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iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

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Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#381

Post by carlyfan »

jedieaston wrote: post #330
carlyfan wrote: post #238

For anyone who is interested in making an iMessage proxy and has time to spend: There is a legitimate way to interact with the iMessage system with a standard protocol. It requires you to have a host iPhone (no jailbreaking needed). What you need to have is a Bluetooth adapter with MAP (Message Access Profile) support. Your iPhone will treat all messages from the MAP protocol as if they are from the Messages app. Thi…

The only problem is that any messages that the iPhone received while the middleman was out of range won’t get to your PC, but this’d still be extremely useful for quick replies. I wonder if the iPhone will accept photos over MAP....

> The only problem is that any messages that the iPhone received while the middleman was out of range won’t get to your PC

That is not a problem. MAP is sort of like the IMAP protocol. You can ask the phone to give you older messages and the iPhone does indeed support that as well.

Moreover, with this scheme, you will likely have to keep the donor host iPhone and the middleman at home and have them plugged in 24/7. So then your middleman doesn’t have to be extremely clever, although it wouldn’t hurt if it was.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#382

Post by xnyan »

ta17711771 wrote: post #247
jamescostian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 22 and live in a mid-sized city, and I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" - and really, I'm not exaggerating. And not from rich people who have the latest iPhone either. In addition, I have been in friend groups that would exclude Android users because if you have even 1 Android user in…

> I've seen people trying to get into a relationship (or even something more casual, but not a platonic friendship) get rejected because of the dreaded "green bubbles" Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow. I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos, and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.

>I consider this line of thinking to be on the same level as face tattoos and social media posts about meals multiple times a week.

You're mad at people for succumbing to a dark pattern in tech that they themselves don't completely understand, but are going off on people who post pictures of their food or have tattoos like it affects you in any way?

>Good, fuck those people, I probably don't want to associate with them anyhow.

You know, blue bubbles may in fact feel the same way about you.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#383

Post by toasterlovin »

saagarjha wrote: post #190
toasterlovin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.

There's a lot of people who use WhatsApp even in the US. Perhaps not as many as iMessage, but it's still a household name.

Do they use them to talk to people in the US who have no connection to countries where it is the main messaging app?

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#384

Post by toasterlovin »

klodolph wrote: post #105
toasterlovin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, nobody uses WhatsApp, so it’s not a realistic option. Network effects are a thing.

The US is a big place. WhatsApp has plenty of users in the US. It’s easily the third messaging app I use, after LINE and iMessage. And the people I talk to on WhatsApp are US natives, it’s not like they picked up WhatsApp in some other country and brought it here.

If you're using three messaging apps on a regular basis, you are either an extreme outlier or have lots of contact with people who are in other countries or have strong ties to other countries.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#385

Post by sukilot »

scarface74 wrote: post #327
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been developing for Mac and iOS before the App Store was released, and have experience the author names - in broad strokes, your argument is valid, but it's not correct - errors slip in when describing the Applescript interface as just a reflection of Applescript sucking, describing his issue with Apple having _fragile_ private APIs when his conclusion is the problem is _private_ APIs, and reducing the problems…

Why do people act like having “private APIs” is something evil? The entire purpose of having published public APIs is that they should be something that doesn’t change without a deprecation schedule or warning while the underlying implementation can change without notice. This is software engineering 101.

I don't know about evil, but it's hostile because Apple is intentionally preventing a non-AppleOS version from existing. The details of how they do it are of merely scientific interest.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#386

Post by jedieaston »

oarsinsync wrote: post #256
ta17711771 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of the people might already have an iPhone 85%+ of the world's on Android, think outside your social circle =]

The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage. What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle. I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bu…

If you tap on the info button in Messages, you can click "Hide Alerts", which works fine for me.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#387

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Would something like https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet-imessage have not worked?

I'm almost certain I've seen other implementations too, but I can't find them now.

Edit: Oh, here was another one: https://github.com/RomanScott/weMessage It's for Android, but you could presumably reuse the server implementation to create a Windows version.

Edit2: And yet another one, fwiw, but this time it's Android-only and closed source so less useful. https://airmessage.org/

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#388

Post by ripdog »

paulcarroty wrote: post #367
harpratap wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does, but cross platform IMs are not so socially discriminating. You can easily download LINE and move on with your life in Japan. But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many, for which they end up being socially ostraostracized

> But getting iMessage is an economic barrier for many economic barrier to buy ~$100 used iphone on ebay?

Are you really going to buy, charge, supply with data and carry around a second phone, no matter how cheap, just so you can send blue messages? That attitude is, like many american ideas, really whack.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#389

Post by unix_fan »

nailer wrote: post #356
sgt wrote: post #254

"The looming demise of macOS as a developer platform". There's some sentiment these days on HN about this but personally I think it's hogwash. No platform is perfect, but macOS to me is as close as you can get to a developer's dream workstation / laptop. Remember all those years when we dreamed of a Unix with a proper UI? Well, it exists. Windows doesn't even come close. I'd rather go Linux before Windows as a develo…

> Remember all those years when we dreamed of a Unix with a proper UI? Well, it exists. Windows doesn't even come close. You should reconsider Windows. A full Linux kernel and apt-get is way better than Homebrew will ever be.

Personally, I find windows to be much more intrusive than macOS out of the box.

sudo spctl --master-disable is usually enough for macOS to keep quiet.

Re: iMessage for Windows: A labor of love that will never see light of day (2018)

#390

Post by Wowfunhappy »

carlyfan wrote: post #238

For anyone who is interested in making an iMessage proxy and has time to spend: There is a legitimate way to interact with the iMessage system with a standard protocol. It requires you to have a host iPhone (no jailbreaking needed). What you need to have is a Bluetooth adapter with MAP (Message Access Profile) support. Your iPhone will treat all messages from the MAP protocol as if they are from the Messages app. Thi…

Can you _send_ messages this way though? I wonder why Smartwatches don't make use of it. I can't send iMessages from my Pebble, only read them.
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