Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beeper Mini is back

blog.beeper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#221

Post by jwells89 »

lacker wrote: post #148
qrohlf wrote: post #29

I’m curious what their best-case outcome is here. It’s fully transparent at this point that Apple has no appetite for a third party iMessage client on any platform and will take whatever technical steps needed to prevent this from happening. I’d wager heavily that even if Beeper plays cat-and-mouse to the point where they’ve exhausted Apple’s budget for blocking them and somehow managed to avoid Apple’s legal team pu…

The best case outcome is to get publicity leading to US and EU antitrust regulators to file a lawsuit against Apple, both of which Apple loses. The conclusion of this lawsuit is that not only must Apple allow access to iMessage, they also must allow changing the default for every component of iOS - messaging app, browser, app store, let you replace Siri with other voice assistants - and to lower the 30% app store fee…

I would hope that this “best case outcome” also comes with regulations to keep other giants (mostly Google) from marketing and cross-promoting their way into dominance on iOS, creating monopolies in the process.

For instance, Google apps shouldn’t be able to drive Chrome installs by presenting a sheet offering to download Chrome every time I tap a link in them, as they do currently.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#222

Post by ankit219 »

qrohlf wrote: post #29

I’m curious what their best-case outcome is here. It’s fully transparent at this point that Apple has no appetite for a third party iMessage client on any platform and will take whatever technical steps needed to prevent this from happening. I’d wager heavily that even if Beeper plays cat-and-mouse to the point where they’ve exhausted Apple’s budget for blocking them and somehow managed to avoid Apple’s legal team pu…

I think they ignored a rarely talked about but important aspect. iMessage is free for Apple users because it comes bundled with all Apple products. The cost to run iMessage and deliver millions of messages daily must be a significant number.

With beeper, they are enabling the functionality for android. That is every android user signed up with beeper will end up costing Apple some money to send messages to iphone (or to send messages to other android users using the same thing).

In my opinion, next step for Apple is to mandate having an apple device to be able to use an Apple ID as part of their TnC. They will keep closing loopholes in the meantime, but don't think Apple will let beeper win this, purely because of the can of worms it opens up.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#223

Post by barnabee »

CharlesW wrote: post #71
barnabee wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Apple given their scale and position in the market should be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard for messaging. iMessage should no longer allowed to be proprietary and stay part of Apple.

> Apple given their scale and position in the market should be forced to operate and interoperate with an open standard for messaging. You mean like SMS and MMS right now, and RCS next year? https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

If RCS goes live on all Apple devices in all jurisdictions and that solves the problem then great!

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#224

Post by sahila »

ethanbond wrote: post #189
doublerabbit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. This now puts Apple in a prickly situation. One which paints a negative light on Apple which of, if a crowd following gathered "why isn't there iMessage for Android?". As I see, it would result of one of the following: - They sue and cause a backlash of Apple users. - They do nothing, shows Apple solely interest is in itself. - They create, happy times.

I don't think this is painting Apple in a negative light for their actual customers, who pay them money. It's painting them in a negative light for a small segment of Android users who obviously are unlikely to switch to Apple anyway.

I disagree, I'm an Apple user and don't view this positively for them. There's a lot of narratives including better security, more interoperability, or even just a david vs goliath battle with Beeper. If it was Google proper, it might be a different story but people like to root for the small guys on the side of right.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#225

Post by radlad »

chewmieser wrote: post #51
radlad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what metric? Arguably, users are less secure since "fixing" Messages (i.e. breaking Beeper) means Apple and Android users lose a secure communication channel. Beeper isn't "hacking" Messages... they've implemented the protocol.

I don't think the parent is that concerned with Android Apple communications with that statement. Reverse-engineering a closed protocol and distributing an Apple Binary (IIRC correctly) are a bit more than just "implementing a protocol."

> Reverse-engineering a closed protocol and distributing an Apple Binary (IIRC correctly) are a bit more than just "implementing a protocol."

Reverse-engineering the protocol was the first step to implementing it. The point is that there was no vulnerability exploited in the protocol - it's as secure as it ever was.

I don't think they are shipping an Apple binary. Can you provide a source for that?

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#226

Post by bigstrat2003 »

haswell wrote: post #61
martinky24 wrote: post #13

These Beeper folk sound a bit entitled. As was repeatedly mentioned in the other thread [1], building production applications on top of an undocumented and unsupported (in terms of backwards compatability, etc) API is a nightmare that should be avoided. Apple has every right to change their API, if they do Beeper will go down, and Beeper will blame Apple. I understand Apple's incentives to not want to be in this situ…

If the only thing Beeper does is continue to make Apple look anti-competitive, they've succeeded as far as I'm concerned. I'm deep into the Apple ecosystem and don't see myself getting out anytime soon. But I think their stance on iMessage sucks, even while understanding the strategic reasons they're doing it. I don't see this as "leeching off an undocumented API" as much as demonstrating that iMessage is already in…

Apple has always been anticompetitive to an extent that would make Bill Gates blush, at least as far back as I can remember. They are one of the most toxic tech companies in that regard. I hope that they are forced to open their walled gardens (app lockdowns in particular), but I have no doubt they'll find another way to be anticompetitive. It's just in their company culture.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#227

Post by maratc »

Living in the country where absolutely no one uses iMessage, the whole kerfuffle about the colour of the message bubble leaves me completely flabbergasted.

I mean, probably the curvature of the Earth is involved, but from here this looks like a very small hill to die on.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#228

Post by jay-barronville »

I’m a former Android fanatic turned iPhone user. I still own Android devices, but my primary device is an iPhone. I haven’t had something excite me as much as this Beeper Mini situation in years—I love that they’re doing this.

One of the things that got me to switch to the iPhone a few years ago was the fact that it seemed Apple was actually doing a lot of the right things when it came to privacy and security. Obviously, I was still pretty skeptical of them, but compared to Google, Apple’s track record seemed a bit more trustworthy.

The way Apple tries to lock you in though while stifling competition is extremely disappointing. They’re on the wrong side of history.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#229

Post by duped »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #220

Beeper has caught a ton of media attention in recent weeks but I truly do not understand it. The SMS protocol has been around for decades and works perfectly fine with iPhones. If you want rich media and other bells and whistles, use WhatsApp. How often does someone whine so loudly about insisting on using the closed, Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends need to pay a monthly subscription for a third party i…

> If you want rich media and other bells and whistles, use WhatsApp.

People in America don't use WhatsApp. There's no reason for me to switch when none of my friends/family/contacts have it.

> How often does someone whine so loudly about insisting on using the closed, Apple-proprietary protocol that their friends need to pay a monthly subscription for a third party interop app?

Enough that people don't date people who use Android

Post reply on HN