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Beeper Mini is back

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Re: Beeper Mini is back

#491

Post by threeseed »

acaloiar wrote: post #421
snakeyjake wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this an actionable anti-trust issue? iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the minds of most users globally. In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms. Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service? The purpose of anti-trust is to increase competition and prevent unlawful monopolies. Apple…

I'm not a lawyer. But I do believe there's reason to consider Apple's policy relative to iMessage clients monopolistic. Apple's behavior is not significantly different from Microsoft's, which instigated US v. Microsoft [1]. That case largely took issue with Microsoft's mandatory bundling of IE with Windows and the extent to which Microsoft created an inorganic monopoly. In addition to how Microsoft's monopoly came to…

> I'm not a lawyer.

This is very obvious because you have a poor grasp of the facts.

a) The issue with Microsoft was that it had a monopoly in operating systems. At the time it was about ~95% market share. Gates woke up one morning, decided web apps were a threat to this, saw Netscape as their major competitor and decided to eliminate them. It didn't try to compete with them. It went straight for elimination by bundling IE and coercing OEMs e.g Compaq to not bundle Netscape. Using a monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in another is exactly what the laws were designed to prevent.

b) Global and domestic iMessage usage is relevant. In fact it is the whole point. You need to demonstrate that there is an absence or distortion of a market for anti-trust laws to be applied.

c) Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper, they have no monopoly in anything and there is clear evidence of a fair and functioning market by the presence of WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#492

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

malwrar wrote: post #315

Relying on the assumption of an “authorized client” is fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism, as this Beeper saga demonstrates. A curious 16 year old casually figured out how to make a client be “authorized”, and a motivated party just demonstrated basic interference from Apple can’t stop it from continuing to practice guerrilla interoperability. Apple might be able to sue Beeper out of existen…

> Relying on the assumption of an “authorized client” is fundamentally not a reliable security or anti-spam mechanism, as this Beeper saga demonstrates.

That's fundamentally false given how Apple is a hardware company, and going forward they can ship a cryptographically secure hardware attestation mechanism. The issue is simply that older Apple devices were shipped without this capability, and Apple doesn't want to break them to prohibit Beeper.

But make no mistake, in a few years when those older devices are fully deprecated, there is nothing preventing Apple from shipping essentially uncrackable hardware attestation.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#493

Post by dr-smooth »

Jtsummers wrote: post #275
theshrike79 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in the US. The rest of the world uses Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal. This blue/green bubble SMS but not SMS -thing is a 100% an American issue.

It's really not an American issue. It's an immature people issue. I've yet to meet anyone who actually cares about whether their messages show up as blue or green when they send them. My social network (in the US) is about 50/50 for Android and iPhone users, and we have a variety of group threads that have both types of phones in them. The only people that care are: - Maybe some children - Some immature adults - A lo…

Android user here who is a member of a group that is all iphone. Those users don't care about the color of the bubble. What thy care about is that if I am in the group, they lose functionality that they are accustomed to. The big ones that I hear about are adding/removing users and high quality media sharing. Not to mention the janky handling of message reactions that seem to always suck for one side or the other.

The problem is that having just one non-iphone user in the mix causes imessage to drop to SMS, taking them back a decade in functionality.

And yes, some of them do complain about it vocally. Maybe they're immature, I don't know. But it's an annoying bit of social friction, and I'm sure many android users have caved to the pressure to "upgrade" to an iphone.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#494

Post by shmatt »

dlivingston wrote: post #486

> From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

Every consumer facing tech company with a paid product (physical or digital) I've worked at had Android as Unless they're trying to join iOS group messages I guess

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#495

Post by shawnc »

dlivingston wrote: post #486

> From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

Really shows to me why so many developers end up focusing so much more on the iOS versions of their apps. I would have expected the same.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#496

Post by mvdtnz »

dlivingston wrote: post #486

> From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

I don't believe for one microsecond that those numbers would qualify as the "fastest growing paid Android application launch in history". I do believe that their numbers are that low - I don't know a single person who would pay to... what, have text messages appear in a different colour on other peoples' phones?

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#497

Post by graphe »

LordKeren wrote: post #26

I think one of the underlying issues is that many are now going to be hesitant to even bother with Beeper Mini anymore. I don’t think there is going to be a high tolerance for this game of cat and mouse from the end user perspective I also don’t think goading apple is going to do much here either. Regardless of the current feelings around apple’s walled garden, they are not going to suddenly keel over and give up on…

iMessage is reliable, ‘free’ and encrypted. Beeper mini is unreliable, paid, and encrypted. I wouldn’t recommend it anymore to my Android friends.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#498

Post by erohead »

shmatt wrote: post #494
dlivingston wrote: post #486

> From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

Every consumer facing tech company with a paid product (physical or digital) I've worked at had Android as Unless they're trying to join iOS group messages I guess

Our conversion from download to paid subscription is hovering around 50% fwiw

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#499

Post by zulln »

dlivingston wrote: post #486

> From what we can tell, Beeper Mini was the fastest growing paid Android application launch in history. In the first 48 hours, it was downloaded by more than 100,000 people. These numbers seem very low. I would have expected numbers in the millions.

Edit, forget what I said. I missed the keyword 'paid'.

Threads earlier this year apparently got 70 million user signed up the first 48h. I would assume this leads to at least >1m Android users?

First example I came to think about, might be much better examples out there. Regardless, something with "more than 100,000 people" in 48h is probably not the fastest growing Android app.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/07/tech/meta-social-media-do...

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#500

Post by Miner49er »

snakeyjake wrote: post #290
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…

How is this an actionable anti-trust issue? iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the minds of most users globally. In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms. Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service? The purpose of anti-trust is to increase competition and prevent unlawful monopolies. Apple…

What dwarfs iMessage in the US? I would assume that it is the most used messaging platform in the country.
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