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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
> 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.
> 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?
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...
> 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.
> 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.
> 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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
> 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?
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?"
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).
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
Can you sue someone for violating TOS? It's not illegal, and Apple doesn't have any damages.
Terms of Service are just... the terms you need to follow in exchange for service. If you violate the terms, you get cut off from service... which they already did
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.
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.
> 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?
> 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?
> 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
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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).
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.
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That aside, it seems like an easy way around that would just be for Apple to adopt RCS in addition to iMessage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
The developer of the software supporting those platforms. In this case, Beeper.
I suppose if Apple wants to say certain users are not allowed to access iMessage unless they've bought an iPhone that's fair. (Maybe you could argue its anticompetitive to bundle services together like that, but I won't assert that point here.) But if that's all this was about then I ought to be able to buy an iPhone, import the access token from that into Beeper on my Android, stuff the iPhone in a drawer, and go about my business. The problem is that Apple wants to dictate not only who has access to iMessage servers, but also how they're allowed to access it. And that is unacceptable in my opinion.
"Security" is a poor excuse. If server side software has to rely on trusting the client then it was never secure in the first place. And if client side software wants to "secure" itself against the person who owns it... that's a form of "security" I could do without.
it would be incredibly easy for apple to frame this as a security issue, because, even in my mind, it is. I pay for apple devices because I trust apple with my data. I do not trust most companies with my data. I trust my data to only flow through Apple's servers, and to get a clear indication when my data is _not_ flowing through apple's servers (e.g. green bubbles). A company bypassing this causing messages to show up blue when they are in fact traveling outside of Apple's control is a security risk (to me). Clearly if it's e2e encrypted that's not the case, but that's not what apple is going to argue. They're going to argue exactly what I just did. And I honestly agree with them. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't need to allow other companies onto the platform, just that BLUE BUBBLES mean something to apple customers and bypassing that is something that apple needs to block.
Apple really needs to get that RCS implementation rolled out though. Wonder if it's still going to be green bubbles or something else.
I think this pypush method uses Apple servers. I think the key aspect was the author figuring out how submit public keys and request public keys for other Apple users from Apple servers. From that point it seems to be as secure as public key cryptography.
i mean... will the court understand that? Or will they understand the argument I framed (however dumb it is)? I think apple would easily be able to convince the court that anything exiting their servers is less secure, or gives the appearance of lower security, to their customers. Anyway, apple is implementing rcs next year so hopefully none of this matters.
The comment from the author's original post is quite the non-answer.
"Side note: many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?’ To be honest, I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client. The internet has always had 3rd party clients! It’s almost like people have forgotten that iChat (the app that iMessage grew out of) was itself a multi-protocol chat app! It supported AIM, Jabber and Google talk. Here’s a blast from the past: https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png."
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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...
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you misunderstood, I by no means think that all iPhone owners are psychopaths. I'm not even opposed to owning an iPhone. I'm just making the case that if there are a significant number of people who will cut you out of their lives for using an Android, that's a really good argument for using an Android, because it's rare to find a way to get terrible people to voluntarily cut ties with you with no further repercussions.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> "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.
> 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?
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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
- On blending the two, what's the issue here? Automatically upgrading SMS messages to go over data connections instead of SMS systems seems like a pure upgrade?
- 3rd party chat apps are cross platform because they're funded by alternative methods, usually by selling your personal information, though sometimes also by sales of other products within the app (like on LINE). Apple funds its chat app through phone sales.
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.
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,
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the same with my wife. She didn't care about what phones anyone had, she just found that her group chats with iPhone friends (when she had Android) were janky, as you describe. She doesn't care about apps or phones, but we got her an iPhone because she wants her chats to work well.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?)
>The solution is literally downloading a free app and encouraging others to do the same.
Absolutely not. I'll never touch whatsapp with a ten thousand foot pole. If you aren't tired of facebook ruining people's lives then I don't know what to tell you, but frankly most people who pay attention are sick of FB controlling the planet.
How about instead, you use apps that don't sell your information to literally anyone who will give them a dollar? Like Apple's iMessage.
I was making fun of you. That seems to have gone right over your head. Here, I'll put it in your perspective. Facebook users (you, a whatsapp user) just want others to use facebook (spyware).
I was one of the first users of signal when it first released, over a decade ago. I could not, and still can not, get others to use it. We're long past that. The choices are Google's spyware, Facebook's spyware, or Apple's locked down ecosystem, which has been proven to not be spyware (fbi requests and all that). I think I'll take the latter.
Nobody is doing that. Doesn’t matter what i do. In Europe you have a mess of country codes and to be charged fees by network provider based on the countries you’re talking to. In the US that has literally never been an issue. We never put the country code in because we’re in the same country. Lol.
Country codes or roaming fees have nothing to do with it. The reason we use Whatsapp is simply to avoid SMS/ MMS (I might have sent one MMS in my life, back in 2008) and network charges for phone calls/ video calls. Basically most of our phone communication activity is over ip, with the only exception of a minority of classic phone calls (as they tend to have better quality).
> Nobody is doing that. Doesn’t matter what I do.
Lol. Of course it matters: if you do it, by definition someone is doing it.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple...
It's literally as simple as installing a cross-platform app. Apple is not stopping you from doing that.
And using a third party app/protocol is pretty much the only way right now. Even most Android users don't use RCS among themselves, because only newer phones have it enabled by default and it only works in some apps.
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.
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.
I am surprised my statement was so controversial tbh. It is exceedingly obvious if you talk to hot women lol, and they are pretty much are what determines how mainstream people are going to talk to each other.
No we don’t! Consider this. I want to send a picture to my friend.
If iPhone, I can iMessage it to them easy, no compression and fully encrypted.
If android, I can text them but MMS will degrade the quality. I can send it over instagram or Snapchat but that will also degrade the quality. I can send it through google photos but wait!! That also degrades the quality. Not to mention none of these methods are e2ee.
The only lossless option is email. No one in college is emailing me photos btw. So if they don’t have an iPhone generally I’m out of luck
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
I'm curious why privacy issues of WhatsApp and Facebook are only a concern for Americans. Does the rest of the world know that WhatsApp has been owned by Facebook for 10 years?
Americans use Facebook, Google, etc. as much as anyone else. Claiming that the mythical “privacy” is a meaningful factor in iMessage’s adoption over Facebook properties is delusional.
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.
> 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)
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
Right, I know Windows isn't free. My point is, it's the same situation with OS X, and with iMessage. Just because OS X is made by the hardwae developers doesn't change it. Windows still isn't free on Surface laptops, believe me that the OS team gets a cut of hardware sales.
Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.
Hackintosh isn't cracked down on. Commercial use of it is. I had an osx snow leopard partition I hackintoshed and I was trying old HDDs and it booted on my netbook. Most of the times it doesn't work is based on broken APIs or changes that aren't related to osx. 10.8 or 10.7 was the first free osx and the first one that included iMessage.
The difference is that my device isn't incompatible, Apple just doesn't want me to run iMessage on it. They don't just not care, they're actively blocking companies that released clients.
There’s iMessage the app and then there’s the proprietary Apple Push Notification Service. that Apple use in its implementation.
The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.
The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.
So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.
> You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.
No, i was asking if it was free in respect to beeper, because the beeper not being free is literally the comment i replied to. I feel like you're looking at my comment in isolation, but expecting me to keep your comment in context - which also seems to be lacking context.
graphe: “iMessage is reliable, ‘free’ and encrypted. Beeper mini is unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn’t recommend it anymore to my Android friends.“
You: “Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?”
Not sure where the confusion is. Seems from the quoted text you were expressly asking if iMessage was free or not.
If not, what is the “it” you were referring to in your reply? Your initial response did not seem to compare cost to beeper.
I was definitely referring to iMessage. I was just saying that the conversation is about Beeper and iMessage. The comparison was taken place in the quote you posted.
Anyway, i'm just saying that the mints on a hotel pillow are "free" too, but if you cannot acquire them without paying for another service or hardware, they're hardly free.
Best i can give iMessage is that it's complementary. Please correct me if i'm wrong, but almost no one gets iMessage without paying Apple for an associated product to gain access. It's a mint on your pillow.
I dunno, it just feels some silly definition or thought experiment to define away the money missing from my wallet.
I'll concede all day long that i may be using the wrong definition, that's definitely not my objection. However free is pretty simple. Entrance fees or any price blocking you from the "free" thing is in any practical sense, hardly free. At least imo.
A lot of things are free if you ignore what you paid for in the first place.
Out of curiosity, how would you even define what is free and what isn't? Lets say a snickers bar released an April Fools edition where you paid the standard price, but only for the wrapper. The snickers bar inside is free. Or the silly paper clip example i gave, with beeper mini. Is there some definition that you would see apt to describe these as practically (as in, how people would interpret them) not being free?
They said they made ‘beeper’ free, not ‘beeper mini’ free. Unless they combined them since the last post. But maybe they should say beeper mini is free.
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.
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.)
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. In other words, "Sue somebody when they criticize you, hoping the legal expense will make them stop." This isn't exactly the same scenario, but would be similar (in the poster's hypothetical) in that it was a lawsuit meant to intimidate rather than to seek justice.
The problem is that Apple has valid case, because these guys are making money with the app, by using Apple’s private backend services without permission.
Eh, just being really big isn't going to be enough by itself. Apple has just a bit over half the market, they're definitely not a monopoly. The gov't won't get involved.
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.
They could take it the other way and start suspending accounts that use a spoofed device id. For me that's my main hesitation, I don't want to have my apple accounts suspended for violation of ToS.
Apple doesn’t even need to do that. They can send the DOJ after Beeper.
Many people hear about a reverse entering exception in the DMCA and call it a day. But it’s not that simple.
Reverse engineering is allowed for a very narrow case, namely interoperability between two software programs (for which you have a license granting you legal permission to use), as defined in paragraph 4 of Section 103(f).
The DMCA decidedly does not permit you to use reverse engineering to package someone else's software or service and sell it.
Jurisprudence also established that EULAs that explicitly prohibit reverse engineering supersede the exception granted in the DMCA, see Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, 320 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2003)[0]
Apple has explicitly forbidden reverse engineering in their macOS license agreement[1], the iOS license agreement[2], and the Apple Media Terms of Service[3].
Agreement with those terms is necessary to reach the parts that need reverse engineering.
There’s also the matter that the pypush repository seems to include Apple’s proprietary code, which wouldn’t fall under reverse engineering.
Worst of all, even if reverse engineering was allowed, it still doesn't allow you to connect to other people's servers. The Computer Fraud Abuse Act of 1986 explicitly prohibits unauthorized access to computer systems, and the DMCA exception doesn't supersede the CFAA.
A lot of states have criminal statutes that mirror the CFAA.
So, at this point, it wouldn’t be inconceivable for Apple to try and get the DOJ involved.
> 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?
"We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on ."
I agree that right now, most people shouldn't give this a try. But at some point it will reach a steady state.
Either Beeper manages to make a client that is truly indistinguishable from old iPhones, and gets to exist for a few years, or Apple somehow manages to patch all existing iPhones in a way that makes it impossible to spoof (not sure if that's possible with old hardware that don't have a secure enclave).
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.)
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.
>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.
> 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.
"They can afford it" is a terrible argument. There's literally no upside for Apple providing their infrastructure for free to third parties, particularly given that it's a potential vector for flooding their customers with spam.
Up until quite recently, most phone carriers metered the number of texts you could send per month and then charged extra. Many still charge per text when you're roaming overseas. Perhaps Apple could offer API access on commercial terms to third parties but that's their decision.
I really don't think anybody should think about their decision, they are too big for fully owning the platform.
Additionally, iMessage is full of scams and spams already, it's not hard to buy a box of old iphones and turn them into spam relays and that's exactly what is happening now.
> 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?
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.
> 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?
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.
Apple's whole schtick is that they exercise restraint on design so that it works well across many constraints, not just optimizing for one, such as newest or best feature.
I am sure engineering these devices involves lots of compromise, and maybe they did not find sufficient benefits to outweigh the drawbacks for those other features.
Maybe it is possible they swing the pendulum too far into the cautious territory, but given their track record, I would not bet on it.
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.
> 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've said this before and I'll say it again here. No Apple device user I've ever met thinks of the blue bubble as a status symbol. This is only something that Android users for some reason covet. In fact I've never heard it mentioned by any Android user in real life. This is only an internet thing that a tiny segment of people, like those who post to hacker news, seem to care strongly about.
I personally couldn't care less if Android got iMessage or not as long as it doesn't force any changes on the Apple side of things. It doesn't prevent me from communicating with Android users in any way currently. I also don't want to see any spam start to appear via iMessage, as there is currently none of it.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That doesn't mean there will be an ecosystem of ethical FOSS app developers though. That will take much time to develop and it only being available in the EU will limit its growth. And you'll probably still have to invest in a Mac to compile for iOS.
I think the excellent FOSS apps ecosystem will remain exclusive to android even after Apple is forced to open up.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
Even the normal 3% overhead for credit card payment flow charged without these monopolistic practices isn’t reasonable. Even 0.1% allows the bloodsucking rentseekers a gigantic margin, as their marginal costs are approximately ZERO.
15% is pure “you have no other options” robbery, expanding on the same thing pioneered by Visa/MC/AmEx.
All of the expenses you listed are a) trivial and b) already paid for by iPhone purchasers. Apple is a hardware company with the highest margins in the industry.
They’re double dipping, and gouging whilst they do so.
The storage and bandwidth costs of the App Store are the size of a rounding error at this scale. Furthermore, the App Store is a marketing tool and value add for the iPhone, and benefits them directly. To expect app developers to pay for it is insane.
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.
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”?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
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.
> 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?
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...
> 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.
Wait wait... now I am totally confused. I don't mind the separation of my messaging needs. In fact, I use Messages only for SMS (or SMS-like) messages, and WhatsApp and Signal for everything else.
> What I am against is the pitchforks and bullshit reasoning around why this is anti-consumer/trust. The whole polemic is just bullshit.
That is what I am saying :) All this debate about bubble colors, anti-consumerism, monopolies, etc is a waste of time, we have much bigger problems to deal with.
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?
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.
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.
IMHO, it's unlikely anyone with an iPhone uses it "purely for SMS usage." That would mean we have an iPhone owner who only receives SMS from services, only sends messages to people with an Android device, has gone through the trouble to deliberately disable iMessage messages or lacks a data plan of any kind.
I agree with you. The problem is that we conflate SMS and iMessage usage in the Messages app. Most people do use Messages for SMS-like messages (meaning not for exclusive iMessage features). E.g. looking at my message list: at least 40% of messages I receive are alerts, payment confirmations, appointment reminders, etc. These are SMS messages in terms of their purpose, even if some have the blue bubble and whatnot. Messages is a popular app in the US, but what we need to look at is how popular it is for specifically iMessage-exclusive features, not as an SMS client.
Since I’ve moved out of the US and started using Line (the message service of choice in my country of residence) I have no idea why the US market continues to cope with SMS.
iMessage is confusing. I get constant random authorization requests on my iPad because it got un-synced. Messages never come through to my Mac either.
Line is nowhere near perfect, and the app does have ads, but it works, it’s fast, and encrypted. People even use it for calling. I’ve literally never gave my phone number to someone for communication. Not even my coworkers.
It’s so prominent that data only cellphone plans are actually usable-and cheap.
I’m not saying we should all use Line (I would prefer Matrix). What I’m saying is there are so many communication platforms out there that are way better than S/MMS.
I don't think the core motivation in this discussion (or the monetary motivation from Beeper) is due solely to "angsty teenagers." Clearly there are adults out there, with money to spend, who would prefer to send an iMessage to an iPhone owner rather than an SMS message.
While I find it annoying to constantly hear from my mother and other members of my family how messages from me are "a hassle" or "always getting missed" or "never show up in the group chat", I am not willing to spend the money on something like Beeper. But some people are spending the money, it looks like there is a market there.
In my bubble I switched everyone to Signal. I acknowledge that this is an anecdote and don't propose this as a solution. However, complaining about features in different apps is even less of a solution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
> 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
Your comment came across as defending the position that Apple is in the wrong for not allowing iMessage to be accessible from all platforms, my crude definition of "the aggressor" my apologies if that is not how you meant your comment to come across.
This whole green bubble equal shame thing is 100% on people.
The reason there are 2 different colors is so people can tell when they are using SMS because SMS are capped / cost money in most of the world - while iMessage messages are unlimited and free.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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).
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
You should be able to sell your gasoline to customers with Ford's cars, regardless of whether or not Ford has their own gas stations.
But why are we reaching for a car analogy? Should gmail or google.com be able to block Firefox and force you to use Chrome? Not make use of some feature Chrome has, but just purposely block Firefox even if it supports that feature or its users are content to use the service without it.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
I believe MS didn’t get nail on integrating IE into Windows - at least in the US - they got nailed on threatening to increase Windows prices for OEMs (which will ruin them in the competitive OEM market) that bundled Netscape, i.e. abusing their Windows monopoly to harm a competitor.
WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger are all free to download on iOS - heck it’s offered for download at Apple’s expense; since it’s from their App Store servers.
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.
> 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.
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
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.
> 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".
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.
> 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.
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.
> …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
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.
> 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.
Apple is intentionally degrading the experience of sending messages to non-Apple devices for the explicit purpose of driving iPhone sales. This is anti-consumer, full stop.
"They must provide access to iMessage outside of the ecosystem" unnecessarily restricts the possible ways that Apple can address this issue, and is only one of many solutions to the problem.
My point and stance is not that Apple should be forced to implement iMessage on Android, but that the intentional and artificial restrictions baked into the Apple <-> Non-Apple experience is unacceptable to me as a customer.
I've commented at length about this elsewhere in the thread, but they could:
- Implement RCS (which they're finally and reluctantly doing due to regulatory pressure, but we have no idea how much they'll hamstring it, and it's borderline ridiculous that they haven't done something yet. Too little too late)
- Allow 3rd party apps to surface messages in a unified interface like they do with other iOS capabilities (e.g. the unified voice call experience from various non-Apple apps/services)
> 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 premise is demonstrably true, and can be experienced by trying to send someone a text containing an image or video using the phone's native capabilities.
I think it's worth reiterating here that Apple has explicitly restricted the messaging experience while allowing other categories of app (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Phone calls) to natively interact with 3rd party services from a single interface. The argument that "just use another chat app" would be a lot stronger if Apple actually supported other chat apps in their native experience.
Zoom out and stop focusing on "iMessage on Android", and it becomes extremely obvious how anti-consumer this stance is based on comparing it to Apple's own design philosophy and other capabilities across iOS.
> iMessage on Android is moot.
On this I tend to agree. But this doesn't get Apple off the hook, or make the dark patterns acceptable.
As I've said elsewhere, Apple may have every right to do this, but customers have every right to be pissed about it, especially because there are ways to solve this that don't require Apple to open the floodgates to iMessage.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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?..
This is the point I am making. There are certain apps and features that are exclusive to certain devices. I can 't play the vast majority of Steam games on my Mac. Should Steam (and all game companies involved, including Valve) be forced to enable support for MacOS for all their games because Mac users have FOMO?
I am mentioning Steam as an example of an ecosystem that offers exclusive apps on different devices. The fact that I can install Steam on a Mac is sort of irrelevant considering that I can't play the games that are offered through Steam on my Mac. Many indie games are offered only on Steam, so it's a monopoly in this sense.
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.
I don't dispute these facts. And I don't think they dispute my comment. By mentioning US v. Microsoft, I pointed out that there are similarities between Microsoft in the 90s and Apple today.
> 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.
Thank you for the correction.
> 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.
Unless one can believe that Apple is both willing to block Beeper and not eliminate it, then Apple is trying to eliminate Beeper as a Messenger competitor. From their statement: "We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage."
I think Apple has a reasonable argument for doing so. Though, in a world where Apple controls the only App Store where iOS users are blocked from downloading alternative SMS applications, they do hold a monopoly over both how iOS users install applications, and the only SMS application available on iOS: Messenger. Non-iOS users who want to message iOS users with the same quality of service as iMessages may only do so by installing 3rd party software. Otherwise they need to implicitly agree to having messages treated as second class, to Apple's likely enrichment. I think reasonable people can perceive some amount of anti-competitive intent in Apple's action. Should Apple be able to block 3rd parties from using the iMessage service infrastructure? Possibly, but it's hard to argue that doing so is pro-competition.
I think most of the concern over Apple's refusal to admit 3rd party iMessage clients will be eliminated if and when they make good on their promise to support RCS next year.
Apple has a literal complete monopoly on operating systems. Every iPhone must either run iOS or be cracked (jailbreak). That's not the whole story, though: Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior was not monopolizing the OS market. It was using that monopoly to promote IE.
> Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper
They are literally eliminating one of their products. That's anti-competitive.
> 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.
You just moved the goalposts out of the stadium. Anti-competitive behavior doesn't need to overwhelm every segment of a market to be anti-competitive behavior.
a) That's not how it works. You need to have a functioning market in order to have a monopoly.
b) Apple is not interfering with the ability of Beeper to sell their product or add new features. They are simply closing loopholes in their product.
c) I never said that anti-competitive behaviour needs to overwhelm every segment. In fact I said the complete opposite when I referred to market distortion.
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!
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.
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.
It's not about having accounts. Again, the data source (which I admit could be wrong/misleading) all say active users, which I take mean users actively sending messages using FB messenger. The sources, by the way, are companies that sell services that market to consumers using these services, so it's in their interest to know usage stats and patterns. Admitedly finding information around iMessage usage is harder, which is why I went with number of active iOS devices. Yes, it's sketchy AF, but I'm not going to pay Statista $149 in a vain attempt to pyrricly win internet points.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
A lawsuit to do what exactly? Require Apple release an iMessage client on Android for free? That'd get thrown out pretty quick anywhere with a functioning legal system.
The only antitrust comparison I can see was Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer, but that doesn't really work because that was Microsoft preventing other competing chat clients from accessing the wider internet, not Microsoft's own servers. There has never been an antitrust lawsuit won anywhere that forces a company to open its own servers that its paying for open to anyone who wants to access them.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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])
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think the credentials are faked. The author's blog post seems to give the details. He is publishing a public key to Apple's servers and figured out how to read the public key of other users. It seems like he is using the normal Apple encryption path from there. Although I don't fully understand the details.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Averageroyalty appeared to be arguing that Apple would only buy them so they wouldn’t use the API anymore. That was my read of their comment.
The OP they responded to was arguing there’s no point in Apple doing that, if they wanted an app on android they could do it themselves. They already have for Apple Music, Apple TV, and their moved to iPhone app.
I don’t think there is any level of frozen over hell where Apple would ever buy the company and let them run the service. There’s no chance they’ll ever buy the company. Even if they did, they would just shut it down for something Apple makes. Apple does not need third-party code to interface with Apple‘s own service.
I should have said it explicitly, but there was an implicit "couldn't do themselves in a reasonable amount of time".
If the rumors are true, Apple already has iMessage running on Android, they just haven't released it yet. They used to support AIM and other messaging services, so they're no stranger to cross-platform messaging apps. The could probably pull together a Beeper competitor pretty quickly.
> 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.
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.
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.
>> consider a worse chat experience with Android users a feature
Well not really - it would be great if the sms feature set matched imessage. The main benefit to me when I see blue is that I know that person is probably at least authenticated and probably has a credit card tied to that account. That in itself seems to limit the riffraff (scammers) that want to send spam or other garbage. I see way more of that from green than I do blue.
I would recommend finding a friend or looking up a YT video or whatever to see what the experience is like. Theres a reason this keeps hitting the front page, and it isn’t because the current experience is good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
You can self-host this matrix bridge which is developed by beeper.
So you can host this on your mac, and then you can join that bridge using matrix.
I've used this once for whatsapp, and it worked quite well, also stuff like polls and reactions worked. Though I don't know how good the imessage bridge is feature wise.
> 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.
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
I'm always a proponent of rooting for the underdog. But, in this scenario I am finding it hard to justify doing so. Beeper isn't doing this for some mystical enthusiasm for hacking and exploiting or sticking it to the man. It's motives are purely incentivized by profit which makes it hard to for me to root for. If this were a small time hobbyist providing a solution for an existing problem, sure I'm all game for that.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 477 ms ] threadHonest question: is there anyone who doesn't already think that? Even at, like, a legislative level?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Then you can blame their phone... just like you would now if your SMS messages to them were getting lost.
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!
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
They must fix security holes. They don't have to make internal protocols public. These are not comparable investments of time, either.
In this case, it's not a standard.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
and it's why (well one very big reason why) I hate Apple products, and avoid them.
1/7 isn't bad, I guess.
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.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-confirms-imessage-locks-...
Where is the lock in?
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).
1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/04/04/iphone-is-still-t...
The amount of corporate bootlickers who wish to surrender that right is staggering though.
Because it’s also their right not to respond to those packets?
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.
No company on earth is that generous, let alone Apple.
It’s not free, the end user just isn’t paying in monetary currency.
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.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680114...
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that is willing to fund it.
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.
Beeper on the other hand has far fewer users, who by now likely expect a bad experience. Beeper can be way more agile.
Even then, it'll still be pretty easy because Apple has trillions of interactions with Apple devices to analyze and compare against Beeper.
(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)
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.
Is there a single person in the world who didn’t already know the answer to this question?
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)
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.
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.
It's now an ongoing PR stunt, since Eric and Brad were rewarded handsomely in attention for the first hack.
I think Beeper is intentionally aiming for (heavily publicized) litigation to set a precedent.
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."
During setup, Apple's servers return authorization keys for your device to use.
Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Fortunately, courts aren't computers, judges aren't compilers, and legal code isn't a programming language.
"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.
Accessing a public server using the public protocol it advertises is generally allowed.
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?
In a similar vein: has any maker of web scraping tools been sued by a website? I couldn't find anything.
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.
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.
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.
Not quite a carte blanche protection in the EU, either.
Terms of Service are just... the terms you need to follow in exchange for service. If you violate the terms, you get cut off from service... which they already did
I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that is willing to fund it.
Beeper isn't "hacking" Messages... they've implemented the protocol.
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?
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
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.
My partner and I were finally able to move off Messenger... for a day.
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.
Still, I'm glad they brought it back, and hope will continue this route.
Anything that helps break the high walls of that garden.
> 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?
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.
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).
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/10/senator-warren-calls-out-a...
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That aside, it seems like an easy way around that would just be for Apple to adopt RCS in addition to iMessage.
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.
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.
Unlike Apple, the government has to meet the people where they are.
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.
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.
Let's see... abortion, school shootings, jobs, climate change, blue bubbles...?
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.
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.
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.
The developer of the software supporting those platforms. In this case, Beeper.
I suppose if Apple wants to say certain users are not allowed to access iMessage unless they've bought an iPhone that's fair. (Maybe you could argue its anticompetitive to bundle services together like that, but I won't assert that point here.) But if that's all this was about then I ought to be able to buy an iPhone, import the access token from that into Beeper on my Android, stuff the iPhone in a drawer, and go about my business. The problem is that Apple wants to dictate not only who has access to iMessage servers, but also how they're allowed to access it. And that is unacceptable in my opinion.
"Security" is a poor excuse. If server side software has to rely on trusting the client then it was never secure in the first place. And if client side software wants to "secure" itself against the person who owns it... that's a form of "security" I could do without.
Apple really needs to get that RCS implementation rolled out though. Wonder if it's still going to be green bubbles or something else.
https://jjtech.dev/reverse-engineering/imessage-explained/
"Side note: many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?’ To be honest, I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client. The internet has always had 3rd party clients! It’s almost like people have forgotten that iChat (the app that iMessage grew out of) was itself a multi-protocol chat app! It supported AIM, Jabber and Google talk. Here’s a blast from the past: https://i.imgur.com/k6rmOgq.png."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759
What did they think was going to happen? Who knows? But I guess they thought it was no big deal.
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
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.
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.
(This is one of the reasons why WhatsApp is big in the rest of the world)
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
[0]: https://olvid.io
[1]: https://github.com/olvid-io/olvid-android
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Put a tiny flat rate on the app for the work that they crated and call it a day.
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.
It never has and never will be a ‘free spirited hacker place’ despite the name.
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.
>> "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.
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.
To my knowledge, 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.
In fact, can't I not just create an new Apple ID specifically for this?
You mean like SMS and MMS right now, and RCS next year? https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/
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.
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.
This candy fell into the mud. Therefore I will never eat candy again because they are all muddy.
https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/IEmu
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
How does Apple abuse this power in the US but not EU with no differences in the product?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
What chat apps using a centralized server owned by a single company have open APIs that let anyone use them?
- 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
- 3rd party chat apps are cross platform because they're funded by alternative methods, usually by selling your personal information, though sometimes also by sales of other products within the app (like on LINE). Apple funds its chat app through phone sales.
Edit: Should have read this new post more closely. They are now requiring an Apple ID, when they weren't before.
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.
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.
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).
Of course, Apple is welcome to start charging a reasonable fee for the service.
"I'm only stealing fractions of pennies at a time! That's why it's not stealing!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And stupid analogies help nobody. 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.
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?
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.
Sort of like how Apple builds their apps?
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.
is also laughably false lol. iPhone users just want android users to get an iphone.
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.
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.
The amount of features you get for groups in Telegram for example is galaxies ahead of SMS groups.
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.
Percentage share of iphones are rising in korea and japan tho for similar reasons though.
That's what Apple wants. So they maintain arbitrary limitations to incentivize their customers to also want it.
"Android? You're buying it wrong"
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.
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.
> 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?)
Absolutely not. I'll never touch whatsapp with a ten thousand foot pole. If you aren't tired of facebook ruining people's lives then I don't know what to tell you, but frankly most people who pay attention are sick of FB controlling the planet.
How about instead, you use apps that don't sell your information to literally anyone who will give them a dollar? Like Apple's iMessage.
american iphone users just want others to be iphone users
Btw, Poe's law, and you are absolutely right about Europe lol. Thank you for making my point.
Then use Signal.
> Nobody is doing that. Doesn’t matter what I do.
Lol. Of course it matters: if you do it, by definition someone is doing it.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
It's literally as simple as installing a cross-platform app. Apple is not stopping you from doing that.
And using a third party app/protocol is pretty much the only way right now. Even most Android users don't use RCS among themselves, because only newer phones have it enabled by default and it only works in some apps.
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
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.
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)
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
I probably won't try it again until it has a few months of uninterrupted service.
I still have my Macbook if/when Beeper is cut off 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.
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.
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.
You can only get Apple Fitness on Apple devices, but you also have to pay for it.
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?
1) you have a device
2) you have software
If you buy the software, it is paid.
If you do not buy the software, its free.
If the software is not available for your device that does make it not free; you just have an incompatible device.
Any other take on this is subscribing to some bias.
Paper clips, are not relevant.
There is a distinction, to be fair, between “free open source software” which is free and you can take it and port it to your device if you want.
…but no one is claiming iMessage is FOSS, and when someone says it is “free”, that is not what they mean.
Look up “windows oem” using your favorite search engine.
Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.
The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.
The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.
So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.
I never said that. The Apple iMessage APNS is proprietary - and Apple explicitly state it cannot be used without their blessing.
In addition Apple have the right to terminate any Apple IDs that they feel are being used to circumnavigate their approved service access.
I’d be grateful if you’d stop putting words into my mouth here. I’m not claiming any analogies- just facts.
You are the one asking if iMessage is “free” (as in beer) software.
It comes with iOS - the license of which is provided free of charge for each user to run on their respective device.
I never made any statement about Beeper - I was talking singularly and only about Apple.
No, i was asking if it was free in respect to beeper, because the beeper not being free is literally the comment i replied to. I feel like you're looking at my comment in isolation, but expecting me to keep your comment in context - which also seems to be lacking context.
You: “Is it free? I have it bundled as part of my hardware purchases. Is there somewhere to get it without paying?”
Not sure where the confusion is. Seems from the quoted text you were expressly asking if iMessage was free or not.
If not, what is the “it” you were referring to in your reply? Your initial response did not seem to compare cost to beeper.
Anyway, i'm just saying that the mints on a hotel pillow are "free" too, but if you cannot acquire them without paying for another service or hardware, they're hardly free.
Best i can give iMessage is that it's complementary. Please correct me if i'm wrong, but almost no one gets iMessage without paying Apple for an associated product to gain access. It's a mint on your pillow.
Both are essentially the same thing.
https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/free-vs-complimentary
I'll concede all day long that i may be using the wrong definition, that's definitely not my objection. However free is pretty simple. Entrance fees or any price blocking you from the "free" thing is in any practical sense, hardly free. At least imo.
A lot of things are free if you ignore what you paid for in the first place.
Out of curiosity, how would you even define what is free and what isn't? Lets say a snickers bar released an April Fools edition where you paid the standard price, but only for the wrapper. The snickers bar inside is free. Or the silly paper clip example i gave, with beeper mini. Is there some definition that you would see apt to describe these as practically (as in, how people would interpret them) not being free?
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.
(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.)
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.
That would be a clear and avoidable error and would get them shut down instantly.
Many people hear about a reverse entering exception in the DMCA and call it a day. But it’s not that simple.
Reverse engineering is allowed for a very narrow case, namely interoperability between two software programs (for which you have a license granting you legal permission to use), as defined in paragraph 4 of Section 103(f).
The DMCA decidedly does not permit you to use reverse engineering to package someone else's software or service and sell it.
Jurisprudence also established that EULAs that explicitly prohibit reverse engineering supersede the exception granted in the DMCA, see Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, 320 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2003)[0]
Apple has explicitly forbidden reverse engineering in their macOS license agreement[1], the iOS license agreement[2], and the Apple Media Terms of Service[3].
Agreement with those terms is necessary to reach the parts that need reverse engineering.
There’s also the matter that the pypush repository seems to include Apple’s proprietary code, which wouldn’t fall under reverse engineering.
Worst of all, even if reverse engineering was allowed, it still doesn't allow you to connect to other people's servers. The Computer Fraud Abuse Act of 1986 explicitly prohibits unauthorized access to computer systems, and the DMCA exception doesn't supersede the CFAA.
A lot of states have criminal statutes that mirror the CFAA.
So, at this point, it wouldn’t be inconceivable for Apple to try and get the DOJ involved.
0: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/320/320.F3d...
1: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOSSonoma.pdf
2: https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS16_iPadOS16.pdf
3: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/
> 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/
Either Beeper manages to make a client that is truly indistinguishable from old iPhones, and gets to exist for a few years, or Apple somehow manages to patch all existing iPhones in a way that makes it impossible to spoof (not sure if that's possible with old hardware that don't have a secure enclave).
I highly doubt that these guys will win. I would bet 5 AAPL on it.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
I don't think Apple is going to get bankrupt for forwarding a few SMS, they'll be fine don't worry.
Up until quite recently, most phone carriers metered the number of texts you could send per month and then charged extra. Many still charge per text when you're roaming overseas. Perhaps Apple could offer API access on commercial terms to third parties but that's their decision.
Additionally, iMessage is full of scams and spams already, it's not hard to buy a box of old iphones and turn them into spam relays and that's exactly what is happening now.
Because you designed the system in such a way that interoperability was impossible without non-customers using your servers?
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.
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.
I am sure engineering these devices involves lots of compromise, and maybe they did not find sufficient benefits to outweigh the drawbacks for those other features.
Maybe it is possible they swing the pendulum too far into the cautious territory, but given their track record, I would not bet on it.
I upgraded from a 11 Pro Max to a 14 Pro Max last year and it was my phone, but better.
I've said this before and I'll say it again here. No Apple device user I've ever met thinks of the blue bubble as a status symbol. This is only something that Android users for some reason covet. In fact I've never heard it mentioned by any Android user in real life. This is only an internet thing that a tiny segment of people, like those who post to hacker news, seem to care strongly about.
I personally couldn't care less if Android got iMessage or not as long as it doesn't force any changes on the Apple side of things. It doesn't prevent me from communicating with Android users in any way currently. I also don't want to see any spam start to appear via iMessage, as there is currently none of it.
Okay, that might not be likely, but you did ask about the best case outcome.
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?
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._Microsoft_Cor...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...
Edited: formatting
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.
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...
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
In contrast, Android has multiple app stores that exclusively host open-source, non-spyware and ad-free ads.
The future is here!
I think the excellent FOSS apps ecosystem will remain exclusive to android even after Apple is forced to open up.
And maybe a pony.
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.
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
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.
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.
Firefox eventually caught up, but had lost much of its userbase and mindshare by that point.
That said this really only relevant for Apple platforms and Linux/Android, unfortunately. WebKit for Windows is somewhat in a state of disrepair.
The insidiousness of them all is frustrating
In danger of being an Apple apologist, the app store fee for the vast majority of sellers is 15%.
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.
Reducing your price gouging from 10x to 5x isn’t exactly a kindness.
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%.
15% is pure “you have no other options” robbery, expanding on the same thing pioneered by Visa/MC/AmEx.
All of the expenses you listed are a) trivial and b) already paid for by iPhone purchasers. Apple is a hardware company with the highest margins in the industry.
They’re double dipping, and gouging whilst they do so.
The storage and bandwidth costs of the App Store are the size of a rounding error at this scale. Furthermore, the App Store is a marketing tool and value add for the iPhone, and benefits them directly. To expect app developers to pay for it is insane.
https://www.howtogeek.com/713498/how-to-launch-google-assist...
I remember doing something like this a while ago.
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.
Maybe because it comes preinstalled?
“Because it comes preinstalled it is dwarfed by at least three other platforms”??
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”?
maybe Discord, FB Messenger
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.
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.
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?
Edit: in fact I'm annoyed at myself for adding to the pointlessness of what amounts to petty nerd-rage. I apologise to everyone...
Wait wait... now I am totally confused. I don't mind the separation of my messaging needs. In fact, I use Messages only for SMS (or SMS-like) messages, and WhatsApp and Signal for everything else.
> What I am against is the pitchforks and bullshit reasoning around why this is anti-consumer/trust. The whole polemic is just bullshit.
That is what I am saying :) All this debate about bubble colors, anti-consumerism, monopolies, etc is a waste of time, we have much bigger problems to deal with.
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?
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.
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.
iMessage is confusing. I get constant random authorization requests on my iPad because it got un-synced. Messages never come through to my Mac either.
Line is nowhere near perfect, and the app does have ads, but it works, it’s fast, and encrypted. People even use it for calling. I’ve literally never gave my phone number to someone for communication. Not even my coworkers.
It’s so prominent that data only cellphone plans are actually usable-and cheap.
I’m not saying we should all use Line (I would prefer Matrix). What I’m saying is there are so many communication platforms out there that are way better than S/MMS.
While I find it annoying to constantly hear from my mother and other members of my family how messages from me are "a hassle" or "always getting missed" or "never show up in the group chat", I am not willing to spend the money on something like Beeper. But some people are spending the money, it looks like there is a market there.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...
Fortunately a lot of teens moved to discord.
although the "liked your message" type stuff is also annoying.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Eventually we gave up and bought two Curve's.
Never discount peer pressure.
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
You honestly see Apple as the aggressor in that situation and not those people?
...
> You honestly see Apple as the aggressor in that situation and not those people?
Where did I call Apple an aggressor? Stick to the facts, please.
The reason there are 2 different colors is so people can tell when they are using SMS because SMS are capped / cost money in most of the world - while iMessage messages are unlimited and free.
Easy, then! Let's just fix people
Do you realize how ridiculous this reasoning is?
> 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/
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.
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.
why?
"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...
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.
Do you mean that Apple doesn't allow third-party SMS apps? Because there are lots of messaging apps on iOS.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
But why are we reaching for a car analogy? Should gmail or google.com be able to block Firefox and force you to use Chrome? Not make use of some feature Chrome has, but just purposely block Firefox even if it supports that feature or its users are content to use the service without it.
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.
Messages is not even in the top 5 used messaging apps globally.
WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger are all free to download on iOS - heck it’s offered for download at Apple’s expense; since it’s from their App Store servers.
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._Microsoft_Cor....
> 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.
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
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Apple is intentionally degrading the experience of sending messages to non-Apple devices for the explicit purpose of driving iPhone sales. This is anti-consumer, full stop.
"They must provide access to iMessage outside of the ecosystem" unnecessarily restricts the possible ways that Apple can address this issue, and is only one of many solutions to the problem.
My point and stance is not that Apple should be forced to implement iMessage on Android, but that the intentional and artificial restrictions baked into the Apple <-> Non-Apple experience is unacceptable to me as a customer.
I've commented at length about this elsewhere in the thread, but they could:
- Implement RCS (which they're finally and reluctantly doing due to regulatory pressure, but we have no idea how much they'll hamstring it, and it's borderline ridiculous that they haven't done something yet. Too little too late)
- Allow 3rd party apps to surface messages in a unified interface like they do with other iOS capabilities (e.g. the unified voice call experience from various non-Apple apps/services)
> 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 premise is demonstrably true, and can be experienced by trying to send someone a text containing an image or video using the phone's native capabilities.
I think it's worth reiterating here that Apple has explicitly restricted the messaging experience while allowing other categories of app (Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Phone calls) to natively interact with 3rd party services from a single interface. The argument that "just use another chat app" would be a lot stronger if Apple actually supported other chat apps in their native experience.
Zoom out and stop focusing on "iMessage on Android", and it becomes extremely obvious how anti-consumer this stance is based on comparing it to Apple's own design philosophy and other capabilities across iOS.
> iMessage on Android is moot.
On this I tend to agree. But this doesn't get Apple off the hook, or make the dark patterns acceptable.
As I've said elsewhere, Apple may have every right to do this, but customers have every right to be pissed about it, especially because there are ways to solve this that don't require Apple to open the floodgates to iMessage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I can't play thousands of Steam games on my Mac
This is the point I am making. There are certain apps and features that are exclusive to certain devices. I can 't play the vast majority of Steam games on my Mac. Should Steam (and all game companies involved, including Valve) be forced to enable support for MacOS for all their games because Mac users have FOMO?
But yes, console and OS exclusives are a plague and people should stop making them.
I don't dispute these facts. And I don't think they dispute my comment. By mentioning US v. Microsoft, I pointed out that there are similarities between Microsoft in the 90s and Apple today.
> 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.
Thank you for the correction.
> 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.
Unless one can believe that Apple is both willing to block Beeper and not eliminate it, then Apple is trying to eliminate Beeper as a Messenger competitor. From their statement: "We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage."
I think Apple has a reasonable argument for doing so. Though, in a world where Apple controls the only App Store where iOS users are blocked from downloading alternative SMS applications, they do hold a monopoly over both how iOS users install applications, and the only SMS application available on iOS: Messenger. Non-iOS users who want to message iOS users with the same quality of service as iMessages may only do so by installing 3rd party software. Otherwise they need to implicitly agree to having messages treated as second class, to Apple's likely enrichment. I think reasonable people can perceive some amount of anti-competitive intent in Apple's action. Should Apple be able to block 3rd parties from using the iMessage service infrastructure? Possibly, but it's hard to argue that doing so is pro-competition.
I think most of the concern over Apple's refusal to admit 3rd party iMessage clients will be eliminated if and when they make good on their promise to support RCS next year.
> Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper
They are literally eliminating one of their products. That's anti-competitive.
> 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.
You just moved the goalposts out of the stadium. Anti-competitive behavior doesn't need to overwhelm every segment of a market to be anti-competitive behavior.
b) Apple is not interfering with the ability of Beeper to sell their product or add new features. They are simply closing loopholes in their product.
c) I never said that anti-competitive behaviour needs to overwhelm every segment. In fact I said the complete opposite when I referred to market distortion.
Source: Googling around, so take it for what it is!
I would also guess it does more volume then FB Messenger, even if it technically has less users.
Do you have a source for this?
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... )
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
* Platform dependent messanger is a terrible idea, but perhaps anyone have right to implement legal terrible idea.
* Why the US people widely adopt terrible idea? It's terrible as designed.
* Although, since it's widely adopted in the US, it should be opened, maybe. EU won't help because they don't adopt terrible idea.
Apple shit just works, I like my wallet garden, don't want third party trash or getting spammed from android clients.
I'm guessing it was a typo, but well done nonetheless.
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.
The only antitrust comparison I can see was Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer, but that doesn't really work because that was Microsoft preventing other competing chat clients from accessing the wider internet, not Microsoft's own servers. There has never been an antitrust lawsuit won anywhere that forces a company to open its own servers that its paying for open to anyone who wants to access them.
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.
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.
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.
This looks like a great outcome?
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.
[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212619
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.
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.
So there's quite a window where spoofing that kind of iDevice will be easy.
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.
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.
At least, from what I've read over the past few days.
https://jjtech.dev/reverse-engineering/imessage-explained/
If cost was the problem, they could offer a subscription.
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.
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').
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.
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.
This might be extremely hard for Apple to fix.
If this uses copyrighted keys then it will be a bit more tricky (although fair use could still come into play).
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.
I've not heard of one, it doesn't appear to be in their playbook.
Apple doesn’t do that. It has lawyers to use.
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.
The OP they responded to was arguing there’s no point in Apple doing that, if they wanted an app on android they could do it themselves. They already have for Apple Music, Apple TV, and their moved to iPhone app.
I don’t think there is any level of frozen over hell where Apple would ever buy the company and let them run the service. There’s no chance they’ll ever buy the company. Even if they did, they would just shut it down for something Apple makes. Apple does not need third-party code to interface with Apple‘s own service.
If the rumors are true, Apple already has iMessage running on Android, they just haven't released it yet. They used to support AIM and other messaging services, so they're no stranger to cross-platform messaging apps. The could probably pull together a Beeper competitor pretty quickly.
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.
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.
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.
Well not really - it would be great if the sms feature set matched imessage. The main benefit to me when I see blue is that I know that person is probably at least authenticated and probably has a credit card tied to that account. That in itself seems to limit the riffraff (scammers) that want to send spam or other garbage. I see way more of that from green than I do blue.
Interesting. How does this impact an Android user who sends text to you? To them everyone is green (or whatever color Android uses) correct?
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.
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.
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.
Don't know if that would solve the Phone Number registration part, but thought I'd throw this out there
No relays (so preserves security) & harder for apple to identify (because to them it'd be as if I'm just using my iPad)
So you can host this on your mac, and then you can join that bridge using matrix.
I've used this once for whatsapp, and it worked quite well, also stuff like polls and reactions worked. Though I don't know how good the imessage bridge is feature wise.
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.
Either way, I doubt Apple would come to an agreement and would most likely continue to play the cat and mouse game (like they do with people who jb)
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
It seemed like it would make spam and scamming over iMessage worse. At least it requires an Apple Id now.