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Beeper Mini is back

blog.beeper.com

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Re: Beeper Mini is back

#801

Post by clwg »

chankstein38 wrote: post #748
jorvi wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did AOL really win in the end though? My youth was in the late 90s and 2000s and I don’t know a single soul that used AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo. I imagine all of them must have been hoping for the reverse at that point, access to MSN.

Yeah, what? I grew up (in the same era) using AIM and Yahoo, ICQ was a little before my prime. Everyone I talk to about those days used them as well. MSN was fine but AIM and Yahoo were where it was at for the bulk of my early years of instant messaging with friends. At one point a friend even made me an AIM account because I was using MSN and they wanted to chat with me but didn't want to do it through MSN. Obviousl…

Back then the networks weren't so locked down to the clients, so it wasn't as big of an issue to have friends on various networks either. I have to call out IRC too.

I definitely look back on those as the "good old days" of chat.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#803

Post by quantumsequoia »

nikanj wrote: post #269

I wonder how far I would have to dig before I found the way Google is funding Beeper Mini. They are a sacrificial lamb, getting lead to slaughter so Google can ask EU regulators to stop Apple’s anti-competitive actions.

Considering beeper is coming after Google's closed chat networks too, I doubt it.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#804

Post by yakkityyak »

zeven7 wrote: post #541
zappb wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Messages has existed longer than the Secure Enclave has.

Secure Enclave doesn't have to exist for the rest of the system to work as I described. (And once Secure Enclave does exist, it can be used to further secure the private keys generated after that date.)

Without Secure Enclave, remote parties (the servers) can't know where the key material came from. I'm assuming because old devices pre-SEP have to be supported, Beeper is exploiting this since there's no required residency or provenance attestation for the keys.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#806

Post by crazysim »

IshKebab wrote: post #785
sneak wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beeper isn’t using Apple services (at least not in Beeper Mini, their new e2ee iMessage client), and thus is not subject to any Terms of Service from Apple. They’re publishing client software, which is protected expression provided it’s original and doesn’t infringe any trademarks or copyrights. The end users are the ones potentially violating the ToS by connecting to Apple APIs. Apple has no basis to tell Beeper to…

Someone said they are embedding Apple binaries for crypto stuff. Clear copyright infringement if so.

They might argue that this is like the inclusion of the Gameboy logo to boot a Gameboy game.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#807

Post by quantumsequoia »

rewgs wrote: post #593

Man, what an absolute waste of engineering talent. I don't understand those in this thread celebrating the "hacker spirit." The real "hacker spirit" would be something like, I don't know, building a better alternative to iMessage. This is just a game of whack-a-mole, destined to lose.

iMessage isn't dominant because it's "better". It's dominant because it's the default. Doesn't matter how good a chat app is, iMessage users aren't going to switch

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#808

Post by rd07 »

lxgr wrote: post #753
dontlaugh wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hardly matters, almost everyone on earth uses WhatsApp for group chats.

Well, the most and third most populous countries on Earth don't.

As much as I don't like it, I am sure that Whatsapp is the go to communication channel in the fourth most populous country on Earth.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#809

Post by johannes1234321 »

lxgr wrote: post #757
dontlaugh wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, sure. Very few of the people in Earth live there.

Quite a few people commenting here live there. You also seem to be forgetting the most-populous country in the world – no WhatsApp there either. Between China and the US, that's already 20% of the global population unlikely to be using WhatsApp for most of their messaging.

> You also seem to be forgetting the most-populous country in the world – no WhatsApp there either.

However in the 4th largest (Indonesia) everybody uses WhatsApp (at least a few years back) as Facebook offered free data to their services there (internet.org / "Free Basics") whereas iMessage would cost money for data traffic or SMS/MMS.

Thus really different across countries and regions and social circles.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#810

Post by Zak »

wharvle wrote: post #756
hornban wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved. They want the experience to suffer when somebody outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to create social pressure for the outsider to change. The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be forcing Apple i…

> From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved. I'd be sure this was why, if Google hadn't once tried to get me to use a combo SMS/MMS + some-other-Google-messaging-service app on my phone (by replacing the normal SMS app on OS upgrade—this was on a Nexus phone) tha…

I don't remember Hangouts being broken, but Google didn't keep their attempt to onboard people by making it the default SMS client going very long. To me, that seems like a major error on their part, though I think I'm glad Google didn't succeed in popularizing a proprietary unencrypted messaging service.
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