| blamed.
| skeaker wrote:
| Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if they
| simply open their protocol and let whoever develops the
| Android client take care of that, as evidenced by Beeper
| Mini.
|
| > If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends
| install it, and some of my messages start getting lost,
| delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
|
| In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before
| Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android
| devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to
| them getting dropped and having to go through SMS
| instead...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if
| they simply open their protocol and let whoever develops
| the Android client take care of that, as evidenced by
| Beeper Mini.
|
| Now they have to support an _open standard /protocol_,
| though. That's not negligible effort.
|
| > In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before
| Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android
| devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to
| them getting dropped and having to go through SMS
| instead...
|
| But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that
| choice.
|
| When there's some kind of iMessage failure, though, they
| sit around and don't send, until I get a delivery failure
| and "send as SMS" as the fallback. This is rare, but
| _extremely annoying_. Adding third-party services into
| the mix doesn 't seem like it's going to _reduce_ these
| instances.
| skeaker wrote:
| > Now they have to support an open standard/protocol,
| though. That's not negligible effort.
|
| Evidently not, given the existence of Beeper Mini without
| intervention on their part. In fact, they're actively
| spending effort on _breaking_ a working implementation
| that took them no effort. And either way, they have
| trillions of dollars and some of the brightest people in
| tech under their belt. If your argument is that they 're
| not capable of making that protocol work, you're wrong.
|
| >But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that
| choice.
|
| It's seamlessly giving you less functionality, sure. This
| is not a matter of opinion: Being able to send iMessages
| to Android users is a feature that iPhones currently do
| not have at all. Apple is choosing to not give you that
| functionality when they could be. With something like
| Beeper Mini, you as an iPhone user gain more
| functionality by being able to send iMessages to some
| Android users. Even if it fails sometimes, it is still
| functionality that simply did not exist at all before.
| This is only beneficial to you as an iPhone user because
| you now have functionality that you did not before. I
| don't know if that can be phrased any more directly.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Evidently not, given the existence of Beeper Mini
| without intervention on their part.
|
| Leaving a hole open is _not_ anywhere near the same thing
| as formally supporting a public protocol.
|
| > In fact, they're actively spending effort on breaking a
| working implementation that took them no effort.
|
| They're spending effort fixing a security hole in an
| _internal_ protocol.
|
| > Being able to send iMessages to Android users is a
| feature that iPhones currently do not have at all.
|
| That's like saying Toyota doesn't offer "driving a Ford"
| as a feature. I don't give a shit? Sending an SMS to
| Android users is fine.
| skeaker wrote:
| > They're spending effort fixing a security hole in an
| internal protocol.
|
| Then they're spending effort regardless, and your
| argument was that they shouldn't spend effort at all. If
| that is the case then it would be better spent opening
| the protocol in the first place.
|
| > That's like saying Toyota doesn't offer "driving a
| Ford" as a feature.
|
| Fun hyperbole, but no, there's an obvious difference and
| this is a reach.
|
| > I don't give a shit? Sending an SMS to Android users is
| fine.
|
| Good for you, but it's obvious that a lot of people do
| care. Look around in this very thread, even. Apple users
| complain that things like group chats and read receipts
| don't work with Android users. The whole fickle green
| bubble thing originates from this. Plenty of people do
| care about this functionality and are happy that this
| exists, iPhone users included. And if you don't care,
| then why would you be so insistent about _not_ wanting it
| added?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Then they're spending effort regardless...
|
| They _must_ fix security holes. They don 't _have_ to
| make internal protocols public. These are not comparable
| investments of time, either.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Counterpoint: AirPods can connect to any Bluetooth
| compatible device, yet the experience with an iPhone is
| still magical.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That doesn't seem like a comparable scenario; Apple
| implements the Bluetooth standard (along with a bunch of
| others), which is defined by industry groups.
|
| In this case, it's not a standard.
| hraedon wrote:
| The relevant example here is that Apple supports the
| lowest common denominator standard: SMS. iMessage is what
| makes the experience "magical" on iPhones.
|
| The total failure of any open messaging standard to
| capture the market seems to imply to me that control is
| actually pretty important to the experience of using the
| service!
| hamandcheese wrote:
| It merely implies that being closed is more profitable,
| not that it is critical to the experience.
| covercash wrote:
| I actually like the walled garden, things "just work" in
| here...
|
| I also have devices outside of the the walled garden but
| they take a bit more effort as far as initial set up and
| upkeep, things I'm willing to do but average Joe just
| wanting his tech to do what he tells it to do might not
| have the patience for.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I would say people like the marketing. The average
| consumer gives no shits about product quality (see: the
| race to the bottom in basically every industry). But
| Apple has somehow convinced people that they are cool, so
| people buy their products.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Apple is often less shitty than the alternative. Yes, the
| standards have dropped, but the competition has too, so
| the status quo stands. It's not _just_ marketing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > But Apple has somehow convinced people that they are
| cool, so people buy their products.
|
| That "somehow" is pretty easy to explain. Apple creates
| innovative products - the iPod, iPhone and AirPods were
| _all_ the first-of-their-kind products - and especially,
| it creates _long lasting_ products, both in terms of
| build quality and support.
|
| Good luck getting security updates (including drivers)
| for your 5 year old typical Windows laptop (or getting a
| modern OS running on it, see the issue with TPM
| requirements). Apple, on average, supports a device for
| ~6 years, and up to 9 years (!) for mobile devices [2].
|
| Meanwhile, you're lucky if your Windows or Android device
| even lasts that long physically.
|
| On top of that, the battery lifetimes for Apple devices
| are insane compared to the competition - a feat that
| neither Windows nor Android can achieve as they lack the
| complete control over the entire stack, from CPU design
| over firmware over hardware to the OS and user-space
| libraries, that Apple has.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/some-macs-
| are-gettin...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iPhone_models
| sumuyuda wrote:
| Not for sure where the claim of Windows machines lasting
| less than Apple products comes from. Before Windows 11,
| you could easily be running Windows 10 on a 10-15 year
| old computer.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Not for sure where the claim of Windows machines
| lasting less than Apple products comes from.
|
| I'm talking about the entire stack including drivers.
| Microsoft is left at the mercy of vendors here.
|
| Additionally, I have yet to see a Windows laptop that
| _doesn 't_ develop cracks, broken hinges and whatnot
| after 2-3 years of use.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| > The average consumer gives no shits about product
| quality
|
| It's exactly this sort of contemptuous attitude that
| "techies" have towards "average users" that enabled Apple
| to become the most valuable company in history.
| thayne wrote:
| > it is why many people like Apple products so much
|
| and it's why (well one very big reason why) I hate Apple
| products, and avoid them.
| freedomben wrote:
| Unfortunately we're heavily in the minority. The vast
| majority of people won't do this.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I wonder how many of the people complaining about the
| Apple ecosystem are doing so using a Google browser on a
| Google operating system running on a Google hardware
| device and found this site using the Google search engine
| and signed up using a Google Mail mail address and do
| work using Google's office suite and are listening to a
| video or music on Google's video sharing platform in the
| background as they type.
| darkwater wrote:
| > They want to control the entire user experience end to
| end, and it is why many people like Apple products so
| much.
|
| Totally. But in a messaging app context, that doesn't
| apply or even make sense. They could just release an
| iMessage app for Android and keep the experience _exactly
| the same_ for their iPhone users.
| encoderer wrote:
| Nobody is locked into Apple products because of iMessage.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Apple disagrees
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-confirms-imessage-
| locks-...
| encoderer wrote:
| Most iPhones are not purchased by parents for kids.
| You're fixated on this but it's a footnote for why people
| buy iPhones.
| rpmisms wrote:
| You said nobody, I provided evidence that "nobody" is
| false.
| encoderer wrote:
| Me buying an iPhone for my kids doesn't make me locked
| into the platform. I just want my kids on the same
| platform as I am.
|
| Where is the lock in?
| sahila wrote:
| What is the reason you want your kids on the same
| platform?
|
| Is it perhaps because it's easier to message them, do
| photo sharing/albums, see their location, have airtags
| work on both? At least for a sizable group my extended
| family included it's a lock-in for iPhones (or a very
| strong social disincentive to switch).
| encoderer wrote:
| Yes exactly - it's the whole Apple experience. If
| iMessage started working on android it would remove _one
| reason_ to get my kid an iPhone. I still have 20 more.
| sahila wrote:
| I don't think that list of reasons are long, for me
| personally iMessage is the reason I'm not switching to
| Android alone. For others, it might take more but once
| you start to remove reasons, switching can be based on
| competitive reasons instead of lockin, ie iPhones are
| better devices than Pixels and worth the premium vs today
| I have to get an iPhone because I want to use the
| dominant communication tool to talk to family.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Maybe true, but 87% of teens self-reported owning an
| iPhone [1]. The blue-bubble effect is real, and this
| cohort is facing enormous pressure to use iMessage
| specifically. I wouldn't call it a footnote, personally.
|
| 1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/04/04/iphone-is-
| still-t...
| hamandcheese wrote:
| iMessage is one of the primary reasons I will not buy an
| Android phone.
| constantly wrote:
| I don't think anyone thinks it's impossible for apple, or
| even relatively difficult for them. I also don't think
| anyone doesn't understand that they try to lock people into
| their ecosystem. Not my favorite choice of theirs, but
| largely a business choice they've decided to make.
| misnome wrote:
| As is their right?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Just like it's our right to run software on my device
| that sends packets of a certain format to a certain
| server.
|
| The amount of corporate bootlickers who wish to surrender
| that right is staggering though.
| misnome wrote:
| It's completely our right to send those packets, but that
| fact is completely disconnected to anything anyone is
| talking about here.
|
| Because it's also their right not to respond to those
| packets?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's their right to not respond, but people here seem to
| be mad _at Beeper_ for producing software which sends
| packets that Apple servers _want_ to respond to.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > lock people into the ecosystem.
|
| Other messaging services are available on iOS. In much if
| the world, iMessage is barely used. This is not lock-in, at
| all.
|
| If anything, this is lock-out - it's a service that Apple
| provides to its customers and they don't want 3rd party
| clients and/or non-customers using the service.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Running the iMessage service for a billion iPhone users
| can't be cheap. Opening up the API and running it for the
| entire rest of the world for free is a non-starter.
|
| No company on earth is that generous, let alone Apple.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| Then how does WhatsApp run their service for free across
| multiple platforms?
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Facebook mines the metadata to increase revenue received
| through advertising.
|
| It's not free, the end user just isn't paying in monetary
| currency.
| ska wrote:
| > Then how does WhatsApp run their service for free
| across multiple platforms?
|
| FWIW, this is always a good question to ask yourself when
| considering using a service... they are getting paid for
| it one way or another.
| umeshunni wrote:
| The last year it was independent, WhatsApp lost nearly
| $140M (on a much smaller userbase than it has today)
|
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680
| 114...
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Why does it have to be free? Aren't beeper showing that
| there is a market of users who would pay to be able to
| use imessage from non-apple hardware?
| rpmisms wrote:
| Seriously, Apple would make absolute bank selling this
| exact service, even if it was restricted to blue bubbles,
| reactions, and high-quality media.
| riscy wrote:
| That's exactly what the announced RCS support for iOS
| provides. Just not the blue color of iMessage.
| rpmisms wrote:
| No, Apple won't be charging for that service.
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't RCS hosted by the carriers rather than Apple?
| meepmorp wrote:
| Yes, it's basically an SMS replacement, with at least as
| much carrier control.
| dwaite wrote:
| It is actually more often than not hosted by Google
| Longhanks wrote:
| Why should Apple be bullied to enter a market they
| clearly have no interest in?
|
| Apple's message is clear: if you want iMessage, get an
| Apple device. And I fail to understand how "access to
| iMessage" should be considered a public good that Apple
| must be forced to allow others access to, there's nothing
| special about it, there's plenty of different services
| providing the same experience, anyone can launch an
| iMessage competitor.
| Levitz wrote:
| > there's nothing special about it, there's plenty of
| different services providing the same experience, anyone
| can launch an iMessage competitor.
|
| There very evidently is something special about it. It
| comes from Apple, so it enjoys the advantages of their
| closed ecosystem and Apple can get away with offering an
| inferior product.
|
| Apple has no interest in a market they control which has
| interested customers. Apple should be bullied into it
| because any other option is an utter failure of
| capitalism.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Apple does not "get away" with offering an inferior
| product. Any other messenger can be installed on Apple's
| devices and the OS does not penalize the user in any way
| for choosing e.g. WhatsApp over iMessage.
|
| > Apple should be bullied into it because any other
| option is an utter failure of capitalism.
|
| This is an extreme hyperbole, capitalism isn't going to
| fail because some people think less of "green bubble
| folks". Also, that scheme failed in any other market than
| the US. US folks engaging in bullying because of some
| messenger preferences does not mean you get to dictate
| the market, and if it does, please provide me some
| information about that law from which you derive that
| justification.
| bagels wrote:
| Seems like an expensive way to tell us all something we've
| known since the iphone was released.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > _Yeah, not the point. The point is to prove that it 's
| possible and relatively simple, and the only reason Apple
| operates this way is to lock people into the ecosystem._
|
| _Is_ that the point? Everybody already knew that Apple 's
| messaging strategy was a business calculation based around
| lock in.
|
| Beeper also presents itself as a _company_ , so I'm not
| sure how releasing software that annoys Apple _just to
| make_ a point could possibly help their bottom line. If
| that was the goal, they should 've released the code as an
| anonymous open source project rather than painting a huge
| target on their own backs.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Except what they are doing is specifically legal under the
| DMCA, and protected under the EU SDA. Under the EU SDA, Apple
| might even have to assist them.
| kernal wrote:
| >sued into bankruptcy
|
| Good luck with that. I'd like to see this play out in court
| with a technically inclined judge. Be careful what you wish
| for.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I suspect the end-game of Beeper is to explicitly set a
| legal precedent or at the very least a highly publicized
| fight over adversarial interoperability, something no other
| company dared to do (because most tech companies nowadays
| themselves make money out of interoperability
| restrictions).
|
| I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that
| is willing to fund it.
| randyrand wrote:
| Yes, this is like a picture perfect case for
| interoperability.
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| There's no piggybacking. Beeper's messages never hit Apple
| servers.
| smt88 wrote:
| They only thorn they're creating for Apple is forcing them to
| do anticompetitive things while they're being investigated for
| anticompetitive practices in places like the EU.
|
| In terms of technical problems, Apple will likely be able to
| keep up their end of the arms race with less than 1/2 of a
| single developer's time. The cost to continue patching Beeper
| out of their systems will be a fraction of a rounding error for
| them financially.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I doubt that this can be done that easily without recklessly
| endangering the experience of their 1+ billion users.
|
| Beeper on the other hand has far fewer users, who by now
| likely expect a bad experience. Beeper can be way more agile.
| smt88 wrote:
| Apple doesn't need to break backward compatibility to block
| Beeper, they just need a way to fingerprint traffic from
| Beeper which is going to be trivial unless Beeper finds a
| 100% on-device solution.
|
| Even then, it'll still be pretty easy because Apple has
| trillions of interactions with Apple devices to analyze and
| compare against Beeper.
| bdcravens wrote:
| How are they funding development?
| not_your_vase wrote:
| So what's the big idea? Keep playing whack-a-mole with Apple
| until Apple changes their TOS and sues their pants off, or until
| they run out of open holes? Or is there a bigger end goal?
| rpmisms wrote:
| Force Apple to either allow or implement iMessage
| interoperability via competitive tactics, not regulatory means.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| They don't implement it exactly due to their competitive
| tactics...
|
| (It was exposed in a recent courtroom hearing that Apple has
| seriously considered making it available on Android, but they
| decided that having it Apple-only is a serious benefit for
| them)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Of course. This now puts Apple in a prickly situation.
|
| One which paints a negative light on Apple which of, if a
| crowd following gathered "why isn't there iMessage for
| Android?". As I see, it would result of one of the
| following:
|
| - They sue and cause a backlash of Apple users.
|
| - They do nothing, shows Apple solely interest is in
| itself.
|
| - They create, happy times.
| misnome wrote:
| > "why isn't there iMessage for Android?"
|
| Is there a single person in the world who didn't already
| know the answer to this question?
| ethanbond wrote:
| I don't think this is painting Apple in a negative light
| for their actual customers, who pay them money. It's
| painting them in a negative light for a small segment of
| Android users who obviously are unlikely to switch to
| Apple anyway.
| sahila wrote:
| I disagree, I'm an Apple user and don't view this
| positively for them. There's a lot of narratives
| including better security, more interoperability, or even
| just a david vs goliath battle with Beeper. If it was
| Google proper, it might be a different story but people
| like to root for the small guys on the side of right.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Does this make you less likely to purchase an Apple
| device in the future?
|
| TBC, I also don't necessarily view this _as a positive._
| I just don 't see it as a negative whatsoever. It would
| be nice to be able to chat with Android friends over
| iMessage, but it's not offputting at all that an outside
| company trying to monetize reverse-engineered "hacks"
| onto the protocol are getting booted.
|
| (Yes I know it's not "hacking," but it is obviously
| _hacky_ )
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Does this make you less likely to purchase an Apple
| device in the future?
|
| Does for myself. Knowing that Apple has the capabilities
| yet not willing to implement them.
|
| The disconnect is real. I don't own Facebook, nor use
| WhatsApp neither do I want to use either.
|
| Other applications do exist but the learning curve and
| convincing family to use shouldn't be something I need to
| do. Nor how do I know they'll survive in the next five
| years?
|
| Yes, RCS will happen but its long overdue.
| ethanbond wrote:
| So because of this you're more likely to purchase an
| Android product on your next device refresh? I don't see
| how that logic works out... "My family shouldn't have to
| use the inferior protocol, so next chance I get I'm going
| to switch myself to that protocol?"
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Who said anything about superior or inferior.
|
| The deciding factor is whatever device makes it easier
| for me to talk to my relatives will be my next device.
|
| I currently have an iPhone XR, and I have been so
| frustrated with it for the past five years.
|
| Why I've not changed device because it cost me a heck
| amount of money and minus my gripes is usable.
| danieldk wrote:
| Same. iPhone user since 2009 and Mac user since 2007 and
| to me this just feels like bullying. I'm definitely
| rooting for Beeper here. And IMO this weakens Apple's
| security story (which was for me one of a bunch of
| reasons to stick with Apple).
| richwater wrote:
| I don't want millions of Android phones being able to spam me
| on iMessage, thank you very much.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Apple will need to charge a registration fee for devices
| that can't be strongly authenticated (no secure element) -
| that way legitimate use (of both Beeper and legacy non-SE
| devices) is possible while spam is made unprofitable.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _So what 's the big idea?_
|
| It's now an ongoing PR stunt, since Eric and Brad were rewarded
| handsomely in attention for the first hack.
| Laaas wrote:
| What grounds would Apple have for suing?
| ethanbond wrote:
| "No reverse engineering" is a pretty standard TOS item.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Has any of this ever been tested in court though? Also, the
| whole thing can be (and very well may have been)
| implemented using a "clean-room" process, where the Beeper
| app developers were never exposed to proprietary Apple
| code, instead working off the pypush PoC's code.
|
| I think Beeper is intentionally aiming for (heavily
| publicized) litigation to set a precedent.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| When did Bepper accept their TOS?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Either they're authorized to use the service and (almost
| certainly) signed a TOS, or they're not, in which case
| they're using the service unauthorized.
|
| Not a lawyer but I don't see what else could be true
| here. I suppose you could say the _end users_ are the
| ones violating the TOS? I don 't think it'll land with
| any judge, "your honor _we_ just did the reverse
| engineering (without signing a TOS) and sold it to our
| users (who did sign a TOS, but didn 't reverse engineer),
| so we're all clean."
| randyrand wrote:
| Authorization is the first step of setting up Beeper
| Mini.
|
| During setup, Apple's servers return authorization keys
| for your device to use.
|
| Seems pretty clear cut to me.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Under this logic, no hacking would ever be illegal. After
| all, there's obviously no way any attacker ever did
| anything the code _actually_ made impossible.
|
| Fortunately, courts aren't computers, judges aren't
| compilers, and legal code isn't a programming language.
| randyrand wrote:
| Beeper Mini uses the official channels to get
| authorization. It's not a "hack".
| ethanbond wrote:
| Every attack ever uses something that can be described as
| "official channels." It's all in the code, after all. As
| Apple's response makes clear, this is indeed not via the
| official channels.
|
| "Authorization" in the legal sense != authorization in
| the cryptographic sense. You can get a token and still be
| not legally authorized to access a system.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer either but I don't see what's wrong with
| that argument. The tool that Beeper built isn't
| infringing any laws, reverse engineering in this context
| is perfectly legal. They're not responsible for their
| users' use of the tools they build and their consequent
| violation of the TOS.
| ethanbond wrote:
| That's not generally true in practice. Especially when it
| is _marketed to end users_ as a TOS-violating product and
| doubly so when it was originally a commercialized
| product.
| pr0zac wrote:
| TOSes are not legally binding so who cares?
| ethanbond wrote:
| What is up with this meme around here? Of course terms of
| service are legally binding. They're a contract.
|
| It is possible to put unenforceable terms in a TOS, but
| it's simply untrue that "TOSes are not legally binding."
|
| What do you think is the distinction between a legally
| binding contract and a TOS?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| You say that, but what is Apple going to sue Beeper for?
| Tortious interference? That seems a stretch.
|
| In a similar vein: has any maker of web scraping tools
| been sued by a website? I couldn't find anything.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is
| explicitly allowed.
|
| Also, breaking the TOS is usually not illegal. TOS of a
| random company is not the law, otherwise you would get into
| trouble non-stop from random websites and apps making you
| "agree" to things.
| ethanbond wrote:
| > Reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability
| is explicitly allowed.
|
| In Apple's iMessage TOS? I don't find that likely but
| open to being wrong.
|
| > Also, breaking the TOS is usually not illegal
|
| In general, contracts are legally binding, therefore
| breaking them is illegal. Sometimes contracts include
| clauses that can't be legally binding, but I don't think
| a TOS forbidding this type of behavior would be
| questionable in the slightest. Apple obviously has no
| obligation to allow anyone to use its platform as a
| backend for their own (previously commercialized)
| product.
| kuschku wrote:
| > In Apple's iMessage TOS? I don't find that likely but
| open to being wrong.
|
| In EU law. No contract or license may restrict your right
| to reverse engineer or decompile for the purpose of
| interoperability or building an alternative
| implementation.
| pr0zac wrote:
| In US law as well fwiw.
| ethanbond wrote:
| At least in US law, that's overridable by EULAs, TOS,
| T&C's, etc: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/What-were-
| the-5N_SjNVpRTOJr...
|
| Not quite a carte blanche protection in the EU, either.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I suspect the end-game of Beeper is to explicitly set a legal
| precedent or at the very least a highly publicized fight over
| adversarial interoperability, something no other company dared
| to do (because most tech companies nowadays themselves make
| money out of interoperability restrictions).
|
| I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that is
| willing to fund it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| As an Apple customer, I applaud their tenacity. Every time
| Beeper's protocol hacks are fixed, Messages gets more secure.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| By what metric? Arguably, users are less secure since "fixing"
| Messages (i.e. breaking Beeper) means Apple and Android users
| lose a secure communication channel.
|
| Beeper isn't "hacking" Messages... they've implemented the
| protocol.
| chewmieser wrote:
| I don't think the parent is that concerned with Android <->
| Apple communications with that statement.
|
| Reverse-engineering a closed protocol and distributing an
| Apple Binary (IIRC correctly) are a bit more than just
| "implementing a protocol."
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > Reverse-engineering a closed protocol and distributing an
| Apple Binary (IIRC correctly) are a bit more than just
| "implementing a protocol."
|
| Reverse-engineering the protocol was the first step to
| implementing it. The point is that there was no
| vulnerability exploited in the protocol - it's as secure as
| it ever was.
|
| I don't think they are shipping an Apple binary. Can you
| provide a source for that?
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Arguably, users are less secure since "fixing" Messages
| (i.e. breaking Beeper) means Apple and Android users lose a
| secure communication channel._
|
| If you hack a secure communications channel so that
| unauthorized client software/hardware can pretend to be
| authorized software/hardware, how does that make the channel
| more secure?
| mab122 wrote:
| > If you hack a secure communications channel so that
| unauthorized client software/hardware can pretend to be
| authorized software/hardware, how does that make the
| channel more secure?
|
| How does it make more insecure? It doesnt, security should
| be accomplished by the protocol, messages themselves not by
| blockong access to a communication channel. Otherwise its
| just
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| To lose something you'd have to have had it to begin with.
| Users aren't gaining an additional secure messaging channel
| would be a more accurate description.
|
| I personally won't waste my time trying to be an early
| adopter of this. I suspect the upcoming RCS support will be
| the only "apple native" way to have non-shit tier messaging
| between android and iOS, and Apple will keep breaking Beeper
| if they can.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I was using Beeper Mini a few days ago, so not sure what
| you mean by "had to have it to begin with." I did!
|
| My partner and I were finally able to move off Messenger...
| for a day.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Beeper is not exploiting any kind of vulnerability. The user is
| voluntarily providing their Apple ID credentials (or doing the
| SMS verification process to prove ownership of their number),
| just like they would on an iPhone.
| sgerenser wrote:
| What's the over/under on how long before Apple blocks it again?
| oldandboring wrote:
| I would give it up to 48 hours. It's important for Apple to
| architect their fix carefully so that they don't break the
| world for legitimate users.
|
| For my part, I had fun using Beeper Mini last week while it
| lasted but I cancelled my subscription and I'm likely not going
| to use it again due to the risk of incoming messages getting
| dropped on the floor when Apple blocks it again.
| odiroot wrote:
| Happy user of normal Beeper, have no skin in this particular game
| though.
|
| Still, I'm glad they brought it back, and hope will continue this
| route.
|
| Anything that helps break the high walls of that garden.
| nickvec wrote:
| Over or under on 24 hours until they are "not back" again?
| solardev wrote:
| > We've made Beeper free to use.
|
| > Our Play Store ranking dropped precipitously on Friday.
|
| Really have to wonder what their play here is. What did they
| think would happen?
|
| Isn't it always going to be a cat and mouse game with Apple? Who
| would want to use a messaging service that works some days but
| not others, much less pay for it?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| It seems clear to me that Beeper is playing a game of chicken
| with Apple. If Apple continues to cut off Beeper's access, it
| makes an antitrust argument stronger (a la
| https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/06/eus-imessage-antitrust-
| invest...)
| solardev wrote:
| In the event Apple loses in Europe, I wonder what would
| happen. Would they really open up iMessage worldwide? Just in
| Europe? Shut it down there altogether since WhatsApp is
| already so popular there anyway, and their US market is
| bigger?
|
| And what does this do for Beeper, anyway? If they open it up,
| wouldn't Google and Samsung just integrate it into their
| first party messaging clients?
|
| It seems as precarious a position as Trillian was back in the
| day: only usable if the source protocols don't shut them out,
| but only valuable if those protocols don't open up
| completely. The moment either happens, they die.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Whatever legislation they face, they will implement it in
| the most hostile way towards non-Apple
| services/users/companies.
|
| See how they implement off-App Store payments in the
| Netherlands and/or South Korea.
|
| Apple is not giving up on iMessage. And, given the
| legislation becomes to cumbersome to deal with, they will
| withdraw from countries - they threatened to withdraw
| iMessage from the UK already.
|
| The EU is already becoming a second-class market for
| technology companies (see Meta's Threads, and many more
| will follow).
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, also the EU has already dropped their iMessage thing
| fooey wrote:
| The Beeper vs Apple battle is already getting the attention
| of US legislators
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/10/senator-warren-calls-
| out-a...
| solardev wrote:
| There's something funny about Warren posting on Twitter
| while shouting about antitrust. I really wish government
| wouldn't make public announcements on closed platforms.
|
| -----
|
| That aside, it seems like an easy way around that would
| just be for Apple to adopt RCS in addition to iMessage.
| jtriangle wrote:
| Let's not turn mountains into molehills here, Twitter
| isn't really closed, it's just authwalled. So, burner
| email is all you need to read all the tweets, errr, X's?,
| that you want.
|
| Also, far simpler to take care of beeper, just make all
| the message bubbles the same color. They'd lose their
| entire userbase if that happened.
| ldarby wrote:
| It's viewable via Nitter:
| https://nitter.net/SenWarren/status/1733956234200445130
|
| But I agree with the earlier point, that it is a closed
| platform. If you want to respond, I thought it requires a
| phone number now in addition to email? It used to at
| least. And if Twitter doesn't like you, why is your
| ability to communicate with an official regulated by this
| private company? And Nitter is likely to get shutdown by
| Twitter any moment now in the same way as Apple is trying
| to shutdown Beeper.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Apple needs better critics.
|
| Senator Warren would be a lot more effective if she or her
| staff understood how technology actually works. Senator
| Markey is another person who cares about this stuff but is
| also incompetent to regulate it.
| solardev wrote:
| I don't think it's just a matter of not understanding
| technology, but not having any sway in politics. Most of
| their peers care more about personal brands and culture
| wars and virtue signaling than doing the boring day to
| day task of regulating minituae for consumers.
|
| People like Warren and Bernie are like the determined
| sergeants in the trenches, while most of Congress is busy
| grandstanding and trying to become the next Napoleons or
| Trump.
|
| They just don't care to actually do anything useful,
| instead focusing on optics and pork barrels and revolving
| doors.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Most voters couldn't care less about Apple's iMessage
| antitrust concerns. Even within the realm of antitrust
| questions it's an extremely low priority.
| solardev wrote:
| Yeah, good point, lol.
|
| Let's see... abortion, school shootings, jobs, climate
| change, blue bubbles...?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Well, you can't pass legislation to shut down the school
| shootings factory or invade climate change's homeland.
| However, Europe has shown us that tying your economy's
| profitability to a basis of digital standards _can_
| easily compel more open behavior.
|
| Given that Apple is quite literally the _Largest Company_
| , they're somewhere on that list. Maybe not next to
| abortions and climate change, but Apple antitrust is an
| inevitability unless they get smaller or the economy gets
| bigger.
| mike_d wrote:
| > If Apple continues to cut off Beeper's access, it makes an
| antitrust argument stronger
|
| I'm not sure why everyone thinks it is an antitrust issue
| when it isn't. There is no legal obligation to support your
| services and software on third party platforms.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I'd argue that's not the right framing of the issue. Taking
| active steps to prevent your services from being used on
| competing platforms is more than merely "not supporting"
| them.
| al_borland wrote:
| Apple has always made services primarily for the users of
| their hardware. They are a hardware company that makes
| their own software and services. The hardware purchase
| funds the software development.
|
| Who decides which platforms get support, if it's not the
| company making and supporting the service? When BBM was
| popular, I know a lot of people without Blackberries
| would have liked to use it, but Blackberry didn't offer
| it, and no one was threatening legal action against them
| (that I know of). I don't see how this situation is any
| different.
|
| There are a lot of exclusive services out there, which
| are locked to specific platforms. Affording legal
| protection to anyone who hacks their way into a system,
| and telling the company they can't do anything about it,
| would create chaos in the tech world. There might be some
| cool projects, but business models would fall apart,
| companies would fail, security would be worse than it
| already is, and I'd question why anyone would try and
| start something new when they wouldn't be allowed to
| control it in a way to ensure profitability. Having
| everything free and open is great, but at some point
| these services need to be paid for.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Doesn't this push traffic that didn't pay Apple through Apple's
| infrastructure? These guys should know better than to waste dev
| hours on a business problem. Apple isn't going to allow this. No
| amount of shady spoofing or reverse engineering will change that.
| If you want to send an iMessage just get an iPhone. Pretty basic
| requirements.
| martinky24 wrote:
| These Beeper folk sound a bit entitled. As was repeatedly
| mentioned in the other thread [1], building production
| applications on top of an undocumented and unsupported (in terms
| of backwards compatability, etc) API is a nightmare that should
| be avoided. Apple has every right to change their API, if they do
| Beeper will go down, and Beeper will blame Apple. I understand
| Apple's incentives to not want to be in this situation.
|
| I don't buy their "Beeper unequivocally makes things secure
| story" either. For one, I do not want to have my Apple ID login
| routed through a third party. I trust an established, trillion
| dollar company far more with that sensitive info than I do a
| fast-moving, eager-to-break-things startup. And the list goes on.
|
| It's an impressive engineering effort, but I really don't believe
| they're entitled to parasite off the undocumented iMessage API.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38574888
| campbel wrote:
| I think they are rightly calling out that iMessage as part of
| Apple's moat building is both bad for their customers and
| people their customers interact with. And while I agree with
| you, and I won't be using the service, I think from their POV
| it is the correct messaging.
| richwater wrote:
| > Apple's moat building is both bad for their customers and
| people their customers interact with
|
| I bought into the ecosystem exactly because of the quality
| and functionality of iMessage. There's absolutely no spam,
| everything works and the ecosystem is tight-knit.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| But other side of the Apple reality is your then stuck when
| all your other relatives use Android.
|
| I am then forced to use some $app, persuade my contacts to
| use said app. Defeating the point of iMessage when I just
| want native support all around.
|
| Something that Apple had never implemented anywhere else
| and for which it could decades ago.
|
| I wouldn't switch to an Android because the feature became
| available.
|
| If all your contacts use Apple Devices, sure go nuts. But
| when others don't iMessage becomes unpractical.
|
| But hey, vendor device lock-in money is very nice. It's
| unfortunate that they don't water the lawns of the walled-
| garden nor restock the bird feeder. We are expected to do
| that ourselves using a wooden ladder with missing prongs.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| You aren't though because sms exists as fallback.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Group chat SMS doesn't work globally the same way as it
| apparently works in the USA.
|
| (This is one of the reasons why WhatsApp is big in the
| rest of the world)
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > I bought into the ecosystem exactly because of the
| quality and functionality of iMessage. There's absolutely
| no spam
|
| I'm glad I bought into the ecosystem for other reasons, as
| I definitely receive occasional iMessage spam. It's about
| as frequent as WhatsApp spam.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I think it's valid feedback from Beeper, but to insinuate
| that this gives them to right to force Apple to run their
| reverse-engineered access is where things go a bit too far
| for me. Apple's customers are not Beeper's customers. They
| have completely different incentives.
|
| I guess the approach is to try and force Apple's hand or push
| some legislation for interoperability, but Apple is working
| on RCS so it's not like they've been completely ignoring
| criticism...
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Apple's RCS implementation is meaningless unless they cut
| out the blue/green bubble shit.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| It will be far from meaningless if I can send a high
| resolution image easily to a groupchat containing a mix
| of android and ios users.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| Sure, but if Beeper keeps working, likely some free
| alternative isn't far behind, and if that means your
| messages don't come up as blue, that will be everyone's
| preference.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| "Meaningless" isn't accurate at this point. Media doesn't
| get nearly as severely downgraded (if at all), so the
| user experience of using an RCS chat is better than
| SMS/MMS.
|
| There are still disparities, though, that should be
| presented. There's no standardized end-to-end encryption
| yet for RCS (although it could be argued Google's
| protocol is a de facto standard), and Apple has indicated
| it will be implementing RCS as the standard dictates,
| i.e. with no E2E encryption. Using blue bubble to
| indicate E2E encrypted and green to indicate otherwise is
| a reasonable UX choice.
|
| After Apple implements E2E encryption over RCS via
| whatever standard (which can be reasonably inferred as
| their intention from their announcements), if the
| delineation for green-vs-blue is still iMessage/not-
| iMessage (rather than E2E vs not-E2E), then I think
| "meaningless" applies. But we're not there yet.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The colors of the bubbles are the least important aspect
| of this
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| As long as Apple keeps encouraging their users to be
| shitty to Android users, I'd say it's important.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "Encouraging shittiness" because they're pointing out a
| lack of feature parity with a color seems like a stretch.
| Google has done the same exact thing by pushing a number
| of chat apps in their ecosystem, the only difference is
| that Apple has succeeded.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| It's not a stretch at all. They are well aware of the
| weird culty green bubble clique attitudes. And there are
| plenty of things they could do to allow imessage on
| Android. And even if they still didn't want to do that,
| they didn't need to choose an entirely different color
| for non imessage messages, they could be more subtle in
| alerting iphone users the other person in the convo has
| less features available to them. Much of the time it
| isn't even relevant.
| echelon wrote:
| Apple is at a scale in smartphone dominance that they're
| anticompetitive. There are only two vendors. They control
| everything about one of the most essential functional pieces
| of modern society.
|
| A smartphone is essential. Apple and Google tax 30%, control
| when and how software can be deployed, control browser tech
| (Apple), prevent web downloads of executable software (Apple)
| or scare and confuse you about it (Google). They control the
| payment rails and increasingly enforce using their identity
| and customer management, so they can sink more claws into
| business and innovation. They're partnering with governments
| to be authoritative identify providers. They're usurping
| payment rails to become the entire payment ecosystem of the
| future.
|
| The devices are user unfriendly. Can't repair them, can't use
| third party components, can't replace the battery. Unofficial
| pieces break core features due to unnecessary cryptographic
| locks. Updates obsolete old hardware.
|
| Nevermind the petty bullshit about green and blue bubbles
| giving children (and even adults) fear about their image and
| reputation. Being bullied for not buying the latest and
| greatest.
|
| This is scary shit and we're letting them do this.
|
| Nevermind all the fluff of them owning movie studios and
| music and the arts to keep eyeballs locked.
|
| Car companies wish they had it this good. They'd love to
| charge you for third party accessories, or to charge
| McDonalds a fee every time they drive you there. That's
| essentially the deal Apple and Google are getting.
|
| This is all at once worse than Standard Oil, and comes with
| heavy Orwellian vibes.
|
| We need more than two vendors, and we need different
| companies to own different parts of the stack. As it stands,
| these two companies own everyone and everything these people
| touch.
| oldandboring wrote:
| I had started writing basically this and stopped because
| you did a much better job. Thanks for taking the time to
| articulate this.
|
| I want to add a subtle but important part: outside of the
| tech community, almost nobody knows this problem exists. If
| you try to explain it their eyes glaze over. Normies with
| iPhones, if they think anything, think iMessage is
| "texting". Blue bubbles mean they can see when you're
| typing and can send reactions, green bubbles mean you can't
| because you're on Android (or, "Samsung"). None of them
| think of iMessage as a "chat application" on par with
| WhatsApp... it's texting.
|
| And all the government officials we wish would step in are
| included in this lot. They all have iPhones and they love
| them. iPhone is synonymous with 'smartphone' in common
| discourse and Apple is happy to trade brand dilution for
| that kind of "default" brand status.
|
| And, as you eloquently point out, we could break the world
| trying to loosen Apple's grip on texting, only to find that
| we just transferred some of their power to Google, which
| isn't much better.
| solardev wrote:
| As a Google Android user using a Google Pixel and Google's
| RCS on Google Fi, the messaging system is a total
| clusterfuck. There's no way to reliably send or receive
| messages, and sometimes my images will be degraded silently,
| group messages to other Fi users often don't work before
| several retries, reactions are totally hit and miss...
|
| IMessage is a much much much better experience. It's not at
| all bad for their customers. It's a huge plus of that system
| over Android and other platforms that still try to piggyback
| off SMS or haphazardly support RCS.
| prmoustache wrote:
| GNU Jami or similar messaging systems are the solution, not
| some proprietary vendor locking solution.
| solardev wrote:
| That sounds like an uphill battle, lol. Signal came and
| went, WhatsApp and WeChat and Line dominate in much of
| the world, even email these days is mostly proprietary
| webmail. I think the average person will always prefer
| ease of use over openness or security.
| guyomes wrote:
| Olvid [0,1] seems interesting too.
|
| [0]: https://olvid.io
|
| [1]: https://github.com/olvid-io/olvid-android
| matsemann wrote:
| When did HN get so anti-consumer, anti- _hacker_ , anti-
| freedom, pro-proprietary?
|
| Them taking the fight with Apple should be applauded. A walled
| down proprietary message platform only a few can use is stupid
| to fight in favor of.
| rpmisms wrote:
| There is nothing quite as hard as making a man understand
| something that his paycheck depends on him not understanding.
| chewmieser wrote:
| I think we can commend their efforts and call out their
| entitled messaging at the same time. These are not mutually
| exclusive.
| distortionfield wrote:
| When the VC money got tangled in the roots.
| misnome wrote:
| It isn't anti-freedom and pro-proprietary to have a view on
| what you think the law says and what you think Apple's right
| to respond is.
|
| The original kid who reversed: Great hacking, I think we can
| all applaud. This is a for-profit (VC funded?) company
| charging users by piggy backing off of servers they don't own
| or pay for (and using apple binary blobs?).
|
| If they used the protocol they reverse engineered on their
| own servers that'd be completely different. But that wouldn't
| be profitable for them.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > charging users by piggy backing off of servers they don't
| own or pay for
|
| Apple is free to charge for them. In fact, I think it would
| be the best outcome and a mitigation to the upcoming spam
| onslaught now that the protocol has been documented.
|
| > But that wouldn't be profitable for them.
|
| Is it a problem to profit off creating a tool that some
| other manufacturer intentionally doesn't _want_ to create
| (since Apple is more than capable of building an Android
| iMessage client)? Isn 't that the whole point of a
| competitive market?
| peyton wrote:
| Apple does charge for access to their servers. Or are you
| saying they're free to pick another business model?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It currently doesn't because Beeper Mini users are able
| to get access without paying. This should change, if
| anything just to make the upcoming onslaught of spam
| unprofitable.
| misnome wrote:
| > Apple is free to charge for them
|
| But I don't think anyone disagrees that Apple is
| (currently) free _not_ to charge for them.
|
| > Is it a problem to profit off creating a tool that some
| other manufacturer intentionally doesn't want to create
|
| I'd say ethically no - not a problem - up _until_ the
| point where they are actively, continuously using
| resources of that manufacturer. Legally? If you or your
| customers have agreed to a TOS then that's probably bad
| either way.
|
| Nobody would care about (or be interested in) beeper if
| they were running their own servers.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| A walled down proprietary messaging platform is so common as
| to be unremarkable. Google has probably 5 in the works right
| now. Meta has a few, and there's dozens of others to choose
| from.
|
| It was really cool news when they reverse engineered the API.
| It was less cool when they _sold paid access_ to this
| unofficial API. Beeper is barely pro-consumer because again,
| they're charging for something open sourced by a 16yo kid
| which has no official support.
|
| The green bubble blue bubble story is really tired. Yea it's
| real, but it's not a technical problem it's a social problem.
| Haven't we learned that you can't out-hacker a social
| problem?
| jxf wrote:
| > The green bubble blue bubble story is really tired. Yea
| it's real, but it's not a technical problem it's a social
| problem.
|
| It's both. For example, Apple degrades the experience for
| "green bubbles" even though it doesn't need to. That's not,
| strictly speaking, a social problem.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Apple doesn't degrade the experience, that's a carrier
| limitation when sending SMS and MMS messages to anyone
| even other iPhone users.
|
| E.g. MMS messages generally have to fit within 300-600KB
| so they are horribly, horribly compressed.
| https://m.gsmarena.com/glossary.php3?term=mms
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Is this paid? I thought it was free.
|
| As for beeper cloud, I'm a paying customer to Apple and I
| just want to use my damn chat app on desktop that I pay
| for.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's paid. It's cheap ($2/mo?) but it's a subscription.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Yea, i actually disagree with that. Generally i'm in
| favor of Beeper Mini if can be used by people who already
| pay Apple (like i want my Android tablet to have my
| iPhone iMessage or w/e), but odd to me that they're
| charging monthly for a service they don't host.
|
| Put a tiny flat rate on the app for the work that they
| crated and call it a day.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Hackers do things because they can. Apple is entitled to
| gatekeep their own technology until it is regulated as a
| utility. To me the anti-hacker spirit is a company thinking
| just because they did something they subjectively think is
| good that Apple is then obligated to keep it running.
|
| In what world is Apple obligated to keep a service running
| which allows unauthorized _security related_ behavior? Such a
| hole in a service is usually called a security vulnerability
| and is patched away asap.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Hacker news is the public arm of a hyper capitalist venture
| capitalist clan.
|
| It never has and never will be a 'free spirited hacker place'
| despite the name.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| If through magic they were able to make a replacement that
| didn't utilize Apple's servers/resources (e.g.
| Point-2-Point), I think you'd find the attitude different.
|
| The inherent problem right now is that they want to create a
| commercial product using another company's servers/APIs
| without that company's permission, ultimately leaving Apple
| picking up the bill (inc. additional support ticket volume,
| like when iMessage gets locked on a given AppleId).
|
| Is iMessage part of Apple's moat? Absolutely. Is it good for
| consumers for iMessage to have a hardware lock? No. But even
| if that is true, this seems like something regulators should
| be involved in solving.
|
| Plus there is nothing anti-proprietary or pro-freedom that
| Beeper Mini is doing.
| kcb wrote:
| Pro-Apple
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| People tasted the fruit in Apple's garden noticed that it
| tasted _really_ good. So good in fact that it made them go
| "Is this walled garden actually that much of a bad thing?
| Because man, I do love eating this fruit."
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Beeper is trying to build a business based on unauthorized
| use of another company's servers. Apple customer's pay the
| Apple premium for their phones and get iMessage at no charge
| for the life of the device. Beeper charges its customers for
| a service that is paid for by Apple. How is that ok?
|
| >> "only a few can use"
|
| There are about 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world.
|
| As far as proprietary services, the world is full of them.
| Google, Meta, X, Instagram, .... Apple built a service to
| provide advanced messaging services to their many customers.
| It comes with the phone. Should Apple be required to freely
| give iPhone cameras to people who don't buy their phone? How
| about the Touch ID module?
|
| There are plenty of cross platform messaging apps available
| on iOS. The only thing that could be considered anti-
| competitive is the inability to change the default messaging
| app on iOS. Apple has fixed this for some of the other built-
| in apps, but not messaging yet. I would agree that that
| should be fixed. However, Beeper is not offering an
| alternative messaging platform, they are selling access to
| Apple's platform.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You think an E2E encryption messenger is best served by a
| proprietary, single vendor implementation, with the added bonus
| of being able to subvert the client at any moment for
| individual devices?
|
| There are some very weird takes around security on this to
| somehow twist it into an "Apple good" scenario. No, like
| _literally every other time in history_ , closed & controlled
| does not make it more secure.
| martinky24 wrote:
| Isn't Whatsapp a proprietary, single vendor implementation?
| Isn't Signal a single vendor implementation? I'm confused on
| your point.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Like Signal?
|
| To my knowledge, you can't make a 3rd party Signal client and
| connect it to the official Signal instances.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > you can't make a 3rd party Signal client and connect it
| to the official Signal instances.
|
| The Signal guy doesn't _want_ you to do that (just like
| Apple), but it 's absolutely possible. It's in fact much
| easier than in the iMessage scenario since all the client
| sources are available.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Giving your Apple ID to a third party is an incredibly bad
| idea for your security, full stop. Do not ever do this. Any
| argument that this helps user security because your messages
| are now E2E is completely undermined by the risk to your
| identity for literally all of Apple's other services, and
| that someone could now impersonate you in Messages. But it'd
| be encrypted!
| wvenable wrote:
| Of course, if you're on Android -- which you would be to
| use this service -- then maybe you don't even have any
| other Apple services (I don't). So this is not a problem.
|
| In fact, can't I not just create an new Apple ID
| specifically for this?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| And if you're using this in place of SMS, having a single
| bad guy be able to read your messages is still better
| than having _all_ the bad guys be able to read them.
| barnabee wrote:
| No. Apple given their scale and position in the market should
| be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard for
| messaging. iMessage should no longer allowed to be proprietary
| and stay part of Apple.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple given their scale and position in the market should
| be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard
| for messaging._
|
| You mean like SMS and MMS right now, and RCS next year?
| https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/
| xeromal wrote:
| This is one of those technically correct comments, but
| missing the point. We're probably too old for this but the
| green message bubble vs blue message bubble is an actual
| thing that many people care about.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I have two kids in high-school who insist it's not a
| thing. I've seen their text chains, and they're all
| standards-based (green) because their friends have both.
|
| This isn't to say there aren't toxic cliques whose alpha-
| teen leaders insist on certain brands of phones,
| clothing, ebikes, etc., but just that the flames of this
| particular media panic are actively fanned by Google and
| Samsung PR.
| xeromal wrote:
| It seems like to me that whether it's real or not,
| removing the potential for it to be used in a bad way is
| a good thing.
| bscphil wrote:
| Someone in a recent thread said that they performed an
| informal survey of their friends and family, and there
| was unanimous agreement that each person would be much
| less interested in dating someone with green bubble text
| messages, because this indicates that there's likely to
| be a poor culture fit between themselves and the other
| person.
|
| To me, this provides an _excellent_ argument for using
| Android devices if you are single and looking to start a
| long term relationship. Through one tiny choice, you get
| some of the most elitist, opinionated, and disagreeable
| people to _voluntarily_ exclude themselves as potential
| dates, with no hard feelings on either side. It 's a far
| better filter than most stuff you could put in a dating
| profile.
| misnome wrote:
| I would argue that claim (if not complete bullshit) said
| infinitely more about them, their family and friends. You
| are taking "these people owning an iphone are
| psychopaths" as "all people owning an iphone are
| psychopaths".
|
| This candy fell into the mud. Therefore I will never eat
| candy again because they are all muddy.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| No, we mean cutting out that blue/green bubble shit to
| drive wedges between users.
| barnabee wrote:
| If RCS goes live on all Apple devices in all jurisdictions
| and that solves the problem then great!
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| Why stop there? Why not force every iOS app to support
| running on android?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Because it's possible for competitors to build replacements
| for the rest of the apps.
| meepmorp wrote:
| It's possible for competitors to build replacements for
| iMessage, too. In fact, in many parts of the world, those
| competing apps are more popular than iMessage. You can go
| to the app store right now and install these competing
| apps, usually for free.
| skeaker wrote:
| There is an obvious technical difference between a protocol
| like iMessage and the software stack required to run apps.
| Beeper Mini has shown with tangible proof that an iMessage
| client on Android exists. Nobody to my knowledge has been
| able to emulate arbitrary iPhone apps on Android (if they
| have then let me know, that sounds like an incredible
| project and I would be fascinated to see how it works).
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| There have been attempts
|
| https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/IEmu
| haswell wrote:
| If the only thing Beeper does is continue to make Apple look
| anti-competitive, they've succeeded as far as I'm concerned.
|
| I'm deep into the Apple ecosystem and don't see myself getting
| out anytime soon. But I think their stance on iMessage sucks,
| even while understanding the strategic reasons they're doing
| it.
|
| I don't see this as "leeching off an undocumented API" as much
| as demonstrating that iMessage is _already_ in a state that
| allows 3rd parties to interact with it, documented or not.
| Every time Beeper starts working again, it shines a light on
| the fact that iMessage was never so locked down to begin with.
| It also puts pressure on Apple to answer the growing # of their
| own customers who are frustrated by the limits. These are good
| things, IMO.
|
| Apple may have every right, but that doesn't make their stance
| good for the ecosystem or good for consumers. This is pretty
| clearly about forcing people to switch ecosystems and not about
| security. If security was the only issue, Apple could easily
| provide supported iMessage APIs that make it clear that the
| other user is not a verified Apple user, while still allowing
| interoperability.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Imitating a first-party user isn't the same as being a third-
| party user.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| What's anti-competitive with what Apple does with iMessage?
| iMessage's lack of popularity _everywhere else in the world_
| is proof that competition is able to flourish. Apple is under
| no obligation to make an Android app, and it 's silly to
| pretend not making an app for another platform is somehow
| anti-competetive.
|
| The market simply chosing a preference is not anti-competive.
| iPhone and iMessage is able to compete on it's own merits
| without competition being artificially hindered.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If I have a computer that's technically capable to
| interoperate and talk with someone else's computer, why
| should we intentionally restrict that ability?
|
| The answer isn't to say that in other locations we have a
| _different_ gatekeeper so all is well, the answer should be
| that Apple 's gatekeeping should be broken, and then other
| gatekeepers' gatekeeping should be broken too.
|
| We should all have one messaging client that can seamlessly
| use all the major protocols and services - in fact like we
| used to have over a decade ago.
| ethanbond wrote:
| We do: SMS
|
| It's just worse than the alternative that Apple provides
| for its own ecosystem of users. Any Apple user is free to
| opt for that more universal system if they want.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Well, Beeper has proven that we now have another one:
| iMessage.
|
| Why not use the more modern, featureful & secure option
| instead of antiquated SMS? Why are you still defending
| corporate greed at the expense of user experience?
| ethanbond wrote:
| I _pay Apple_ to manage my mobile device experience. That
| is literally _why_ they demand and receive a premium over
| the alternatives. Why do you think Apple customers are
| some helpless and ignorant victim, and not people
| specifically placing their bets with a company that has
| delivered exceptional products at the expense of rather
| fringe philosophical views on "openness?" I don't care
| about "openness" nor taking down "corporate greed" in
| this context, I care about having a great experience
| using my own mobile device.
|
| FWIW there was an era where I felt differently. I was
| very active in the early Android jailbreak community. It
| was fun and the freedom has benefits, but those are
| benefits that I've deliberately chosen to give up for the
| benefits of the other end of the spectrum. I wasn't
| tricked into giving them up and neither was anyone else:
| people are paying Apple for the experience Apple is
| trusted to deliver. The reason people trust them is
| because they deliver it. It's super simple.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I pay Apple to manage my mobile device experience
|
| > I care about having a great experience using my own
| mobile device.
|
| But you can still do that - I don't see how Beeper
| changes that? As a happy Apple user you don't need to use
| Beeper, though might still get benefit from it if your
| Android-using friends can now use the same messaging app
| you do.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I trust Apple to make that determination, not someone
| reverse engineering Apple's APIs.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But how does someone else's API reverse-engineering
| affect you? You don't have to use Beeper (and don't need
| to).
| ethanbond wrote:
| I have no clue, I'm not an engineer at Apple, that's why
| I trust them to make that determination (and again, not
| Beeper).
| madeofpalk wrote:
| There's plenty of cross-platform messaging apps
| available. There's a plethora of ways those two computers
| an interoperate, all the way down to the lowest-common
| denominator of SMS (and soon to be, RCS, which Apple took
| their time on). They all work great. Many of them
| dominate as a third party options on both iPhone and
| Android across the world.
|
| > why should we intentionally restrict that ability
|
| I don't believe software and hardware companies should be
| under obligation to support things they don't want to.
| Users can decide on whether the products meet their needs
| and decide whether they work for them or not.
| haswell wrote:
| If Apple had implemented RCS sooner, I don't think we'd
| be having this conversation. While a lot of emphasis has
| been placed on the desirability of the blue bubble, I
| think it's important to focus on _why_ : interoperability
| is artificially bad, and basic things like sending a
| photo or video are broken in 2023.
|
| Apple made the decision to blend iMessage seamlessly into
| the phone's default messaging experience, and with the
| power of that default, they've weaponized the intentional
| interoperability failure.
|
| Should they be under some _obligation_ to support things
| they don't want to? As a product manager, I say that
| depends on what their customers want out of the devices
| they're buying. Apple does owe their users something
| here, and it's reasonable to expect that a new device
| purchased in 2023 is capable of sending a quality photo
| to other devices. Regardless of obligation, I also think
| they deserve every bit of anger and bad press they get
| for the way they've played this.
|
| It's smart business, but that's not the same thing as
| good for consumers.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > should be under obligation to support things they don't
| want to
|
| Nobody is asking them to support anything though - Beeper
| developed their client on their own and isn't asking
| Apple anything. Apple is in fact spending extra resources
| to _break_ interoperability, where as they could just do
| nothing.
| thrwy_918 wrote:
| When you have market power, your behavior has to be held to
| a higher standard. Apple has huge amounts of market power
| in the US cell phone market. It is totally clear to any
| reasonable observer that they are using that market power
| to dissuade people from purchasing Android devices via the
| green bubble system.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| "Making a product that people like and use" is abusing
| market power?
|
| How does Apple abuse this power in the US but not EU with
| no differences in the product?
| haswell wrote:
| > _" Making a product that people like and use" is
| abusing market power?_
|
| This is a very one-sided framing of the situation and
| leaves out quite a few factors.
|
| People aren't just buying Apple products because they
| like them. They're being forced to buy Apple products to
| stay in the "in" group. They face exclusion by peers due
| to Apple's dominance in the geo and in certain
| demographics.
|
| As I understand it, iMessage is not dominant in the EU,
| so the market conditions are quite unlike each other.
| misnome wrote:
| > They're being forced to buy Apple products to stay in
| the "in" group. They face exclusion by peers due to
| Apple's dominance in the geo and in certain demographics
|
| So, uh, factors that have zero to do with Apple are
| evidence that it is... abusing... the... market...?
|
| Are you auditioning for Apples' defence team or
| something?
| haswell wrote:
| > _So, uh, factors that have zero to do with Apple are
| evidence that it is... abusing... the... market...?_
|
| How does this have zero to do with Apple? It has
| everything to do with Apple, because it's ultimately
| their product decisions driving user behavior.
|
| Had they implemented support for RCS by now, this
| conversation wouldn't be happening. They made the
| explicit choice to capitalize on their poor
| interoperability and decided to claim it's for security
| reasons, which is pretty obviously bullshit.
| haswell wrote:
| > _iMessage 's lack of popularity everywhere else in the
| world is proof that competition is able to flourish._
|
| I truly do not understand the reasoning behind this. A
| product doesn't need to be popular world-wide for behavior
| to be anti-competitive. The reality is that the US market
| is heavily impacted, and the fact that this isn't true in
| other geos has nothing to do with the impact here.
|
| > _Apple is under no obligation to make an Android app, and
| it 's silly to pretend not making an app for another
| platform is somehow anti-competetive._
|
| I think that framing this only as an obligation for Apple
| to make an android app is unnecessarily narrow.
|
| There are many ways this could be solved:
|
| - By not artificially degrading the non-iMessage experience
|
| - By not want until 2024 to implement support for RCS
|
| - By opening up APIs with appropriate restrictions to be
| consumed by other apps - the thing they do for most other
| native phone capabilities
|
| Building a first party app is just one of a large number of
| possibilities that are less broken than the status quo.
|
| RCS will help this. They're embarrassingly and/or
| intentionally late to the party.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Someone "hacking"[0] into my bank account shines a light on
| the fact that my bank wasn't so locked down to begin with,
| but I still don't want people doing it.
|
| Keep in mind, iMessage also relies on a server component.
| It's not some peer-to-peer protocol. Apple has to pay for the
| costs of sending messages, high resolution videos and photos,
| audio recordings, and supporting iMessage apps[1]. You can
| argue that this is included in the price of the
| iPhone/iPad/Mac but obviously is not for random android
| devices. Personally it doesn't bother me if Apple has to just
| eat the costs, but it is a cost, and probably a not
| insubstantial one.
|
| [0] Social Engineering.
|
| [1] Ok how many people actually use these? Still, they are
| part of iMessage.
| mlindner wrote:
| That's a strange argument... It sounds like you're making the
| claim that every single chat application should be mandatory
| legally required to have completely open APIs for any clone
| that wants to pop up and get access to their network.
|
| What chat apps using a centralized server owned by a single
| company have open APIs that let anyone use them?
| haswell wrote:
| I don't believe every chat application should be required
| to have completely open APIs. Key factors in my mind:
|
| - iMessage isn't a chat app. It's the default experience
| for sending the equivalent of text messages from the Apple
| ecosystem. They've blended the experiences such that it's
| not fair to compare it to a traditional chat app
|
| - 3rd party chat apps are cross platform. The only reason
| Beeper exists is because there is no first party option to
| interact with iMessage chats outside of the ecosystem. This
| is not the case for actual "chat apps", and the non-
| existence of APIs takes on lesser relevance
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Apple has always been anticompetitive to an extent that would
| make Bill Gates blush, at least as far back as I can
| remember. They are one of the most toxic tech companies in
| that regard. I hope that they are forced to open their walled
| gardens (app lockdowns in particular), but I have no doubt
| they'll find another way to be anticompetitive. It's just in
| their company culture.
| albelfio wrote:
| Devil's advocate: does Beeper opens up iMessage to spam bots?
| rpmisms wrote:
| This is addressed in the announcement, beeper is happy to add
| a pager emoji to the message metadata to allow for
| identification.
| mareko wrote:
| Spam bots can already use the Mac version of iMessage. I
| doubt Beeper will change spam levels for iMesssage users.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Your Apple ID login is not routed through a third party when
| you use Beeper Mini. You don't have to input your Apple ID at
| all.
|
| Edit: Should have read this new post more closely. They are now
| requiring an Apple ID, when they weren't before.
| mattl wrote:
| > Phone number registration is not working yet. All users
| must now sign in with an AppleID.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| They are not entitled at all, they are filling a void in the
| market that Apple doesn't want filled. As I understand it this
| is explicitly legal under the DMCA and the EU DSA,
| glasshug wrote:
| Anyone have some detail on the copyright law connection here?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Copyright law is often abused to prevent adversarial
| interoperability, so it's relevant, even if it might not
| actually apply.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| DMCA allows reverse engineering for interoperability. I'd
| say it's relevant.
| wvenable wrote:
| > Apple has every right to change their API, if they do Beeper
| will go down, and Beeper will blame Apple.
|
| They can blame whomever they want, what difference does it
| really make.
|
| > For one, I do not want to have my Apple ID login routed
| through a third party.
|
| As long as you don't use the service, then you're fine. I don't
| see why you should even care if other people want to use this
| service.
| duped wrote:
| I don't know where you're getting "entitled" from. They clearly
| don't care what Apple does, they have plans and designs to work
| around it.
|
| Beeper isn't "blaming" Apple for being Apple. They're saying
| that Apple is full of shit when they claim that Beeper hurts
| the security and privacy of their users.
| sigmar wrote:
| edit: guess I was wrong
| misnome wrote:
| Bad news! This is now Beeper mini works now _according to the
| very article to which your comment is attached_.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The part that's wild to me is that Beeper is collecting revenue
| from their users for this.
|
| Apple doesn't charge for iMessage, and instead that service is
| funded by device purchases. Beeper is charging people who
| haven't purchased devices to help them parasitize the
| infrastructure of the service, and instead of contributing to
| Apple's operational expenses, they're pocketing the money.
|
| There's no scenario where this stands, even if iMessage came to
| non-Apple devices Apple is probably going to charge users if
| they're not buying Apple devices (I can't imagine it being an
| ad-driven service).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The marginal cost of an extra user on the APNS server is
| extremely small. Hell I bet the overall barrage of spam push
| notifications across the iOS landscape causes orders of
| magnitude more load than Beeper users, and Apple doesn't
| complain (despite push spam being against the App Store
| rules).
|
| Of course, Apple is welcome to start charging a reasonable
| fee for the service.
| wang_li wrote:
| Asking a million people to pay $0.01 per month is a small
| marginal cost. Asking one company to pay $0.01 for each of
| a million users per month is not a small marginal cost.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| - Stealing is wrong
|
| "I'm only stealing fractions of pennies at a time! That's
| why it's not stealing!"
| BD103 wrote:
| That was the point I wanted to make. I don't see Apple
| letting Beeper make money off of a service they don't run. If
| the app was open sourced and free then Apple wouldn't really
| be able to stop it. Apple can definitely sue them as a
| business, though.
| eredengrin wrote:
| > Beeper is charging people who haven't purchased devices
|
| Do you have numbers for that? Sure, some of the users haven't
| purchased devices, but many of them have an apple device or
| two and just want access to the network across all the
| devices they use.
| afavour wrote:
| The way I see it Beeper are deliberately poking the bear. They
| knew Apple would block their implementation (I wouldn't be at
| all surprised if they had this replacement ready to go). You
| don't have to trust them, if you don't want to use the service
| then don't.
|
| They're highlighting the closed nature of Apple's messaging
| system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I
| support them in doing that.
| theklr wrote:
| Only question is what's the endgame? It's not like they're
| going to gain meaningful followers from this. This happens
| every 3-5 years with something Apple does and all that
| happens is Apple hardens even more, the little guy gets some
| press for a month and then disappears into the ethers
| afavour wrote:
| The context is a little different, with the EU looking into
| whether iMessage is anticompetitive and should be opened
| up:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-argues-
| imessa...
|
| I imagine Beeper is providing exhibits A and B for any such
| court case, should it happen. And they get some good brand
| publicity along the way.
| fh9302 wrote:
| The EU has already decided the iMessage is not a
| gatekeeper.
| skeaker wrote:
| They are absolutely getting followers from this. You're
| talking about them now, whereas hardly anyone was a week
| ago.
| mlindner wrote:
| > They're highlighting the closed nature of Apple's messaging
| system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I
| support them in doing that.
|
| Every major chat app is closed though? For example, I use
| LINE regularly, there's no way to access that chat system
| through anything but LINE apps.
| afavour wrote:
| LINE doesn't come pre installed on your phone and
| automatically enable when you message certain people,
| though.
| mlindner wrote:
| Sure, it's strictly better... There's nothing requiring
| you use iMessage and you can send send SMS messages to
| iPhones if you choose to do so. It's a great way to
| secure SMS messages by default. That iMessage acts like
| SMS automatically is _good_ thing.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I do not want to have my Apple ID login routed through a
| third party
|
| Then don't use Beeper.
|
| > I trust an established, trillion dollar company far more with
| that sensitive info than I do a fast-moving, eager-to-break-
| things startup. And the list goes on.
|
| Thankfully, you don't necessarily have to trust them since the
| entire process runs on your device.
|
| > I really don't believe they're entitled to parasite off the
| undocumented iMessage API.
|
| Do you also believe it's "parasitism" for a tool manufacturer
| to create a screwdriver that fits another manufacturer's screw
| shapes? That's more or less exactly what's happening here -
| they made a tool that fits the existing proprietary API and
| interacts with it.
| misnome wrote:
| You do have to trust them - you have to trust both apple and
| beeper not to harvest your messages and personal/contact
| info.
|
| And stupid analogies help nobody. Which part of your
| screwdriver is costing the original manufacturer money every
| time you turn a screw?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Which part of your screwdriver is costing the original
| manufacturer money every time you turn a screw?
|
| The true cost is so insignificant as to not matter. The
| normal iOS push notification spam uses orders of magnitude
| more resources than whatever Beeper uses, and yet Apple
| doesn't seem to mind those.
|
| The screwdriver would cost a lot to a screw company that
| based its business model on being the only seller of
| compatible screwdrivers though, and that's why Apple is mad
| about this and trying to break it.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| This is more like a 3rd party releasing a tool that unlocks a
| proprietary security shroud so you can plug in a wireless
| router to an ISP POP. You aren't authorized to unlock that
| shroud or rebroadcast that internet, just like Beeper Mini is
| not authorized by Apple to use their authorization-required
| iMessage service.
|
| If I sold internet off that wireless router and the next OSP
| tech that gets into that POP (rightfully) unplugs it, why
| should I have any right to call my ISP and chew them out
| because people gave me money for that internet access?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > that unlocks a proprietary security
|
| Beeper Mini is not "unlocking" anything more than a real
| iPhone does. It's not exploiting anything, it's following
| exactly the same protocol and registration flow as the real
| thing (that's why it works in the first place). No security
| is being broken here.
|
| You could argue that it's using an (insignificant) amount
| of resources on Apple's side without having paid for it
| (since most users wouldn't have purchased an iOS device),
| but Apple can trivially mitigate that by offering an
| officially-supported registration flow that charges a
| reasonable fee.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| You can't use iMessage without authenticating, and Apple
| didn't provide a way for Android devices to authenticate.
| Beeper Mini, while it may be using the APIs through a
| questionably obtained binary, is handling authentication
| for you so a non-approved device can become authorized to
| send/receive iMessage data. A non-authorized device is
| gaining access to an authorization-required service in a
| way the service provider is not happy about. If it isn't
| _technically_ unlocking something Apple doesn 't want
| unlocked, it's realistically gaining access to a
| restricted service. Just because I can make a key that
| unlocks my neighbors door doesn't mean I have the right
| to use it without his permission.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| Did apple had any right to hijack sms, feels a bit entitled.
| When I first got an iphone I didn't really understood what was
| going on with me messages, and why they were different for some
| people. The interface is so subtle that most people think they
| are sending sms.
| kernal wrote:
| >building production applications on top of an undocumented API
|
| Sort of like how Apple builds their apps?
| oefrha wrote:
| > Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to
| chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis,
| typing status, read receipts, and all modern chat features.
|
| There are numerous chat apps with those features, so I can't see
| why people were "desperate" about it at all. Better yet, those
| existing chat apps aren't likely to stop working tomorrow.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together
|
| is also laughably false lol. iPhone users just want android
| users to get an iphone.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| ...in the US.
|
| The rest of the world uses Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal.
|
| This blue/green bubble SMS but not SMS -thing is a 100% an
| American issue.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's really not an American issue. It's an immature people
| issue. I've yet to meet anyone who actually cares about
| whether their messages show up as blue or green when they
| send them. My social network (in the US) is about 50/50 for
| Android and iPhone users, and we have a variety of group
| threads that have both types of phones in them.
|
| The only people that care are:
|
| - Maybe some children
|
| - Some immature adults
|
| - A lot of people who have never used an iPhone and don't
| even know what the blue/green bubble is but whine about it
| anyways.
| greatquux wrote:
| 100%. It's nice to have the typing status, delivered/read
| status, higher quality of pictures, etc. But I could care
| less what color it is, and group conversations with
| SMS/MMS work pretty darn well. I would like a desktop
| SMS/MMS/iMessage client for my Linux desktop though
| without having to run a Mac.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| If you think that SMS/MMS group conversations "work
| pretty darn well" you really should try something made in
| the 2000's instead.
|
| The amount of features you get for groups in Telegram for
| example is galaxies ahead of SMS groups.
| greatquux wrote:
| What I mean is I'm not constantly fighting to keep
| messages under a certain size, getting message
| rejections, weird formatting, or even annoying tapback
| quotes anymore: basic functionality is all I care about
| and working fine. Plus I can send funny GIFs back and
| forth! I have used Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, etc and
| they're "nice" and have lots of emotes, but I don't
| really care too much as long as basic functionality is
| good.
| dr-smooth wrote:
| Android user here who is a member of a group that is all
| iphone. Those users don't care about the color of the
| bubble. What thy care about is that if I am in the group,
| they lose functionality that they are accustomed to. The
| big ones that I hear about are adding/removing users and
| high quality media sharing. Not to mention the janky
| handling of message reactions that seem to always suck
| for one side or the other.
|
| The problem is that having just one non-iphone user in
| the mix causes imessage to drop to SMS, taking them back
| a decade in functionality.
|
| And yes, some of them do complain about it vocally. Maybe
| they're immature, I don't know. But it's an annoying bit
| of social friction, and I'm sure many android users have
| caved to the pressure to "upgrade" to an iphone.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| Ye you are probably right that I am american-centric in my
| perspective. Only one that really matters in tech tho.
|
| Percentage share of iphones are rising in korea and japan
| tho for similar reasons though.
| hu3 wrote:
| > iPhone users just want android users to get an iphone.
|
| That's what Apple wants. So they maintain arbitrary
| limitations to incentivize their customers to also want it.
|
| "Android? You're buying it wrong"
| _gabe_ wrote:
| It's false based on what? Your own anecdotal experience? I
| have a friend group that has iPhones and Androids. We went on
| vacation and had to jump through so many hoops just to share
| our pictures. We don't care what devices everybody uses,
| because why the heck should that matter?
|
| The fact that it _can_ be simple to share high fidelity
| pictures and videos, but it isn't just because Apple wants
| their walled garden benefits nobody but Apple. So your claim
| that this is laughably false is easily refuted by my
| anecdotal evidence.
|
| People that are friends or family with differing devices do
| exist. I know, it's shocking. And it would be nice to have
| something as simple as messaging just work without all these
| stupid UX downgrades for no reason at all.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Curious. In Europe, I never know if my friends are using
| Android or iPhone. My gf has iPhone and we never had any
| issue sharing pictures and videos- we both use Whatsapp
| (never heard of iMessage outside of this absurd "green
| bubble" thing that happens in the US) and Google Photos.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| Nobody I know in the US uses WhatsApp. This has been
| repeated ad nauseam in other comments. I don't know why
| this is, but in the US people tend to use the default
| message apps on their phones to text each other.
|
| The only other app that I've seen used in several places
| is GroupMe, but that's typically reserved for large
| groups (more than 10 people or so) that may include
| people you're not friends with, but more acquaintances.
| So it's been used for school classes, community groups,
| and things like that.
|
| Me and my friends don't care about green vs blue bubbles
| or any of that garbage. We just want to be able to
| communicate over the paid cellular plan that we already
| have. What happens in Europe has no bearing on this. All
| I pointed out by my comment above is that this is a
| problem and there are people that would like a solution.
|
| And, not that this matters, I'm writing this on my
| iPhone. But, this is still an annoying problem to me
| because much of my family and some of my friends use
| android. Apple degrades my experience with family and
| friends for no technical reason. The only reason they do
| this, presumably, is to retain a large market share and
| promote some stupid "exclusivity" ideal that appeals to
| some people.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > Nobody I know in the US uses WhatsApp
|
| > this is a problem and there are people that would like
| a solution
|
| The solution is literally downloading a free app and
| encouraging others to do the same.
|
| > this is still an annoying problem to me because much of
| my family and some of my friends use android
|
| Then why don't you start using Whatsapp with them? It's
| not like in Europe we were born with it, at some point
| someone told us "you are on Whatsapp, right? I'll message
| you there" and we downloaded the damn thing. Is it an
| internet connection issue? (In the sense that you need to
| always be able to fallback seamlessly to SMSes because
| the connection is spotty?)
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| The technie vs normie divide exemplified right here in
| these comments.
|
| You don't hear iPhone users begging their friends to get on
| signal unless they are discussing drugs or sensitive
| topics. You hear android users ask iphone users to install
| wtv app all the time.
|
| And I am talking about anecdotes here, but there are well-
| document events (some that happened this year) that do
| emphasize what I am saying. I won't share them though
| because you know... jobs... and that they should be obvious
| if you are following this conversation over the past
| decade. What I will say tho is that only one company wants
| (wants being generous) the other to change their messaging.
|
| > The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity
| pictures and videos, but it isn't just because Apple wants
| their walled garden benefits nobody but Apple
|
| Irrelevant. iPhone users mostly just want android users to
| get iphones. Doesn't matter why.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I didn't mention this, because it doesn't matter. I use
| an iPhone. I'm writing this on an iPhone. I use a
| MacBook. Why the heck should I care about my friends and
| family paying some "Apple status" fee to get an iPhone
| just so I can share pictures and videos with them?
|
| > iPhone users mostly just want android users to get
| iphones. Doesn't matter why.
|
| This is anecdotal. Where is the data proclaiming this?
| I've never personally met somebody that cares what brand
| of phone you have.
|
| And I guess it should also be said, I don't use drugs or
| anything. I just want to be able to message friends and
| family without pointless restrictions. I don't know where
| you're getting these ideas from.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > Why the heck should I care about my friends and family
| paying some "Apple status" fee to get an iPhone just so I
| can share pictures and videos with them?
|
| You might not. It is clear that the majority of iphone
| users don't care that android users keep complaining
| about green vs blue bubbles.
|
| > Where is the data proclaiming this?
|
| Use the mobile app usage data repository that your
| company provides or wtv data subscription (Bloomberg,
| data.ai, etc) that your company provides. After looking
| at aggregate, segment by iOS vs android. Hell, if you
| work in the mobile app space, you already know just how
| difficult it is to get iOS users to shift away from the
| apple default.
|
| > I don't know where you're getting these ideas from.
|
| like i said, techie vs normie divide. Funny you keep
| mentioning anecdotes when we can clearly look at the
| market forces. Apple isn't being pressured to change
| anything because their users just find it easier for
| others to switch to iPhone.
|
| As others have remarked, my perspective is US-centric.
|
| > I've never personally met somebody that cares what
| brand of phone you have.
|
| This is incorrect, or you don't meet many people. They
| exist.
| danaris wrote:
| It's not hard "just because Apple wants their walled garden
| benefits nobody but Apple". It's hard _because SMS does not
| and cannot support those features._
|
| If you want group picture sharing, just pick a chat
| protocol that _actually supports_ that, rather than
| bitching at Apple over what SMS, a protocol they have
| _zero_ control over, can and can 't do.
|
| Apple is not deliberately degrading the experience for SMS
| users, or refusing to allow sharing high-quality videos and
| photos with SMS users. That's like saying Apple is
| discriminating against your grandmother by not letting you
| video call her landline phone from 1985.
| binkHN wrote:
| Apple supporting RCS should fix this, hopefully.
| standardUser wrote:
| Yes, because Apple has very successfully manipulated iPhone
| users into thinking this. It's both impressive and depressing
| how effectively Apple has achieved this marketing goal.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| Facts. US iPhone users are so incredibly entitled, the
| suggestion that they're going to move to a third party app to
| accommodate Android users is laughable.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| None of the existing chat apps have established themselves as
| viable alternatives
|
| Meta has trashed their privacy image so FB Messenger/WhatsApp
| non-starters for lots of Americans. Signal, telegram don't have
| enough PR, 90% of Americans have never heard of them. Kik was
| popular but died due to their financial trouble.
| Discord/Groupme have found success by marketing themselves
| towards particular niches, but people don't really think of
| them as general-purpose messaging apps
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I like that this is happening, because Apple will want to prevent
| it from being possible, and they'll dig their own regulatory
| grave doing it.
| bsenftner wrote:
| This is subtle and much bigger issue than it looks. Marketing
| people have a real issue with the inability for a single
| messaging solution, and paying the Apple tax. And unless you did
| not realize, marketing kind of run/control a lot, far more than
| it appears.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| Who gives marketing their phone number? Email or bust.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Crazy that Apple gets to ship a proprietary messaging app as the
| default
| hu3 wrote:
| Apple is lucky that iMessage usage in EU is irrelevant.
|
| Otherwise this kind of thing would have been regulated already.
|
| See what's happening to Safari on iOS. Took a long time if you
| ask me.
| everfree wrote:
| Google does it too, with their proprietary messaging app that
| extends the RCS protocol.
| robertoandred wrote:
| What's proprietary about SMS?
| LordKeren wrote:
| I think one of the underlying issues is that many are now going
| to be hesitant to even bother with Beeper Mini anymore. I don't
| think there is going to be a high tolerance for this game of cat
| and mouse from the end user perspective
|
| I also don't think goading apple is going to do much here either.
| Regardless of the current feelings around apple's walled garden,
| they are not going to suddenly keel over and give up on locking
| out these commercialized attempted to bypass their security
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Yeah I was super excited to try it out last week, but then it
| went down and I didn't receive important messages from my wife
| (didn't even realize the app was down).
|
| I probably won't try it again until it has a few months of
| uninterrupted service.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Right now Beeper Mini only works without registering your phone
| number, and I'd be ok if that's all I ever got. In fact, I hope
| they make number registration optional if they do get that
| working again.
|
| I still have my Macbook if/when Beeper is cut off again.
| wvenable wrote:
| It definitely might be better at the moment without
| registering your number as then you won't have messages
| disappear into nothingness if the service goes down again.
|
| I missed a few messages when I switched from iPhone to
| Android because I hadn't deregistered my number from Apple.
|
| I don't think I'd use my existing Apple ID for this --
| probably easy enough to create a new one with a new email.
| lxgr wrote:
| Number registration is and always was optional on Beeper
| Mini!
| graphe wrote:
| iMessage is reliable, 'free' and encrypted. Beeper mini is
| unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn't recommend it
| anymore to my Android friends.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware
| purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?
| bear141 wrote:
| The quotations would indicate that he is using "free"
| facetiously.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They put free in quotes because it is bundled in, I'm
| pretty sure. It is, from a user point of view, free if you
| are already buying an iPhone anyway.
|
| I have no idea how to compute the actual price. It really
| isn't any better than SMS anyway, so I put the value at $0.
| wharvle wrote:
| > It really isn't any better than SMS anyway, so I put
| the value at $0.
|
| Depends on what you do with it. You can send much higher-
| quality photos and videos over iMessage than SMS/MMS. You
| can also do things like play games (chess, for example)
| entirely inside iMessage.
|
| If you're just sending short messages of plain text,
| yeah, it's not much of an improvement.
| MissTake wrote:
| It's free. The fact it's only available on Apple devices
| doesn't change that fact.
|
| You can only get Apple Fitness on Apple devices, but you
| also have to pay for it.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Seems a silly distinction. So you're saying Beeper could
| make paper clips, sell them to you for $2/m, and then
| give you Beeper Mini for free and you'd consider it free?
|
| Imo the only thing that should be done here is only valid
| Apple IDs should be able to use this service. Then paying
| customers are the ones using it. Problem solved, right?
| lancesells wrote:
| It is free even without purchase. I could give someone an
| old iPhone and they can use it without issue.
| lxgr wrote:
| Even if old iPhones were free: There's still a
| significant issue for people not wanting to carry two
| phones.
| Tommstein wrote:
| "Cars/TVs/insert-other-thing-here are free, because I
| could just give an old one to someone!" That ain't how it
| works bro . . . .
| frumper wrote:
| One would say you can watch stations for free over the
| air even though you have to buy a TV.
| lxgr wrote:
| A better comparison would be a free over the air station
| that only works on a particular brand of TV.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Or XM Radio "free" stations that you can only listen to
| if you have XM radio subscription and hardware.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| All Apple needs to do is send a few scary C&D letters from
| their army of lawyers and this will be done. If they run the
| infrastructure for imessage, I'm sure there's something in a
| ToS somewhere that talks about spoofing device IDs and
| unauthorized use of their services blah blah Apple's sole
| discretion.
|
| In theory I love it but in reality it'll be dead soon as Apple
| has too much to gain from the walled garden they've spent
| decades and billions building and defending.
| mmastrac wrote:
| A $3T monopolist sending scary C&D letters tends to get the
| attention of the government.
| aetherson wrote:
| What is your evidence for this assertion?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Since when? What country?
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| I'm sure they're quaking in their boots over the prospect
| of paying a $2m fine a decade from now.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| That decade of lawyer fees is much more than $2m.
| JoshuaRogers wrote:
| If it was obviously bogus (think SLAPP territory) then that
| would make sense, but I don't think it is as likely to get
| their attention if the offending behavior can reasonably be
| classified as a potential violation of the CFAA.
|
| (Whether it is a violation or not, I certainly couldn't
| say, but my point being that there is a reasonable good
| faith interpretation of the behavior that would not raise
| eyebrows.)
| andrethegiant wrote:
| what is SLAPP in this context?
| blep_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_p
| ubl...
| mrajcok wrote:
| I've been on the receiving end of this - as an individual
| maybe, but as a committed startup not necessarily. Rooting
| for them!
| sneak wrote:
| Beeper isn't using Apple services (at least not in Beeper
| Mini, their new e2ee iMessage client), and thus is not
| subject to any Terms of Service from Apple.
|
| They're publishing client software, which is protected
| expression provided it's original and doesn't infringe any
| trademarks or copyrights.
|
| The end users are the ones potentially violating the ToS by
| connecting to Apple APIs.
|
| Apple has no basis to tell Beeper to cease and desist from
| the publication of software that it is legal to publish.
| mongol wrote:
| But as part of developing the application? Can they
| realistically do that without violating ToS?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Someone said they are embedding Apple binaries for crypto
| stuff. Clear copyright infringement if so.
| Beached wrote:
| let's be honest. it isn't for security. security is just the
| hand they wave to prevent people from tapping their walled
| garden.
| pathartl wrote:
| I'd be willing to put up with it if it were free, like the good
| ol MSN messenger / AIM days.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It is free
| lolinder wrote:
| From their website [0]:
|
| > We currently offer a 7 day free trial, afterwards there
| is a $1.99 per month subscription. Beeper Mini is available
| to download today with no waitlist.
|
| That doesn't sound free to me. Am I missing something?
|
| [0] https://www.beeper.com/
| Miner49er wrote:
| The article we are commenting on says they have made it
| free for now. I just don't think they've updated their
| main site yet.
| kickofline wrote:
| > If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to
| metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it
| easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini
| users.
|
| Why would they not just shut it down if Apple asks, wouldn't that
| just do the same thing (beeper users can't send messages)
| kbf wrote:
| I'm guessing they think Apple might consider an opt-out (or
| more likely opt-in) setting to allow messages from other
| platforms.
| qrohlf wrote:
| I'm curious what their best-case outcome is here. It's fully
| transparent at this point that Apple has no appetite for a third
| party iMessage client on any platform and will take whatever
| technical steps needed to prevent this from happening.
|
| I'd wager heavily that even if Beeper plays cat-and-mouse to the
| point where they've exhausted Apple's budget for blocking them
| and somehow managed to avoid Apple's legal team putting a stop to
| things via other channels (very unlikely), Apple's next move
| would likely be to release some kind of official iMessage Android
| client rather than cede control of the space to Beeper.
|
| It's easy to read this as a pure publicity stunt on Beeper's
| behalf, but that's not what I'm getting from the tone and content
| of these announcements. And I also don't think the market for a
| paid all-in-one chat app is large enough to justify the
| expenditure that this iMessage for Android project represents, if
| the endgame is ultimately a PR stunt.
|
| They seem too smart to realistically think that Apple is going to
| just shrug and let them continue unbothered after a few rounds of
| back-and-forth, so what are they playing at?
| starkparker wrote:
| Best-case outcome is that Apple decides engaging in an arms
| race with a motivated competitor isn't worth the time or effort
| and they enable some (probably limited) interop.
|
| I can imagine a "blue-green" type of message that's encrypted
| but not from an Apple device; Apple keeps their status
| symbology and users on both ends get E2E encrypted messages to
| and from Apple device users without Apple users switching to a
| third-party app.
|
| Apple's never had to confront this because nobody's had this
| much success smashing the walled garden on iMessage before. If
| Beeper is persistent and good enough, they'll have the first
| foot in the door of such an outcome.
|
| Worst case is Apple keeps escalating the fight knowing that
| Beeper can't outlast them. Everybody loses in this situation;
| Beeper and Apple both burn a bunch of money with no benefit to
| anyone, iMessage users see people popping into and out of chats
| because Apple keeps blocking them, and most non-Apple users
| continue sending unencrypted SMS messages because Apple users
| won't switch off iMessage.
|
| Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage's "blue bubble" is by far
| the most arbitrary. Allowing strictly controlled interop with
| non-Apple devices doesn't change how good iMessage is, it only
| dents the ecosystem's most superficial status symbol.
|
| I'm rooting for the better outcome but expecting the latter.
| wvenable wrote:
| > Worst case is Apple keeps escalating the fight knowing that
| Beeper can't outlast them.
|
| I feel like this is in Apple's DNA. Perhaps Beeper is lucky
| that Apple needs to support a lot of legacy devices and they
| might not be able to fully plug this hole without creating a
| big support nightmare.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Please explain to me why that wouldn't be in anyone's
| interest?
|
| Why should I pay costs for server uptime and maintenance
| for clients that I a) did not authorize and b) did not pay
| for me keeping up my servers and c) actually accept that a
| third party is getting money for providing said access to
| my servers?
|
| I really don't get how Apple is to blame for protecting
| what they pay for.
| danieldk wrote:
| Apple also uses a lot of infrastructure that they don't
| pay for on their devices. Everything from open source
| code used in Darwin to public internet infrastructure.
| Besides that, if that is the reason that they don't want
| to offer this, they could offer a paid subscription for
| Android users.
|
| The reason they block this is not that they cannot afford
| the infrastructure, it's peanuts for them. It's because
| they want to continue maintaining the schism in the US
| where Android users are stigmatized for green bubbles,
| pushing them to buy iPhones. (AKA exploiting teenagers'
| insecurity for profit.)
| Longhanks wrote:
| Apple has every right in the world to use open source
| software if they comply with the code's license. The
| Beeper client has no right to interact with Apple's
| servers in a way that involves faking an Apple
| authorization.
|
| Apple has chosen not to provide an iMessage client. The
| mere possibility for one existing does not mean Apple can
| be forced into providing or tolerating one, given that it
| involves cost on Apple's server side, no matter how small
| that might be to them (how can you even tell?).
|
| The fact that US teenages stigmatize each other has
| nothing to do with Apple's business. Apple has always
| advertized iMessage as an Apple-only messaging platform.
| If teenagers are to be protected here, it is up to US
| legislation to create a law that prevents the undesired
| behavior. Until such a law is present, what Apple is
| doing is legal, and what Beeper is doing is probably not,
| they're certainly creating server upkeep costs that they
| do not pay Apple for, despite Apple telling them clearly
| not to do so.
| scythe wrote:
| >If teenagers are to be protected here, it is up to US
| legislation to create a law that prevents the undesired
| behavior.
|
| The Sherman Antitrust Act is broad and vague. It's
| practical definition depends on common-law precedent.
| While the system may seem baroque, it offers a kind of
| stability that has made common-law jurisdictions the
| preferred arena for most international business across
| the world. Hence, this fundamentally misunderstands the
| nature of the relevant competition law.
| wvenable wrote:
| > The Beeper client has no right to interact with Apple's
| servers in a way that involves faking an Apple
| authorization.
|
| I'm not completely down on the implementation details but
| is there really anything "faked" here. If they have a
| service that client and authenticate against using an
| Apple ID and I just use a different client with my Apple
| ID then nothing is "faked". It's just implementing the
| protocol.
|
| > Apple has chosen not to provide an iMessage client. The
| mere possibility for one existing does not mean Apple can
| be forced into providing or tolerating one, given that it
| involves cost on Apple's server side, no matter how small
| that might be to them (how can you even tell?).
|
| I agree. But if they're going to provide these servers on
| the Internet without any sort of paid authentication and
| I can utilize them with an alternative client then I'm
| going to do that. They don't have to tolerate it.
|
| I also use an adblocker when I browse the web.
| realusername wrote:
| > I really don't get how Apple is to blame for protecting
| what they pay for.
|
| I don't think Apple is going to get bankrupt for
| forwarding a few SMS, they'll be fine don't worry.
| error503 wrote:
| > Why should I pay costs for server uptime and
| maintenance for clients that I a) did not authorize and
| b) did not pay for me keeping up my servers and c)
| actually accept that a third party is getting money for
| providing said access to my servers?
|
| Because you designed the system in such a way that
| interoperability was impossible without non-customers
| using your servers?
| danieldk wrote:
| _Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage 's "blue bubble" is by
| far the most arbitrary._
|
| 100% I have been an iPhone user since 2009, but for me the
| most likely reason to go to the competition is not if it gets
| iMessage (I don't live in the US). The most likely reason is
| that Apple has become utterly boring when it comes to
| innovation. I recently purchased an iPhone 15, coming from
| the iPhone 13, I can honestly not say what has changed or
| improved besides the camera, the underused dynamic island,
| and USB-C [1]. And USB-C is nice, but pretty much a letdown
| because they capped it to USB 2 for market segmentation and
| it still has excruciatingly slow charging. At least on the
| Android side, for better or worse, interesting stuff is
| happening: from Fairphone's phone that is repairable with a
| single screwdriver, foldables (finally a phone that is small
| and big), Samsung S-Pen, to Nothing's slightly whimsical back
| LEDs. Also, pretty much every phone above 300 Euro has a good
| OLED screen with 120Hz, whereas I am still looking at 60Hz
| (because segmentation).
|
| At any rate, Tim Cook will fight this nail and tooth. By now
| it's very clear that he has a blind spot where he thinks
| Apple is entitled to some things and is not sensitive to
| different viewpoints in other cultures/legislations. He
| thought Apple is entitled to a 30% cut. But he pushed it so
| far that the EU will regulate them. Now they have to offer
| side-loading and open the iPhone to alternative app stores.
| This will lead to segmentation of the platform, because some
| apps will only be available in app stores with better terms
| for the developer.
|
| Ideally Apple would stop Beeper in its tracks by releasing an
| Android client themselves, because then they could dictate
| their own terms (orange bubbles, feature segmentation, etc.).
| Now they open up themselves to the risk that regulators in
| some regions will require opening up iMessage.
|
| [1] Of course, the spec sheet contains more improvements,
| like a better SoC, but it is barely noticable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The most likely reason is that Apple has become utterly
| boring when it comes to innovation. I recently purchased an
| iPhone 15, coming from the iPhone 13, I can honestly not
| say what has changed or improved
|
| Is there some law of nature that allows humans to achieve a
| rate of technological advancement that is beyond what
| "bores" you?
| danieldk wrote:
| _Is there some law of nature that allows humans to
| achieve a rate of technological advancement that is
| beyond what "bores" you?_
|
| I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say?
|
| Are you saying that I am not entitled to progress? If so,
| I am not saying that I am. I am just saying that (IMO)
| some other companies are now more innovative and that
| should worry Apple more. Short term they can try retain
| users by locking them in, but at some point people will
| buy alternatives because they surpassed Apple's products
| at their price points.
| deergomoo wrote:
| To be honest, given Apple has already committed to adding RCS
| support next year, the market for this thing is limited
| anyway. Apple has said they won't implement Google's
| encryption extension, but your average person doesn't care
| much about that anyway. They just want to be able to group
| chat and send media to their friends.
| altairprime wrote:
| I think they're a lawsuit startup, as in funded in service of
| the speculative opportunity of favorable court case and/or
| political outcomes stemming from their intentional behaviors.
| Think Uber being funded to set case precedent versus taxis, in
| order to pave the way to deprecating humans taxi drivers in
| favor of robots. VCs love speculation and Beep's PR has been
| quite effective at riding the coattails of pre-existing beliefs
| to push for their desired legal outcomes, from which they would
| profit.
| lacker wrote:
| The best case outcome is to get publicity leading to US and EU
| antitrust regulators to file a lawsuit against Apple, both of
| which Apple loses. The conclusion of this lawsuit is that not
| only must Apple allow access to iMessage, they also must allow
| changing the default for every component of iOS - messaging
| app, browser, app store, let you replace Siri with other voice
| assistants - and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%. Same
| rules apply to Android.
|
| Okay, that might not be likely, but you did ask about the _best
| case outcome_.
| misnome wrote:
| US? When has that ever happened in the last 30 years? I'd buy
| the EU stepping in to mandate interoperability though. I'd
| welcome that!
|
| But... shouldn't mostly everyone here view needing the EU to
| force the behaviour of a US company kind of against the
| entire supposed benefit of the US system and the purpose of
| the domain this forum is hosted on?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Many of us on this site think modern hypercapitalism, the
| US system, and VC financing are basically evils, and are
| here for the general tech content. US regulators have been
| captured by monied interests, so rooting for the EU to do
| the job the US government won't is the best we can
| currently hope for.
| petemir wrote:
| > US? When has that ever happened in the last 30 years?
|
| United States vs. Microsoft Corp, 2001? [0]
|
| And ongoing: United States vs. Google LLC (2020) [1] and
| United States vs Google LLC (2023) [2].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsof
| t_Cor...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_L
| LC_(2...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_L
| LC_(2...
|
| Edited: formatting
| misnome wrote:
| > United States vs. Microsoft Corp, 2001? [0]
|
| As the wikipedia page you yourself are citing, overturned
| on appeal.
|
| > And ongoing: United States vs. Google LLC (2020) [1]
| and United States vs Google LLC (2023) [2].
|
| Ongoing, so a bit hard to count these as evidence of
| successful market regulation.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Overturned on appeal but MS was fined heavily over the
| years using the same justification. The one I remember
| off the top of my head was the WMP fine[0].
|
| If you have an OS, everything within should be open for
| competition and courts have generally ruled as such for
| years.
|
| [0]https://www.npr.org/2007/09/17/14465160/eu-court-
| defeats-mic...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > As the wikipedia page you yourself are citing,
| overturned on appeal.
|
| So the law says "Don't do behavior X", the government
| takes you to court, there is a judgment, you appeal, and
| win the appeal.
|
| I'm not sure "dismissed on appeal" means "this isn't
| working as intended".
|
| Successful market regulation _includes_ investigating
| issues, prosecuting them where there is reasonable
| grounds to do so _and_ it also includes a determination
| (either in investigation or in court) that something is
| not an issue.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > But... shouldn't mostly everyone here view needing the EU
| to force the behaviour of a US company kind of against the
| entire supposed benefit of the US system and the purpose of
| the domain this forum is hosted on?
|
| European here. From my POV it seems as if the USA have
| forgotten that for a truly _free_ market to exist, there
| needs to be serious oversight to prevent capitalism from
| devolving into "corporate Darwinism" - aka the strong ones
| staying strong because they (b)eat all the competition by
| being so strong in the first place or because they impose
| their externalities upon everyone else.
|
| There is many an argument to be had if a free-market system
| is better than one more oriented on the government running
| things (obviously, I'm in the latter camp), but the problem
| is y'all _don 't have_ a free market at that point.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Where are you coming up with these theories?
|
| A capitalist economy needs the government for some very
| key laws like upholding private property rights but how
| does that extend to "mandating interoperable message
| systems"?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Where are you coming up with these theories?
|
| By simply looking at the general state of the US economy
| that has lost competition _across the board_ over the
| last decades as large companies consolidated to form
| extremely large behemoths that _dominate_ their
| respective markets (e.g. Boeing for aircraft, Microsoft
| for computer operating systems and office software, Meta
| for social media, Walmart for groceries, Google for
| search, Cargill /Tyson/JBS in agriculture,
| AA/Delta/Southwest/United in airlines), use both legal
| and illegal (such as wage collusion) tactics to cement
| their marketshare, and extract ruinously low purchase
| prices from their vendors. This shit used to be
| different, with _lots_ of competition and resulting
| innovation, not even a few decades ago.
|
| > A capitalist economy needs the government for some very
| key laws like upholding private property rights but how
| does that extend to "mandating interoperable message
| systems"?
|
| Easy. Apple has a very popular product that they (ab)use
| to push its users to push _their friends_ to get
| themselves iPhones. Breaking up their stronghold over
| iMessage would allow Android users to communicate on
| their devices with people who own iPhones, and it would
| lead to a flurry of competing messenger applications.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The definition of "free market" includes being free from
| monopolies.
|
| If the government wants to maintain a free market, that
| means they need to step in and prevent monopolies, which
| includes preventing anti-competitive behavior.
|
| Apple is being very anti-competitive with iMessage. It's
| not just the blocking of Android clients, but the fact
| that Apple will not let you use any other SMS app on
| iPhone, so users are locked into iMessage.
| zappb wrote:
| The government has done a dandy job enabling tech
| monopolies by making copyright and patent law so
| draconian.
| misnome wrote:
| Also European^wfrom the european area (I think you get
| lynched here if you say that after brexit), and I
| completely agree. But it seems an awful lot of USian
| cheer for "free markets" only when it is giving the
| specific outcome they personally want, and I think you
| should mostly approach these "US Company" issues without
| the expectation of a Europarliament-ex-machina solution.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| How would interoperability and end to end encryption work
| together?
| cmiles74 wrote:
| There's no technical reason why services could not
| interoperate and still provide end-to-end encryption.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The same way HTTP+SSL/TLS or OpenPGP/SMIME work: by
| standardization. No matter if you run Google Chrome,
| Firefox, Safari, cURL or your own client, you can connect
| with end-to-end encryption to any HTTP server with any
| kind of SSL frontend. For email, it's just the same - any
| client communicating with any other client implementing
| the respective standard can do so with e2e encryption.
| pb7 wrote:
| If we're talking best case outcomes, then why settle for 10%?
| 0%! Free distribution for everyone.
| askonomm wrote:
| Yes! We don't need any moderation or policy enforcement,
| viruses for everyone!
| gkbrk wrote:
| You have a garbage sandbox if you can get viruses that
| easily. People expect much better from modern operating
| systems.
| askonomm wrote:
| By viruses I don't only mean them in the classical sense,
| but also apps that steal your data, apps that mislead
| you, apps riddled with ads everywhere. That's the future
| if you want app stores with no oversight, and you will
| have app stores with no oversight if you put 0$ as the
| budget for managing the stores.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Today iOS doesn't allow running apps that were not vetted
| by Apple. And yet you can find loads of apps that steal
| your data, with ads everywhere. All approved by Apple.
|
| In contrast, Android has multiple app stores that
| exclusively host open-source, non-spyware and ad-free
| ads.
| pb7 wrote:
| > ad-free ads
|
| The future is here!
| askonomm wrote:
| I have found the overall design aesthetic and user
| experience to be tremendously worse on Android however,
| and with a lot more ad-riddled apps.
| ulucs wrote:
| God I miss F-droid, hope EU makes apple allow them in
| soon
| dwaite wrote:
| Or even Apple paying developers a cut of iPhone sales,
| since apps provide so much value to the hardware ecosystem.
|
| And maybe a pony.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Apple is THE consumer tech company in the USA. Its their
| darling. The only way the USA will rule against Apple is that
| if they are losing them money elsewhere.
| freedomben wrote:
| Not to mention that virtually the entire ruling class in
| the USA has iphones and are largely tech illiterate so
| incapable of understanding nuance. Add some big lobbying
| money from Big Gray and Apple seems pretty safe
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| The _actual best case outcome_ is consumers become
| increasingly educated on these issues and use the market to
| not reward Apple for these practices, rather than relying on
| the coercive apparatus of the state that easily falls victim
| to corruption and regulatory capture, until such the time
| where we can have an actual functioning government again that
| isn 't strangling small businesses, close the revolving door
| and get money out of politics and, yeah.. pigs flying and all
| that.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I don't think relying on consumers to "not reward" anti-
| competitive behavior is a good strategy.
|
| I own several Apple devices primarily because the UX and
| ecosystem is so far beyond anything Android offers (in my
| opinion), that I'm simply not willing to switch. Of course,
| Apple's anti-competitive behavior is a big reason for that.
|
| But I'm not willing to hurt my own daily interactions with
| the tech that enables my life just because the US
| Government isn't willing to do its job.
| freedomben wrote:
| I am the opposite of you, in that I refuse to buy Apple
| products, regardless the degraded UX I experience because
| of it. I will gladly suffer with a worse UX in order to
| vote with my $ and support vendors that align with my
| principles.
|
| But I fully agree with you on this. It would be _ideal_
| for consumers to change, but it 's not going to happen
| and it's not reasonable to expect it or demand it IMHO.
| If we rely on consumer behavior then things are only
| going to get worse and Apple more entrenched.
| Machiavellian behavior in business _works_. We have long
| known that individuals making microeconomic (e.g.
| personal) decisions can have a negative macroeconomic
| (e.g. big picture) effect[1]. I don 't think anything
| will change for the better if left entirely to the
| market.
|
| [1]: Tragedy of the Commons
| jwells89 wrote:
| I would hope that this "best case outcome" also comes with
| regulations to keep other giants (mostly Google) from
| marketing and cross-promoting their way into dominance on
| iOS, creating monopolies in the process.
|
| For instance, Google apps shouldn't be able to drive Chrome
| installs by presenting a sheet offering to download Chrome
| every time I tap a link in them, as they do currently.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| This happens to me constantly when I use google search in
| ios safari.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Chrome's quality is what's usually cited as being the
| primary driver behind its rise to its current position of
| most popular browser, but the reality is that Google's
| intense marketing is at least as responsible. In-app
| prompts, prompts in Google search, and Chrome getting
| bundled in installers for every other Windows app were
| big contributors to its momentum.
|
| Of course it becoming the default browser on the majority
| of Android devices and Google web apps underperforming in
| other browsers also played a role but that's a bit of a
| different topic.
| Zak wrote:
| I have no doubt marketing played a role, but Chrome and
| Chromium-based browsers were the only ones with a multi-
| process architecture for over half a decade after
| Chrome's launch. That meant a bad web page couldn't crash
| the browser or block the UI, which used to happen
| frequently on other browsers.
|
| Firefox eventually caught up, but had lost much of its
| userbase and mindshare by that point.
| jwells89 wrote:
| WebKit went multiprocess with the release of WebKit2
| around 14 years ago, with the difference being that the
| multiprocess architecture is part of WebKit itself and
| thus easily reusable -- just embed a WebView in your app
| and you have it. This contrasts to the Chromium
| implementation where multiprocess is handled by Chromium
| rather than Blink, meaning to get multiprocess you have
| to ship the whole of Chromium and can't just embed Blink.
|
| That said this really only relevant for Apple platforms
| and Linux/Android, unfortunately. WebKit for Windows is
| somewhat in a state of disrepair.
| verdverm wrote:
| Microsoft does this with Windows links, to the point it
| opens edge despite my default browser being set to not
| edge.
|
| The insidiousness of them all is frustrating
| sircastor wrote:
| > and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%.
|
| In danger of being an Apple apologist, the app store fee for
| the vast majority of sellers is 15%.
| toyg wrote:
| Only now, because they were forced to lower it. There is
| nothing stopping them from raising it again, once the
| prospects of antitrust prosecution disappear.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| When were they forced to lower it? It seems like you are
| saying they decided to lower it
| toyg wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-
| store...
|
| For context: Epic launched their lawsuit in August 2020,
| fighting the 30% cut, and less than 3 months later Apple
| lowered it to 15% for small businesses. Absolute
| coincidence, I'm sure.
| sbuk wrote:
| If it's not in the ruling, it's their choice, maybe they
| read the room...
| toyg wrote:
| I guess that depends on your definition of "forced". In
| my recollection, the wave of bad press was so big that
| they really had no choice but to give ground.
| sbuk wrote:
| Like I said, maybe they read the room...
| sneak wrote:
| ...which is still more than 5x the normal rate for payment
| processing.
|
| Reducing your price gouging from 10x to 5x isn't exactly a
| kindness.
| hifreq wrote:
| Clearly, App Store is not just a payment processor, stop
| misrepresenting the situation.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| 15% seems reasonable. They're not only charging to cover
| payment processing, there are salaries to pay for those
| developing the app stores, the human app reviewers
| (virtually non-existent in case of Google Play), storage,
| bandwidth, etc.
|
| Granted, both Apple and Google also earn money from ads
| (shame on Apple's part). In that case I can sort of see
| the justification to lower their cut to below 15%.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Ironically, if Google were ever allowed to replace siri on
| iPhones, I would probably never buy an android again.
| graphe wrote:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-as-a-
| siri-s...
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/713498/how-to-launch-google-
| assist...
|
| I remember doing something like this a while ago.
| UseStrict wrote:
| Siri is so incompetent it's basically unusable. I would
| love if they were forced to allow 3rd party assistants.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| How is this an actionable anti-trust issue?
|
| iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the
| minds of most users globally.
|
| In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms.
|
| Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near
| the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof
| their service?
|
| The purpose of anti-trust is to increase competition and
| prevent unlawful monopolies. Apple is a flea on the tail of
| an ox when it comes to messaging, as capable of influencing
| the market as I am.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| > In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms
|
| Maybe because it comes preinstalled?
| sroussey wrote:
| This makes no sense.
|
| "Because it comes preinstalled it is dwarfed by at least
| three other platforms"??
| cstrahan wrote:
| Which other 3 platforms come preinstalled?
|
| Edit: wait, are you talking about iMessage being
| preinstalled? If so, how does iMessage being preinstalled
| make it dwarfed by other non-preinstalled platforms? Are
| you suggesting it's human nature to use third party apps,
| or maybe you mistook the meaning of "dwarfed by"?
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I am very curious what three other messaging application
| are available on iOS and have more market share than
| Apple Messages! Nearly every member of my family has an
| iPhone and they _all_ use Apple Messages.
| Psyonic wrote:
| Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram
|
| maybe Discord, FB Messenger
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I started looking around, I can find charts that show
| messaging app market share on iOS but none of them
| include Apple Messages. For sure Apple doesn't share
| these numbers, it looks like no one else has gone through
| the trouble to collect them.
| sbuk wrote:
| They do supply the number of active iOS devices, though
| it doesn't necessarilly mean that they are all active
| iMessage users. 136 million iPhones in the US, ~140
| million active Facebook Messenger users in the the US.
| hifreq wrote:
| We can assume that there are close to zero iPhone owners
| who don't use Messages, considering that almost half of
| the US population has an iPhone. This calculation fails
| to account for the critical aspect: Messages is the
| default SMS app, it's not just a group chat. Comparing it
| to WhatsApp is just incorrect.
| sbuk wrote:
| If it's the default app and _all_ iPhone users _actively_
| use it, and FB messenger beats it by 4 million _active_
| users, then your argument hasn 't really got a leg to
| stand on, especially given that the market share for
| iPhone in the US is ~53%.
| hifreq wrote:
| My argument is only strengthened by your data?.. Messages
| app is the app every iPhone user uses to send and receive
| SMS messages. It's not about some exclusive features,
| blue vs green bubbles, etc. It's just SMS messages.
|
| So just citing the number (130M) means nothing in this
| debate. WhatsApp or Signal or FM Messenger are not SMS
| apps, so we can't just look at the number of active users
| and make conclusions.
|
| How many angsty teenagers must have an iPhone because of
| the color of their chat bubble? That's the number that
| (apparently) matters.
| sbuk wrote:
| No. That's appealing to emotion, it's a fallacy and has
| no place in a sensible discussion.
|
| As for SMS, I can say with a high degree of confidence
| that deliberate SMS sending is very low outside the US.
| Besides, the feature being spoofed, and therefore
| discussed is iMessage, which categorically is not
| SMS/MMS. Bringing it up is introducing a strawman.
| hifreq wrote:
| > therefore discussed is iMessage, which categorically is
| not SMS/MMS
|
| That's not the reality though, correct? When I send a
| message to a friend using the Messages app it's being
| sent as an iMessage if both of us use an iPhone. I don't
| care what the format is, my intention is to send an SMS.
| So you can't use this as evidence of popularity of
| iMessages.
|
| Just looking at my message list: at least 40% of my
| messages are alerts, reminders, payment confirmations,
| etc. Are you saying in Europe people get those via
| Signal?
| sbuk wrote:
| No, I'm saying it's irrelevant what businesses are
| sending you. And since SMS is fundamentally limited to
| 160 ASCII characters, I doubt the majority cares. Getting
| hung up on a default SMS client feels like a waste of
| energy. I get that, as a convenience, you'd want one
| location for all your messaging needs. For an alternative
| view, I like the separation that multiple apps provide.
| I'm not against iMessage being on other platforms either.
| What I am against is the pitchforks and bullshit
| reasoning around why this is anti-consumer/trust. The
| whole polemic is just bullshit.
|
| Edit: in fact I'm annoyed at myself for adding to the
| pointlessness of what amounts to petty nerd-rage. I
| apologise to everyone...
| Miner49er wrote:
| There's no way WhatsApp is more widely used in the US
| then iMessage. Same with Signal and Telegram.
| hifreq wrote:
| It's a ridiculous comparison. How do you calculate "more
| widely" usage? I use Messages for all SMS messages. I've
| had maybe 5 group chats in Messages over the last 10
| years, all groups are organized in WhatsApp or Signal. So
| what is more widely used in my case?
|
| Messages is the default _SMS app_ on iPhones. 130M
| iPhones in the US does mean there are 130M Messages
| users. So what? Some teenagers are angsty because of
| green bubbles? FFS do we not have bigger problems to deal
| with?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Do you live in the US though?
|
| Messaging is done extremely differently in the US. All
| those group chats on Whatsapp or Signal would be done in
| iMessage because most Americans don't have Whatsapp or
| Signal, and Android users would likely just be left out
| of them.
| hifreq wrote:
| I do live in the US. All my friends are on Signal and
| WhatsApp.
|
| There are 140M FB Messenger users in the US, more than
| iPhone users.
|
| This discussion is baffling to me. People buy devices
| that have exclusive content and features all the time.
| PS5 has a ton of exclusive games. So sometimes a group of
| friends is divided: some people have Xbox, others have
| PS5. Also some have no console at all. And some people
| will make fun of others, some people will get bullied
| because of that. This issue will not magically go away if
| we force Apple to "equalize" the chat bubble color. Some
| teenagers will still get bullied.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Interesting, my experience is very different in the US. I
| know very few people who use WhatsApp or Signal except
| for when they are outside the US.
| hifreq wrote:
| WhatsApp has ~100M users in the US. FB Messenger has
| ~140M. I would argue that Messages has a far lower number
| once you exclude pure SMS usage.
| threeseed wrote:
| WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat, QQ:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-
| glob...
| Miner49er wrote:
| We're talking US, not global.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Aren't 70% of American teenagers on iPhone because of the
| iMessage network effects? The whole "green bubble" shaming
| issue.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| its more than a shame. emoji, gifs and images are a core
| part of teens' communications (I have one, I know all too
| well), and iMessage's green bubble is also a guarantee
| that these things won't work, so its not just a shame, it
| is a hard road block.
|
| Fortunately a lot of teens moved to discord.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Based on all the messages I get from my work colleagues
| (mostly android users much more into memes and things
| than I am), gifs and emojis and other features work just
| fine these days with MMS messaging on iPhone.
| fsckboy wrote:
| videos taken on your or their phones don't show up
| postage stamp sized and blurry/bricky any more? that's
| usually how a green bubble drags an iphone group down
|
| although the "liked your message" type stuff is also
| annoying.
| lazycouchpotato wrote:
| Google thankfully added a workaround/fix for that. "Liked
| your message" shows up as a reaction on Google Messages.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/10/googles-message-app-
| can-no...
|
| In fact, the role's been reversed - the iPhone user now
| gets the "liked your message" text message while on
| Google Messages it shows up as a reaction.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| When iMessage has to send a pic or vid to a group that
| contains non-iMessage recipients, iMessage will fallback
| to MMS and may need to recompress the pic/vid to get
| under the MMS media limit.
|
| MMS, introduced in 2002, has much lower limits for
| pictures/video than if the messaging apps were to send
| the media over data/internet.
|
| Also these MMS media limits aren't hardcoded, the limits
| are set by the sending and receiving carriers.
|
| see https://www.androidpolice.com/why-text-message-
| videos-look-b...
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >The whole "green bubble" shaming issue.
|
| Even if that's a real thing and not an imaginary or minor
| phenomenon hyped up for clicks, it is hardly anti-trust-
| worthy.
|
| 70% of American teenagers may have access to iMessage due
| to it being on their phones but there is a 0.0% chance
| that, in aggregate, iMessage is in their top five most-
| used messaging apps.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I can't speak to the anti-trust issue but it is a real
| thing. My daughter couldn't join the group chat used by
| her (all iPhone) cheerleading team. We ended up missing
| last minute changes to practice locations more than once.
|
| And, of course, there was some teasing from the other
| team members about how my daughter's parents were too
| cheap to buy them a proper phone.
| spease wrote:
| "I have a dream that my four little children will one day
| live in a nation where they will not be judged by the
| color of their SMS but by the content of their
| character."
| hifreq wrote:
| I can't play many games on my MacBook, so can't play and
| hang out with friends who all have Xbox/PS5. What should
| I do?
| airstrike wrote:
| _> Even if that 's a real thing and not an imaginary or
| minor phenomenon hyped up for clicks, it is hardly anti-
| trust-worthy._
|
| I'm in a group chat with (former) coworkers who
| repeatedly (albeit playfully) shame the one group member
| who forces us all to use green bubbles. It's a real thing
| jpc0 wrote:
| Sounds like you need a new group of people around you.
|
| You honestly see Apple as the aggressor in that situation
| and not those people?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Do you have data to back this up? I would be shocked if
| iMessage wasn't the most used messaging app by US teens
| or consumers in general.
| jdlshore wrote:
| I would guess Discord is more popular, based on my teens'
| usage.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Maybe, but they probably text you through iMessage.
| joshmanders wrote:
| This just in, teen prefers to message with friends via
| Discord, but uses iMessage to message parents who are
| also on iMessage and not discord. We must file an anti-
| trust lawsuit against Apple, stat!
|
| Do you realize how ridiculous this reasoning is?
| Miner49er wrote:
| No where have I argued for antitrust. I'm just saying
| iMessage is probably the most used messaging app in the
| US, others are claiming it's not without any data.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > I'm just saying iMessage is probably the most used
| messaging app in the US
|
| > others are claiming it's not without any data.
|
| So quick question, why do you get to claim something
| without data but others have to back up their claims with
| data?
|
| Anyway, I can't find anything that is specifically about
| the US in 2023 (so far) that isn't requiring a payment
| for a large sum, but everything else I found seems to
| back up the claims by everyone else.
|
| Most of them don't even include iMessage in the top 10,
| and the one that does has it in like 8th place with one
| caveat, facetime itself is 2nd to Facebook Messenger
| which absolutely dominated the list.
|
| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/messaging-app-market/
| Miner49er wrote:
| That's because the data doesn't exist. Even the site you
| linked said they don't have data for iMessage.
|
| I'm calling out people for making a claim without any
| evidence. I'm not providing evidence because there isn't
| any.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > I'm calling out people for making a claim without any
| evidence. I'm not providing evidence because there isn't
| any.
|
| I can't tell if that's intentional sarcasm or something
| else.
| tmiku wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're so confident in that 0.0%
| assertion. iMessage is integrated with the
| default/ubiquitous messaging app on iPhones, and I think
| it's reasonable to assume that teenagers are messaging
| mainly other teenagers who are likely to have iPhones
| (and thus using iMessage).
|
| What do you think is beating out iMessage here apart from
| SMS? Snapchat, WhatsApp, various social net DMs? The
| biggest non-iMessage usage numbers I can imagine still
| don't exceed what I'd expect from iMessage, just based on
| its ubiquity in that demographic.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > it is hardly anti-trust-worthy.
|
| why?
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I have teen girls in Oregon. iMessage is decidedly the
| number one messaging app. The others aren't even close.
| There's no universe where my daughters use anything but
| iPhones. For better or worse, their friend group
| deliberately excludes those who cannot use the full
| functionality of iMessage. In case you've forgotten, teen
| girls are not terribly "equity" minded, particularly when
| it comes to tech.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| from Piper Sandler's 2023 Fall survey of US teens (
| https://www.pipersandler.com/teens ):
|
| "87% of teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be
| their next phone; 34% own an Apple Watch"
|
| No idea how many bought them specifically for iMessage...
| stevehawk wrote:
| we should caveat all of this with "USA teenagers" as
| Apple does not have nearly these adoption levels anywhere
| else in the world.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| "...2023 Fall survey of US teens ... "
| mthoms wrote:
| Canada is somewhere else in the world. As are Japan,
| Norway, Denmark and Australia.
| jtriangle wrote:
| So "monopoly" as a single entity controlling a single
| market is a simplistic view of the issue at hand. Anti-
| trust is far broader than that, where any anticompetitive
| action can be subject to anti-trust lawsuits/regulatory
| action.
|
| So the legal argument would be that, because Apple allows
| for a single messaging app, and interacting with that app
| requires an iphone, they're effectively preventing
| messaging app competition.
|
| Apple has a very, very talented legal team though, so, for
| this to even see argument in court someone's going to have
| to realllly have to want it, and be able to fund it.
| laserlight wrote:
| > Apple allows for a single messaging app
|
| Do you mean that Apple doesn't allow third-party SMS
| apps? Because there are lots of messaging apps on iOS.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| IMHO, the argument is that Apple does not allow any third
| party messaging app to send message to the built-in
| messaging application (Apple Messages) on the iPhone.
| That is Apple ships one messaging app that is the default
| and may not be removed, and they also do not allow any
| interoperability with that one messaging application.
|
| Apple Messages is not an SMS application; it's an
| internet messaging application that falls back to SMS
| messages when communicating with any non-iOS device.
| There are some situations where there may be no data
| network and, maybe, it falls back to sending an SMS
| message to another iOS device but this is pretty rare.
| evilduck wrote:
| They don't know what they mean, because there isn't a
| legal precedent for narrowly defining monopolies to
| facets of a single company's stores and platforms. It's
| just wishful thinking phrased authoritatively.
| dickersnoodle wrote:
| >So the legal argument would be that, because Apple
| allows for a single messaging app, and interacting with
| that app requires an iphone, they're effectively
| preventing messaging app competition.
|
| That is weapons-grade horseshit. You can put WhatsApp,
| Facebook Messenger and Signal on your iPhone and message
| to your heart's content. (I know, because I've had the
| first two on my phone before and they did not get killed
| in their sleep by Apple's native messaging app).
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > iMessage ... messaging platform
|
| For me, personally, it's an SMS app not general messaging.
| And on iOS there is absolutely no competition for SMS by
| design.
|
| I suspect iMessage would enjoy far less adoption if the
| iMessage features were a separate application from the SMS
| features, or if a 3rd party app could assume the role of
| handling SMS (I.E. Signal).
|
| If Signal were allowed to handle SMS on an iPhone, ditching
| iMessage would be one of the first things I'd do when
| setting up my device.
|
| On iOS, if I want to send a message to a phone number using
| a cross-platform protocol that (nearly?) all cellphones
| understand by default without coordinating a separate
| communication channel out-of-band, my option is: iMessage.
| That is not organic, it's Apple using its position as the
| device manufacturer to force all competition out of the SMS
| space, and then offering a "progressive enhancement" on top
| of an open protocol that nobody else can compete with or
| interopt with.
| dwaite wrote:
| Slight correction - you can't (or rather, shouldn't)
| override the SMS handling on an android phone.
|
| Instead what an app like Signal does is request all the
| permissions it can from the SMS/MMS handling service of
| the phone - to read and send SMS entries, and to get
| events on an incoming SMS, and then request to be the
| default handler of the `sms` custom URI scheme.
|
| But you can have any number of SMS clients at once. It is
| likely if Apple Messages ever came to Android, it would
| do the same thing - otherwise, the fallback behavior
| (when talking to an android user without the app
| installed, for example) would be sub-par.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere
| near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to
| spoof their service?
|
| The top messaging services are SMS and email. Do these
| allow different companies to interoperate with each other?
| Yes, of course.
|
| And so should _all_ messaging apps, regardless of how many
| other messaging apps there are, because they _all_ have a
| network effect. They 're segmented into their own markets
| _by the act of restricting interoperability_.
|
| There is no carrier with a monopoly on SMS but Apple is
| trying to maintain a monopoly on iMessage. Why should that
| be allowed for _anyone_? Restricting interoperability --
| i.e. competition -- is not a legitimate business practice.
| peyton wrote:
| I dunno, fixing the market to be "company X's own
| services" doesn't seem to be in the spirit of antitrust
| laws. Should I be allowed to sell gasoline at Shell's gas
| stations?
| cmiles74 wrote:
| How is Apple Messages not the #1 most popular messaging
| application on the iPhone? I know many people that use an
| iPhone and they all use Apple Messages. I know because I
| have an Android phone and this is the only way to
| communicate with them.
| rezonant wrote:
| There seems to be a huge disconnect from people who are
| in countries where texting is not dominant. In the US
| (and apparently the UK) that is not the case, and
| iMessage and texting more broadly are overwhelmingly
| dominant from all indicators I've seen.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _How is this an actionable anti-trust issue?_
|
| How is this _less_ of an issue than Microsoft integrating
| Internet Explorer with Windows back in the day?
|
| The shit Google and Apple seem to be getting away with
| these days would make regulators of yore spin in their
| graves.
| gafage wrote:
| It is less of an issue because of market share. MS
| crushed Netscape with IE. imessage is not used in the EU
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Does this mean that existence of Android allows both
| Google and Apple to mutually shield themselves from
| antitrust accusations? They basically get to do what they
| want, and argue "us refusing to give you X is not
| antitrust-relevant, because there's the other 50% of the
| market that refuses to give you X in an _entirely
| different way_ ".
| gafage wrote:
| This has nothing to do with android. iphone comes with an
| app store and that app store contains lots of messenger
| applications. Users overwhelmingly download one or
| several messenger applications from the store and use
| them instead of imessage. What's the similarity to IE
| here? IE had over 90% of browser share at some point.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Integration. None of the alternative messaging apps are
| first parties on iOS. Just like IE, for a moment, was the
| only first-party browser on Windows.
| gafage wrote:
| I don't see any practical difference between whatsapp and
| imessage. iphone has so many apis such as callkit that
| make apps that use them feel like first parties. I think
| the only real difference is that you can use the built-in
| messages to read and send sms... which nobody uses
| anymore.
| threeseed wrote:
| But being first party on iOS has had no impact on the
| market.
|
| Messages is not even in the top 5 used messaging apps
| globally.
| hifreq wrote:
| The only reason we are having this conversation is that
| some Americans can't fathom the idea that something they
| want is not available to them for free.
| acaloiar wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer.
|
| But I do believe there's reason to consider Apple's policy
| relative to iMessage clients monopolistic. Apple's behavior
| is not significantly different from Microsoft's, which
| instigated US v. Microsoft [1]. That case largely took
| issue with Microsoft's mandatory bundling of IE with
| Windows and the extent to which Microsoft created an
| inorganic monopoly. In addition to how Microsoft's monopoly
| came to be one, the judge also took issue with Microsoft's
| methodology in quashing threats to that monopoly. One could
| claim that Apple is taking similar quashing action relative
| to Beeper now.
|
| Microsoft of course appealed the judgement, and prevailed.
| But they prevailed only because the judge had broken his
| code of conduct in discussing the case with media; not
| because Microsoft's behavior was not monopolistic.
|
| I don't believe global or domestic iMessenger usage is
| relevant.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsof
| t_Cor....
| stouset wrote:
| > I'm not a lawyer.
|
| > But I do believe there's reason to consider Apple's
| policy relative to iMessage clients monopolistic.
|
| In order for antitrust laws to apply, it's not enough to
| exhibit monopolistic behavior. You actually have to _be_
| a monopoly and use this behavior to achieve and /or
| retain it.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > You actually have to be a monopoly
|
| Every person who shall monopolize, or _attempt to
| monopolize_ , or combine or conspire with any other
| person or persons, to monopolize _any part_ of the trade
| or commerce among the several States, or with foreign
| nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony -- Sherman
| Act, Section 2
| tzs wrote:
| That's not the whole story in the United States.
| Antitrust law prohibits monopolization, which is monopoly
| power couple with anticompetitive practices, but it also
| prohibits various practices from companies that do not
| have monopoly power.
|
| For example the Sherman Act prohibits attempted
| monopolization. You run afoul of that for anticompetitive
| conduct and a specific intent to monopolize if there is a
| dangerous probability that will achieve monopoly power.
|
| The Clayton Act added restrictions on price
| discrimination, exclusive dealing, tying, and mergers and
| acquisitions that substantially reduce competition or
| tend to create monopolies.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| > But they prevailed only because the judge had broken
| his code of conduct in discussing the case with media;
|
| You seem to think this was a terrible, terrible accident
| on the part of the judge, rather than just one of the
| many mechanisms by which the powerful evade laws to
| protect the weak. That is, a deliberate terrible terrible
| "mistake".
| hraedon wrote:
| This is a silly argument: Microsoft's bundling of IE
| resulted in real damage to another company (Netscape)
| that had a viable and independent competitor product.
| Beeper doesn't have an independent product: they have a
| hacky workaround that Apple fixed.
|
| What Microsoft did with IE isn't really analogous to
| Apple refusing to let another company free ride on their
| infrastructure. This isn't even as egregious as patching
| iTunes to break the Palm Pre sync was, and the legality
| of that action seems pretty settled by now.
| haswell wrote:
| > _What Microsoft did with IE isn 't really analogous to
| Apple refusing to let another company free ride on their
| infrastructure._
|
| Zoom out for a moment and take Beeper out of the picture.
| The issue is not Beeper specifically, it's the underlying
| reasons that Beeper even exists.
|
| If you buy an iPhone and want to interoperate with
| friends/family on Android, the default experience is
| extremely broken.
|
| Apple's behavior here is directly driving users away from
| Android, not because Apple is better, but because it's
| the only way to actually use the native experience.
|
| I don't know if the cases are equivalent, but there's
| certainly a case to be made that they're in a similar
| category.
| hraedon wrote:
| If I want to "interoperate" with friends and family who
| use Android, I have zero issues doing so. SMS works fine,
| and the default experience being "bad" is really
| completely unrelated to any sort of antitrust concern. If
| we want more features, they're an App download away.
|
| Apple offers a product that has seen significant success
| in a small number of markets versus android, including
| the US. Dressing up what is ultimately the normal bump
| and tumble of competition in a market as antitrust
| because they're winning enough in the market(s) you care
| about is silly.
| haswell wrote:
| > _...because they 're winning enough in the market(s)
| you care about is silly_
|
| I disagree that what follows "because" is an accurate
| representation of what is happening, and reduces a more
| complex issue to an oversimplified notion of "winning".
|
| Microsoft was also winning in the market. _How_ a company
| wins is what matters in discussions about anti-trust. If
| that winning is appreciably supported by anti-consumer
| behaviors, it becomes problematic.
|
| I don't know if what Apple is doing rises to the level of
| antitrust, but it's certainly anti-consumer.
|
| > _Dressing up what is ultimately the normal bump and
| tumble of competition in a market as antitrust because
| they 're winning enough in the market(s) you care about
| is silly._
|
| Anti-consumer behavior being part of the "normal bump and
| tumble" is hardly a good reason to find it acceptable.
| Anti-trust actions have been weak or almost non-existent
| for years now, but again has nothing to do with whether
| or not the status quo is acceptable.
|
| I don't find those arguments compelling, and we'll have
| to agree to disagree
| sbuk wrote:
| I wouldn't categorize it as anti-consumer. Apple is not
| under any moral, legal, or ethical obligation to provide
| access to iMessage to users outside of their ecosystem.
| Moreover, it's crucial to note that no significant
| tangible harm is being inflicted on anyone unless they
| willingly choose not to explore more widely-used
| alternatives. Some individuals argue that there should be
| broader access, but these arguments primarily rely on
| appeals to emotion ("...hardly a good reason to find it
| acceptable") and pleas for sympathy, as your post
| demonstrates.
|
| iMessage is essentially a convenience feature designed
| for Apple customers to communicate with one another free
| of charge. While some might view it as a potential loss-
| leader for Apple, for most of it's users it's just
| another feature, with a majority already utilising
| alternative messaging platforms.
|
| A comparable example is BlackBerry Messenger, which
| initially followed a similar path. BlackBerry only opened
| it up to other platforms when they found themselves
| losing the smartphone market to both iOS and Android. In
| contrast, Apple does not appear to be facing the same
| competitive pressure, which is why they maintain their
| current approach to iMessage access.
|
| Edit: In another thread, you say " _They're selling a
| general purpose communication device that is incapable of
| exchanging run of the mill content with other general
| purpose communication devices, and using that poor
| experience to drive iPhone sales._ " which is a
| _demonstrably_ false premise. The mere existence and
| prevalence of more successful competitors show us this.
| The problem here is that there are those arguing that
| iMessage is _the only_ option, when it clearly isn 't.
|
| Ultimately, whether or not iMessage is availble to
| Android users is immaterial. Apple are 10 years too late
| to the party. Add that RCS is comming to the platform (of
| which I am disappointed - it a half-baked solution that
| risks ceding control to carriers, which IMHO is a
| terrible idea), iMessage on Android is moot.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| > If you buy an iPhone and want to interoperate with
| friends/family on Android,
|
| Then use a cross platform messaging app. FB Messenger,
| WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord. I have all of them on my
| phone.
|
| > the default experience is extremely broken.
|
| It's not broken. Apple devices have a low-friction "hot
| path" for communicating with other apple devices. That's
| it. Want to use it? Get an apple device.
|
| Apple isn't obliged to make its messaging app work for
| everyone, on all platforms.
| haswell wrote:
| > _It's not broken. Apple devices have a low-friction
| "hot path" for communicating with other apple devices.
| That's it. Want to use it? Get an apple device._
|
| As an Apple user who likes Apple products (I just really
| dislike this iMessage stance), I don't agree. When I open
| the app that allows me to communicate with other users
| via phone number, and when that experience can't handle
| sending a photo in the year 2023, the experience is
| broken.
|
| I'm glad they're implementing RCS support (which seems to
| be their acknowledgement that there is an issue to
| solve), but the fact that they chose to wait until 2024
| is unacceptable.
|
| > _Apple isn't obliged to make its messaging app work for
| everyone, on all platforms._
|
| That's not what I'm arguing. The desire for iMessage is a
| symptom, and I'm not saying they should be forced to make
| iMessage work everywhere. The problem is that non-
| iMessage support on the phone is atrocious. They're
| selling a general purpose communication device that is
| incapable of exchanging run of the mill content with
| other general purpose communication devices, and using
| that poor experience to drive iPhone sales.
|
| There are many ways to solve this that don't require
| Apple to make its messaging app work for all platforms.
| They've already solved this for other categories like
| VOIP apps, which enjoy a unified OS-level experience.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| > when that experience can't handle sending a photo in
| the year 2023, the experience is broken
|
| It's Apples fault SMS is an archaic protocol? Wow, I
| truly learn something new every day.
|
| > The problem is that non-iMessage support on the phone
| is atrocious.
|
| I have fb messenger, WhatsApp, telegram and discord on my
| phone. I don't find having to use these "atrocious",
| they're just different apps. Atrocious would be the awful
| "this messenger does all chats, but awfully" experience
| of early Android devices, that was a dumpster fire of
| confusing contact details and lost messages. Also, it's
| not like Android is immune from these issues: your
| complaint is that SMS/MMS is archaic and needs an
| upgrade, not that we need to make iMessage bend over
| backwards to support everything else.
|
| I guess I just don't see the argument why iMessage
| explicitly needs to shoulder the burden here.
| haswell wrote:
| > _It's Apples fault SMS is an archaic protocol? Wow, I
| truly learn something new every day._
|
| Why would this only be about SMS? RCS has existed for 15
| years. It has its issues, but it's not as if there hasn't
| been an option. Apple will finally add some level of
| support next year (yikes), but as evidenced by the Beeper
| brouhaha, it's unacceptably late to the party.
|
| > _your complaint is that SMS /MMS is archaic and needs
| an upgrade_
|
| No, it's really not. My complaint is that there's been an
| upgrade to SMS/MMS for many years that would make the
| iMessage limitations irrelevant, but Apple has refused to
| address the issue. There has been too much focus on
| iMessage itself, and not enough on the underlying
| behaviors they're forcing and the obvious intent behind
| this.
|
| > _I guess I just don't see the argument why iMessage
| explicitly needs to shoulder the burden here._
|
| I honestly don't care if Apple makes iMessage work on
| Android. There are numerous options that solve this issue
| without crossing that line. RCS next year is a step in
| the right direction. They could also follow their own
| design philosophy and allow apps to surface their
| messages in a unified interface like they do for most
| other iOS capabilities.
|
| I can receive a discord call and it shows up next to my
| normal phone calls. This kind of UX would solve the issue
| without requiring Apple to touch iMessage.
|
| But they won't, because this isn't about security or some
| undue burden to support android devices; it's a
| calculated decision to degrade the user experience when
| messaging non-iPhone devices for the purpose of driving
| sales.
|
| This has even been confirmed by discovery documents from
| recent lawsuits.
| threeseed wrote:
| > I'm not a lawyer.
|
| This is very obvious because you have a poor grasp of the
| facts.
|
| a) The issue with Microsoft was that it had a monopoly in
| operating systems. At the time it was about ~95% market
| share. Gates woke up one morning, decided web apps were a
| threat to this, saw Netscape as their major competitor
| and decided to eliminate them. It didn't try to compete
| with them. It went straight for elimination by bundling
| IE and coercing OEMs e.g Compaq to not bundle Netscape.
| Using a monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in
| another is exactly what the laws were designed to
| prevent.
|
| b) Global and domestic iMessage usage _is_ relevant. In
| fact it is the whole point. You need to demonstrate that
| there is an absence or distortion of a market for anti-
| trust laws to be applied.
|
| c) Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper, they have no
| monopoly in anything and there is clear evidence of a
| fair and functioning market by the presence of WhatsApp,
| Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc.
| hifreq wrote:
| Agreed. Every single platform/device has apps that are
| exclusive to it. It's mind-boggling to me that people are
| so obsessed with Messages. I can't play thousands of
| Steam games on my Mac. My friends who have PCs play those
| games together, have fun, chat online. Should Steam be
| forced to "open their protocol" whatever that means?..
| Miner49er wrote:
| What dwarfs iMessage in the US? I would assume that it is
| the most used messaging platform in the country.
| sbuk wrote:
| Facebook Messenger - approx 140 million users, then
| WhatsApp at approx 75 million. iOS has approx 136 million
| users (not sure if that includes iPad). So "dwarfs" might
| be a bit extreme. However, its extremely unlikely that
| all the iOS users use iMessage and none use either
| Facebook or WhatsApp. Statista has the figures, but I'm
| not going to pay $149 per month to find out more!
|
| Source: Googling around, so take it for what it is!
| Miner49er wrote:
| With this numbers I would still guess that iMessage has
| WhatsApp beat.
|
| I would also guess it does more volume then FB Messenger,
| even if it technically has less users.
| sbuk wrote:
| How? 140 > 136! And the figure reported are _active_
| users. I accept it 's back-of-the-napkin, not trustworthy
| sources, but even so, your math just doesn't make sense.
| Miner49er wrote:
| I'm just speculating that iMessage users use the app more
| then FB messenger users use FB messenger. I don't think
| there's anyway to know, so I definitely might be wrong.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| Many Americans have Facebook/WhatsApp accounts they
| haven't used in years. I'd be skeptical they surpass
| iMessage in terms of volume of messages
| rezonant wrote:
| > In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other
| platforms.
|
| Do you have a source for this?
| progval wrote:
| > iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in
| the minds of most users globally.
|
| It doesn't matter what the users think. However, the EU
| Commission agrees with you here, as it explicitly decided
| that iMessage doesn't fall under the DMA: https://ec.europa
| .eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_... ("gateway"
| is one of the three conditions to be a gatekeeper, see
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... )
| grishka wrote:
| > Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere
| near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to
| spoof their service?
|
| The one I know a lot about -- Telegram -- has official
| public protocol docs and is fully open to third-party
| clients: https://core.telegram.org
| Miner49er wrote:
| Not allowing interop makes it harder for new competitors,
| because no one is going to use a messaging app that no one
| else uses.
| zffr wrote:
| Let's say that Apple is forced to allow third parties to use
| iMessage. Can't Apple just make the cost prohibitively high?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| The "forcing" would likely come with conditions and some
| oversight. See how big phone companies in some countries
| are "forced" to allow competitors (eg. MVNOs) to connect to
| their networks at wholesale prices - do you think they
| chose that price point themselves?
| vhold wrote:
| That's the best case for most of us, but probably not Beeper
| Mini, since the cat-and-mouse game is their killer
| competitive advantage. With the barriers gone the space will
| be totally flooded with options, not to mention just normal
| Android integration.
| hjkdgshkdfjhg wrote:
| Best case outcome for who? Super happy user of Apple here, I
| would hate that outcome.
|
| Apple shit just works, I like my wallet garden, don't want
| third party trash or getting spammed from android clients.
| ksclarke wrote:
| Ha, "wallet garden" gave me a good chuckle. I usually hear
| it expressed as a "walled garden", but this might be the
| perfect typo (or clever twist / word play).
|
| I'm guessing it was a typo, but well done nonetheless.
| kanbara wrote:
| this might be the "best outcome" for some nerds or android
| users, but it certainly isnt the best outcome for most
| consumers.
|
| iOS has resisted a lot of the crap and cruft of windows and
| android because of its opinionated nature. sure, siri could
| use improvement, but at least iPhones never fail to call 911.
| Keegs wrote:
| I'll admit I'm one of these nerds but I disagree. There's a
| difference between being opinionated and not allowing me to
| change the defaults on a device I own.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| While they are at it, can they file an antitrust action
| against Google for making changes that break ad blockers and
| third party clients for YouTube?
| idonotknowwhy wrote:
| Reminds me of how bleemcast made game console emulators
| officially legal
| kernal wrote:
| How many ways does Apple have of blocking Beeper
| interoperability without major changes to their protocol that
| breaks existing functionality? They've already exhausted 1 of
| them without much delay.
| rany_ wrote:
| > Apple's next move would likely be to release some kind of
| official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of
| the space to Beeper.
|
| You say this as if it's a bad thing, I think that would be
| mission accomplished for Beeper... tbf, though I suppose their
| moment would be over by then.
| theultdev wrote:
| Right?
|
| For all Android users this would mean there's now an official
| client.
|
| For Beeper devs this means there's less RE needed for their
| client.
|
| Even if Apple released an official app, Beeper is still
| useful for aggregating other services, something Apple will
| never do.
|
| I see noone but Beeper winning in this game barring legal
| skirmishes.
| fragmede wrote:
| Define "over". Opera the web browser earned $80 million on
| $380 of revenue and I don't know anybody that uses it. If
| Apple releases an Android iMessage client, but Beeper still
| has enough paying MAU so they can pay their employees and
| investors, is anything "over" just because there's
| competition? It isn't a winner-take-all like a game of
| football or something.
| rany_ wrote:
| By over, I just mean that their days in the spotlight/media
| would be gone and people would generally be less aware of
| their existence. Not that they won't be able to compete
| against Apple.
|
| If anything judging by Apple's Android apps recently,
| especially with my personal experience with their Apple
| Music app I would say they have a really bad track record
| thus far. It's a really buggy and almost unusable mess.
|
| This is unrelated but I was actually duped by Apple Music,
| I intially thought that the audio quality was noticably
| better but as it turns out it was actually just louder.
| Raising the volume made YouTube Music sound just as good.
| summerlight wrote:
| > Apple's next move would likely be to release some kind of
| official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of
| the space to Beeper.
|
| This looks like a great outcome?
| ankit219 wrote:
| I think they ignored a rarely talked about but important
| aspect. iMessage is free for Apple users because it comes
| bundled with all Apple products. The cost to run iMessage and
| deliver millions of messages daily must be a significant
| number.
|
| With beeper, they are enabling the functionality for android.
| That is every android user signed up with beeper will end up
| costing Apple some money to send messages to iphone (or to send
| messages to other android users using the same thing).
|
| In my opinion, next step for Apple is to mandate having an
| apple device to be able to use an Apple ID as part of their
| TnC. They will keep closing loopholes in the meantime, but
| don't think Apple will let beeper win this, purely because of
| the can of worms it opens up.
| gruez wrote:
| I'm sure most android users would be happy if iMessage-on-
| Android was included as part of the $0.99/month icloud
| subscription.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I would imagine a significant number of people would be
| willing to spend $5-$10/mo to be able to use iMessage +
| FaceTime as native Android/Windows apps (you can already
| FaceTime with non-Apple users via a link [0])
|
| [0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212619
| ewoodrich wrote:
| Yep, I already pay for iCloud, Applecare on several devices
| and yet I am still punished by Apple via iMessage for using
| Android as my main device. (I also own a newish iPhone but
| even that's not good enough without workarounds to use my
| primary phone number with iMessage).
|
| I don't like the idea of ever being bound to a single
| ecosystem and Apple's lack of interoperability by design
| keeps me using many Google services because they offer
| almost everything for both iOS and Android.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| It's actually really surprising to me (from a technical
| perspective) that this wasn't already the case. Based on what
| I've read they're basically spoofing the fact that they're an
| iDevice which seems like it should be much more difficult
| than Beeper has made it look.
| ankit219 wrote:
| It was open sourced by a 16 year old apparently.
|
| https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush
|
| They used this and added their own changes. From their
| communication about what they are doing, it's remarkably
| similar, and i would be very surprised if they did not see
| this before.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| You'd think. But a great big pile of intel-based macs
| without TPMs are still supported iDevices. And the tail for
| supporting those macs (that have been on iMessage for some
| time) might be quite a bit longer than the tail for, say,
| OS updates to those macs.
|
| So there's quite a window where spoofing that kind of
| iDevice will be easy.
| danaris wrote:
| Based on my understanding, Beeper is using false or duplicate
| Apple _device_ credentials in order to authenticate with
| Apple as "being a legitimate iMessage endpoint".
|
| There's no need to take the--rather draconian--step of
| locking out all Apple users who are using Apple IDs through
| the browser; all Apple needs to do is ban the false device
| IDs and possibly close the loophole that allows Beeper to
| create them.
|
| Any time you see something that looks like a jailbreak, at
| its heart is a vulnerability in the device or service that is
| being jailbroken. That is, fundamentally, a security flaw,
| and fixing that security flaw is all that's necessary to
| prevent the jailbreak. The fact that this one is with one of
| Apple's _services_ , rather than with iPhones or other Apple
| devices, means that they don't even have to push out some
| software/firmware update and hope everyone applies it: all
| they have to do is update their own servers, and Beeper will
| be locked out again.
| milkytron wrote:
| I don't think they're using false or duplicate Apple
| devices for this. I think that it may be likely they are
| using AWS resources for it:
| https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/
|
| When AWS first came out with these, this was my first
| thought. People could spin up an EC2 instance and use it
| for iMessage, and Beeper came to be shortly after this
| feature went live in AWS.
| danaris wrote:
| Not fake _devices_ , fake _credentials._ Beeper Mini is
| explicitly using a _different_ method to access the
| iMessage system than Beeper and some other previous
| services; it 's not spinning up virtual Macs and bouncing
| off them. Because of that, it also doesn't require you to
| _hand your Apple ID login & password_ over to Beeper in
| cleartext just to make it work.
|
| At least, from what I've read over the past few days.
| danieldk wrote:
| This aspect is ignored, because it's clear that Apple blocks
| third-party clients to maintain its dominant position in the
| US (social unacceptability of green bubbles among teens).
|
| If cost was the problem, they could offer a subscription.
| standardUser wrote:
| Exactly, iMessage is not a product they want to sell or
| spread around, it is a marketing tool that loses it's
| potency once it's not exclusive.
| ankit219 wrote:
| It's pretty clear why they don't want an android iMessage
| app.
|
| In this case, what beeper enables (if successful)
| potentially is to use Apple's infra for future
| communication between android to android phones, or android
| to iMessage groups, while on Apple's infra and dime. Beeper
| will likely collect a fee for it as well. Thats not a
| position Apple would want to be in.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Or Google doesn't want one and wouldn't let Apple release
| one unless they allowed third party Siri replacement in
| iOS...
| danieldk wrote:
| Like I said, if that was the issue, Apple could just
| charge $10 per month for iMessage users that don't have
| an Apple product linked to their account.
|
| The only reason is to bully people who fear social
| exclusion into buying an iPhone.
|
| (I am an iPhone/Mac user, so I am not trying to bash
| Apple from the other side of the 'divide').
| sbuk wrote:
| So I'm imagining Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp on my
| iPhone? And the appeals to emotion really have got to stop.
|
| People do not by iPhones because of iMessage. I'll totally
| accept that some, even a majority, buy them as a fashion
| item, in a similar way that Samsung S series phones are,
| but iMessage will not be a significant driver for many.
| pinewurst wrote:
| "exhausted Apple's budget for stopping them"
|
| Is this "THX1138"? Is this the Manhattan Project?
|
| It's Apple management asking a messaging lead to spend a few
| minutes figuring out how Beeper is masquerading and submitting
| a fix.
| lxgr wrote:
| Beeper seems to be masquerading as an Intel Mac. These don't
| have any hardware attestation, and many of them aren't
| receiving software updates anymore either.
|
| This might be extremely hard for Apple to fix.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm just glad to see Apple's proprietary gatekeeping being
| challenged and this app has helped bring "green bubble
| bullying" to the fore. A lot of Apple fans seems to applaud
| Apple for acting ethically (at least relative to other big
| tech) and I hope they now view this marketing tactic by Apple
| as unethical and demand it be stopped.
| Sephr wrote:
| It isn't generally illegal to publish software that
| interoperates with third party platforms that don't wish to be
| interoperated with.
|
| If this uses copyrighted keys then it will be a bit more tricky
| (although fair use could still come into play).
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| we've seen this play out so many times. It's over.
| foxhill wrote:
| the optics are already less than ideal for apple. beeper mini
| dismisses the any technical challenge apple may claim a hurdle to
| android having iMessage.
|
| i don't doubt this will also get shutdown in the near term, but
| i'm 70% confident in a surprising acquisition & continued support
| from apple in the longer term.
|
| it will be hard for apple to continue to claim they are pro-user
| when they appear to be this hostile toward android users.
| jkubicek wrote:
| I'm 0% confident in a surprise acquisition by Apple. Beeper
| doesn't seem to offer anything that Apple couldn't do
| themselves.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| With that logic you would expect Apple to never make
| acquisitions. They've got the money in the bank to do just
| about anything.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Can you show an example of an aquisition they've made to
| explicitly stop an external company using their APIs?
|
| I've not heard of one, it doesn't appear to be in their
| playbook.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts. Parent said "Beeper doesn't
| seem to offer anything that Apple couldn't do
| themselves."
| MBCook wrote:
| It's the same thing. There is no reason for Apple to buy
| Beeper except to make them stop.
|
| Apple doesn't do that. It has lawyers to use.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > There is no reason for Apple to buy Beeper except to
| make them stop.
|
| OP clearly was not arguing that the acquisition would be
| for a shutdown.
|
| Acquisition and continued operation is a plausible
| (albeit unlikely) strategy that Apple could use to avoid
| further regulatory scrutiny while also deterring
| copycats.
| roamerz wrote:
| >> it will be hard for apple to continue to claim they are pro-
| user when they appear to be this hostile toward android users.
|
| They are pro user - for Apple ecosystem users that is. And I'm
| good with that.
|
| Disclaimer: Yup I'm an Apple user. I pay good money to keep the
| riffraff out - or at least ID them by not being blue.
| haswell wrote:
| > _They are pro user - for Apple ecosystem users that is. And
| I'm good with that._
|
| I don't really agree. The interoperability impact means that
| I'm affected as an iPhone user too. I'm only not impacted
| when I communicate with other iPhone users.
|
| And it matters to me that my choice of device impacts the
| users I interact with. Apple just knows that their lock-in is
| strong, and the impact is disproportionately _felt_ by non-
| Apple users.
|
| This is not the same as being "pro Apple user" IMO. They're
| just able to get away with it with their own user base
| because they're less aware of the impact.
| ColonelPhantom wrote:
| Did you actually read the parent comment? They consider a
| worse chat experience with Android users a feature, because
| God forbid someone prefers Android, or _shudders_ doesn 't
| want to spend $1000 on a phone.
| haswell wrote:
| I think you and I are interpreting "riffraff"
| differently.
|
| I took it to mean the myriad of SMS scams and spam that
| is rampant outside of iMessage, not Android users
| broadly.
|
| My point was that Apple isn't caring about their users by
| doing this. They're negatively impacting my ability as an
| Apple user to communicate with people who prefer Android,
| and that is a stance that affects both parties. It's not
| pro user.
|
| I suspect we're in violent agreement that excluding-
| Android-as-a-feature is not a pro-user stance.
| modeless wrote:
| Acquiring Beeper would paint a giant target on the iMessage
| team. "Reverse engineer iMessage to make an Android app and get
| a payday from Apple, guaranteed!" 0% likelihood of that.
|
| It would make more sense for Google to acquire them, and start
| the inevitable court fight with the best legal team money can
| buy instead of whatever Beeper can afford right now. But Google
| would probably prefer to stay out of it, so it remains a David
| and Goliath fight as long as possible.
| haswell wrote:
| For sake of argument, if they acquire the Beeper team and
| continue supporting it, there is no further incentive for
| more Beeper-like apps to emerge.
|
| Apple would at that point have a leg to stand on when they go
| after non-native apps, and I think this would actually be a
| deterrent for copycat attempts and not something that
| encourages the behavior.
| modeless wrote:
| If Apple wanted iMessage on Android they would have done it
| already. There are emails from executives made public in
| lawsuits discussing the possibility many years ago.
| haswell wrote:
| It's very clear that Apple does not want iMessage on
| Android.
|
| My point was that if they chose to give in and acquire
| something like Beeper (presumably due to bad press,
| concerns about regulatory action, etc), it does not
| follow that this incentivizes more Beeper-like products.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| So the answer to that is to pay for a piece of software
| where the majority of effort has gone to reverse
| engineering a protocol that Apple themselves know back to
| front anyway?
|
| This is just Silicon Valley brain rot.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Honestly, I just want the ability to add and remove Android users
| from group chats without having to start an entirely new thread.
| If RCS fixes this, then I'll be thrilled.
| garysahota93 wrote:
| Feedback for the Beeper team if they are reading: there is a non-
| zero amount of us that own Apple devices (like MacBooks or iPads)
| and not iPhones. For those it applies to, what if you leveraged
| the legitimate devices we do own as the spoofed devices used by
| Beeper Mini to register?
|
| Don't know if that would solve the Phone Number registration
| part, but thought I'd throw this out there
| ibeckermayer wrote:
| That's how standard Beeper does it, or at least used to do it:
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/pebble-founder-launches-be...
| garysahota93 wrote:
| Beeper cloud used the device as a relay mechanism. I'm
| suggesting the same on-Android-device implementation, but
| rather than randomly generating an apple device to send to
| Apple's registration servers, they use a device I
| legitimately own.
|
| No relays (so preserves security) & harder for apple to
| identify (because to them it'd be as if I'm just using my
| iPad)
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I believe it is possible to use your own relay with Beeper
| (original Beeper, not Beeper mini).
| modeless wrote:
| I believe that this already works. If you register your phone
| number to your Apple ID on an iPhone, then Beeper Mini (and/or
| Cloud) should be able to receive and send messages using your
| phone number in iMessage just as, say, your Mac can.
| mholm wrote:
| > If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to
| metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it
| easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini
| users.
|
| Presumably this would only be if Apple agreed to allow the beeper
| mini users by default? I appreciate Beeper's stance on all of
| this, and hope they can continue operating.
| solarpunk wrote:
| props to these guys for intentionally getting into a cat and
| mouse game with apple over this.
|
| surely there's security implications to all this, if you've got a
| chat app where there's some internal belief that it can only run
| on certain platforms, also controlled by your company, there may
| be some assumptions made about how things work... can't help but
| imagine beeper itself opens up more vectors for stuff like the
| recently-in-the-news push notification mass surveillance
|
| i have been wondering if theres other outcomes i'm missing
| between the two obvious results: 1) a more tightly controlled,
| locked-down iMessage ecosystem 2) some kind of explicitly
| supported third-party api
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| 3) loss of access to tools that worked for the hackintosh
| community. But who cares about the true hackers here?
| felixguilherme wrote:
| how long will it last this time?
| jessekv wrote:
| > Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users
| more secure. That is a fact.
|
| It seemed like it would make spam and scamming over iMessage
| worse. At least it requires an Apple Id now.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Tried to use the app. 2FA error, and can't connect to iMessage,
| so I can't use the app :|.
| Kuinox wrote:
| An update fixed everything.
| gormandizer wrote:
| Beeper on main(ish)stream media.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/12/11/apple-shutters-new-app...
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > _Messages App is the default chat app for all iPhone customers.
| Not only is it the default, iOS makes it impossible to change the
| default chat app. In the US, where the majority of people have
| iPhones, this means that the easiest way to chat is by tapping on
| your friend's name in your contact list and hitting the 'message'
| button._
|
| This is not true. On iOS - iOS has APIs for third party messaging
| and voip apps to intergrates natively into the system where they
| are presented as equal peers to iMessage and default phone app.
|
| When I view contacts in the first party Contacts app, it presents
| message & call as the top options for my contacts. The first time
| per-contact it'll prompt you which you want to use, with third
| party options getting equal billing compared to first-party, but
| after that it'll remember.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Default option is still usual phone call/iMessage in a lot of
| places - in some you can long press and select another option,
| but not all.
|
| Also, merely opening a separate app doesn't really help. How
| about instead of having 5 different apps (that the system one
| sometimes generously allows you to open), you had one app that
| can seamlessly speak all protocols?
|
| You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from
| different providers) and it'll seamlessly merge them in the
| system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same for
| messages?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| You wonder how anyone survives in all of the world where
| nobody uses iMessage (which is everywhere except the US). How
| do people even manage to open WhatsApp? How do people survive
| this horror!
| rplnt wrote:
| I have an iPhone (and macbook if that matters) and have no
| idea what all the rage is about.
|
| Is iMessage the default sms client? It's just called
| Messages on my phone. What does it offer? Mine looks like
| the stock android one. I see virtually zero options to do
| anything else than to send a message. Is it US only thing?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you only have friends that also have iOS devices, you
| can create an iMessage group and send messages in it. I
| don't know how that works in the US but apparently it's
| really popular.
| dwaite wrote:
| Messages sends SMS/MMS (on a Phone or configured
| Mac/iPad/Watch), but will transparently upgrade to the
| iMessage protocol when talking to another Apple user.
| This has substantially better features over SMS,
| including network access and the ability to send higher
| quality multimedia.
|
| If you don't ever want to fall back to SMS, you pick some
| other app (WhatsApp, Signal, etc).
|
| In the US, unlimited texting became a thing much earlier
| than in the EU, partly because the carrier and network
| relationship is structured differently. So SMS is bad but
| free, and thus a bit more tolerable.
|
| A higher percentage of iPhone users means that more often
| than not, you'll find your text is using the much better
| protocol. As a result, many in the US never had to pick a
| third party to be "winner" via network effects (like say
| LINE in certain asian countries).
|
| This puts things into a weird state, where SMS and
| iMessage sort of act like a single pseudo-"product" in
| the US available to both iPhone and Android users, but
| where Android users get a way worse experience and where
| iPhone users get a worse experience when talking with
| Android users.
|
| Which is where I get to personal opinion, and say this is
| mostly Google's fault.
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat-
| allo... . As owner of the other major platform and with
| the ability to release a compatible chat app for iPhone,
| they've had and squandered every opportunity to own the
| space.
| rplnt wrote:
| Thanks for the details and background. If I recall
| correctly, back when I had an Android, every app (Signal,
| Telegram, Messwnger I think) wanted to become my default
| messaging app. I'm assuming to do basically do what you
| are describing. Google had like 20 messaging apps over
| the years, but they never combined ot or I guess other
| vendors went with stock sms-only one instead?
| haswell wrote:
| > _You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even
| from different providers) and it 'll seamlessly merge them in
| the system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same
| for messages?_
|
| And on top of this, other voice apps are merged with the list
| of incoming calls, e.g. discord calls show up in the same
| list as phone calls.
|
| This really highlights the intentional degradation of chat
| behavior. From a pure user experience standpoint, Apple's own
| product does not meet their own philosophy and guidelines
| applied to other categories of app.
| rezonant wrote:
| Or just one app that spoke a single protocol that all phones
| implement, like SMS used to be. That way you wouldn't have to
| install and juggle 20 apps to cover all of your friend's
| preferences, and manage which type of messenger they prefer
| over time.
| borski wrote:
| Because then SMS would never progress, and we'd all be
| stuck with 140 characters under the hood along with
| optional subjects and zero security.
|
| There was no push for RCS until iMessage came along.
| rezonant wrote:
| Internet Explorer introduced a lot of new capabilities to
| the web platform. Those features were highly innovative
| and we take them for granted today. But for many of those
| features they did not do the work to get them
| standardized, or under-standardized them. They did not
| work with other vendors to get them implemented. Apple's
| automatic replacement of SMS is similar and had the same
| result: vendor lock in.
|
| Also it's worth noting that RCS originally launched in
| 2008, a year after the iPhone and iMessage launched in
| 2011. Many features we expect from both iMessage and RCS
| today were not present at the time, but a next-generation
| messaging spec was there- Apple chose not to engage with
| it- which is too bad because at the time Apple could have
| helped to defragment the implementations and make it a
| better specification. The carriers fumbled pretty hard on
| compatibility, also probably because they saw it as a way
| to produce vendor lock in for their customer base.
| dwaite wrote:
| FWIW, my understanding was that Apple did try to engage
| with carriers, but there was't interest in turning RCS
| into what Apple wanted (for instance, adding E2EE). AFAIK
| 15 years later, RCS still hasn't started to define E2EE.
| rezonant wrote:
| Interesting, I tried to find a reference to this online
| but was unable. If you can find a link to such a
| statement let me know.
|
| What's kind of interesting about this to me is that
| Google was able to add encrypted messaging on top of RCS
| without the help of carriers (and it's not just because
| they develop/host Jibe, the most common RCS server side
| implementation-- E2EE messages can be sent over any RCS
| server/relay from what I understand). They just use a
| special mimetype and some base64 encoding and a custom
| identity server for exchanging keys. All things Apple
| could have done with RCS back in 2011.
|
| Google's whitepaper on their E2EE:
| https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
| jorvi wrote:
| What was also really revealing is Signal's operational
| cost breakdown. Their biggest cost is activation texts,
| because providers have lost consumer SMS as a milk cow,
| so they've now started to charge insane rates for
| business texts.
|
| With RCS or iMessage they cannot justify charging for
| these.
| rezonant wrote:
| Both iMessage and RCS require carrier services to
| register phone numbers. In iMessage' case it is an
| activation SMS text.
| borski wrote:
| RCS existed as a concept, but was extremely flawed and
| underfunded. Carriers had zero interest in changing from
| SMS at the time. Apple tried, and gave up, instead
| choosing to build iMessage. You may recall that when it
| was announced, it was actually touted by Steve Jobs as an
| open protocol; that never materialized, largely because
| Apple realized how massive of a lead they had on every
| other handset maker because they weren't beholden to the
| whims of the carriers, who had decided not to move on RCS
| for many years.
| rezonant wrote:
| Well, making it a standard would not have required
| capitulating to the admittedly terrible carriers.
| AaronFriel wrote:
| If vendors were required to conform to standards, I
| suspect we would have had something like RCS a lot
| sooner.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > why can't we have the same for messages?
|
| I wonder if e2ee makes this difficult.
| dwaite wrote:
| > You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from
| different providers) and it'll seamlessly merge them in the
| system Mail/Contacts apps - why can't we have the same for
| messages?
|
| Because there are standards there - SMTP and MIME and HTML
| for email, vCard for contacts.
|
| For the contacts app, whatever fun graph or RDF or whatever
| format you use for contacts, your extension has to provide
| contacts via the surface of the SDK, which luckily had vCard
| to influence it. That may mean that the contacts app cannot
| support round-trip edits of those contacts, and you need to
| go back to whatever source to change things.
|
| Same with calendar events - applications can expose a
| calendar, but this is typically not editable and you need to
| go back into the application to change things (e.g. to remove
| a session from your calendar, go into the conference app and
| say you no longer intend to attend it).
|
| The message apps typically have none of this. They don't have
| commonalities in terms of identifiers (and may all claim
| authoritative use of say a phone number, with no approval of
| the carrier). They have no consistency in formatting. They
| have a varying set of additional features, none of which are
| designed to be compatible (e.g. person-to-person payments in
| Facebook Messenger vs in iMessage). They may also support
| extensions by third parties, business accounts with custom
| routing and workflow, etc.
|
| XMPP and later Matrix tried to create standards around this,
| and for XMPP there was a brief time we thought there'd be buy
| in by larger parties like Google and Facebook. I'm very
| curious to see if we see uptake in ActivityPub, or if the
| same product/market forces make its popularity transient as
| well.
| MitchellKnight wrote:
| Isn't this a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or
| other US laws? Doesn't the fact they are trying to make money off
| of this negate any ethical hacker arguments?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Beeper doesn't "hack" anything though, it uses the exact same
| authorization mechanism as a real iOS device and grants the
| user access to no more than a real device would.
|
| I agree that the CFAA _can_ be abused to try and prosecute this
| (as well as the DMCA), and I suspect Beeper is intentionally
| hoping for (heavily publicized) litigation to settle this once
| and for all and set a precedent.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| > it uses the exact same authorization mechanism as a real
| iOS device and grants the user access to no more than a real
| device would.
|
| And a hacker that social engineers someone's bank password is
| entering just like the account owner would. "Hacking" doesn't
| have to involve exploiting a technical vulnerability. It's
| just unauthorized system access, regardless of methodology
| nkcmr wrote:
| Yeah, I am not expecting this to be a protracted game of cat and
| mouse. Apple will just sue them in the end; that'll put a REAL
| quick stop to this.
|
| I wish things had more interoperability, but Apple is under no
| obligation to implement it or be okay with it. And honestly, I
| believe them when they say that this is a security/privacy risk;
| even if it does serve their anticompetitive tendencies.
| haswell wrote:
| Tech journalists have noted that this kind of reverse
| engineering for the purpose of interoperability is specifically
| covered (allowed) by applicable laws. I'm not well versed in
| the related laws, but it at least seems on the surface that
| lawsuits may not be the end here.
|
| If it's a security issue, that's on Apple's architecture. They
| can cat and mouse this, but the more times they catch the
| mouse, the worse this looks for Apple because it effectively
| means that iMessage was never secure to begin with. Only time
| will tell how effectively they can address this.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| Sue them on what grounds?
| knowald wrote:
| It might be a controversial topic, but this post had some oddly
| rapid upvotes for HN.
|
| I'm trying to understand what the target of this hacky iMessage
| spin-off of Beeper is. The whole idea of subscription-based
| monetization. Rather no way of Apple not patching quickly,
| dealing with this as soon as it raises attention.
|
| But maybe that was the intent of a hack they found? A clever
| marketing strategy, to gain some rapid traction with the
| controversy, highlighting their project?
| xd1936 wrote:
| For me, it's less about craving a specific service, and more
| about watching tech drama and idealism at war.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I saw the announcement on Twitter and came over here to talk
| about it. People are _really_ excited about Beeper.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| I'm not excited about beeper but am excited about the drama
| around beeper!
| standardUser wrote:
| Gatekeeping iMessage has become one of the most despised facets
| of Apple's many gatekeeping techniques, primarily because of
| widespread bullying.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| Bingo. I was excluded from a group chat of ~15 people because
| I was the only one without iMessage.
|
| Eventually they included me. I showed one of them the chat in
| Google Messages and he was amazed at how nice it looked,
| since Android supports Apple reactions. They're also jealous
| of all the emojis I can react with (and I admit I do it just
| to rub it in their face).
| macinjosh wrote:
| "Moat" is SV buzzword that means monopoly as a goal. These people
| want to own the thing and not let anyone benefit from it other
| than themselves.
|
| The fact that Beeper Mini is possible in the first place
| categorically proves Apple is making a decision here to restrict
| interoperability. If we have regulators for anything it should be
| for things like this. At Apple's scale it is completely
| unacceptable behaviour.
|
| The whole iMessage things lost me as a 23 year customer of Apple.
| I just don't care about them anymore because they clearly don't
| care about their customers. Plus they've release the same goddamn
| phone for the last decade. Tim Cook has been coasting on Job's
| legacy and times almost up for them being on top.
| spullara wrote:
| I'm glad that at least you need an Apple ID for this to work.
| Apple probably closed the spam hole.
| resters wrote:
| Apple/Google/Microsoft/Amazon do a lot of extremely petty things
| that should disgust us and give us a glimpse at how this
| pettiness and adversarial conduct might escalate in a GAI world:
|
| - Amazon does not carry Google branded products. ([edit] they do
| now once again, whew!)
|
| - Search in GMail is nearly completely broken when you have too
| many messages, yet Google (ostensibly a search company) can't
| deliver good email search at scale so they don't bother.
|
| - Apple allows lots of customization of push notifications and
| notification behavior (lock screen, badge icons, etc., etc.) yet
| does not simply let the user turn off push notifications that are
| advertisements or promotions.
|
| - Google does not let parents choose third party whitelist
| "experts" for kids content recommendations. The status quo is
| that most kids either have parents who spend hours curating or
| they get to watch all the generative content garbage that Youtube
| hosts.
|
| - Google Maps contains significant glitches and confusing
| navigation suggestions even though there must be terabytes of
| data showing that they routinely result in wrong turns and
| rerouting.
|
| These are all examples of market failures that are
| fostered/continued by various anticompetitive aspects of the
| markets these firms operate in.
|
| Not sure why anyone would expect Apple to allow Beeper Mini when
| clearly iMessage is meant to secure a competitive advantage at
| the expense of apple customers convenience and freedom.
| odiroot wrote:
| > - Amazon does not carry Google branded products
|
| What do you mean? I just searched on Amazon UK and can easily
| buy Pixels, Home Nest etc.
| resters wrote:
| Ahh they seem to have become available again. That's a step
| in the right direction.
| endisneigh wrote:
| How can this be taken seriously when basic facts are wrong. Go
| on Amazon and check for Google products.
|
| Apple has no way of telling you what an advertisement or
| promotion is, and it's inherently subjective.
| resters wrote:
| As noted in the comment, Google products are once again
| available on Amazon. They were removed for several years not
| long ago.
|
| Ads are subjective? Apple has many criteria for rejecting app
| store submissions, why not add "misleading push message
| content not labeled as advertising"
| abhinavk wrote:
| An app can send anything via APNS. Apple cannot know at the
| time of submission. As Android has it, they could introduce
| something like Notification Channels in the next iOS which
| you can then turn off individually but they haven't yet.
| wrboyce wrote:
| > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or
| direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly
| opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in
| your app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a
| user to opt out from receiving such messages.
|
| From (section 4.5.4 of) the App Store Review Guidelines. GP
| is incorrect on many points.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Sprinkle some seasoning on these guys, cus they're cooked.
|
| There is no path forward for integrating with Apple unless Apple
| opens up imessage. Fat chance. These guys took years and years
| and years to switch to a non-idiotic charging port! :(
|
| I wonder how viable their business is without imessage
| integration. They are still aiming for all-in-one chat app - but
| that's not new and has been done at least a dozen times before.
|
| How is this VC scalable?
| kernal wrote:
| Why are Apple users so upset about this? It's almost as if they
| don't want interoperability with Android users. And please spare
| me the spam excuse.
| theklr wrote:
| Why do android users want something they have everything else
| ahead? I don't want interoperability. If I did I'd use the
| other messaging apps that are far beyond apple's. The only
| value I see is stubbornness with older family as many see
| iPhones as a simpler device
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'm going to go with a combination of Stockholm syndrome, crabs
| in a bucket and snobbery. Apple users like to think they're in
| a special little club.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Speaking as one Apple user, I don't think of myself in a
| special club - I just like that my shit works. What I don't
| understand is why Android users are so vested in ruining it
| for me.
|
| Can't have nice things.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Why would it ruin it for you?
| dabinat wrote:
| I don't really understand the long-term purpose of Beeper. Apple
| has already announced RCS, which will fix most complaints about
| text messaging interoperability.
|
| There is still the question of encryption, which Beeper is
| strongly pushing, however Apple has announced it wants to develop
| an RCS encryption standard, so it sounds like it will be solved
| at some point in the next few years.
|
| At that point, all Beeper becomes is a service to turn a green
| bubble blue.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Group messages. RCS doesn't have a good solution for this.
| foooorsyth wrote:
| >At that point, all Beeper becomes is a service to turn a green
| bubble blue.
|
| This is a bigger deal than encryption itself to most people
| using Beeper. Beeper requires you to divulge your Apple ID
| password to Beeper anyways, so arguing for security is quite
| strange. People literally just want blue bubbles on their
| Android -- that's the main appeal.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm really curious how this is possible.
|
| Why wouldn't every iMessage sent be tied to an Apple ID?
|
| If Beeper can do this, wouldn't that mean anyone else with the
| same technique could basically spam iMessage users across the
| world?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| A friend of mine got her Apple ID compromised years ago and
| cloud sync brought back the spam that the attacker was sending.
| iMessage spam is not new - whether it will increase remains to
| be seen.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It just seems like an insane way to set things up. I must be
| missing something because Apple is not usually a crazy
| company.
| mareko wrote:
| It's interesting to see how polarizing this topic is. I'm curious
| if people are just reacting according to the "party line" so to
| speak, ie based on whether they are iPhone or Android users.
|
| We can do a poll to confirm this without revealing your phone
| preference.
|
| Just respond with "Affirmative" if you are an iPhone user and
| dont like this OR you're an Android users and like this.
| Likewise, respond with "Negative" if you're in the opposite camp.
| misnome wrote:
| I think you are mixing up what you are calling "the party line"
| with a mixture of - people cheering for the world they want (EU
| yet again forces a US company to change behaviour), and people
| who view the chances of this (at best interpretation legally
| grey) gamble working without that as extremely unlikely.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's not really that simple. I'm an iPhone use, who thinks
| Android is kinda pointless, but I don't understand why Apple
| hasn't opened up the iMessage protocols years ago, or at the
| very least made their own Android application
| mlindner wrote:
| I'm surprised people are defending these guys. This is paid-for
| illegal breaking into systems.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I'm hoping Apple find a perm shut down solution. A proper
| iMessage client for android can't come from a hack.
|
| I do applaud them for getting a home run in PR for themselves
| sentientslug wrote:
| Without phone number registration working isn't this far less
| useful?
| flycatcha wrote:
| Surprised this doesn't have more upvotes, without phone number
| registration Beeper Mini isn't actually back.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I got my first iMessage spam from an email address ever. I wonder
| if this whole thing is related..
| neilv wrote:
| I get why many people might want this, but open standards are the
| way to go, and this seems to be playing into the hands of
| proprietary in some ways.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Beeper has caught a ton of media attention in recent weeks but I
| truly do not understand it. The SMS protocol has been around for
| decades and works perfectly fine with iPhones. If you want rich
| media and other bells and whistles, use WhatsApp. How often does
| someone whine so loudly about insisting on using the closed,
| Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends need to pay a
| monthly subscription for a third party interop app?
| duped wrote:
| > If you want rich media and other bells and whistles, use
| WhatsApp.
|
| People in America don't use WhatsApp. There's no reason for me
| to switch when none of my friends/family/contacts have it.
|
| > How often does someone whine so loudly about insisting on
| using the closed, Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends
| need to pay a monthly subscription for a third party interop
| app?
|
| Enough that people don't date people who use Android
| jay-barronville wrote:
| SMS is fundamentally insecure. I don't want to use WhatsApp.
| yoavm wrote:
| It's a USA thing. No ones uses WhatsApp. Everyone has an
| iPhone. If you're using Android everyone knows it and they'll
| shame you for it.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| I tell you what, if you're a young person you can be publicly
| shamed for having the wrong color bubble, or outcast by being
| excluded from a group chat. To you and I that probably doesn't
| make sense, but for a big portion of the young, phone using
| population being unable to participate in the iMessage
| ecosystem is a huge deal socially. You are essentially excluded
| from the friend group, you're excluded from conversations, and
| it carries over into real life because you've been excluded and
| that carries an impact -- you're an outcast. It doesn't have to
| be rational to be true.
|
| Being excluded from a group chat has a huge social impact for
| younger people.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Those young people are probably doing themselves a favor by
| disassociating from peers who are shallow and prejudiced
| enough to exclude someone for, of all things, not using a
| specific (proprietary!) chat app.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Oh come on, are you claiming you don't have arbitrary
| actions/clothing/language that you treat as a status signal
| amongst your in group? Have you forgotten what it was like
| to be a teenager?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I've experienced this first hand, even as an adult (well 20
| something). I'd be left out of group chats because MMS breaks
| everything. I'd even missed events because it was all planned
| in the group chat, and assumed someone would mention it in
| person to me.
| misnome wrote:
| If you are a young person you can be publicly shamed for
| literally anything. If not this then a million other things.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > The SMS protocol has been around for decades and works
| perfectly fine with iPhones.
|
| It's not that simple, you get discriminated against for having
| a different color bubble and using up people's SMS allocation.
|
| We should whine about (communication) interoperability, it's
| critically important for everyone. Purposefully or negligently
| creating incompatibilities is anticompetitive and generally
| toxic.
| vips7L wrote:
| > you get discriminated against for having a different color
| bubble and using up people's SMS allocation
|
| It's really not about either. It's about UX. SMS and MMS
| message UX is terrible.
| julesallen wrote:
| So many reasons not to use SMS: No indicators that the message
| was actually received (2023 and SMS is still flaky on
| deliveries), no read receipts, no presence notifications, no
| typing notifications, no encryption in transit or rest, no
| escaping group chat spam... that's just the high points.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| All those real-time features are antipatterns that do nothing
| but create anxiety and a false sense of urgency. We use Slack
| at work, and the typing indicators/presence detection/etc.
| drive me (and many others) downright insane.
|
| I agree that encryption in transit and rest are important,
| but there are open and verified solutions like Signal. It
| seems like extremely poor security hygiene to take Apple's
| word that their closed-source chat service is _actually_
| secure as they claim for it to be.
| julesallen wrote:
| > All those real-time features are antipatterns that do
| nothing but create anxiety and a false sense of urgency. We
| use Slack at work...
|
| ...and I use other apps to keep in touch with family in
| different time zones. For me knowing somebody is online in
| real time is quite comforting. Knowing they got my message
| and then that they read it, even if they don't reply, is
| also useful.
|
| I see your point but there is valid usage outside of a
| corporate setting.
| grishka wrote:
| > No indicators that the message was actually received (2023
| and SMS is still flaky on deliveries)
|
| Long time ago when I was actually sending SMS messages to
| real people, then-current phones had a "delivery
| notifications" setting you had to turn on. Then you would
| receive a notification when your message has been delivered.
| maratc wrote:
| Living in the country where absolutely no one uses iMessage, the
| whole kerfuffle about the colour of the message bubble leaves me
| completely flabbergasted.
|
| I mean, probably the curvature of the Earth is involved, but from
| here this looks like a very small hill to die on.
| fullstop wrote:
| It's not the color of the message, for me. If an Apple user
| sends me a video it comes through as an extremely low
| resolution and highly compressed video. Look at the unwanted
| grackles at my mom's bird feeder:
| https://i.imgur.com/7gBt22i.png
|
| Fantastic, right?
| badwolf wrote:
| Because it's sent as MMS. Apple implementing RCS next year
| will mitigate that.
| sneak wrote:
| RCS lacks end to end encryption.
| RKearney wrote:
| iMessage is not about the color of the bubble. While the color
| is what's most noticeable to the end user, a non-iMessage chat
| means: 1. Unable to rename group chats 2.
| Photo sharing quality is lowered 3. Video sharing
| quality is abysmal 4. Messages traverse carrier networks
| in plain-text 5. Loss of undo send and delete 6.
| Loss of inline replies 7. Loss of typing indicators and
| read-receipts (if enabled)
|
| Just to name a few.
| maratc wrote:
| I won't doubt the fact that you know that other cross-
| platform messaging apps exist.
| fullstop wrote:
| My mom, in her 70s, barely gets iMessage -- half the time I
| receive "text" messages from her as an email! Throwing in
| Whatsapp or Telegram would just confuse her.
| misnome wrote:
| I'd add that photo and video sharing might not be free as
| even today it depends on your carrier plan.
|
| ... So it's an extremely useful signal to tell you to use a
| different messaging app with this person. Glad we sorted that
| out!
| throw310822 wrote:
| Me too. But rather than the colour of the bubble, what leaves
| me flabbergasted is the fact that there is a country where
| people seem to associate a stigma to owning a phone of a brand
| perceived as being "less luxurious", and even take some
| pleasure in inflicting some annoyance on those in the outgroup.
| And all this because, hear, iMessage is the _default_ app. Not
| because of some choice, or because alternatives aren 't
| available. No, because _default_.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| I'm a former Android fanatic turned iPhone user. I still own
| Android devices, but my primary device is an iPhone. I haven't
| had something excite me as much as this Beeper Mini situation in
| years--I love that they're doing this.
|
| One of the things that got me to switch to the iPhone a few years
| ago was the fact that it seemed Apple was actually doing a lot of
| the right things when it came to privacy and security. Obviously,
| I was still pretty skeptical of them, but compared to Google,
| Apple's track record seemed a bit more trustworthy.
|
| The way Apple tries to lock you in though while stifling
| competition is extremely disappointing. They're on the wrong side
| of history.
| kulahan wrote:
| >They're on the wrong side of history.
|
| Say that to their market cap. Seems a lot of people appreciate
| what comes with that drawback. Revealed preferences can be a
| sonuvabitch.
| freedomben wrote:
| yep. And GP themself is an example of why this works. Their
| practices sold an iphone and converted a fanatic Android
| user!
| smoldesu wrote:
| I will say that to their market cap. Such an insane
| capitalization on digital sales can only be achieved by
| extinguishing the alternatives your platform can host. It's a
| regressive featureset that can (apparently) only be reversed
| through legislative demands a-la Digital Market Act.
|
| Many, many companies have had huge market caps while funding
| anti-humanist or exploitative processes. Given Apple's scale
| you almost _have_ to assume that they 're abusing something
| lucrative.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Such an insane capitalization on digital sales...
|
| Apple's market cap is built on something like 80%
| _hardware_ sales by revenue.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Yep, this is an unpopular HN opinion, but I actually like
| Apple's walled garden. It's safe, it's friendly and I don't
| have to worry.
| vore wrote:
| This is in fact the most popular HN opinion that always
| comes up on every Apple thread.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| SMS is spammy enough -- I don't want to see spam via iMessage.
| These third-party clients make spam much more viable.
|
| I love open standards, open source, whatever, but I want some
| things in my life to just work well without caring about the
| details. My phone is one of those things.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > it seemed Apple was actually doing the a lot of the right
| things when it came to privacy and security
|
| Isn't this one of them?
|
| A security hole existed that permitted Beeper to pretend to be
| your Apple device. In this case, it was being used for non-
| nefarious purposes, but that doesn't mean everyone would.
| Apple's fixing that hole seems in-line with your desired
| "privacy and security".
| jay-barronville wrote:
| > Isn't this one of them?
|
| I don't believe so. Beeper Mini uses Apple's protocols the
| same way the native iMessage uses it; they didn't exploit a
| security hole (unless you classify the device faking part as
| a security hole--I don't). They maintain the E2EE flow.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| This is incorrect. They're using a legacy, less secure
| protocol - not in the sense of encryption, but in the sense
| of the need to generate auth tokens per user.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The protocol's implementation is intended to verify you're
| connecting a device Apple built, with stuff like secure
| enclave and end-to-end encryption as known quantities. With
| Beeper, you have to give your Apple ID to a _third-party
| app_ , which they then proxy through a server of some kind
| (https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-
| ope... "signing in with our Apple ID generated an Apple
| prompt that noted our ID was being used to sign in with a
| device "near Los Angeles, CA" (where we are not located.)")
|
| I don't see how you could describe that as anything other
| than a security hole.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| > With Beeper, you have to give your Apple ID to a third-
| party app, which they then proxy through a server of some
| kind (https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-
| back-in-ope... "signing in with our Apple ID generated an
| Apple prompt that noted our ID was being used to sign in
| with a device "near Los Angeles, CA" (where we are not
| located.)")
|
| I think they have another primary product of the same
| name that operates this way, but Beeper Mini never sends
| your credentials off anywhere other than Apple's servers
| [0][1].
|
| [0]: https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works
|
| [1]: https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My link is specifically talking about Mini; they indicate
| this behavior was on "the updated version of Beeper
| Mini".
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| From your first link:
|
| > To work around this limitation, we built Beeper Push
| Notification service (BPNs). BPNs connects to Apple's
| servers on your behalf when Beeper Mini Android app isn't
| running. We can do this while preserving user privacy
| thanks to Apple separating the credentials needed to
| connect to APNs to send and receive content (the "push"
| credentials) and the keys needed to encrypt and decrypt
| messages (the "identity" keys). Push credentials can be
| shared securely with the Beeper Push Notification
| service, and BPNs can connect to APNs on your behalf.
| Whenever BPNs receives an encrypted message that it won't
| be able to decrypt, it simply disconnects from APNs and
| sends an FCM push notification to wake up the Android
| app, which then connects to APNs, downloads, decrypts and
| processes the incoming message. BPNs can only tell when a
| new message is waiting for you - it does not have
| credentials to see or do anything else.
|
| Bepper still connects on your behalf to run notifications
| while the app is not running.
| vore wrote:
| I know that HN is not one homogeneous opinion, but it
| always comes up in these Apple threads that all this
| device attestation and secure enclave stuff is
| unambiguously good because Apple does it, but when it
| comes to TPM key escrow or Web Environment Integrity
| suddenly everyone is up in arms about how it's a total
| violation of a user's freedoms to do what they want with
| their device.
|
| You shouldn't defend something that's inherently consumer
| hostile just because it happens to be for something you
| like.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm OK with titrating skepticism on a proposal based on
| the motivations of the proposer.
|
| To Godwin a bit, I'd treat "we should make the trains to
| Auschwitz run more on time" differently depending on if
| it's being proposed by the German government in 1942 or
| the Polish government in 2023.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| It can be both a security issue and something that
| doesn't optimize user freedom.
| gkbrk wrote:
| > A security hole existed that permitted Beeper to pretend to
| be your Apple device.
|
| _An_ Apple device. Not _your_ Apple device.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Hey, I'm /u/ceejayoz's new iPhone! Bwahahahahahaha. Ahem.
| I promise I'm really the iMessage client you're expecting.
| Start sending me a copy of all their potentially sensitive
| messages."
|
| Again, how do we not classify that as a security issue?
| Spivak wrote:
| Because the user explicitly authorized the app by logging
| in with their own credentials and has the keys.
| gkbrk wrote:
| So wait, if I send people messages from a different
| number and say I'm /u/ceejayoz's new number, they will
| believe me?
|
| What is stopping me from buying a second-hand old iPhone
| and doing this without Beeper?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > What is stopping me from buying a second-hand old
| iPhone and doing this without Beeper?
|
| In that scenario, you're still using the official client,
| which Apple presumably knows isn't silently siphoning
| messages off to somewhere else. You're on official
| hardware with an official client.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Sorry, I misunderstood the previous comment. I thought
| you were worried about other people pretending to be you
| to your friends to trick them.
|
| Is what you are asking this?
|
| 1. I install Beeper.
|
| 2. I log in to Beeper with my Apple ID, for the explicit
| purpose of accessing my own iMessage data.
|
| 3. ...
|
| 4. Gah! How could Beeper access my iMessage data even
| though I installed and authorized it just so it could
| access my iMessage data?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 5. "Gah! Beeper was hacked/compromised/deliberately
| siphoning off Apple ID credentials into a log/error
| reporting/bad actor's database and now millions of people
| have had their sensitive texts and other iCloud data
| exposed."
|
| Facebook and LinkedIn used to try to get people to hand
| over their email credentials so they could "help you find
| your friends on Facebook"; people were correctly
| skeptical then. Giving my Apple ID to a third-party seems
| _insane_ , given what can be done with it, and I'd
| imagine Apple sees it the same way.
| gkbrk wrote:
| > Giving my Apple ID to a third-party seems insane
|
| That's fair. You'd be happy to learn that literally no
| one is forcing you to hand over your Apple ID to Beeper.
| Your approach is very good for your account safety, but
| you don't need to keep other people safe from themselves.
|
| Do you have similar concerns when people use non-Google-
| approved email clients to use Gmail, or alternative
| YouTube clients, or Signal/Telegram forks?
|
| Perhaps you think HN should ban alternative clients or
| weird web browsers too. Too bad a lot of people think
| interoperating clients are important or we would be left
| with the Web Integrity crap to "keep us safe".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Do you have similar concerns when people use non-
| Google-approved email clients to use Gmail.
|
| If they ask for credentials, absolutely. Google has both
| an OAuth flow and the ability to generate app-specific
| passwords (which correctly have very limited abilities)
| so I _never_ have to pass over the real creds.
|
| I have never given my Gmail credentials to Apple, but I
| get my mail just fine.
| gkbrk wrote:
| Google requires you to register an application and get it
| approved to log in with OAuth, you can't just use it with
| arbitrary callback URLs. Why should I need to ask Google
| permission to use my own data, or ask for Google's
| permission to allow other apps to use my data?
|
| If the Beeper service is totally fine, and you mind their
| auth methodology, perhaps you should complain about Apple
| not providing better iMessage auth options.
|
| Instead, you complain about users being able to give
| their own data to an app they chose to install.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Google requires you to register an application and get
| it approved to log in with OAuth, you can't just use it
| with arbitrary callback URLs. Why should I need to ask
| Google permission to use my own data, or ask for Google's
| permission to allow other apps to use my data?
|
| I specifically mentioned the other approach; if your
| email client doesn't implement the OAuth style approach,
| you can generate an app password.
| https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en
| dadoum wrote:
| If you're referring to the history, then it cannot talk
| to the iCloud keychain, and even if it could, it would
| require your credentials. Same thing if you are just
| talking about incoming messages, they need your
| credentials. If they have those you're already fucked.
| And also, they could just have taken an iPhone and log in
| there with your credentials.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's understandable Apple doesn't want third-party apps
| proxying Apple ID credentials. Ever.
| dadoum wrote:
| It isn't proxying afaik, it is calling the Apple servers
| directly. The only thing getting to Beeper servers (and
| that can be disabled) is an IDS key without its matching
| decryption key, for Beeper to be able to see if messages
| are coming to signal the phone (which has the encryption
| key but is not connected continuously) to fetch it and
| show the notification.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| At the very least, it's being proxied through the third-
| party Beeper app, which Apple has no reason to trust.
| (Nor the Android device it's running on.)
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-
| ope... _appears_ to indicate more than that, though.
|
| > In tests, signing in with our Apple ID generated an
| Apple prompt that noted our ID was being used to sign in
| with a device "near Los Angeles, CA" (where we are not
| located.)
| endisneigh wrote:
| > The way Apple tries to lock you in though while stifling
| competition is extremely disappointing. They're on the wrong
| side of history.
|
| Fascinating that you say this when you literally switched to
| iPhone yourself.
| smoldesu wrote:
| How is it fascinating? Apple exerts pressure on customers to
| buy their products, and then further pressures to keep them
| integrated with Apple's ecosystem. Here, a customer gave in
| to the first pressure and is disappointed by the artificial
| friction Apple uses to upsell their customers.
|
| So... are we shocked that iPhone customers don't de-facto
| agree with everything Apple does? Or the fact that OP would
| be willing to criticize something they paid for and
| supposedly identify with?
|
| It's really not fascinating at all. It reads like a perfectly
| level-headed and candid criticism of an ecosystem by someone
| who isn't invested in the success of one particular company.
| It's almost too lucid for HN.
| misnome wrote:
| > while stifling competition
|
| How? Lock-in, sure - but unless you do a lot of market
| gerrymandering (which Epic tried but got laughed out of court),
| how does anything apple do stop people competing?
|
| It's not e.g. paying google large sums of money to avoid making
| its own competitor. Being big isn't itself anticompetitive.
|
| And on this exact topic - there is a whole ecosystem of
| messaging apps that exists. They just have to build their own
| userbase.
| colordrops wrote:
| If you want privacy a de-googled android phone is far better
| than apple.
| jay-barronville wrote:
| I believe this to be true, but to be honest, back when I made
| the switch, I was also considering the convenience factor.
| knd775 wrote:
| Yes, but a truly de-googled Android phone is a huge pain.
| Many apps rely on play services, and the open source
| alternatives still don't fully work.
| colordrops wrote:
| I've been using LineageOS with microg for over 2 years
| without much pain, other than initial setup.
| DeIlliad wrote:
| This is some ways like Youtube and adblock. Apple is completely
| within their right to try to kick Beeper to the curb but I also
| enjoy watching a scrappy company like Beeper try to circumvent
| Apple's attempts to shut them out.
|
| Because of how likely it is to be killed though I don't think I
| shall be adopting it personally.
| supermatt wrote:
| Apples response:
|
| > These techniques posed significant risks to user security and
| privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and
| enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.
|
| Didn't it recently come to light that apple have been "exposing"
| that metadata to government agencies for years? Maybe they should
| stop exposing metadata rather than blaming others for replicating
| their implementation!
|
| How does a 3rd party implementing their API mean there will be
| "unwanted messages, spam and phishing attacks"? Are they accusing
| the 3rd party of doing that, or do they believe 3rd party
| software is inherently inferior to their own (which constantly
| needs security updates).
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Because by abusing an older style auth method, they skip a lot
| of the checks required to start iMessaging people currently.
|
| This methodology can be abused by SMS scammers, phishers, etc
| to easily target the iMessage network that users may often feel
| has a higher default level of trust.
| WendyTheWillow wrote:
| You can't imagine how exposing a new, automatable interface
| might increase spam?
| bdcravens wrote:
| There is no doubt that Google will refund every single customer
| that asks (they are way more flexible about refunds than Apple -
| I've known people who were able to get substantial amount of IAPs
| from games refunded just because they didn't like the results
| they got). I suspect those refunds will be net negative for
| Beeper.
| nikanj wrote:
| I wonder how far I would have to dig before I found the way
| Google is funding Beeper Mini. They are a sacrificial lamb,
| getting lead to slaughter so Google can ask EU regulators to stop
| Apple's anti-competitive actions.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Try as you may, you will not escape the village
|
| https://youtu.be/op7IgFbT8l0?t=194
| bentt wrote:
| The whole green bubble thing with Android SMS on iPhone is a
| problem, but the solution is to get everyone to use a different
| chat app. Apple will never give this up.
|
| Google could be leading that charge and providing a world beating
| chat app that works across all phones and all desktop devices.
| They have every reason to provide the best chat app in the world
| and yank iPhone users over to it. Instead they have given up on
| chat. The Google Hangouts/Meet chat situation is a disaster on
| iPhone and on desktop. They don't even try. It's proof that they
| are lost.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > The whole green bubble thing with Android SMS on iPhone is a
| problem, but the solution is to get everyone to use a different
| chat app. Apple will never give this up.
|
| There are so many competitors in this space, you really can't
| claim it's for lack of trying.
|
| Defaults are powerful, especially for Apple users.
| danieldk wrote:
| It's not just that defaults are powerful, it's the network
| effects. When WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook, there was a
| strong movement in Europe to move to other messengers. But it
| never really got off the ground because everyone is on
| WhatsApp. Trying to live without WhatsApp in some European
| countries only leads to social isolation (a bit like trying
| to live without iMessage in the US).
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| > but the solution is to get everyone to use a different chat
| app
|
| And how do you do that?
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| They sure are trying hard to get sued.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I suspect they are hoping for it and have a rich benefactor
| who's willing to see this fight to the very end, in hopes of
| setting a precedent.
| exabrial wrote:
| Apple is writing their own death sentence here. Beeper Mini's
| case will definitely be used against them when their anti-
| monopoly case inevitably comes about:
|
| 1. Forcing a monopoly when they force-migrated their users to
| iMessage
|
| 2. Maintaining said monopoly by keeping third parties out
|
| Best thing they could do is put third party clients into a MFI
| like program and loads of red tape.
| freedomben wrote:
| Why do you think an anti-monopoly case will ever come? Europe
| has dropped it, and US pretty much everyone in power (and all
| their families/friends) is an iphone user. They're probably
| completely unaware that there's a problem, and even if made
| aware they have positive vibes for Big Gray
| danieldk wrote:
| The EU hasn't dropped it. The consultation period is still
| ongoing, the news was that the EU is only tending towards not
| regulating iMessage, but it is not set in stone yet:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/imessage-will-
| reportedly-g...
|
| It is very much possible that the current kerfuffle has some
| bearing on future regulation.
|
| That said, iMessage is not really big in Europe, Whatsapp is,
| so it's more interesting for the EU to regulate that.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| A case against a monopoly with a minority market share. Good
| luck with that!
| jvolkman wrote:
| As far as I know, Apple has the majority of the market in the
| US where iMessage matters most.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Even if you limit it to the US, they have 56% which is only
| a very small majority. Are you trying to argue that that
| 44% of users not on iOS can't message others because of
| that terrible Apple monopoly? Frankly, that's just
| ridiculous and your fantasy case is so hopelessly going
| nowhere nobody is going to even start it.
| biorach wrote:
| How is it better than, e.g. Whatsapp ?
| znpy wrote:
| I just wish Apple to get into another anti-trust case, ideally by
| the EU, over this.
| sarahintampa wrote:
| fwiw, updating the existing app didn't work. I had to
| uninstall/reinstall. After authenticating with Apple vis Beeper
| Mini, my iPhone says a "Mac now has access to iMessage." (via
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/11/beeper-mini-is-back-in-ope...)
| malwrar wrote:
| Relying on the assumption of an "authorized client" is
| fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism, as
| this Beeper saga demonstrates. A curious 16 year old casually
| figured out how to make a client be "authorized", and a motivated
| party just demonstrated basic interference from Apple can't stop
| it from continuing to practice guerrilla interoperability. Apple
| might be able to sue Beeper out of existence, but lets not
| pretend this approach is any meaningful defense against spam.
| misnome wrote:
| Do we know that beeper wasn't cut off by e.g. an automated spam
| algorithm?
|
| I saw lots of technical discussion in previous threads that
| stated that they were using the same faked hardware ID for all
| messages... that would seem an obvious red flag.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'm dying to know the technical details, but I wouldn't
| advise Beeper to disclose because it will just make it easier
| for Apple to block them.
| modeless wrote:
| Beeper Cloud was running for years before, and Apple released
| a statement at the time they blocked Beeper Mini. This was
| not automated.
| lxgr wrote:
| Beeper Cloud was running on actual Apple hardware until
| October 2023, which is when they switched to the software
| emulation approach that Beeper Mini is also employing.
| modeless wrote:
| Yes, but if Apple's complaint is truly about security
| then they should have blocked it even harder before,
| because the cloud version wasn't E2EE. Their behavior
| reveals that security is not their real concern here.
| lxgr wrote:
| Structurally, the cloud version was you logging into your
| iMessage account on a friend's computer. How could Apple
| possibly prevent that?
|
| I think it actually makes a pretty strong case for Apple
| opening up a better interface that lets people achieve
| the same outcome they clearly desire so much, they'd even
| compromise their own security to achieve it.
| modeless wrote:
| Apple had plenty of ways to detect a datacenter full of
| Mac minis logging into iMessage accounts from all over
| the world, multiple on each machine, with custom software
| automating message sending, which I believe is even open
| source so Apple could look at it.
| lxgr wrote:
| The only thing this really demonstrates is that non-update-able
| software DRM doesn't work and Apple didn't introduce a robust
| hardware attestation mechanism early enough.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Relying on the assumption of an "authorized client" is
| fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism,
| as this Beeper saga demonstrates.
|
| That's fundamentally false given how Apple is a hardware
| company, and going forward they can ship a cryptographically
| secure hardware attestation mechanism. The issue is simply that
| _older_ Apple devices were shipped without this capability, and
| Apple doesn 't want to break them to prohibit Beeper.
|
| But make no mistake, in a few years when those older devices
| are fully deprecated, there is nothing preventing Apple from
| shipping essentially uncrackable hardware attestation.
| wnevets wrote:
| edit: nm, their help page explains it.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| > We--of course--expected a response. What we didn't expect was
| 1984-esque doublespeak. The statement is complete FUD. Beeper
| Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more
| secure. That is a fact.
|
| Is it? Their argument about a potential increase in spam (by
| removing the existing annoyance barrier of signing up to iMessage
| with a phone number before getting full access) is valid. And
| from their perspective, a third party app could be doing anything
| with the messages once unecrypted, despite Beeper's claims to the
| contrary.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's obvious Apple went looking for the first
| 'valid' reason to kill Beeper Mini. I also own a ~~Beepberry~~
| Beepy, so I am a fan. But this isn't FUD at all, this is a
| potential risk to their userbases' privacy (as well as their
| bottom line).
| mike_d wrote:
| > If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to
| metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it
| easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini
| users.
|
| As an iPhone user I would love for them to do this so I can not
| communicate with these users. The green/blue bubble gives me an
| indication of the encryption being used, and presenting a blue
| bubble while the messages are being MITMed (how Beeper works) is
| something I want to be aware of.
| modeless wrote:
| Beeper Mini does not MITM messages. E2EE is maintained
| throughout. More so than iMessage actually, which sends all
| your encryption keys to Apple in the most common configuration
| (iCloud backup). Where's your concern about that?
| mike_d wrote:
| That is not true. iMessage content is encrypted in iCloud
| with keys stored in your keychain only accessible to your
| devices. When you add a new device to your account it learns
| the keys from one of your existing devices and requires
| touch/face ID approval. In an "all devices lost" situation
| the keychain is backed up to iCloud but encrypted using a key
| stored in an HSM that requires authentication using things
| only you know but are never transmitted to Apple using https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protoco...
| modeless wrote:
| You have been misled. The truth is that the iMessage keys
| stored in iCloud are accessible to Apple unless you have
| enabled the non-default Advanced Data Protection (ADP)
| feature. This is clearly documented by Apple themselves[1].
| And even if you do enable it, your messages are still
| accessible to Apple in the iCloud backups of the people you
| are messaging, since they likely didn't enable a non-
| default feature like ADP. Defaults matter!
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
| arilotter wrote:
| Beeper Mini does not MITM messages - it's a reverse engineering
| of how iMessage works, and runs entirely on-device, without
| putting messages thru Beeper's servers. It talks directly to
| Apple and pretends to be an iPhone.
|
| You're thinking of Beeper Cloud, which does iMessage thru a Mac
| Mini in the cloud.
| mike_d wrote:
| Even if it is done on device, the Beeper app is an effective
| MITM on what should be communications between official
| clients. It could have security issues, be logging everything
| to disk, or include a third party analytics SDK that is
| snarfing data for marketing. Like I said, if they want to
| flag the communications as being from an unofficial client I
| am ok with that.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| > Beeper Mini does not MITM messages - it's a reverse
| engineering of how iMessage works, and runs entirely on-
| device, without putting messages thru Beeper's servers. It
| talks directly to Apple and pretends to be an iPhone.
|
| It doesn't matter. It's closed source and not easily audited
| - they could easily just be doing a naive solution and piping
| every message back to themselves after it's decrypted by the
| client.
| sneak wrote:
| iMessage is also closed source, and iOS (as documented by
| Apple) backdoors the encryption in iMessage by including
| the cross-device "Messages in iCloud" endpoint iMessage
| sync keys in the non-e2ee iCloud Backup (as documented
| plainly in Apple's own HT202303).
|
| This means Apple can read the iCloud Backup contents, and
| Apple has the Messages in iCloud device endpoint keys, and
| Apple can decrypt the iMessages sent to or from the device
| in realtime.
|
| iMessage is, in practical terms, not really e2ee.
|
| It's not fair to level these sorts of potential/speculative
| security concerns at Beeper Mini when iMessage's first-
| party implementation has way worse problems that are
| actually documented.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| > It's not fair to level these sorts of
| potential/speculative security concerns at Beeper Mini
| when iMessage's first-party implementation has way worse
| problems that are actually documented.
|
| Apple has a proven track record of not handing over all
| your messages to russian and chinese intelligence,
| something that beeper is almost certainly doing (as their
| business model revolves entirely around MITMing your
| email and chat)
|
| You sound like a fifth columnist.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| > The underlying connection method is open source, for anyone to
| review.
|
| SSPL sure isn't open source and I'm certainly not reviewing this.
| At best it's source available. I'm all for separating the meaning
| of the term from OSI's opinions but this usage misses the mark.
|
| I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Final result: Apple releases official iMessage client for
| android, but messages sent from it show up with a little green
| android icon in the corner. :)
| g0atbutt wrote:
| The funniest outcome with this whole "Apple vs. Beeper" saga
| would be if Apple said, "Fine use the iMessage protocol. We won't
| break interoperability and you can even have full feature
| parity...
|
| BUT... Any messages sent this way will still show up as the
| dreaded "Green Bubble".
|
| (I hope Eric and the Beeper team can pull through!)
| rpmisms wrote:
| If the green bubble (or teal bubble or whatever) works with
| iMessage, I will be happy. It's about the functionality, not
| the status symbol.
|
| For many people, it is about not looking like a brokie to their
| peers, and that's what apple counts on.
| kbf wrote:
| Messages sent via SMS or iMessage already look identical to the
| recipient, the only distinguishing feature is a small header at
| the top of the conversation that says either "Text message" or
| "iMessage".
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| SMS doesn't support emoji reactions, read receipts, typing
| indicators, high quality pictures/video, or groupchats over
| 10 people. These are deal-breaker for anyone that texts
| regularly
| riedel wrote:
| Got myself a apple ID for fun but cannot sign in, as SMS second
| factor fails in Beeper Mini. Wonder if they found another way
| again to detect the 'fraud'.
| oldandboring wrote:
| You're way ahead of me then. Out of curiosity I tried to
| register a new Apple ID to use with the updated app and the
| registration page throws 400 at me no matter what I input.
| issafram wrote:
| At what point does Apple start a lawsuit? I hope they don't, but
| I can't see them ignoring this.
| k310 wrote:
| There ARE alternatives, as posters have noted. In an iMessage to
| an Android user, I shared some information. Android user said
| that I could share the info with third user if I were on
| WhatsApp, but I choose not to use apps owned by companies built
| upon surveillance capitalism, and soon, using customer data to
| train AI. (Which may include Apple). Hmmmmmmm.
|
| Guess what? Signal locks out non-Signal users, WhatsApp locks out
| non-WhatsApp users (AFAICT, I don't use others, and Signal is
| refusing to work on my systems for reasons I don't know, and I
| can actually live well without it)
|
| The bubble with bright white text on a bright green background
| hurts only ME, the Apple user with old eyes, and I have offered
| old Apple gear to friends so we can FaceTime, a nifty way to
| reuse rather than recycle gear.
| magnio wrote:
| Not living in US so it's fun to see people poking at big
| corporations like the mouse-and-cat chase of ad-blockers and
| anti-ad-blockers. Unfortunately, in the end, it is usually the
| big companies that have both the moral and technical high
| grounds, just like YouTube and Reddit did.
|
| Also funny to see HN trashes on Google for their Web Environment
| Integrity while Apple pulling off the biggest attestation scheme
| in history (they even shipped attestation in Safari for a year
| before anyone noticed).
| dishsoap wrote:
| Apple's attestation thing in Safari is currently 'fake' as in
| it doesn't rely on any special hardware device or account on
| Apple's servers (yet) and instead currently works on a
| hackintosh or macOS virtual machine without any special
| configuration. With effort, one could reverse engineer it and
| implement it in other software systems. When they (assuming
| they do) shift it into requiring accounts or special hardware,
| it will be a greater cause for concern.
|
| Edit: This may be misinformation now -- I tested it again and
| it now seems to require an Apple ID account. When I tested a
| month or two ago, I don't remember that being the case.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| This clearly isn't going to be solved through technical means. It
| makes me wonder - if Apple were to stop obstructing
| interoperability, how much the resulting market for competition
| to iMessage and other parts of the walled garden be worth? A
| couple billion dollars? With today's valuations, probably closer
| to trillions.
|
| Why then VCs aren't willing to spend a fraction of that - say a
| couple billion - to invest into a crack team of lawyers and sue
| the shit out of Apple over this issue? When at least one side of
| the suit is a corporation, my understanding is that American
| justice system is basically the game of who can outspend whom.
| Surely enough VCs could outspend Apple on this while still
| securing some probable profit in the end?
|
| Why is this not happening?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| So much of the current tech companies derive at least part of
| their profits out of restricted interoperability. A legal
| precedent allowing adversarial interoperability would be the
| death of any "engagement"-based business model, aka most of
| tech nowadays. Alternatively clients would pop up left and
| right that will strip out all the "engagement" nonsense (as
| well as the spyware/malware), and those will no longer be
| stoppable by legal trolling.
|
| Such a move would completely kill off VC's (already sick)
| golden goose. They would lose more than what they'd win.
| grishka wrote:
| In some countries it's already legal to reverse engineer
| software for the purpose of interoperability.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Some useful history, the AOL/MSN chat wars:
| https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/
|
| AOL finally "won" that one by making a buffer exploit in their
| own client part of the required protocol. Later a court required
| them to allow messaging interop (as part of the Time Warner
| merger). They never implemented it.
| altintx wrote:
| That story has been playing on loop in a dark corner of my
| brain the last few days. It's as close to an identical
| circumstance as I can imagine.
| jorvi wrote:
| Did AOL really win in the end though?
|
| My youth was in the late 90s and 2000s and I don't know a
| single soul that used AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo. I imagine all of them
| must have been hoping for the reverse at that point, access to
| MSN.
| hattmall wrote:
| Everybody was on all three for me. That being AIM and ICQ
| then later MSN. I don't remember much Yahoo messenger usage,
| just gaming on Yahoo, but everyone was on ICQ.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Yeah, what? I grew up (in the same era) using AIM and Yahoo,
| ICQ was a little before my prime. Everyone I talk to about
| those days used them as well. MSN was fine but AIM and Yahoo
| were where it was at for the bulk of my early years of
| instant messaging with friends. At one point a friend even
| made me an AIM account because I was using MSN and they
| wanted to chat with me but didn't want to do it through MSN.
|
| Obviously just 1 anecdote but I just wanted to share that my
| experience and your experience were dramatically different.
| jorvi wrote:
| Perhaps it's geographically correlated, I'm from The
| Netherlands, which would be West+Central Europe in terms of
| cultural zeitgeist. Would map neatly to the iMessage /
| WhatsApp divide too, if for different reasons.
| ftmch wrote:
| Also from NL, was using ICQ at first then everyone
| switched to MSN. I do remember using AIM a little bit to
| chat with some Americans. This was the late 90's.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Like today, it was highly regional. The talk about Beeper
| Mini sounds ridiculous in the UK because literally nobody
| uses iMessage.
|
| IIRC AIM was popular in America and MSN was popular in
| Europe.
| manmal wrote:
| My friends were all on ICQ and MSN, ca 2001-2007 was when I
| heavily used those.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Y!M was used by niches as is Telegram to Discord, I found.
|
| Unless you actually sign up you tend not to find anyone using
| it. But when you do, it all appears out of nowhere.
|
| Same as when you buy a car and suddenly everyone has the same
| colour/model.
|
| I used Y!M for NeoPets stuff when I was 14, and MSN for
| school but never ICQ or AIM.
|
| Those time's were specially magical.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Thank you. I've been needing to read something retro like that
| for a while now. You scratches that itch.
| js2 wrote:
| > Messages will be sent and received via your email address
| rather than phone number. [...] Even worse, when iPhone customers
| added an Android phone number to an existing iMessage secure
| encrypted group chat, the Messages app would by default switch
| the entire group chat to using unencrypted, unsecure SMS.
|
| These two Messages features combine to create a terrible UX. When
| someone starts a group chat in Messages and includes a single
| non-Apple device, it converts the chat into a group MMS at which
| point anyone in the group who was added by Apple ID email address
| starts receiving the messages via email with text messages
| arriving as text attachments to those emails.
|
| The from/to addresses look like 2345678901@domain with domains
| such as mypixmessages.com, mms.att.net, mypixmessages.com,
| icmms1.sun5.lightsurf.net, etc.
|
| It doesn't matter if you have a phone # associated with your
| Apple ID in addition to an email address. If the person who
| starts the chat accidentally uses your email address (which
| Messages makes both very easy to do accidentally and very
| difficult to notice because Messages hides the actual address
| behind the contact name) and there's a single non-Apple device in
| the group, you get to be on the receiving end of a barrage of
| emails from which you cannot unsubscribe.
|
| When Messages converts a group to MMS, it really needs to make it
| obvious which recipients are email addresses and which are phone
| #s... it should either not hide the information behind the
| contact name and/or for cases where a contact has both a phone #
| and email addresses, it should favor the phone #.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Sounds like a great UX to me!!!
|
| /sarcasm
| bdavbdav wrote:
| I almost forgot that you could MMS to email addresses. Crazy
| times of old.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| You can also usually send a SMS by sending an email to your
| provider, ie 9495551212@vtext.com, which is the poor man's
| way to wire up alerting to text the on call if you've yet to
| implement or afford a solution with proper sms/twilio support
|
| https://www.verizonwireless.com/pdfs/user_guides/How_To_Txt_.
| ..
| 98codes wrote:
| Spammers haven't, that's for damn sure
| pathartl wrote:
| When I was in high school and not allowed to have a cell
| phone, I had to use email via Gmail in my PSP's web browser
| in order to message people. I relied on these addresses so
| heavily and many people gave me weird looks for "oh btw, I
| need to know which carrier you have so I can get the right
| email address"
| technothrasher wrote:
| When I was in high school and not rich enough to have a
| cell phone, I had to wait until midnight for my BBS to dial
| the upstream FidoNet host and exchange messages.
| hornban wrote:
| From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX
| nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional
| design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't
| been solved. They want the experience to suffer when somebody
| outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to create social
| pressure for the outsider to change.
|
| The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be
| forcing Apple into supporting RCS to fix the situation, Google
| has resisted every effort to extend RCS to their own Voice
| platform.
|
| It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile, because
| they really could be a real middle ground for the rest of us
| that just want interoperability.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Let's imagine it is an engineering problem; how do they solve
| it? Give a disclaimer that "your communications are not
| encrypted" and turn the bubbles maybe light green?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Wouldn't entire thread need to be light green. Wouldn't
| android users not see the Tapbacks/threads in same visual
| UX. It makes sense to turn it off entirely than to deliver
| a subpar and confusing UX
| rezonant wrote:
| Actually both tapbacks (for a long time) and reply
| threads (since the latest iOS release) are both supported
| in MMS group conversations. The iPhone will send a
| tapback as an SMS message such as "Liked 'contents of
| message that was liked'" and other iPhones convert that
| back into a tapback. Google Messages also does this (and
| in fact did it before Apple did). iOS does not convert
| Google Messages style tapback messages into tapbacks
| though, so iPhone users only have half of the solution.
|
| As for reply threads, when it's used it creates a lot of
| confusion for non iPhone users and it's not clear how
| Google Messages and other texting clients can fix it
| post-hoc. I'm not even sure how iOS reconstitutes it--
| perhaps Apple sends some message metadata on the side via
| iMessage?
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| I hate all of this. How depressing. As always, the actual
| _people_ in the system wear all the cost.
| tiltowait wrote:
| iOS does attempt to properly inline Android tapbacks and
| has done so since IIRC iOS 16. It's not perfect, though:
| if the tapback isn't one Messages recognizes, then you
| get it in message form, e.g. ":smile: to 'Have a nice
| day!'" (only with the actual emoji). It also fails _all_
| tapbacks if it 's an image, presumably since it can't
| know which image is reacted to.
|
| Hopefully the experience is improved when they implement
| RCS, though I'm not sure if tapbacks are part of the
| spec.
| hornban wrote:
| > how do they solve it?
|
| Release iMessage on Android. If there is a concern that it
| wouldn't be secure with Google controlling it, then they
| could put it out on F-Droid, which would simultaneously
| prove that they're serious and also undermine Google's own
| efforts at controlling the culture war.
| mthoms wrote:
| But then they wouldn't be able to claim that alternative
| app stores are bad for consumers.
| antiframe wrote:
| The presupposition was "let's assume it was an
| engineering problem, how would they solve it". Obviously
| we can revert it back to a business choice rather than
| engineering problem rather trivially.
| stouset wrote:
| Part of the iMessage security model is that devices are
| attested. Without this, the service as-is becomes widely
| open to spam and other forms of abuse.
|
| Yes, there are other solutions to the spam problem. They
| are nowhere near as effective as what I've witnessed as
| an iMessage user so far. I regularly get spam chats on
| WhatsApp and Signal.
| nelox wrote:
| Apple would prefer you buy an iPhone.
| barrkel wrote:
| That's not an engineering solution.
| kergonath wrote:
| > From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the
| UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an
| intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem
| that hasn't been solved. They want the experience to suffer
| when somebody outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to
| create social pressure for the outsider to change.
|
| This makes no sense. What's the point in degrading the UX
| without telling the user 1) why the UX is degraded, 2) what
| they can do about it? If the point is to steer people towards
| iDevices, why is it degrading the UX specifically for these
| people? Honestly, this sounds like a knee jerk reaction where
| you are convinced that Apple is bad and are looking for
| confirmation instead of trying to actually think rationally.
|
| > It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile,
| because they really could be a real middle ground for the
| rest of us that just want interoperability.
|
| They could not. They were neither here nor there in terms of
| platform use and applications availability and poured tons of
| money into it for no result. Nothing in their behaviour at
| the time showed that they even understood the problem they
| were trying to solve.
| shados wrote:
| > What's the point in degrading the UX without telling the
| user 1) why the UX is degraded, 2) what they can do about
| it? I
|
| Because 1) everyone in the Apple world knows, and 2) they
| want the answer to "What can be done about it" to be "Shame
| your peers into switching to an iPhone".
|
| And it works. A little too well, especially with younger
| folks.
| wharvle wrote:
| > From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the
| UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an
| intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem
| that hasn't been solved.
|
| I'd be sure this was why, if Google hadn't once tried to get
| me to use a combo SMS/MMS + some-other-Google-messaging-
| service app on my phone (by replacing the normal SMS app on
| OS upgrade--this was on a Nexus phone) that was so broken and
| janky it was unusable.
|
| Like, it is for-sure the case that a rich, huge, "smart"
| company can fuck this up a lot worse than Apple has. iMessage
| is _easily_ good enough that I haven 't had to go find some
| alternative SMS app, at least.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| > The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be
| forcing Apple into supporting RCS to fix the situation,
| Google has resisted every effort to extend RCS to their own
| Voice platform.
|
| Google Voice has been in maintenance mode for years. It's
| unlikely that Google resisted adding RCS, but rather there's
| been no effort to actually do it.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It hardly matters, almost everyone on earth uses WhatsApp for
| group chats.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'm not American and I've never seen anyone use WhatsApp. I
| only use it to text my family back in Morocco. Facebook
| Messenger is even more universal than WhatsApp in my
| experience
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Sure, that one is popular too. My point was that almost no
| one uses iMessage group chats.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| That's obviously not true or we wouldn't be having many
| of these discussions.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It's clearly a US vs everyone else thing.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Agreed that I don't get the entire "iMessages is
| essential". I also have never seen it been used, I'm a
| zoomer and most of my friends use iPhones, but with
| snapchat or anything else for group messages. Maybe it's
| a generational thing!
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Definitely not the case for Americans
| kergonath wrote:
| It depends entirely on your social circles. That's why all
| these discussions about $some_platform being completely
| useless because of course everyone uses $other_platform are
| completely pointless. I haven't seen any of these in which
| there was any useful information or even a hint of looking
| things in perspective. It's only people telling everyone
| else that no platform is relevant except for their pet app.
| javawizard wrote:
| Source? Of the many group chats I'm involved in, exactly one
| of them uses WhatsApp.
|
| (I'm American, for context.)
| dontlaugh wrote:
| In the US, sure. Very few of the people in Earth live
| there.
| lxgr wrote:
| Quite a few people commenting here live there.
|
| You also seem to be forgetting the most-populous country
| in the world - no WhatsApp there either.
|
| Between China and the US, that's already 20% of the
| global population unlikely to be using WhatsApp for most
| of their messaging.
| kergonath wrote:
| But very few of the people on Earth live where you live,
| either. What's the point?
|
| People I know in India tend to use WhatsApp. People I
| know in Europe tend to use whatever shit is popular where
| they live. Discord, Telegram, FB Messenger, iMessage for
| those with iPhones, SMSes as a default, you name it.
| Again, what's the point?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| WhatsApp is by far the most popular option overall and in
| Europe too. Facebook Messenger and WeChat are also
| popular.
|
| iMessage is only used in the US.
| abrouwers wrote:
| But how many of apples users live there?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Not that many, considering iPhones are popular in several
| European countries and in China.
|
| I really don't think Apple consider iMessage exclusivity
| that important.
| lxgr wrote:
| > I really don't think Apple consider iMessage
| exclusivity that important.
|
| Then you missed the part where Apple executives
| explicitly said so in writing:
|
| > "the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple
| universe app is iMessage . . . iMessage amounts to
| serious lock-in." Schiller stated that "moving iMessage
| to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email
| illustrates why."
|
| https://www.phonearena.com/news/imessage-locks-ios-users-
| int...
| lxgr wrote:
| Well, the most and third most populous countries on Earth
| don't.
| dbbk wrote:
| I live in the UK and have not seen an MMS conversation in about
| 15 years. This is crazy.
| spdustin wrote:
| > "We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that
| exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage."
|
| They never addressed that part of Apple's statement. I don't see
| how they can survive without doing so.
| etchalon wrote:
| At some point, Apple is just going to send them a cease and
| desist.
| dlivingston wrote:
| > From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid
| Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it
| was downloaded by more than 100,000 people.
|
| These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the
| millions.
| shmatt wrote:
| Every consumer facing tech company with a paid product
| (physical or digital) I've worked at had Android as <10% of
| conversions. This includes just retail browsing from their
| phone shopping. Android users make no one money
|
| Unless they're trying to join iOS group messages I guess
| erohead wrote:
| Our conversion from download to paid subscription is hovering
| around 50% fwiw
| orliesaurus wrote:
| congrats eric, that's HUGE! A real pain point y'all are
| solving - long live Beeper!
| shawnc wrote:
| Really shows to me why so many developers end up focusing so
| much more on the iOS versions of their apps. I would have
| expected the same.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I don't believe for one microsecond that those numbers would
| qualify as the "fastest growing paid Android application launch
| in history". I do believe that their numbers are that low - I
| don't know a single person who would pay to... what, have text
| messages appear in a different colour on other peoples' phones?
| zulln wrote:
| Edit, forget what I said. I missed the keyword 'paid'.
|
| Threads earlier this year apparently got 70 million user signed
| up the first 48h. I would assume this leads to at least >1m
| Android users?
|
| First example I came to think about, might be much better
| examples out there. Regardless, something with "more than
| 100,000 people" in 48h is probably not the fastest growing
| Android app.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/07/tech/meta-social-media-do...
| lambda wrote:
| Note: "paid."
| tedivm wrote:
| If it was a free app sure, but in the paid category those
| numbers drop quite a bit.
| sammyteee wrote:
| Anyone got a referral code?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| As far as I understand, in order to talk to Apple iMessage
| services/backend (and all auth pieces) you need a "legit" Apple
| ID and legit Apple hardware model #s / serial #s
|
| If you don't have that, how are they able to get auth tokens /
| send messages around without basically "exploiting a hidden hack
| that might get patched"?
| beatboxrevival wrote:
| The hackintosh community has tools to generate those #s. e.g.
| https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Post-Install/universal/i...
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| But why is it Apple's responsibility to accept a non-
| legit/unknown serial #?
| haswell wrote:
| > _But why is it Apple 's responsibility to accept a non-
| legit/unknown serial #?_
|
| I don't think anyone is arguing that it's Apple's
| responsibility to accept fake serial numbers.
|
| The serial number is an implementation detail and not the
| core issue, which is Apple's intentional degradation of the
| non-iMessage experience, and their stance against
| interoperability.
|
| If this was all about security, they could accept something
| other than an Apple serial #, and provide a UX that makes
| it clear the user is interacting with a non-Apple user.
| This would address most spam/abuse issues.
|
| But we know that this is about lock-in and not security.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I don't think anyone is arguing that it's Apple's
| responsibility to accept fake serial numbers.
|
| Can we confirm if that's what is happening here or not?
| How else is Beeper Mini able to work given Apple's
| requirement "iMessage auth + read/write requires
| valid_serial_number"?
| haswell wrote:
| The "How Beeper Mini Works" post from a few days ago
| doesn't mention the serial number, so I don't know.
|
| But whether this is happening or not is immaterial to the
| broader philosophical issues being raised.
|
| For sake of argument, let's say they're faking a serial
| number to make the app work. How does that change the
| impact of Apple's anti-interoperability stance?
|
| Again, if the real issue is security, nothing stops Apple
| from providing a secure alternative. And again, this
| takes us back to: this isn't about security.
| asylteltine wrote:
| It's not, and they don't. This is a cat and mouse game.
| Apple is free to block these and people are free to keep
| trying to get around it. Everyone should be acting in good
| faith
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > It's not, and they don't.
|
| > they don't
|
| They (Apple) don't accept requests without a valid serial
| #, but Beeper Mini is working (for users without
| iDevices), so there's some kind of exploit, no?
| arilotter wrote:
| AFAIK they are using a reverse-engineered Apple binary that
| does the real iMessage - and since Apple doesn't update apps
| outside of iOS updates, Apple can't, in theory, patch it
| without also breaking iMessage on older iPhones.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I'd have assumed there'd be something more going on in
| iMessage, like each device has a private key that needs to
| sign the messages, and Apple can ban any private keys that
| leak -- but in theory couldn't they even be prevented from
| leaking by secure enclave?
|
| I'm just speculating on what would have made sense, but I'm
| guessing that's not how it's working since Beeper Mini
| exists. It begs the question: why isn't that the way they do
| it?
| zappb wrote:
| Messages has existed longer than the Secure Enclave has.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Secure Enclave doesn't have to exist for the rest of the
| system to work as I described. (And once Secure Enclave
| does exist, it can be used to further secure the private
| keys generated after that date.)
| brigade wrote:
| You're asking why cryptographic attestation isn't a
| requirement to use a service that still supports >10-year
| old x86 Macs?
| zeven7 wrote:
| Yeah? Asymmetric cryptography has been around a lot
| longer than a decade.
| brigade wrote:
| That's the foundation of attestation, not attestation
| itself. Macs did not ship with a TPM, and had no
| facilities for hardware chain-of-trust until the T2 chip
| in 2017.
| zeven7 wrote:
| But you don't have to have everything in place to do the
| basics. Use private keys stored normally on the device.
| If they get stolen or leaked, brick iMessage on those
| devices and show a message saying, "Your system has been
| compromised and can't use iMessage until you visit an
| Apple Store or call 1-800-..." Then just hand out a new
| private key at the store or over the phone with little
| friction, but track which customers are given new keys
| and how often. If there's a trend of someone receiving a
| bunch of new keys, investigate them before issuing more.
|
| Or just allow a user to obtain a new private key via
| their iCloud account and associate the key with that
| account so that it can't be used to send messages unless
| you're signed into that account.
|
| Newer devices that can protect their keys don't need
| that, and you phase the old process out over time.
| grishka wrote:
| Maybe they generate legit-looking fake device serial numbers,
| that just happen to match real devices most of the time?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How does Apple not know a database of real serial #s that
| match products it has sold? Why would an API that goes to the
| lengths of expecting a serial # not validate and instead
| accept a fake "real-looking" serial # instead of a known-
| matched-in-the-database real serial #?
| rezonant wrote:
| Well, Apple does not actually know which serial numbers
| have been sold. You can still buy Apple products outside of
| an Apple store, and even at an Apple Store, knowing which
| serials are sold is logistically difficult.
|
| They could probably implement a process at Apple stores but
| to do it for third party stores would be more difficult. To
| avoid simply adding a step for a user to claim a serial
| number as sold when they set up their Hackintosh or
| HackiPhone (can we coin this?), you'd probably need a way
| to authenticate as the store when you mark one off. But
| there's nothing stopping stores who have excess inventory
| from selling it off at cost or even a discount when a
| particular product isn't doing well- and at that point
| those purchasers will need to be able to mark off serial
| numbers when _they_ sell those devices.
|
| It's not impossible but it's not terribly likely, at least
| any time soon.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Well, Apple does not actually know which serial numbers
| have been sold.
|
| What about "serial numbers manufactured?"
|
| I'm going to guess "Beeper Mini stealing manufactured-
| but-not-yet-sold serial #s for themselves" will be shut
| down super quickly. If you are a user who finally gets a
| device with a serial # "stolen" by Beeper Mini... that
| seems like bad luck/bad user experience?
| criddell wrote:
| I wonder why Apple lawyers don't go after Beeper with the CFAA?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe they will... but, also, I bet they can change their
| systems faster than the court system.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > CFAA
|
| Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
| dishsoap wrote:
| It would be a mis-use of the act.
| kevinsync wrote:
| Maybe this came up in the earlier threads (announcement, outage)
| so I apologize if it's been discussed ...
|
| This project is fantastic. The hacker spirit is in full force,
| and I love a good David and Goliath story. However, all the
| comments about demanding interoperability and protocols keep
| confusing me -- I don't consider APNS a protocol (like TCP
| anyways), it's also not incidental, extra header space to stuff
| data into in an existing message being transported (ala early
| SMS), and it's not an open relay for everybody to use. It's
| Apple's private message delivery system!
|
| Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using
| Apple products?
|
| I'm not licking boots over here, just genuinely curious. I
| wouldn't want to set up a mail server and then foot the bill and
| assume liability for whatever the hell goes through it from
| random people on the internet.
|
| And trust me, I'm all for civil disobedience and sticking it to
| the man with clever technical solutions, but given the (probable)
| massive costs of operating APNS, Apple's got every right in the
| world to close any gaps in their system and keep kicking Beeper
| out.. and Beeper can keep trying to get back in.. but I just
| can't wrap my head around making the assumption that APNS access
| is somehow a fundamental right that we're all being denied.
| grishka wrote:
| > Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not
| using Apple products?
|
| Network effects.
| nine_k wrote:
| This would be "enticed", not "entitled". What a user is
| entitled for is listed in the ToS; who did not accept them,
| is not entitled. Not necessarily forbidden or blocked, but
| any bets and guarantees are off.
| grishka wrote:
| If many people around you are participating in something
| but you're left out because of your phone OS choice, you do
| still feel _entitled_ to participate in that by whatever
| means necessary. It 's about the social aspects more than
| anything else. See other comments here for people
| apparently getting shamed and left out of group chats for
| having wrong color bubbles.
|
| Remember Clubhouse, and how it was iOS-only when it was
| actually popular for a month? I felt _entitled_ to build an
| unofficial Android app for it because so many people were
| on there doing interesting things, and so many _other_
| people were complaining loudly about it being iOS-only.
|
| FOMO is a powerful force.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| Uhhhh, what does APNS have to do with any of this?
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but people want iMessage to be an open
| protocol. You're talking about APNS, the "apple push
| notification service", which is something completely different
| than what beeper is doing and what folks are asking for. The
| message schema, format, types, encoding, max length, delivery
| guarantees, etc, like jabber/xmpp [1]. Push notifications are
| sent for iMessage, but that isn't what people want to be turned
| into an open protocol
|
| [1] https://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc6120.html
| ranie93 wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/security/how-imessage-
| sends-...
| ddoolin wrote:
| https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works
| rezonant wrote:
| APNs is used as the backbone of iMessage, it's not an
| optional component. It is not just used for the push
| notifications you see on your phone, but for the actual
| delivery of the messages.
| maxwell wrote:
| > Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not
| using Apple products?
|
| Vertical tying.
| ksherlock wrote:
| Apparently, blue bubble envy is a thing people have. The beeper
| home page mentions blue bubbles 9 times (and not being a green
| bubble twice). WSJ reported in August that 87% of teens have an
| iPhone so anybody with an android or a green bubble therefore
| stands out and is a loser.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/why-teens-hate-androi...
| dawnerd wrote:
| It's not just about that. I want to be able to use my Apple
| message id on other devices.
| hifreq wrote:
| I want to be able to send messages from Signal to WhatsApp!
| Alas, I am not entitled to that.
| artyn wrote:
| I think people wouldn't mind the green bubble if it had a
| good contrast ratio.
| fatnoah wrote:
| My son had an Android phone. I don't think anyone considered
| him to be a loser, but he did get very sick of everyone why
| he had a green bubble.
| therein wrote:
| I have a green bubble because I don't want to live in a
| walled garden. I'd like to think there are still youth
| social circles where that'd get you clout.
| raydev wrote:
| I'm shocked your son and his friends were using iMessage,
| even in the US. My teens are using Snapchat/IG/TikTok
| mostly for messaging.
|
| iMessage or SMS is exclusively how they communicate with
| their parents.
| carstenhag wrote:
| On the Beeper website it sayss they use "blue bubble" to
| refer to iMessage.
| babl-yc wrote:
| Selfishly I'm most excited about this project as a
| demonstration that secure and reliable communication across
| platforms is pretty straightforward. The only blocker is that
| Apple doesn't want it to exist.
|
| If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they
| would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication
| with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise.
|
| And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with enough
| permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage alternative.
| oneplane wrote:
| Don't WhatsApp and Signal already do exactly that?
| rezonant wrote:
| > And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with
| enough permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage
| alternative.
|
| Not an Apple user, but I imagine even though there's _some_
| allowances for third party messaging, there 's a lot of
| holes. For instance, what happens if I ask Siri to send a
| message to a specific contact from my Apple Watch. Will it
| send it over Signal if I've added a Signal address to their
| contact card and went the mile to set that as the default
| messaging app for that user? Curious.
| oneplane wrote:
| While I don't mix text and voice control that often
| myself, it appears to be fully supported: https://faq.wha
| tsapp.com/1803878309981730/?locale=sv_SE&cms_... as for
| what actions an app supports, that appears to vary based
| on what the developer included.
| applecrazy wrote:
| > If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest,
| they would want their users to have encrypted and fast
| communication with all devices, through an open protocol or
| otherwise.
|
| yeah that protocol exists. it's called RCS and it is coming
| to ios soon. imo apple is allowed to gate imessage behind
| ios-only if RCS support is a thing
| kamilner wrote:
| RCS has no end-to-end encryption in the standard, though.
| That's a non-standard google messages extension. I think a
| better example would be the cross-device messengers like
| signal/whatsapp/etc.
| rezonant wrote:
| Google is slacking here and I hope Apple's involvement in
| RCS will help to move this forward. Samsung Messages also
| does not support Google's E2EE even though it supports
| RCS and pretty much all of the user-facing features
| Google Messages provides. Based on Google's whitepaper
| [1] about their E2EE support, I imagine it's because of
| the identity service they use for key exchange being
| centralized and internal (when really the identity
| service a contact uses should be an RCS capability in the
| extended contact system [RCS terminology here], and they
| should interoperate).
|
| [1]
| https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
| LelouBil wrote:
| I believe encryption is not in the RCS spec yet.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| > The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.
|
| This is my main source of excitement around this project. The
| existence of this project shows that there is no technical
| reason it can't exist. So, what _is_ the reason it doesn 't
| exist? Exactly what you said: Apple thinks it is in its best
| interest not to.
| k8svet wrote:
| That couldn't possibly have ever been in doubt, though.
| dhosek wrote:
| There's also the fact that iMessages have a cost to them.
| An individual message might not amount to much, but
| millions of them? Apple is hosting the computing to manage
| the delivery of iMessages. Should they provide that free of
| charge to the world out of the goodness of their heart?
| kevinsync wrote:
| As of iOS 6.1 (2013), Apple said APNS had delivered over
| 4 trillion notifications already. A 2018 paper [0]
| claimed (with an admittedly-small sample size) that
| people receive on average 56 notifications a day
| (delivered, not necessarily interacted with). It's almost
| 2024. Even going off those old numbers, assuming 2
| billion active devices [1], APNS would be delivering
| close to 41 TRILLION messages a year, and likely growing.
|
| That's a lot of pepperoni, guys. Expensive pepperoni.
| Just some food for thought.
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3229434.3229445 [0]
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1383887/number-of-
| apple-... [1]
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not
| using Apple products?
|
| I hereby demand that Google stop making changes to YouTube that
| prevent ad blockers from working.
|
| Or more to the point, I should have the right to sell hacked
| access to Microsoft's Office 365 servers to end users and
| Microsoft must not take any action that interferes in those
| user's access.
|
| That's reasonable, right?
| ehvatum wrote:
| I hereby demand that Apple stop supporting email
| interoperability with non iCloud users. The current
| situation, where the iCloud email users enjoy first class
| communication with gmail users, is tantamount to theft.
|
| That's reasonable, of course.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| That does not seem like it follow from the person you are
| replying to's examples. Pretty much nothing is about
| removing functionality?
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I am an Apple user. I've owned more iPhones and MacBooks than I
| can remember.
|
| I am the one who foots the bill for iMessage and APNS.
|
| I want to be able to message my friends with Androids with the
| same ease as I do my friends with iPhones.
|
| I also would like to be able to access my messages when I run
| Asahi Linux on my MacBook.
| dotBen wrote:
| Use Signal. Get your friends to do so. What you are
| describing is a multi-platform ecosystem so don't rely on one
| of the platform vendors to enable something for everyone
| else.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Or better, use matrix/element if you can (the backbone
| technology of Beeper). It's an open protocol not beholden
| to one central server (Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord)
| that could go out of business, get bought, or change their
| usage policy at any time.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Yep, its really a lose-lose for everyone except Apple. Apple
| could even release a client that doesn't allow
| Android<->Android iMessage and I doubt many Android users
| would care. Personally, I just want a decent messaging
| experience and I would be willing to jump through the extra
| hoop of downloading another app even if my iPhone using
| contacts aren't willing to.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > It's Apple's private message delivery system!
|
| In the US, where democratic principles govern and capitalism
| drives the economy, the regulation of corporations emerges as a
| necessary practice. This approach rests on the understanding
| that while corporations are essential for economic growth, they
| must operate within a framework that prioritizes the public's
| interest.
|
| In a democracy, every entity, including corporations, should
| answer to the people. Corporations wield significant influence
| and power, and without oversight, this power could be used in
| ways that harm the broader society.
|
| Corporations should reflect the values of the society in which
| they operate and not undermine social, environmental, and
| ethical standards set by the democratically elected government.
| Regulation of corporations is not about impeding economic
| growth but about guiding it in a direction that is beneficial
| for all members of society.
| vlozko wrote:
| This is a wonderful speech full of noble platitudes. None of
| this actually answers the question of why Apple (or really
| anyone) should let anyone have free and open access to
| something they paid and keep paying a lot to create, deploy,
| maintain, and iterate on. It's their stuff, not the public's.
| Nobody should expect corporations to be charities.
| danaris wrote:
| Or, to expand a bit:
|
| If Apple should be expected to open up iMessage, then why
| shouldn't Facebook be expected to allow interoperability
| with Messenger, and Telegram and Signal forced to open
| those up, too?
|
| Or, if you wish to take it a slightly different way: Why
| shouldn't the New York Times be expected to give everyone a
| copy of their paper for free? Information and good
| journalism are a public good, after all.
|
| Why shouldn't pharmaceutical companies be expected to make
| all life-saving medications available for free?
|
| Why shouldn't ISPs be expected to make Internet access
| available to all for free?
| edrxty wrote:
| I mean, we could structure our society so that everything
| wasn't arbitrarily gated but that would be _gasp_
| socialism.
|
| Also, Telegram and Signal are already open and can be
| bridged from anything to anything so yeah, we should
| force Messenger and Imessage to accept, at a minimum,
| bridging as well.
| danaris wrote:
| To be honest, I personally agree that we should be
| forcing at least _some_ of these things for the common
| good (and, to the extent necessary, funding them with
| significantly-more-progressive taxes). My point is
| primarily that it 's not particularly logical to single
| out Apple for this treatment if that's your principle.
|
| Good to know about Telegram and Signal--I don't use or
| know much about them. IMNSHO, my argument still holds
| even removing them from the equation.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| We force companies to incur costs for the public's benefit
| all the time. In special cases we even require them to
| serve loss generating customers as a condition of
| operation. No one is forced to operate a power company, but
| if you do you are bound to provide power to customers
| regardless of their individual profitability. Similarly,
| dominant vertically-integrated messaging systems could be
| required to provide interoperability at a reasonable charge
| (or even no charge!). Apple could then decide whether or
| not they want to operate a system under those terms.
| nine_k wrote:
| OK! Let's assume you've built a water delivery system, a
| series of pipes. You attach anyone who buys a licensed
| faucet, and collect a modest monthly payment, as a typical
| utility would do. You use these funds to cover the operation
| costs of the pipe system.
|
| Your pipes use a standard threaded connector.
|
| If somebody attaches to your pipes without buying your
| licensed faucet and without paying, just due to the
| interoperability of threaded pipes, do you have the right to
| disconnect them, and rework your pipe connectors in a way
| that prevents unpaid connections in the future? If not, why?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Any sane company with the goal of making money from
| operating a service would just meter water from a device
| they own and charge a reasonable fee. Most of the people
| complaining would be completely fine with Apple charging a
| reasonable fee for Android access to iMessage. A system
| like yours would only make sense if your goals had nothing
| to do with covering the costs of operating the service, and
| were instead growing and maintaining your licensed faucet
| marketshare. Some people might think that isn't in the
| public's benefit and want to change the law. In the case of
| water services we already have, and the licensed faucet
| scheme would likely be illegal basically everywhere in the
| US.
| beejiu wrote:
| It's my understanding that in the European Union, the new
| Digital Markets regulations will require interoperability. It's
| still not 100% what it will cover, but it could become a
| requirement.
| oneplane wrote:
| As far as I could find, the text suggests that only applies
| to market giants (i.e. Meta with WhatsApp and Facebook
| Messenger). iMessage is not even breaking the top 5 in the
| EU. It's not even in the top 5 world wide, and even in the US
| it's only somewhere in position 4 or 5. If they go for
| absolute numbers (i.e. X million users) instead of market
| share that might be different, but it's unlikely to really be
| relevant to the EU considering from a user's perspective it's
| already interoperable (messages sent on one device end up on
| the other device, even if it's technically a mix of SMS, MMS
| and iMessage - that part is not really relevant).
|
| I think the only source of all this iMessage this that and
| the other comes from parts of American society where they
| value the color of a chat bubble. Ironically that value has
| nothing to do with iMessage and just to do with "this persion
| I am chatting with can afford an iPhone", which in turn is
| what people appear to value.
|
| In countries where iMessage is not really used, it doesn't
| matter at all. I would be surprised if most users would even
| know about different chat bubble colours and what they mean.
| danaris wrote:
| It's already been made public that iMessage will not
| (currently) be covered under this.
| realusername wrote:
| iMessage is pretty much dead in the EU though so I doubt the
| EU regulators will ask for interoperability.
| phonon wrote:
| You could say the same thing about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)
| fahhem wrote:
| Samba is a protocol, Microsoft doesn't have any costs
| associated with more users of it. GP is asking about APNS,
| which involves Apple servers and therefore costs Apple to
| handle more requests, however minimal per individual
| request/message
| phonon wrote:
| Support costs for Microsoft definitely go up.
| jpc0 wrote:
| Explain your perspective on this. Here is a probing
| question.
|
| How does support costs for Microsoft go up when I
| communicate from my linux workstation to my linux server
| using SMB implemented by Samba.
| macNchz wrote:
| I think Samba was my first introduction to the idea that
| using a non-official/reverse-engineered implementation of
| something to piggyback into a closed ecosystem may not
| actually be preferable to either shunning that ecosystem
| entirely, or just buying into it. I loved it in concept, but
| in practice not so much.
| segasaturn wrote:
| >Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not
| using Apple products?
|
| Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked into
| Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any other
| reason.
|
| This language about "entitlement" feels like when Google
| complains about people using adblockers on YT - I don't care
| because they're both $2T corporations, and the only
| "entitlement" I see is the way Apple and Google think they're
| entitled to my money and my data.
| bogantech wrote:
| > Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked
| into Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any
| other reason.
|
| You can't do that now with SMS and a plethora of other
| messaging apps?
| abrouwers wrote:
| I think the "send my grandmother non-pixelated photos of my
| kid using the default messaging app" is a fair ask.
| selectodude wrote:
| She doesn't have an email address? You're not in a walled
| garden, just self host it and send her a link.
| segasaturn wrote:
| You're really suggesting that Android users go back to
| 1996 just to talk to their friends and relatives who use
| iPhones?
| rezonant wrote:
| Yes! All I hear when entitlement comes up is "Why do you feel
| entitled to text message your iPhone friends if you don't use
| an iPhone?"
| toss1 wrote:
| because there _IS_ an open SMS standard, and Apple has
| hijacked all their phones to use iMessage in it 's closed
| ecosystem, saying to the rest of the world: "Go Fork
| Yourselves".
|
| So, right back at ya, Apple. If you cannot make it by
| distinguishing your products on their _MERITS_ vs the
| amount of lock-in you can generate, I feel no reason to
| help protect your brand, or access to it
| raydev wrote:
| Why are you entitled to use Apple's messaging servers without
| paying for access?
| wmf wrote:
| People are willing to pay but Apple won't take their money.
| whycome wrote:
| Apple hijacked SMS. You can't CHOOSE to send SMS. If your phone
| is tied to a computer for a shared imessage account, if you're
| outside with your phone alone (while computer is online) the
| phone cannot receive text messages. (The sender ios device
| presumes 'success' in sending the message because it is
| received by the computer. It does not have the ability to send
| just sms).
|
| So, i'm all for anything that shakes up messaging and maybe
| returns some of it to users.
| marvy wrote:
| you can choose; there's an option buried in settings
| somewhere
| jmkni wrote:
| I mean you can literally just set the iMessage toggle to
| 'Off' on your phone
|
| It's not even buried. Settings -> Messages -> iMessage == Off
| jb1991 wrote:
| > You can't CHOOSE to send SMS
|
| You can turn off iMessage and force sms unless you are
| referring to something else.
| darknavi wrote:
| You can also press and hold the send button to swap over to
| SMS.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| > It's Apple's private message delivery system!
|
| It's not!
|
| > Note: Beeper Cloud's new Oct 2023 iMessage bridge never used
| Mac relay servers and still does not today. It uses a similar
| method to Beeper Mini, but runs on a cloud server.
| rezonant wrote:
| I think you misunderstand that quote. Prior versions of
| Beeper Cloud hosted Mac Minis in data centers and used
| genuine Apple hardware and software to automate iMessage in
| order to function.
|
| This quote simply says that Beeper Cloud is using the same
| direct implementation of iMessage that Beeper Mini does. It
| does not indicate that Beeper Cloud & Mini do not communicate
| with Apple's servers (they do).
| paulddraper wrote:
| It's the same as XMPP/etc vs proprietary chat protocols.
|
| "Slack chat is only for Slack customers."
|
| "Google chat is only for Google customers."
|
| And so on.
|
| Well....if you say it is, then it is.
|
| But the supporters of interoperability would like
| to...interoperate. So non-Apply customers can send messages to
| Apple customers and vice versa.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they 're not
| using Apple products?_
|
| I'm only speaking for myself here, but I don't look at it as
| "being entitled to use Apple's services". I look at it as
| closed, non-interoperable systems as being fundamentally bad
| for people and for the internet. I hesitate to call them
| immoral, but I feel like I could argue that competently as
| well, if pushed to do so.
|
| So if Apple isn't willing to allow interoperability with their
| messaging service that is used by hundreds of millions
| (billions?) of people, then I support every effort to "sneak
| in" and make that happen anyway. And if that means using some
| Apple service that isn't intended for use outside the Apple
| ecosystem, that's just how it has to be.
|
| On the other hand, I would frankly just prefer that non-
| interoperable systems die, instead, and be replaced by
| functionally equivalent, but more open, systems. So I am also
| uncomfortable with Beeper Mini pushing more people into Apple's
| closed ecosystem, even if overall (in the short term, at least)
| it will mean a better, more secure experience for both iOS and
| Android users. (It's gross that Apple talks about the security
| and privacy afforded to users of their products, but at the
| same time forces their own iPhone users to send unencrypted
| SMS/MMS messages to anyone who doesn't have an iPhone, because
| keeping non-iPhone users off iMessage is a competitive
| advantage for them.)
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Oh yeah because this went so well last time.
|
| It took them what, a lazy few days to kill it off last time, bets
| on about the same, along with a "don't make me do this again"
| warning?
| stillwithit wrote:
| Stuff like this feels petty by all parties.
|
| Use an app that's already universal if users are so desperate.
|
| Playing whack a mole back and forth over a chat app as if it's
| some high minded fight for speech when countless options exist is
| melodrama for the sake of melodrama and engagement farming
|
| Beeper real goal is like everyone else in tech; get rich. It
| found the perfect marketing meme, the old David and Goliath
| story, to piggyback its business goals on.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| I had to purchase an iPhone solely to use iMessage. Believe me,
| I would have loved to use any other internet-based chat app.
| But I just can't move my entire social circle to a different
| app. The network effects and friction are too high.
|
| The only thing end users really have control over is their own
| client. I don't know if they'll succeed in the long run, but
| I'm really rooting for beeper
| _rs wrote:
| Was really hoping to read about what Apple changed to break
| things, even if they won't explain how they worked around it
| rewgs wrote:
| Man, what an absolute waste of engineering talent.
|
| I don't understand those in this thread celebrating the "hacker
| spirit." The real "hacker spirit" would be something like, I
| don't know, building a better alternative to iMessage. This is
| just a game of whack-a-mole, destined to lose.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Making a competitive alternative to iMessage is a game of
| whack-a-mole that you will always lose, too. Apple would never
| give a third-party the same level of control they have to
| integrate with iOS.
|
| So, Beeper's approach here at least makes sense to me. They
| aren't representing the "hacker spirit" like Torvalds or
| Stallman, but they _are_ highlighting how arbitrary some
| software limitations can be. Their efforts here, wasted or not,
| will be cited when iMessage finds itself in court next time.
| And to Beeper, a company founded on the idea of unifying all
| messaging clients, that may be a worthwhile business
| investment.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| I really want to use this but it just seems unrealistic. I don't
| want to start new iMessage group chats with friends, explain to
| them how it's possible, only for it to break 3 days later. I knew
| this would happen the first time which is why I didn't subscribe.
| And now I don't want to create an Apple ID only to have it banned
| and messages lost.
|
| I love that you're pursuing this and taking on Apple, but at the
| same time your marketing has felt misleading and you've put a lot
| of users at risk by listing on the Play Store with a subscription
| model.
| boiler_up800 wrote:
| If nothing else it's a fun game of cat and mouse in the most
| David vs Goliath way possible, to mix metaphors.
|
| Is it likely that Apple just has an engineer working on reverse
| engineering Beeper to find and patch the latest method?
| nikolay wrote:
| No, it's not. I don't get the 2FA code. It never worked before
| for me. Never worked with Beeper proper either.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| Do you get 2FA codes when logging in from am actual Apple
| device? Because it might be an issue with how your apple
| account is set up to do 2FA that has nothing to do with beeper
| hattmall wrote:
| Is it possible to install macos in a virtual machine and use
| iMessages?
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| not anymore
| heyoni wrote:
| Yes it is. Hackintosh users have no problem using iMessage or
| FaceTime.
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(page generated 2023-12-11 23:00 UTC)