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They have another product, Beeper Cloud, does the same thing + includes a bunch of other messaging services but (as the name implies) runs in the "Cloud"
Wait, how do they run cloud with iMessage?
So does this also now break iMessage for older iOS devices too? I thought someone said something about that to block beeper mini, Apple would have to also block older iOS devices as that’s the method they were using that wasn’t as locked down.
Looks like iMessage stopped working on my hackintosh...
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Also WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, and a handful of others with more than a half-billion users. Are those heptopolists or septopolists? The word "monopolist" in 2023 seems to mean "a company whose corporate values are different than my personal ones and/or whose pricing and packaging don't match my consumption function and/or who has a lot of money and of whom I am jealous".
I think you might be mistaking what monopoly/duopoly is being mentioned here. Those companies aren't phone manufacturers and they don't make phone texting apps. The distinction might not matter to you, but it's clearly the meaning of the GP. You can say iMessage isn't a texting app because iMessage functionally (as in, the technical details) works like a non-texting app, but it is the only texting app on those phones…
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…
It uses a server for bridging APNs to GCM. Sure, that could be maintained on a donation basis, but it’s not completely infrastructure-free in any case.
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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…
Are these iMessage group chat really a thing? In my part of the world Whatsapp is the defacto standard for group chat and even for things like scheduling anpointment to a doctor/dentist/hairdresser. And that is because it is available on android, apple devices and even those cheap kaios halfsmartphones.
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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…
Hacking? Hacking means whining when what you are hacking fights back? I mean go for it, hack away! I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though lol
> "if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS?" - Eric Migicovsky 1. If Apple sees this as a gap, it is very obvious that they would address that themselves, rather than by allowing a hack to exploit loopholes in their architecture 2. Since Appl…
> 2. Since Apple has no control over the Beeper mini client, they would not consider it safe, it could easily be spying on users without their knowledge. Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe. It could easily be spying on me without my knowledge.
Generally fair assumption. There's been some research (both positive and negative) around their E2EE claims, though AFAIK much of what's known about iMessage's E2EE guts has been learned through unofficial means. I think that for the vast majority of users, iMessage is probably safe enough.
As a user, you have the agency to choose a messenger app that better suits your privacy/convenience balance, though in fairness, I think even among users who care about privacy, many don't know how to judge privacy features and implementation details well.
Like others in this thread, I personally recommend Signal. It's widely available, easily usable, has been audited and researched a fair bit, and though it doesn't have a self-hosted option, it does have white papers out about its protocol which IMO are worth a read.
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.
I find this a bit confusing though. It seems like this was an inevitable outcome, but what do they gain from this technical investment aside from exposure. Their website doesn't steer users to anything other than the now cut-off Beeper mini?
What technical investment? They bought an open-source project from a high-school student.
Beeper Mini is an app they would have built anyway. They simply implemented the bare minimum of iMessage functionality there. Which is a couple of days worth of work, maximum. Maybe a week. And some for testing.
I’m somewhat certain it cost them less than 5 figures. And if it did, what a great marketing campaign. I had no idea what Beeper even was before this whole fiasco.
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…