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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

#531

Post by rezonant »

grupthink wrote: post #431
asylteltine wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a great point I didn’t originally consider. People could easily infiltrate the iMessage fort with spam and other stuff which at the moment requires a genuine Apple device.

Wouldn't your iPhone still receive spam SMS text messages with Apple Messages? And isn't Apple Messages commonly exploited by NSO Group (Zero-clicks)? Maybe I'm wrong, but this does not appear to be very fort-like.

Yes. I believe people are just saying that they assume unknown-contact SMS is spam and that sort of sounds like Apple's SMS spam filtering isn't very good.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#532

Post by tcfhgj »

oneplane wrote: post #522
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…

iMessage is Apple's service, and they can do with it whatever they want. No other arguments are really relevant. As for whatever reasons Apple comes up with: that is probably also not going to be relevant as a multinational that is beholden to money is going to have the legal department and PR do that sort of messaging and not anyone on the technical side of things. Speculating as to why things are the way they are:…

They can't, if they have extreme market power, mich like Microsoft can't do anything they want with Windows

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#533

Post by kyawzazaw »

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.

They contracted him

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#534

Post by ezfe »

jiggawatts wrote: post #463
explaininjs wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should have been obvious to anyone who saw the code where it simply contained the raw literal string `FAIRPLAY_PRIVATE_KEY = b64decode(“…”)`. I suppose now we’ll see how accurate the commenter’s claim “if this becomes a problem, I know how to generate new keys” is. https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py#L16

[flagged]

The private key is that of the operating system, unknown to the user. It is not the private key of the project.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#535

Post by jareklupinski »

toastercat wrote: post #478
runnerup wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that! I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interope…

youtube-dl, NewPipe, and uBlock Origin exist solely for the purpose of empowering the individual, yet they are constantly attacked on HN as being tools used unfairly to harm Google's profitability. Open-source projects like Matrix, PeerTube, Mastodon, are built to be free and open-source for the benefit of end-users and lack of vendor lockin. Yet each is derided on HackerNews for not being enough like their corporate…

> this site's audience is mostly folk who like the status quos set by FAANG

something something someone's salary and getting them to see something

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#536

Post by chatmasta »

I'm pretty sure this quote from the founder is wrong on multiple levels:

> “That means that anytime you text your Android friends, anyone can read the message. Apple can read the message. Your phone carrier can read the message. Google… literally, it’s just like a postcard. Anyone can read it. So Beeper Mini actually increases the security of iPhones,” he [the founder of Beeper] had told TechCrunch.

The phone carrier can read the contents of the unencrypted SMS. But the contents of the message never traverse Apple or Google networks.

If an iPhone user's device attempts to send an iMessage, and it fails to send, then the device falls back to sending an SMS via the cellular network (actually, it's not even a fallback - the user needs to long-press the message and resend it as an SMS).

The content of the message never reaches Apple because the device never sends it to them. It doesn't even send the encrypted content because it wasn't able to exchange keys. I'm not even sure it sends the unencrypted phone number of the recipient to Apple...

And certainly, no part of the message is ever sent to Google's network... that doesn't even make sense.

Now, maybe he's arguing "Apple can see it because they control the operating system," but that's a ridiculous argument because you may as well say they can access every iMessage too...

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#537

Post by haswell »

hu3 wrote: post #496
meepmorp wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's the technical reason. Apple knows of such limitations and does nothing to improve the situation. In fact they ban those who try. FTA.

Apple announced RCS support in 2024, so they’re doing more than nothing. Don’t think we know yet how fully they’ll support it though.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#538

Post by chatmasta »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #503

Of all the text message spam I receive, 100% of them has been green bubbles. I don't want spam in my blue bubbles.

I get a fair amount of iMessage spam, which always disturbs me because does the sender get a confirmation it was delivered to an iMessage account such that I'm tagged as an Apple user?

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#539

Post by aslilac »

jamesdepp wrote: post #523

I feel like this could be a part of a weird plan to trap Apple into an antitrust lawsuit about iMessage. Beeper's CEO has been claiming that the existence of Beeper Mini actually improves iPhone users' experiences. He could argue that Apple shutting off access is not meant to improve Apple users' experiences, but rather, to keep people off of Android. Honestly, I have mixed feelings. I REALLY think that iMessage need…

it’s absolutely the right way to do it. third party clients are a dying breed, because people have forgotten why they’re necessary.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#540

Post by rezonant »

toastercat wrote: post #478
runnerup wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that! I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interope…

youtube-dl, NewPipe, and uBlock Origin exist solely for the purpose of empowering the individual, yet they are constantly attacked on HN as being tools used unfairly to harm Google's profitability. Open-source projects like Matrix, PeerTube, Mastodon, are built to be free and open-source for the benefit of end-users and lack of vendor lockin. Yet each is derided on HackerNews for not being enough like their corporate…

The tools should exist and Google shouldn't fight them. But at least for me, I'm usually trying to remind people that the ad money is a large part of how the content creator survives too. If you block the ads, then please consider donating to your favorite creators Patreon or using YT premium (which is actually typically more lucrative for content creators than ads are).

I don't care about Google's profits but I figure we should try to support the content we enjoy in some way or else all we'll be left with is MrBeast, PewDiePie and content farm videos (ie the stuff that is so hyper scale that no amount of ad blocking can effectively hurt them)

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