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.
Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
411–420 of 902 posts
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#412This is a wonderful project. It highlights how silly Apple is. For those defending the existence of green bubbles, why don’t we swap blue with green then? Would you be okay with all your iMessages in that ugly green while your SMSes with Android friends are in calming blue? I am typing this on an iPhone 15 pro max and I have several MacBook pros (M3 Max on the way) and everyone in my family has their own iPad. I hate…
SMS messages on iOS have always been green. iMessage was released four years after the original iPhone.
They used to be black-on-green, now they are white-on-green. iMessage also used to be black-on-blue, see the announcement at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrBIgjodpFs
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not that familiar with ios apps, can they not push out updates to individual apps?
Not the OS-included ones, afaik. Some Apple apps are through the AppStore normally, which can be updated independently (i.e. TestFlight, despite its deep hooks).
Why did google break out Google Play Services as a separate app, was that when they started integrating more with third-party android phone suppliers, and they didn't want to have to wait for OS upgrade cycles from slower-moving companies?
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#414Whatsapp 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
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple or Meta (WhatsApp) trying to take down something like this would almost certainly be viewed unfavorably by the ever-lurking EU regulators.
That's the only reason I'm not confident that Apple will kill this. They wouldn't want the regulatory attention and (at least for now) this is a niche area that few people know about.
Easier to kill something when it is a small niche area that few people know about rather than wait until it gets bigger and more people use it.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with graceful fallback Have you ever tried to stop having an Apple device? Hopefully better now, but a few years ago there was no way to unlink iMessage. So say good bye to all your Apple friends, as them texting you goes to the Apple cloud and not your new phone.
> a few years ago there was no way to unlink iMessage Deregistration[1] has been supported since November 2014. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203042
There was a time after you still needed to have the iPhone to do it, though. And I'm not sure how many are actually aware you have to do this, just getting messages for them sent into the void.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#417Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#418Recently I got a spam iMessage from a sort of empty contact. There was no number, no email address. I thought this was impossible, that there had to some kind of ID connected. Can someone explain what's going on?
I just got some iMessage spam yesterday. Now I know why. This jailbreak will make it less likely for someone to be able to trust iMessage.
iMessage spam has been a thing for months, and if these guys could reverse-engineer iMessage, so can criminals.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is too high profile. Apple is absolutely, 100% going to kill this and it’s gonna screw this over for those of us who leverage iMessage in Hackintosh environments.
It's been around for ages, and Apple has taken no action so far.
It has never been this easy and it has never been behind a subscription fee.
Re: Show HN: Beeper Mini – iMessage client for Android
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the OS-included ones, afaik. Some Apple apps are through the AppStore normally, which can be updated independently (i.e. TestFlight, despite its deep hooks).
Why did google break out Google Play Services as a separate app, was that when they started integrating more with third-party android phone suppliers, and they didn't want to have to wait for OS upgrade cycles from slower-moving companies?
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 because those versions would likely all act differently-enough from one-another that they would be forced to loosen their server-side, network-traffic-fingerprint-based "authentic Android device" detection that allows them to ignore/block bots pretending to be Android devices.)
By shipping Google Play Services through the store, they can ensure that, on devices that run it, it's exactly the same code for every device that runs it, with no OEM alterations. (And they can also include various checks to reject devices that would try to alter that code at load time. This is the real reason why e.g. Huawei devices are blocked from using Google Play Services — they try to patch unspecified parts of the Play Services code while loading it, "breaking the integrity of the platform" from Google's perspective.)