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Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#301

Post by jrflowers »

willseth wrote: post #209
maxlin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since apple has no control over your fire extinguisher, they sent a man to securely take it from your house and dispose of it. It could have been a bomb for all you know.

What? Does a fire extinguisher connect to Apple servers? Does a fire extinguisher secretly being a bomb affect the security of others? I don’t know if you could have come up with a worse metaphor.

If you think about it, blocking an app and stealing your fire extinguishers are both actions that a person or corporation could theoretically do. Since they are both actions, they are equivalent. Therefore blocking an app, burning down your house, baking a pie, writing a sonnet, doing a backflip are all the same thing.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#303

Post by orangecat »

dmillar wrote: post #65

As usual, Gruber was right on the money. Via Threads yesterday: "My prediction is that Apple will make changes—fixing bugs and/or closing loopholes—that break Beeper Mini. It’s untenable that there’s unsanctioned client software for a messaging platform for which privacy and security are a primary feature. It’s a very nice app, remarkably clever, and for now works like a charm, but if Apple wanted an iMessage client…

If an "unsanctioned" client can compromise iMessage security, then there was no actual security other than obscurity.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#304

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

SahAssar wrote: post #223
addandsubtract wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why most people (should) opt to use a cross platform messenger, such as Signal.

If signal would officially allow third party clients, non-phone-number-bound users and maybe federation that'd be great. It does not.

As very recently made evident, Signal spends a significant amount of money maintaining their phone-number-bound infrastructure, with an entirely plausible, reasonable, user-focused reason for doing so. As a Signal user, and donator, I’m 100% okay with the trade-off they’ve made, and would hate to see it reversed just to appeal to some nerdy pipe-dream for how services should work.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#305

Post by willseth »

doctoboggan wrote: post #89

My guess is Beeper calculated this was likely to happen eventually (maybe not this fast), but that they would get good press on the initial launch and on the shutdown announcement and that press would be worth the technical investment they made. They do have a different service they still offer and some percentage of people are looking at that now.

Agree. It shows off their technical chops and gets a lot of press attention and goodwill for their target market of Android users who mostly don’t like Apple.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#306

Post by busymom0 »

This reddit comment is exactly what I thought when I first saw this:

> The sheer fucking hubris of these clowns to charge a subscription to forge device identifiers and transfer data through Apple's servers for users that have in no way actually paid Apple for that service and then say "there's no way they can shut us down!"

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/18dy7ip/apple_has_se...

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#307

Post by meepmorp »

throw310822 wrote: post #284
meepmorp wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is handled by carriers, so google couldn't really block messages from iPhone users specifically. And that's not considering what an incredibly bad move it would be for them if they could somehow reject only iPhone texts.

Do the SMSes come straight from the other users' phones, or are they relayed via some Apple server? > what an incredibly bad move it would be for them I don't see it very different from Apple's choice to degrade arbitrarily the experience of messaging with android users. There are infinitely better alternatives to sms for private messaging, Google could say it's encouraging its users to move on them.

From the device to the carrier SMSC.

Edit: to respond to your edit

Apple is blocking 3rd party access to their own services. Google blocking access to messages delivered via an 3rd party isn't at all the same thing. And the optics of it would be incredibly bad for Google.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#308

Post by jeroenhd »

trynumber9 wrote: post #47

The EU should, like they did years ago with PC operating systems, mandate a default browser selection screen. And a default messenger selection screen. And a default app store selection screen. Not that we'd get it in the US but it would help reduce Apple/Google market capture efforts.

The EU's DMA is supposed to basically do this: break up gatekeepers and closed platforms for user choice.

Not every app needs to be compatible with every other app, though. There is a user base cutoff (and even then there is some room for interpretation) of 45 million users (10% of the EU population)/10k business users.

Negotiations aren't done yet, but it seems iMessage isn't popular enough to meet this cutoff. Alternatives like WhatsApp definitely are, though; I'm pretty sure that's exactly why Facebook is working on cross-platform messaging for WhatsApp: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/10/23866912/whatsapp-cross-p...

This law doesn't just effect chat app developers: it also applies to app stores and other methods of digital gatekeeping.

That being said, Apple argues the app store for its iPads aren't popular enough to cross the threshold (they split up the iOS app store and the iPadOS app store in their statistics), so the impact of these requirements will depend on what specific iDevice you use.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#309

Post by girvo »

increscent wrote: post #188
StressedDev wrote: post #143

One thing which is really confusing is why are Android users obsessed with iMessage? Android users can send text messages to iPhones, the can call iPhone users, and they can use third party messaging apps to communicate with iPhone users. It really isn’t clear to me why so many people are so angry they cannot use iMessage on Android.

I recently switched from Android to iOS just for iMessage. SMS is quite unreliable even in 2023. SMS messages don't have the same delivery guarantees as IP-based messaging services. And often I have internet access, but spotty cellular service. The thing that pushed me over the edge was that my carrier happened to block all my SMS for a day. I only found out about it later in the day, after I had missed many (unrecov…

FaceTime is the real lock-in service for me. I use it for all my video and most of my audio calls, it’s second to none in terms of reliability and quality. I wish that was accessible from my work laptop!

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#310

Post by im_thatoneguy »

StressedDev wrote: post #143

One thing which is really confusing is why are Android users obsessed with iMessage? Android users can send text messages to iPhones, the can call iPhone users, and they can use third party messaging apps to communicate with iPhone users. It really isn’t clear to me why so many people are so angry they cannot use iMessage on Android.

Because iMessage users won't let you join iMessage group chats. They don't want to lose features. So your choice is to just not be friends anymore or have an iphone device.

I have an ipad just to chat with people who refuse to use anything other than imessage.

I don't want anything to do with iMessage, but I have to.

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