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Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

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Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#401

Post by VincentEvans »

ronyeh wrote: post #368
kayson wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true. By one metric, at least, the green bubble is "uglier" - https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-...

Thank you. Old school iOS SMS used black text which was much more readable. It’s as if I’m writing with yellow highlighter on white paper. Painful. Worse, it changes the color of (gasp) the iPhone owner’s outgoing messages. So as an android user, you’re messing up MY texts and ruining MY perception of myself. Ugh. Yes, humans are stupid. But it would be nice if Apple let me customize the colors in my app. I did just…

Normal people choose an app that works for everyone. If they can’t be bothered to switch to something, like Telegram, or Whatsapp, or Discord, or Line or Signal, or… is because they value your companionship not worth the bother.

So buy an iphone to fit in, or respect yourself a bit more and move on and find a better group to interact with.

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#402

Post by BorisMelnik »

this month has been crazy for Apple and text messages. First RCS now this! I am a bit nervous about jumping into this not knowing privacy implications. Normally I let HN "vet" apps like this but I think more will be revealed with this app, and not saying that in a bad way. It is going to be a crazy week!

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#403

Post by canucker2016 »

electrondood wrote: post #355
bagels wrote: post #349

Why do people care so much about the bubble color?

For one, teenagers are ostracized and excluded from their friend groups because of what OS they're using in group texts. It's insane, but there it is.

It's most likely too late to save the USA teen population from smartphone homogeneity - from 2022's https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/01/06/gen-z-survey-says...:

"Analyst firm Piper Sandler's approximately twice yearly survey of teenagers in America shows that iPhone ownership is up 1% to 87% since its last report. At the same time, the new figures claim 88% of teenagers say their next phone will be an iPhone, which is down 1% from the last report."

from my informal poll of young relatives in past years, females were typically iPhone users and males were more likely to own Androids. I guess peer pressure was too great to fight the supposed Android benefits.

But, hey, Apple doesn't have a monopoly in smartphones, right? so Apple doesn't need to be forced to play nice with anyone...

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#405

Post by geraldhh »

Rygian wrote: post #395
bogwog wrote: post #296

This seems like it won't last, but it's AWESOME and I really hope you survive Apple's inevitable attempts to kill this. A universal chat application would be amazing, and will maybe help bring attention to the value of standards and interoperability (hopefully by governments/regulators).

On the contrary, the EU law that enforces interoperability should put some wind under this project's wings.

it might even be the reason for it's existence

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#408

Post by ttul »

lxgr wrote: post #367
hedgehog wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple maintains iMessage compatibility with devices that are long out of support, if Beeper Mini is sufficiently similar to the client in for example iOS 12 then it makes an Apple decision to break Beeper fairly expensive. Even if they do the work to publish iMessage updates for the old iOS versions it just buys a little time before the new version gets reverse engineered, and that at the cost of poor user experience…

> Even if they do the work to publish iMessage updates for the old iOS versions it just buys a little time before the new version gets reverse engineered There's probably a cliff in complexity. Once Apple starts requesting signed attestations from the secure enclave on the devices that have one, it's game over. They probably don't just yet, since still too many people use iMessage on first-party clients that don't ha…

If Apple does start enforcing signed attestations, they will say that it's to reduce abuse. I have no doubt (being in the anti-abuse world) that spammers and phishing gangs will immediately begin using Beeper to spam iMessage users because this allows them to avoid buying an iOS device. With end-to-end encryption, Apple may also decide to roll out privacy-protecting client-side spam and phishing detection, which would IMHO be a really great thing.

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#409

Post by chimeracoder »

hanniabu wrote: post #280
martin1975 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source to Signal is open to analysis if you doubt its security. I suspect they C&D forks because they don't follow coding/security practices as upstream does, and it would be too hard to ensure they would if they just let anyone fork it.

No guarantee the build on the app store is the same as on github.

> No guarantee the build on the app store is the same as on github.

I don't know why this comment always pops up on HN every time Signal is mentioned.

Signal builds on Android have been reproducible on Signal for nearly eight years - basically the entire time Signal has existed as an app under that name.

On iOS? No, because Apple doesn't allow reproducible builds on the App Store, period. But you can't blame Signal for that.

Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android

#410

Post by keyme »

Whatsapp 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?

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