Congrats on the Eric & Team. Can't wait to try it
Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
611–620 of 902 posts
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#612This is really cool, at least in theory. I keep hearing from only iPhone users on podcasts that they find it annoying to message amyone not on iOS. As an Android user, I couldn't imagine this being a concern to me; have any of you Android users even had the passing thought that you're missing out on hypothetical conversations between people who only use iMessage? I use Messenger for the gen x people in my life, Signa…
Every single person I message regularly uses iMessage. As far as I know none of them are “iPhone users” in the sense that they particularly care , they just use ‘the normal thing’ (which is iPhone). So for the opposite question, I’ve never had the passing thought of missing out on what Android users do either. I wonder if people just sort of mostly self select into mostly non-overlapping groups?
Android users don't have platform specific messaging apps as far as I know, so the fact that some people use iMessage as their normal is mostly inconsequential to Android users, but not the other way around since things appear differently based entirely on the platform. But I suppose I answered my own question, and something like this would enable iMessage to be more platform-independent, and thus an iOS user could hypothetically switch to Android without concern that they'll be ostracized from their messaging group or whatever.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#613Can I make this work with my Google Voice number?
Same question. No RCS, no iMessage... Us few Google Voice users have been forgotten by Google. I live in constant fear that the service will be "spring cleaned".
You know, if Apple wanted to be really snarky, they could run some of those "Make Apple support RCS" ads, except with Google Voice.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like a problem. Emulating the protocol is okayish-to-gray but having the binary there will just be a straight DMCA. Wonder what the actual app is doing since this is just the PoC.
There’s no need for Apple to react to this project at all. Eventually, someone will send spam using this app, at which point automated systems at Apple will “console ban” the hardware identifier shared by all of the app’s customers. The project presumably has a library of valid hardware identifiers collected and ready to go, and eventually that’ll be drained by spammers faster than revenue versus device purchasing al…
Apple may not buy WhatsApp will. If there's ever a commercial or OSS third party WhatsApp voice client I would expect they will try to send their Perkins Coie dogs after the project. They've already done it to many oss projects, terrifying Devs from continuing their work
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably they originally did it because Android has high-assurance embedded use-cases (compare/contrast: Windows IoT Core) where you want to strip out everything possible from the attack surface. But mainly it's because base Android (AOSP) can be arbitrarily modified by the OEM; and Google doesn't want to have to trust installations of Google Play Services that have been arbitrarily modified by OEMs. (Especially beca…
Man, that's contrived. Really its simple: Google seperates out Play Services so they can harvest user data from virtually all Andoid devices. It lets them market Android as OSS while still reaping the benefits of closed source data scraping.
derefr cited one reason but there's another that's relevant to this thread: updates. In the Android model handset manufacturers and carriers decide when (or if) to ship updates. Google distributing their apps through the store gives them a way to roll out new features to a reasonable portion of their user base.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#616How come there’s a waitlist for the main product but not this one? I feel like it should be the other way around?
There's no stress on their servers with Beeper Mini, as it communicates with Apple servers directly.
Oh that makes sense. I was thinking that there’s added risk of spammers and botters on mini and they’d want to gate that
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
Besides being allegedly hard to shut down without breaking iPhones, there's also this statement given to Ars Technica: > Migicovsky had a few different answers. The broadest one, regarding the tech behind the app, is that reverse-engineering for interoperability is legal—a fair use exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's restrictions against circumventing encryption or other protections. The app also goes…
I’m curious to know if this tech requires spoofing an iPhone or otherwise falsely representing to Apple’s servers that the Android device is an iPhone. If so, I would be looking at the CFAA more than the DMCA.
Van Buren protects it from CFAA.
The only avenue that is untested is based on Terms of Service.
I did a OSS WhatsApp reverse engineering project and got a C&D from 800 billion dollar Meta's lawyers all based on violation of their Terms of Service.
As far as I'm aware, there's no precedent for interop against ToS.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#618Whatsapp is known for banning accounts that use any kind of third party clients. For Android users on iMessage (insane achievement!) obviously this isn't such a big issue, as they didn't have an account before, so the sanction of being banned is not so important. I would never dare, however, to switch over my WhatsApp to a 3rd party client. Do you have something planned in this regard?
The best you can do now is run whatsapp apk on an emulator or spare device, then auth that with the matrix bridge, then you can avoid needing to use whatsapp clients on daily drivers. Works decently well: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp
Emulator based WhatsApp accounts are highest risk of bans just f.y.i
If you're worried about using beeper due to bans then just get a second hand burner phone (needs to have had WhatsApp before so it is safe from being identified as "poisoned") then make an account on there to use with beeper.
Beeper is very helpful NGL.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#619"Beeper does not have an official office, and we all work from home: ..., Sochi, ..., Kiev, ....".
So they work with Russia and do not know how to spell the capital of Ukraine.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Beeper Cloud uses a Mac in the middle then I would have assumed that is actually permitted, as its presumably a legitimate iMessage client and some software to forward your messages after that. It seems similar to the parallel of iOS builds where its been possible to do so with virtualized MacOS on non-Mac hardware for a long time but its a violation of the TOS of MacOS to do so. Apple does spend effort ensuring t…
Apple or Meta (WhatsApp) trying to take down something like this would almost certainly be viewed unfavorably by the ever-lurking EU regulators.
Please read this:
https://gist.github.com/smashah/667d4d5cf31670ee87547450861a...
The game being played here is poker. If they call beeper's bluff then they risk setting a whole industry wide precedent that interop supercedes ToS (that's the only angle).
As it stands, ToS based C&D for interop is untested afaik.
We as a community need to discuss ToS-trolling and fight against it.