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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

#501

Post by chatmasta »

altintx wrote: post #485
chatmasta wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an Apple account, why are you even using Beeper? I guess it might have some advantages for convenience (multiplexing chat apps), but is that the main selling point right now? I'd imagine the target market is Android users who want to talk to people on Apple Messages. So they can just create a new Apple account, right? (Isn't that kinda hard anyway, though? You need to tie it to billing, etc.) And if that…

I sit in front of my work laptop which is signed into my work apple account. My iPhone is signed into my personal Apple account. I cannot iMessage from the keyboard because they won't play together. I've been using Cloud Beeper since early summer, and it makes the two apple systems play nice together. I also have a Windows machine signed in to it, but that's a nice to have.

Wait, how does this work? Is it using Handoff and sending from your phone, or Beeper is just a GUI and you've extracted a token from your personal phone to use with Beeper on your work device?

Btw, this is mostly unrelated, but do you work for a large company? I'd assume most security teams would have a problem with a setup like this.

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

#502

Post by dylan604 »

afavour wrote: post #338
nebula8804 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uptake for OS updates is very high on iOS though right? I heard a while back that it is like 90+% in 6 months. (could be totally wrong on that can someone confirm?)

There’s a ton of devices out there unable to upgrade to the latest iOS. Obviously you can release point upgrades for old versions but I do wonder what the uptake of those is like. I’d wager there are a ton of very old iOS devices out there. At the very least many more than there are potential users of Beeper.

anecdote of 1, but i have a 6S+ that is kept up with any updates it receives which is 15.8. there maybe some devs that have older devices that they intentionally keep at even older versions, but if someone is using an old iDevice as a daily driver, they're probably still more likely to run the updates. at least, that's my reaches up and grabs for an opinion

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

#506

Post by philsnow »

edoceo wrote: post #463
philsnow wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EveryBuddy

Not sure what EveryBuddy is. Trillian was a multi-protocol chat client from 2000 [0] named after Trillian [1] from 1979. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(software) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(character)

ah didn't realize it had gone away. its successor appears to be [0]

now I'm reliving the chaos of the late-00s/early-10s instant messaging apocalypse when AOL sunsetted AIM. Clients like Trillian were absolutely necessary before AIM shut down. Everybuddy was a good linux-friendly client. When I still spent time on IRC, I really really liked Bitlbee [1] with ERC [2]. Gaim was one of the first open-source projects I ever contributed to.

(I'm not saying that there's a connection there, but rather that all the chat protocols started getting used less around the same time for the same reason, which was smartphones becoming commonplace in late-00s.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayttm

[1] https://www.bitlbee.org/

[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/erc.html

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

#507

Post by dylan604 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #350
chipgap98 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw an article on the topic where the reporter spoke with Beeper's CEO, Eric Migicovsky. He seems to believe that blocking Beeper might cause problems for legitimate Apple user's. Obviously that outcome is something he wants, but I still think its interesting. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/5/23987817/beeper-mini-imes...

What's brilliant is they get press either way this goes down.

i understand no such thing as bad news/publicity, but if the 800lb gorilla squashes the little guy, then that's some pretty bad news. with the recent Twitt...er,X and reddit debacle with 3rd party apps, that 800lbs is pretty powerful when it wants to be

edit, because i used the wrong turn of phrase

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

#508

Post by gaws »

joshstrange wrote: post #454

Beeper is a really cool idea by some cool people (people behind the Pebble smartwatch) but I've resisted using it for fear of bans. I don't want my Slack/Discord/Instagram/AppleId/etc to get banned for using something not allowed under the terms of service. How are people who use Beeper dealing with this? Are you just using dummy/test accounts that you don't care about or are you just rolling the dice. I would like t…

> I would like to live in a world where I could use Beeper without worry but I don't feel like we currently live in that world. Am I wrong?

I've been using Beeper for close to six months, and it's been a dream.

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

#509

Post by LetsGetTechnicl »

oldandboring wrote: post #434

Thinking maybe this isn't working. I downloaded, installed. It said it detected all my chats with iPhone users and that I was 'upgraded' to iMessage chats with them. I then tried using Beeper Mini to message someone I know has an iPhone (continuing our existing chat that it 'upgraded' from SMS) and I asked him if I was coming up as a blue bubble and he said it's 'grey', not green and definitely not blue.

That's because received messages are grey, but the messages sent from an iPhone to an iMessage recipient are blue. So I'd ask if when he texts you back if his texts are blue.

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

#510

Post by pyrophane »

> 'many people always ask ‘what do you think Apple is going to do about this?' I am shocked that everyone is so shocked by the sheer existence of a 3rd party iMessage client.

I'm not shocked that someone figured out how to create a 3rd-party iMessage client, however I am somewhat skeptical of the notion that Apple will not find a way to break it.

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