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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

#391

Post by Brian_K_White »

Pulcinella wrote: post #311
Brian_K_White wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they don't like being spit on and excluded by iphone users. Iphone users don't like when there are android users in group chats. The reason the iphone users don't like it is because Apple specifically and artificially makes the experience annoying and shitty in several different ways, for the iphone users not just for the Android users.

Good grief! No one is spitting on people with Android phones. If you really feel this way you need to put your screen down and spend time talking to people in real life. No one is persecuting you.

Yes in fact they are. I have the amazing ability to recognize a problem even if I don't have it myself*. If you really can't do that, perhaps you should try.

* Android user in the US where this dynamic primarily exists, but I just don't care because I'm not 20 any more. I only very occasionally need to send a video or picture to anyone, and in those cases, I know enough to use email or a google photos link or something, which probably annoys the recipient a little and makes me weird to them, but I'm just ok with that since I know where the blame really lies. Similarly in the occasional times I txt with family members or friends, we're not in high school and so they don't care about my green bubble, and I just accept the annoying stupid extra txts I get that say "x smiled" or whatever. That ux don't bother me in the sense that I don't spend any time thinking and caring about it, but that doesn't make it not utterly stupid and ridiculous, and especially so when you know it's a deliberate act and not an honest technical limitation. Astonishingly it's possible to both recognize that something is not worth investing much care over, and recognize that it's wrong and that it's a deliberate wrong commited by someone and not just the weather. Amazing!

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#392

Post by seanp2k2 »

empyrrhicist wrote: post #386
llm_nerd wrote: post #290

This was the obvious outcome. People were being willfully blind about how this "hack" works. Using an exfiltrated binary they used its blackbox functions to perform a sort of device attestation using ripped Apple device identifiers. Clearly Apple simply needs to blacklist any device attestation that this service uses, which is obviously trivial. These aren't just RNGs they're fabricating, they're sets of legitimate A…

Yes, totally understandable that this would be blocked within our legal system... but its a proof of concept that it would not be burdensome for apple to enable interoperability. We should be demanding support for open standards for messaging from mono/duopolists like Apple/Google.

Yearly reminder that a long time ago, chat services used XMPP and we were on the verge of having GChat interoperability with FB messages and I think Yahoo or something similar at the time. None of them really wanted to do it for business reasons, so they could “add value” (and charge for it)….same reason RSS has fallen out of favor (no good way to inject ads and tracking). IRC and Matrix still exist.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#393

Post by paulryanrogers »

tedunangst wrote: post #200
gnicholas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read of GP's comment was that the claim of tortious interference would be by Beeper against Apple (for interfering with Beeper's relationship with Beeper's customers).

Apple is not preventing anyone from downloading beeper, or giving beeper money, or running beeper software. They are exercising control over their own servers.

Blocking interpretability could be illegal, especially as they near market dominance

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#394

Post by meepmorp »

cycomanic wrote: post #314
haswell wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An android user in an otherwise iMessage only group chat tends to mess things up. Those Apple users tend to get frustrated by it and group chat exclusion is a real thing. It’s less about a specific feature set and more about inclusion and acceptance from/by peers. This is especially prevalent among the younger crowd. Think high school group dynamics playing out with phones. And then on top of that, photos/videos are…

I realised this the other day, a friend send me a video via mms (I'm on android) and the quality was super poor (like 90s gif like quality). I though she must have some issue with her camera or so, no next time I saw her we looked at her phone (which is an iPhone), perfectly fine video. It's just apple degrading the performance for who is not on an iPhone. I mean just imagine they'd degrade sound to nearly noise if y…

> It's just apple degrading the performance for who is not on an iPhone.

The reason the video looks like ass is because MMS messages aren't meant to be very large. While (iirc) there isn't a hard limit, the recommended maximum message size is ~600KB. The only way to fit a video into that range is to compress the hell out of it.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#395

Post by gnicholas »

tptacek wrote: post #383
gnicholas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read of GP's comment was that the claim of tortious interference would be by Beeper against Apple (for interfering with Beeper's relationship with Beeper's customers).

Yes. And I'm saying, were this a live issue (I don't think it is), the graver liability might be for Beeper interfering with Apple's contracts with its users.

In what way would Beeper's action cause Apple's customers to breach a contract with Apple? I would think most of the people who would purchase a service like this would be Android users, not iPhone users. Some of them might own Macs, but what would be the contract that the user would be breaching that would result in damage to Apple?

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#396

Post by gnicholas »

tedunangst wrote: post #200
gnicholas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read of GP's comment was that the claim of tortious interference would be by Beeper against Apple (for interfering with Beeper's relationship with Beeper's customers).

Apple is not preventing anyone from downloading beeper, or giving beeper money, or running beeper software. They are exercising control over their own servers.

My understanding of tortious interference is that it is broader than actually preventing others from using a service. Even just saying things to dissuade them from doing business with a company can qualify.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#397

Post by selectodude »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #387
threeseed wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't spend much time building this feature. It was an acquihire involving a 16 year old who was doing it for fun.

Except they didn't hire him? He gave them some kind of info about the sms verifications, which they then had their devs implement.

The Github page for the iMessage hack said something about Beeper "acquiring" it. Not entirely sure what that means in practice since it was open source code on Github.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#400

Post by xkekjrktllss »

russelg wrote: post #336

Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening. It is a bit dicey when you're charging for it, but since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist. Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? The level of trust we have t…

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