Beeper Mini is back • Hacker News Board

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#321

Post by verdverm » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

jwells89 wrote: post #221

lacker wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microsoft does this with Windows links, to the point it opens edge despite my default browser being set to not edge.

The insidiousness of them all is frustrating

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#322

Post by microtonal » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

Longhanks wrote: post #231

wvenable wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worst case is Apple keeps escalating the fight knowing that Beeper can't outlast them. I feel like this is in Apple's DNA. Perhaps Beeper is lucky that Apple needs to support a lot of legacy devices and they might not be able to fully plug this hole without creating a big support nightmare.

Please explain to me why that wouldn't be in anyone's interest? Why should I pay costs for server uptime and maintenance for clients that I a) did not authorize and b) did not pay for me keeping up my servers and c) actually accept that a third party is getting money for providing said access to my servers? I really don't get how Apple is to blame for protecting what they pay for.

Apple also uses a lot of infrastructure that they don't pay for on their devices. Everything from open source code used in Darwin to public internet infrastructure. Besides that, if that is the reason that they don't want to offer this, they could offer a paid subscription for Android users.

The reason they block this is not that they cannot afford the infrastructure, it's peanuts for them. It's because they want to continue maintaining the schism in the US where Android users are stigmatized for green bubbles, pushing them to buy iPhones. (AKA exploiting teenagers' insecurity for profit.)

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#323

Post by SpaceManNabs » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

_gabe_ wrote: post #154

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together is also laughably false lol. iPhone users just want android users to get an iphone.

It’s false based on what? Your own anecdotal experience? I have a friend group that has iPhones and Androids. We went on vacation and had to jump through so many hoops just to share our pictures. We don’t care what devices everybody uses, because why the heck should that matter? The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple wants their walled garden benefit…

The technie vs normie divide exemplified right here in these comments.

You don't hear iPhone users begging their friends to get on signal unless they are discussing drugs or sensitive topics. You hear android users ask iphone users to install wtv app all the time.

And I am talking about anecdotes here, but there are well-document events (some that happened this year) that do emphasize what I am saying. I won't share them though because you know... jobs... and that they should be obvious if you are following this conversation over the past decade. What I will say tho is that only one company wants (wants being generous) the other to change their messaging.

> The fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple wants their walled garden benefits nobody but Apple

Irrelevant. iPhone users mostly just want android users to get iphones. Doesn't matter why.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#324

Post by misnome » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

jay-barronville wrote: post #228

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. Obviou…

> while stifling competition

How? Lock-in, sure - but unless you do a lot of market gerrymandering (which Epic tried but got laughed out of court), how does anything apple do stop people competing?

It’s not e.g. paying google large sums of money to avoid making its own competitor. Being big isn’t itself anticompetitive.

And on this exact topic - there is a whole ecosystem of messaging apps that exists. They just have to build their own userbase.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#325

Post by badwolf » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #253

maratc wrote: post #227

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.

It's not the color of the message, for me. If an Apple user sends me a video it comes through as an extremely low resolution and highly compressed video. Look at the unwanted grackles at my mom's bird feeder: https://i.imgur.com/7gBt22i.png Fantastic, right?

Because it's sent as MMS. Apple implementing RCS next year will mitigate that.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#326

Post by averageRoyalty » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:49 PM UTC

supermatt wrote: post #266

Apples response: > These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. Didn’t it recently come to light that apple have been “exposing” that metadata to government agencies for years? Maybe they should stop exposing metadata rather than blaming others for replicating their implementation! How d…

Because by abusing an older style auth method, they skip a lot of the checks required to start iMessaging people currently.

This methodology can be abused by SMS scammers, phishers, etc to easily target the iMessage network that users may often feel has a higher default level of trust.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#327

Post by fragmede » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

rany_ wrote: post #183

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…

> Apple’s next move would likely be to release some kind of official iMessage Android client rather than cede control of the space to Beeper. You say this as if it's a bad thing, I think that would be mission accomplished for Beeper... tbf, though I suppose their moment would be over by then.

Define "over". Opera the web browser earned $80 million on $380 of revenue and I don't know anybody that uses it. If Apple releases an Android iMessage client, but Beeper still has enough paying MAU so they can pay their employees and investors, is anything "over" just because there's competition? It isn't a winner-take-all like a game of football or something.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#328

Post by vineyardmike » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

unshavedyak wrote: post #158

vineyardmike wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A walled down proprietary messaging platform is so common as to be unremarkable. Google has probably 5 in the works right now. Meta has a few, and there’s dozens of others to choose from. It was really cool news when they reverse engineered the API. It was less cool when they sold paid access to this unofficial API. Beeper is barely pro-consumer because again, they’re charging for something open sourced by a 16yo kid…

Is this paid? I thought it was free. As for beeper cloud, I’m a paying customer to Apple and I just want to use my damn chat app on desktop that I pay for.

It’s paid. It’s cheap ($2/mo?) but it’s a subscription.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#329

Post by tinus_hn » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #219

madeofpalk wrote: post #98

> Messages App is the default chat app for all iPhone customers. Not only is it the default, iOS makes it impossible to change the default chat app. In the US, where the majority of people have iPhones, this means that the easiest way to chat is by tapping on your friend’s name in your contact list and hitting the ‘message’ button. This is not true. On iOS - iOS has APIs for third party messaging and voip apps to int…

Default option is still usual phone call/iMessage in a lot of places - in some you can long press and select another option, but not all. Also, merely opening a separate app doesn't really help. How about instead of having 5 different apps (that the system one sometimes generously allows you to open), you had one app that can seamlessly speak all protocols? You can add multiple e-mail or contacts accounts (even from…

You wonder how anyone survives in all of the world where nobody uses iMessage (which is everywhere except the US). How do people even manage to open WhatsApp? How do people survive this horror!

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#330

Post by mike_d » Mon, Dec 11, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

> If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini users.

As an iPhone user I would love for them to do this so I can not communicate with these users. The green/blue bubble gives me an indication of the encryption being used, and presenting a blue bubble while the messages are being MITMed (how Beeper works) is something I want to be aware of.