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Beeper Mini is back

blog.beeper.com

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Re: Beeper Mini is back

#841

Post by lxgr »

wharvle wrote: post #823
lxgr wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iMessage is easily good enough that I haven't had to go find some alternative SMS app (Almost) nobody here is challenging that it is, under the condition that you communicate exclusively with iPhone users . MMS group chats are an absolute dumpster fire from an UX point of view. In some countries, a single MMS costs about half an USD as well (per recipient)!

No, I mean as an sms app. It’s fine for that. Group sms can get kinda rough but I’ve also never had a phone that did it better, including pre-iPhone phones, and a few Android phones. Of course it’s better if you can stay in iMessage, to avoid SMS, same as switching over to WhatsApp or whatever is way better. > MMS group chats are an absolute dumpster fire from an UX point of view. In some countries, a single MMS cost…

iOS Messages is a terrible SMS app!

It doesn’t support delivery receipts (my old Nokia could do that in 2003!), doesn’t let me send texts to a specific number of a given contact, doesn’t let me pick what number I want to send texts from (for dual SIM), and most frustratingly I can’t send an SMS to any contact it believes to be on iMessage.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#842

Post by nani8ot »

cozzyd wrote: post #817
hornban wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do they solve it? Release iMessage on Android. If there is a concern that it wouldn't be secure with Google controlling it, then they could put it out on F-Droid, which would simultaneously prove that they're serious and also undermine Google's own efforts at controlling the culture war.

Does f-droid allow non-open source apps?

No, F-Droid builds almost all apps from source. Even some open source apps don't make it to F-Droid if the F-Droid maintainer doesn't manage to build it themselves on their build server.

Additionally, F-Droid signs every app themselves.

[1] https://f-droid.org/docs/Building_Applications/

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#843

Post by krick »

quantumsequoia wrote: post #772
stillwithit wrote: post #585

Stuff like this feels petty by all parties. Use an app that’s already universal if users are so desperate. Playing whack a mole back and forth over a chat app as if it’s some high minded fight for speech when countless options exist is melodrama for the sake of melodrama and engagement farming Beeper real goal is like everyone else in tech; get rich. It found the perfect marketing meme, the old David and Goliath stor…

I had to purchase an iPhone solely to use iMessage. Believe me, I would have loved to use any other internet-based chat app. But I just can't move my entire social circle to a different app. The network effects and friction are too high. The only thing end users really have control over is their own client. I don't know if they'll succeed in the long run, but I'm really rooting for beeper

Are you saying everyone in your social circle willingly vendor-locks themselves by using an app that is available only on a specific device? That sounds just comically bad. Where is that? USA? I just checked, the iPhone market share appears to be around 57% in the USA, which is sure a lot, but still it means that every second person does not have the ability to use this app. So how comes it ends up being inconvenient for normal people, and not for iPhone users? Weird.

Seriously, I'm struggling to imagine that. It suddenly reminds me of when Microsoft had to offer users to choose something other than IE because of anti-monopoly legislation. What you are telling me about iPhones sounds way, way worse than that. After all, it's not like people had to use IE before that, they just didn't know better. There was no network effect and vendor-lock with IE.

Also, what's even so special about this app? I maybe could understand that, if it was unique. But come one, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, plain old SMS after all… And I'm not even talking about older VoIP/messengers (Skype, Jabber), community-centered apps (Discord, Slack, MS Teams) or some fringe messengers nobody uses even though they are clearly better than everything else (Matrix). By no means there is a shortage of messaging apps and protocols…

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#844

Post by nerdix »

Zak wrote: post #810
wharvle wrote: post #756

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. 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.

It would have been encrypted by now (at least for hangout to hangout chats) had it hung around.

And at least it was cross platform but overall I agree that mobile messaging should be standardized and open. So while the Google messaging strategy has been an abject failure overall, they did eventually trip over themselves and stumble onto the right path.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#845

Post by maxloh »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #612
rezonant wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Apple does not actually know which serial numbers have been sold. You can still buy Apple products outside of an Apple store, and even at an Apple Store, knowing which serials are sold is logistically difficult. They could probably implement a process at Apple stores but to do it for third party stores would be more difficult. To avoid simply adding a step for a user to claim a serial number as sold when they s…

> Well, Apple does not actually know which serial numbers have been sold. What about "serial numbers manufactured?" I'm going to guess "Beeper Mini stealing manufactured-but-not-yet-sold serial #s for themselves" will be shut down super quickly. If you are a user who finally gets a device with a serial # "stolen" by Beeper Mini... that seems like bad luck/bad user experience?

That kind of collision is very unlikely to happen.

It is comparable to someone stealing your Windows license key by guessing randomly.

More on collision: https://stackoverflow.com/a/23253149/

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#846

Post by bmicraft »

stouset wrote: post #788
hornban wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do they solve it? Release iMessage on Android. If there is a concern that it wouldn't be secure with Google controlling it, then they could put it out on F-Droid, which would simultaneously prove that they're serious and also undermine Google's own efforts at controlling the culture war.

Part of the iMessage security model is that devices are attested. Without this, the service as-is becomes widely open to spam and other forms of abuse. Yes, there are other solutions to the spam problem. They are nowhere near as effective as what I’ve witnessed as an iMessage user so far. I regularly get spam chats on WhatsApp and Signal.

I've not received a single spam message on Whatsapp or Signal for as long as I can remember.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#847

Post by sudosysgen »

jessekv wrote: post #52

> Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure. That is a fact. It seemed like it would make spam and scamming over iMessage worse. At least it requires an Apple Id now.

It was possible to send automated iMessage messages from Macs forever, and it's not exactly impossible to jailbreak iPhones, either.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#848

Post by 838583727748 »

Your view on iMessage depends on your social network. If your social network uses other messaging apps, this whole exercise seems pointless. Many of you outside of the US fall into this category. Many of you technically-savvy commenters also fall into this category. But if you are a teenager in the US, 85%+ of your social network uses an iPhone, and you will not convince everyone you know to switch apps for you. The green bubble causes real problems, and Apple does this intentionally to coerce teens and others into buying their phones. It’s anti-competitive and immoral for a company of that size.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#849

Post by [deleted] »

838583727748 wrote: post #848

Your view on iMessage depends on your social network. If your social network uses other messaging apps, this whole exercise seems pointless. Many of you outside of the US fall into this category. Many of you technically-savvy commenters also fall into this category. But if you are a teenager in the US, 85%+ of your social network uses an iPhone, and you will not convince everyone you know to switch apps for you. The…

[deleted]

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#850

Post by nani8ot »

leoxiong wrote: post #831

Why are people obsessed with “breaking into” Apple’s walled garden? There are already secure cross platform messaging services like Signal or WhatsApp that has feature parity with iMessage. This is a solved problem that doesn’t need another solution.

tl;dr

Most people in the US use iPhones. They also like to use the default messaging app, which most of the time is iMessage. Some people like to use Android phones (privacy, cost, freedom), but still want to message their peers who use the Apple-only iMessage.

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