[HN Gopher] Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage net...
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Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage network
Author : lnguyen
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-01-15 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (appleinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (appleinsider.com)
| pram wrote:
| Yeah this isn't surprising, I've had this happen to hackintoshes
| over the years. Apple has always had the ability to ban serials
| from iMessage afaict, and it also (seemed) to be some automated
| process.
|
| It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real
| machines for this.
| eek2121 wrote:
| There is a project working to solve this. The idea is to get
| the majority of legitimate Mac and iOS devices banned. Apple
| will then have to consider other options.
|
| Not link dropping for now.
|
| EDIT: the process is automated, but due to limited IP addresses
| across the network, is throttled.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| That's a pretty stupid plan in my opinion.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| That's awful.
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| So that project's plan is to distribute malware then?
| threeseed wrote:
| So the thought process is to break Messages for innocent
| parties.
|
| That sounds like a great way to get people on your side.
| nulld3v wrote:
| I actually think this is a decent idea. Worst case it causes
| global service disruption which would reveal some pretty
| serious security flaws with iMessage.
|
| All the hackers have to do is make sure they don't get
| arrested under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and get
| thrown in jail for 20 years!
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Never would have happened if instead users relied on
| Briar/Jami/Session/Tox on a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS.
|
| This is an important lesson, take it to heart!
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Thus completely missing the point of this product's entire
| existence and value proposition. This is not helpful and
| bordering on snarky. 'Take note' that people are well aware of
| the existence of other messaging services. They don't want
| them. They want iMessage. The kid saying that they're using
| "Tox on a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS" is sitting by
| themselves during recess whether you like it or not.
| noman-land wrote:
| They don't want iMessage. They want what their friends have.
| If their friends used something else they would use something
| else.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| Eh, many of my friends have WhatsApp, and I don't really
| like it. Almost all of them "have" Facebook messenger, but
| again, no one wants to use it. Maybe I'm biased because
| it's true for me, but I don't really buy this "nothing's
| special about iMessage" claim.
|
| Which sucks, because Apple's approach here (while not
| unexpected) is very disappointing.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >bordering on snarky
|
| You're right, it's snarky and intentionally so. The idea here
| is to use memetic warfare to plant an idea that idiots,
| rubes, and otherwise "consumer"-personality types are drawn
| to apple like moths are to my bug zapper at night: the
| beautiful apple in your eye which entrances you into
| voluntary economic servitude to the platform.
|
| The goal is to counteract the good feelings of holding
| something so fit and finished as an apple, with the gnawing
| feeling of just figuring out that one got played. The
| business model is centrally on inspiring you to cough up
| microtransactions so apple can tax them. Apple has been
| stupidly successful in marketing to the point you have a
| 3-to-1 disadvantage as a GrapheneOS-chad (comparatively to
| apple) in the family formation and reproductive game! You
| literally have to carry a beautiful wealth extraction and
| remote surveillance machine in order to not damage your image
| when finding a partner.
|
| This is too much; my intent has wholly been to foster an
| anti-campaign against this beautiful super-thousand dollar
| flytrap. I want all my contacts on Briar and Session instead
| of imessage or (worse) SMS. I'm tired of using the envelope
| vs postcard argument and getting eye-rolls most of the time.
|
| I hope and pray everyday the CIA approached Intel a long time
| ago to insert platform backdoors, and that they did a bad
| enough job that one day soon some russian hacker group pwns
| 25% of all internet connected systems at the hardware level.
| We need a digital 9/11 if we ever want to see laws passed
| which force source code disclosure, full owner modifiability,
| and full design documentation, all in support of customer
| sovereignty (make it something lixe a 100% sales tax on final
| sale of any product containing universal machines non-
| compliant with owner sovereignty principles [including TVs,
| microwaves, cars, and game consoles]).
|
| /rant
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| In all honesty, this kind of discourse is insulting to the
| target audience, and not going to win over anyone to your
| cause.
|
| If you call the people you are trying to convince "idiots,
| rubes, and otherwise "consumer"-personality types" then
| they stop listening after that point. Which is probably
| fortunate since you called for a "digital 9/11". Call me
| crazy, but I don't want a repeat of an event where
| thousands of people died, leading to two wars where
| hundreds of thousands or millions died just so I can get
| more open computing.
|
| You know who hasn't called me an idiot or a rube? The
| makers of iMessage. In fact, they offer free lessons on how
| their products can be used to make my life better. I can
| buy grandma an iPad, and for no extra charge, they will
| spend hours with her to get her set up and seamlessly
| sending me messages. They won't talk down to her, they
| won't lecture her in internet slang, they won't compare her
| to moths drawn to a bug zapper for using an alternative.
| I-devices are expensive, sure, and there is a mild lock-in
| effect with iMessage/cloud, but most people are pretty
| happy to be locked in. If iMessage goes away, I still buy
| an iPhone and use a Mac, because the hardware works for me.
|
| Truth be told you aren't using mimetic warfare to plant
| ideas (or at least not the ideas you think you are
| planting). You are associating your cause with superior
| attitudes, insults, and unfriendliness.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >You are associating your cause with superior attitudes,
| insults, and unfriendliness.
|
| Pent up frustration at the hidden injustice of the whole
| thing and the apathy I am constantly met with; sue me.
|
| >You know who hasn't called me an idiot or a rube? The
| makers of iMessage.
|
| Their marketing methods are way more pernicious, but one
| example among myriad: https://www.reddit.com/r/datingover
| thirty/comments/b6w9iu/oh...
|
| Social shame is very powerful.
|
| (addendum: my google searches for green vs blue bubble
| today seemed to filter examples like there's a blanket
| tossed on it, duckduckgo showed examples more readily.)
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Also I get to be mad. I get to show that frustration.
| Other people who feel as I do see me get mad and maybe
| they get mad too. Maybe I flutter my wings and some storm
| clouds appear over Redmond down the line.
| clay_the_ripper wrote:
| My take on this whole thing is that this is basically an
| elaborate plan to eventually use this in court against Apple to
| prove its anti-competitive practices.
|
| If not for court, then at the least this is a press strategy
| orchestrated by someone with an interest in opening up the
| iMessage monopoly.
|
| I'm sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this
| becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim - the
| vulnerability to Apple shutting them down was obvious. Which
| leads me to conclude he saw value to be created in just basically
| messing with Apple and forcing them to ban him.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| I'm genuinely surprised that this theory isn't more pervasive.
|
| I seldom buy into conspiracy theories but in this case I'd go a
| step further and suggest that Beeper Mini was secretly enabled
| in some way by other commercial entities incentivised to
| dismantle Apple's walled garden. Maybe not from the start, but
| much more likely when the public game of cat and mouse kicked
| off.
| pxeboot wrote:
| I agree. There have always been highly skilled programmers
| capable of reverse engineering imessage, but everybody knew it
| would immediately get shutdown and not be worth the effort.
| realusername wrote:
| That's definitely possible, the beeper mini case will be used
| in courts against Apple, that's for sure.
| ccamrobertson wrote:
| > I'm sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of
| this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim
|
| If you actually knew Eric and the history of Beeper you would
| understand how hilariously false, absurd and revisionist such a
| statement is. Eric only started Beeper after validating
| _massive_ interest from Hacker News for a paid app that would
| unify disparate communication channels.
| jnovek wrote:
| On Hacker News and Reddit especially I am always
| flabbergasted by the tendency to ascribe some sort of wisdom
| and intent to the actions of early-stage founders.
|
| If my experiences as an early-stage founder have taught me
| anything I can assure you that we don't know our asses from a
| hole in the ground. Founding a company is a game where you
| throw shit at the wall as quickly as you possibly can until
| something sticks and then you desperately try to figure out
| _why_ it stuck. If you can figure that out, you might just
| have product-market fit.
|
| This is especially true for a first time founder. You learn
| as you go.
| clay_the_ripper wrote:
| True that you learn as you go. Also true that motives
| change - the world in 2024 looks very different to the
| world in 2020. Founders adapt, bring on new investors, find
| new ways to create value.
|
| In regards to intent, I am not suggesting that he founded
| the company to do this. I am suggesting that the motives
| for their recent actions are driven by something other than
| finding product market fit.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _Eric only started Beeper after validating massive interest
| from Hacker News for a paid app that would unify disparate
| communication channels._
|
| This may be true with regard to the general concept, but how
| does it relate to the decision to try to skirt the iMessage
| rules? Validating that people want a feature is different
| from (and somewhat orthogonal to) ensuring you can actually
| deliver it.
| clay_the_ripper wrote:
| I have no personal information on this matter, this is pure
| speculation.
|
| I agree that the original intent was to do as you say. But
| the recent actions suggest that new motives may be in play.
|
| Clearly Eric is a very intelligent person. I find it hard to
| believe that he believed that reverse engineering such an
| elaborate workaround would work after Apple had already
| proven that they were willing to shut him down.
|
| If Eric is as smart as you say, then obviously he did not
| expect this latest iteration to work. Which leads me to
| conclude there is value (for him, for his investors) in
| taking these actions to force Apple's hand.
|
| Then again, maybe he just wants to prove a point and use the
| exposure to promote their next app. Whether the app will
| succeed is unknown but the PR strategy so far is crushing it.
| jnovek wrote:
| Early stage is sort of a long string of Hail Marys.
| Critical problems that create new critical problems not far
| down the road.
|
| I'm guessing that Eric knew that he had days before Apple
| patched whatever exploit he found. I'm guessing he was
| hoping to find another move he could make before that
| happened.
|
| Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Big risk
| for big reward -- imagine what a big deal it would've been
| if Beeper Mini actually found a sustainable way to make
| iMessage work outside of Apple?
| pjerem wrote:
| Since Beeper main product is a multi protocol messaging app and
| iMessage is the only protocol that resists them, yes, it's
| probably both.
|
| I know it's marketing but at the end of the day, they are
| fighting for a cause that matters to me and their bridges are
| open source so I wish them good luck.
| rchaud wrote:
| An elaborate plan by who? If Apple opens up iMessage to RCS as
| promised to EU markets, Beeper Mini becomes obsolete overnight.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Calling this "retaliation" is rather dramatic. There are a number
| of communication platforms that don't allow 3rd party apps to
| access their networks and will ban people who attempt it.
| kevingadd wrote:
| What would you call it other than retaliation? Punishment?
| Surprise behavior?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Expected behavior.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Consequence for acting against Apple's terms of service.
| threeseed wrote:
| Protecting the security and integrity of the platform.
|
| I fully support interoperability. But it needs to be done
| through regulation and standards.
|
| Not through intentional abuse of the platform for monetary
| gains.
| o11c wrote:
| Protecting imaginary security is no protection at all.
|
| If Apple doesn't like the particular way Beeper works,
| they're free to give them a better API to use.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's just banning.
|
| It's no different than if you get caught running cheat
| software in an online game.
|
| The company isn't "retaliating" against you, or even
| "punishing" you -- they're just banning you. You broke the
| rules and that's what happens.
| bscphil wrote:
| This site rightly has a different attitude when, say, HP
| remotely bricks working printers because someone used
| unauthorized ink. We don't sit back and say "you broke the
| rules and that's what happens."
| kevingadd wrote:
| This further undermines the "are they supposed to let Android
| users use iMessage for free?" defense, given that these users
| already bought a Mac. And now those paying customers eat hardware
| bans for using their own hardware in a way Apple doesn't like.
| ericzawo wrote:
| Went from "Here's to the crazy ones" to "we'll punish our
| customers for not jumping how we say" in 30 years.
| redserk wrote:
| Completely disagree on this.
|
| This is Beeper, a for-profit company, throwing a tantrum,
| violating the ToS of Apple but leaving Beeper's users and their
| friends holding the bag.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I highly doubt they're "punishing" customers or even
| "retaliating" like the article says.
|
| They've always banned iMessage access that they determined to
| be compromised. It's part of security and preventing abuse.
|
| It just probably took a couple weeks for their automated system
| to detect.
|
| Hopefully affected users can get it working again on their Macs
| via customer service, if they even care.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Hopefully affected users can get it working again on their
| Macs via customer service, if they even care.
|
| I'm going to go wayyyy out on a limb and guess that people
| who were enthusiastic adopters of Beeper Mini, AND who own a
| Mac ARE probably going to care about getting their access
| working again.
|
| I'd actually say the bigger thing would probably be "via
| Customer Service, if Customer Service even cares, and doesn't
| tell them to just create a new Apple ID".
| cosmin800 wrote:
| I don't understand the obsession with imessage, what is so
| special about it?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's what 50% of the US population uses for sending short
| messages.
| troupo wrote:
| Of all the messengers I have and my friends and family use
| iMessage is easily the worst designed one (well, Viber is
| probably worse), and no one I know uses it
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Guessing you're not in the US? It's super common here.
| nurtbo wrote:
| What are its design problems?
| troupo wrote:
| off the top of my head:
|
| - all useful interactions are hidden behind useless slow
| animation and multiple additional clicks
|
| - photo selection is an awkward double scroll
|
| - stickers are tied to external apps, cannot be searched,
| take ages to load when you switch between sets
|
| - link unfurling and file previews are hit and miss, often
| take ages to happen
|
| - pinned chats are useless awkward circles that take up
| space instead of being actual pinned chats
|
| - continuously broken on MacOS (photo selections, unread
| status synchronizations, keyboard shortcuts etc.)
|
| And it's a key app they have on two platforms.
|
| Compare that to Telegram which exists on 5 platforms and
| web, developed by just a handful of people, and has
| everything and more.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Why do you consider it bad?
| troupo wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007004
| mmh0000 wrote:
| My wife uses it. There's no way in hell I'll get her off it...
| Thus, I use it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's simply that it has a lot of users. Any popular enough
| communication protocol attracts interest in interoperating with
| it.
|
| Or if you mean why anyone uses it, it's because SMS is
| automatically upgraded to iMessage between two iPhone users.
| Most people wouldn't know how to prevent that from happening or
| downgrade to SMS and because it feels like texting with a few
| extra features, they don't want to. That approach has
| accumulated about a billion users.
| anomaly_ wrote:
| Android folks upset Google hasn't been able to crack unified
| messaging despite ~45 attempts.
| 63 wrote:
| In the US, it's mostly a network effect I think. It was the
| default on half of people's phones and it managed to be good
| enough over time (unlike sms defaults on Android) to stay
| entrenched.
|
| Also, imagine this scenario from the perspective of a non-
| technical user: You buy an expensive but high quality phone
| that's easy to use and has a great camera and great apps. Most
| of your friends have the same phone and everything works great
| with them. Then you try to talk to someone new but they have a
| phone that was probably cheaper and has a worse camera and
| looks like it's harder to use and full of ads. Every time they
| message you it turns off a bunch of your features and ruins
| group chats for everyone. Who are you going to blame, your
| phone manufacturer whose product seems to work great, or this
| guy with a phone so cheap and buggy that it breaks everyone
| else's?
|
| Thus, non-technical iMessage users see no reason to go out of
| their way to use weird third party messengers. It's not their
| fault - it's the android users' faults for being cheap.
|
| (For clarity, I am a hardcore android phone but I'm not
| delusional enough to think the average person will have a
| better experience on Android then iOS. I had to install fdroid
| and a custom launcher and a bunch of side loaded apps to get a
| decent experience. The average person doesn't and arguably
| shouldn't need to know about all that)
| stalfosknight wrote:
| This is exactly what it's like for us iMessage users.
|
| iMessage just works:
|
| * It works beautifully on watchOS, iPadOS, macOS, in addition
| to iOS
|
| * there's no ads
|
| * E2EE by default
|
| * You can send media at full quality and they recipient
| receives as as you intended
|
| * No bullshit whatsoever
|
| My Android friends though are never able to standardize on
| any one app, some of them want you to use WhatsApp, some want
| Telegram, some want Signal. None of them have watchOS
| clients, they either can't be bothered with iPadOS at all or
| their desktop "client" is really just an lazy Electron
| disaster that they expect you to put up with. And when you
| try to explain how all of these third party alternatives are
| inferior, Android people look at you like you're an alien and
| don't understand.
|
| It's frustrating and I wish they would just get iMessage
| already.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| Let's open WhatsApp... It's recommending that I follow
| channels. Do I want to follow Man City, Real Madrid, or FC
| Barcelona? I watch zero sports and want nothing to do with any
| of this. I've used the app a handful of times over the years,
| yet I have three threads/groups from December that are
| cryptocurrency, investment, and market insight scams. To me,
| the interface also looks bad--and it's a Facebook product.
|
| Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily
| app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
|
| 99% of the time, iMessage just does what it says and at a high
| quality. No bullshit, barely any spam, and OS-level integration
| with my other devices.
| tendencydriven wrote:
| The obsession with iMessage and the "blue bubble" seems to be
| a US only thing, no? All group chats I've ever been part of,
| and 99% of all other messaging, in the UK and every European
| country I've been in happens on WhatsApp.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a
| daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
|
| I loved signal when it was my MMS client. It did what
| iMessage did, only for android, and it worked in my mixed env
| (Mac, android).
|
| Now no more mms. I have stories now. I didn't get signal for
| stories, I didn't want an encrypted social network.
| Krasnol wrote:
| MMS were not encrypted and stories have been the most
| requested feature.
|
| It made totally sense to go this way.
| TillE wrote:
| > It's recommending that I follow channels
|
| That's a slight annoyance but it's extremely new, and doesn't
| reflect the typical WhatsApp experience over its many years
| of explosive growth. It's just a simple cross-platform chat
| app that, as the de facto standard in most of Europe, nobody
| has trouble using.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| From an average consumer perspective (not a HN user
| perspective):
|
| It just works. As soon as I log into my Apple account on any
| Apple device I can access all of my messages, and seamlessly
| carry on a conversation on whatever device is at hand. It works
| with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.
|
| I know that WhatsApp is similar, but their desktop app,
| especially authentication, kinda sucks (I need my phone to
| login, and it seemingly logs me out weekly). Whatsapp is also
| FILLED with weird porn spam, and scammers.
| larubbio wrote:
| > It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think
| about it.
|
| I have a mac laptop and an android phone. My son has an
| iphone. Half of his responses to my text messages go to my
| phone, the other half go to my laptop and I miss them. This
| is a major problem, imessage shouldn't be greedy about
| grabbing messages, especially when replying to an SMS. I've
| missed picking him up from places because I didn't get the
| reply.
| troupo wrote:
| The fact that the iMessage team still can't figure out how
| Apple's own sync works is mind boggling.
|
| Messages are always lost, or marked as read when they are
| not, or marked as unread even if I deleted them on other
| device, or...
| isatty wrote:
| It just works. You may think that this is a meme, but it really
| is not. Let's say you and someone else that you wish to
| communicate with has an iPhone (parent, SO, friend, whoever)
| and things just click into place.
|
| - Extremely responsive, native, fast app with no clutter
| whatsoever, on both phones and on desktop devices (personally,
| I highly dislike web/electron apps)
|
| - Close to no spam (whatsapp in particular seems to have a ton,
| way worse than Telegram even)
|
| - Highest quality (amongst all the apps) audio/video calls with
| Facetime
|
| - e2e encrypted by default, does not have the unconscious bias
| that you're using a Facebook owned product for doing something
| secure, even if it really is (and as far as power users go, I
| don't really particularly dislike the company like many do)
|
| My next favorite messenger, that does Groups better than
| iMessage, is Telegram. I don't wish to get into the privacy
| concerns (and it's valid!) but as far as making a responsive,
| native app that does chat and does it well, it's pretty
| superior to both Whatsapp and Signal.
|
| gTalk of old was amazing, but I don't think that's coming back
| :(
| troupo wrote:
| That "no clutter whatsoever" results in every action
| requiring two-three more clicks than necessary.
|
| As for "fast", just the animation in the main action menu
| would like a word. And then try to select stickers
| crimbles wrote:
| I bet if you sign out of iCloud then reinstall the Mac and sign
| in again it'll work again. This is probably the machine signing
| key being shot down for using it with an unauthorised client
| rather than the mac being completely banned itself.
| altairprime wrote:
| Everyone thinks it's personal when anti-abuse automation detects
| token reuse and blocks the hardware ID that issued it. It's not.
| It's just an HSM-secured communications network, same as Xbox
| consoles use for their player messaging network, complete with
| the anti-abuse automation that can lead to hardware bans.
|
| It'll be interesting to see how hard Microsoft, Nintendo, and
| Sony fight against any attempt to open up iMessage. They each
| depend critically on the right to block devices by device
| identifier using automation, and if a ruling is found against
| Apple in this matter, _all_ hardware identifier enforcement is
| now voidable, which will destroy some of the value of their paid
| subscription services and worsen the safety of those services.
| wwalexander wrote:
| The other day I found myself logged out of iMessage for Mac and
| had to reboot to get it to work; wonder if it was related to
| this. (Never used Beeper)
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