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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

#701

Post by skygazer »

oefnak wrote: post #680
empyrrhicist wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The EU will soon require interoperability between messaging apps! Real Freedom! (for the users, not for the companies)

iMessage seemingly was found exempt because too few Europeans use iMessage for business.

Although to be fair, I have a hard time imagining a world where this ever happens. So large companies have to proactively share information on all their users with all the other large companies, and vice versa? Or do I become skygazer@iMessage and everyone on instagram has to know that? This just seems like an absurd thing to mandate.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#702

Post by inquirerGeneral »

vachina wrote: post #468
skygazer wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, incoming SMS are mostly spam, and other low trust notifications, while incoming iMessages, even if unknown to me, are likely to be real people. Buying an Apple device is an expensive signal, and Apple will quickly shut down abusers, maintaining that relatively high bar. Letting (actual) Android users use iMessage probably wouldn’t affect that, but the open source hack/reversing of it opened the door…

Huh, I used to receive spam on iMessage with blue bubbles. In fact the only blue bubbles I receive are spam.

[dead]

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#703

Post by person3 »

dwaite wrote: post #679
jlarocco wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the contrary, third-party clients is a gigantic security hole, since Apple can't even know if a client app is spying on users. Security isn't about Apple knowing if an app is spying on users, but about THE USERS knowing that nobody is spying on them. At best a third party iMessage client can only be as secure as iMessage itself because the back end is still closed and has no transparency, so it's the weakest lin…

> They can increase security by breaking a single target into multiple targets, by increasing competition around security and privacy issues, by having more people use and work with the protocols and able to spot potential problems, by encouraging more transparency around issues when they arise, and by having alternatives readily available if one of the clients is found to be compromised or insecure. I believe you ar…

I don’t know a lot about how it works, so forgive me if this is a silly idea. I wonder if attestation could be done using real Apple devices, while leaving the private key on the user’s android. So similar to the old beeper to get the signed attestation, and send the result to the phone. Still could be secure since you can keep the private key used to encrypt messages local on the users device. I guess the issue might be a cat and mouse game if detecting beepers flock of Apple hardware to try and disable them all… (given many people would be using the same Apple devices)

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#705

Post by yurishimo »

jaktet wrote: post #693
gabeio wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the link between this repo and Beeper? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759

I might be missing it but still don’t see how that answers the question about how that repo is related to beeper mini. Did they use this directly or the same methodology?

Beeper Mini's implementation was built on top of this repo. I'm sure it was cleaned up and modified for the production release, but the gist is largely still the same.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#706

Post by lofaszvanitt »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #488
SaberTail wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple wouldn't even exist if not for this type of hacking. One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes[1] to play around on AT&T's telephone system. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

> One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes Which didn’t scale because it doesn’t scale because the blue box stopped working. Sort of like Beeper.

Beeper's true purpose was to show people that it's possible without an iPhone. What you don't know how many other clients like this worked and for how long...

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#707

Post by fauigerzigerk »

crazygringo wrote: post #410
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…

> Where is the hacker spirit here? The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business , or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. > Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll. Of course you can. It's sitting there on y…

> Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac where you can use it as much as you like.

For what?

I own a Mac an iPhone and an iPad but iMessage and FaceTime are entirely useless to me because no one I communicate with on a regular basis uses Apple devices. Same thing with various iCloud sharing features. Not using the family sharing offers is entirely uneconomical as well.

So what happens is that I gravitate to other ecosystems. I use WhatsApp. I upload all my photos to Google Photos. I mirror my iCloud Drive to Google Drive to share and collaborate with people on various things.

I have enabled Apple’s advanced data protection for end to end encryption but it’s entirely farcical as my stuff is all over the place anyway.

Almost everything Apple does in terms of software and services is useless to me. They are not locking me in. They are locking me out.

I’m paying for their excellent hardware, the m-series CPUs in particular, but I’m using my “spare” Pixel phone more often because the software suits me better.

I appreciate a lot of things that Apple does but it’s only a question of time until some other ARM based hardware catches up enough for me to stop overpaying Apple for software I can’t use anyway.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#708

Post by [deleted] »

jaktet wrote: post #693
gabeio wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the link between this repo and Beeper? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759

I might be missing it but still don’t see how that answers the question about how that repo is related to beeper mini. Did they use this directly or the same methodology?

[deleted]

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#709

Post by meepmorp »

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 knows of such limitations and does nothing to improve the situation.

Why would they? It's not their problem, nor does it seem to be a big deal for their customers because they're not clamoring for a fix.

> In fact they ban those who try. FTA.

They don't, thiugh. The App Store has tons of photo and video sharing services, email, and other messaging services; I'm sure any number of them would let your iPhone-using friends and family easily send you a non-mangled videos. This is a solved, dozens of times over.

iMessage, on the other hand, is a service Apple provides for Apple customers. They get to set the terms under which it's used, and Beeper did not abide by those terms.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#710

Post by colinsane »

tedunangst wrote: post #632
dzikimarian wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Hacker spirit is owning your machine to its full extent. For fun, for profit or just for mayhem. Apple using instant messaging, where no meaningful innovation happened for decades to build their moat is pathetic and disgusting.

If your mayhem requires communicating with third party servers, who owns those computers?

then to OP’s “where’s the hacker spirit” question: the answer would be “the hacker spirit is to replace iMessage with anything less controlled”, right? that’s still equally as subversive against The Powers in the sense that “hacker spirit” implies any form of subversion.
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