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Beeper Mini is back

blog.beeper.com

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Re: Beeper Mini is back

#961

Post by mlindner »

starkparker wrote: post #89
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…

Best-case outcome is that Apple decides engaging in an arms race with a motivated competitor isn't worth the time or effort and they enable some (probably limited) interop. I can imagine a "blue-green" type of message that's encrypted but not from an Apple device; Apple keeps their status symbology and users on both ends get E2E encrypted messages to and from Apple device users without Apple users switching to a thir…

> Of all the moats Apple has, iMessage's "blue bubble" is by far the most arbitrary. Allowing strictly controlled interop with non-Apple devices doesn't change how good iMessage is, it only dents the ecosystem's most superficial status symbol.

I've said this before and I'll say it again here. No Apple device user I've ever met thinks of the blue bubble as a status symbol. This is only something that Android users for some reason covet. In fact I've never heard it mentioned by any Android user in real life. This is only an internet thing that a tiny segment of people, like those who post to hacker news, seem to care strongly about.

I personally couldn't care less if Android got iMessage or not as long as it doesn't force any changes on the Apple side of things. It doesn't prevent me from communicating with Android users in any way currently. I also don't want to see any spam start to appear via iMessage, as there is currently none of it.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#962

Post by mlindner »

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…

A lawsuit to do what exactly? Require Apple release an iMessage client on Android for free? That'd get thrown out pretty quick anywhere with a functioning legal system.

The only antitrust comparison I can see was Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer, but that doesn't really work because that was Microsoft preventing other competing chat clients from accessing the wider internet, not Microsoft's own servers. There has never been an antitrust lawsuit won anywhere that forces a company to open its own servers that its paying for open to anyone who wants to access them.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#963

Post by dontlaugh »

IshKebab wrote: post #780
chankstein38 wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Like today, it was highly regional. The talk about Beeper Mini sounds ridiculous in the UK because literally nobody uses iMessage. IIRC AIM was popular in America and MSN was popular in Europe.

Plenty of people implicitly (and likely unknowingly) use iMessage in the UK, because iPhones are quite popular here.

But indeed no one uses it for group chats. That's what WhatsApp is for.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#964

Post by Nextgrid »

mlindner wrote: post #959
Nextgrid wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 had one app that can seamlessly speak all protocols? There's nothing that does that though so this seems a bit of an odd statement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software) ?

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#965

Post by InCityDreams »

lawgimenez wrote: post #883

Time should be well spent by creating meaningful apps that can solve world hunger, poverty, water shortages and all that shit. All this circus for a blue bubble is just so hard to comprehend.

>...that can solve world hunger, poverty, water...

Ah, but no profit there. Not being cynical, have witnessed ngo's first hand in war zones.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#966

Post by GeekyBear »

ehvatum wrote: post #648
GeekyBear wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products? I hereby demand that Google stop making changes to YouTube that prevent ad blockers from working. Or more to the point, I should have the right to sell hacked access to Microsoft's Office 365 servers to end users and Microsoft must not take any action that interferes in those user's access. That's reasonable, right?

I hereby demand that Apple stop supporting email interoperability with non iCloud users. The current situation, where the iCloud email users enjoy first class communication with gmail users, is tantamount to theft. That’s reasonable, of course.

What does that have to do with a company's right to control access to the services it runs?

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#967

Post by whyoh »

s3p wrote: post #855
krick wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you hear yourself? Using using an iPhone for communication is perfectly normal. I’m at a top 10 (biggest in terms of number of students) university in the US and I can confidently tell you the overwhelming majority of people carries iPhones. The 57% statistic use site probably skewed toward the older demographic, where older people are more likely to use flip phones and androids. I would if I knew that strange if…

Honest question, does anybody ever consider that excluding non-iPhone users from a group chat is a dick move?

How hard it is to install a cross-platform app? Some of these apps also work in a web browser on any OS, which is a nice advantage over iMessage.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#968

Post by davidfstr »

dmichulke wrote: post #943
go_prodev wrote: post #938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp is that middle ground in some parts of the world. Upon moving to Europe we discovered that WhatsApp is the preferred way to connect with friends, employees, social groups and schools. It was actually the driving factor in me conceding and setting up a FB account.

I don't think you need a FB account to have a Whatsapp account unless you imply they are the same (which I don't think). IIRC I have not ever linked the two nor should FB have...

WhatsApp is owned by Meta/Facebook

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#969

Post by jonathantf2 »

cortesoft wrote: post #924
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)!

Wait, there are still places that charge per MMS?

30p per MMS - everybody uses WhatsApp, the only time I use iMessage/SMS is for receiving OTP codes.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#970

Post by whyoh »

_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 fact that it can be simple to share high fidelity pictures and videos, but it isn’t just because Apple...

It's literally as simple as installing a cross-platform app. Apple is not stopping you from doing that.

And using a third party app/protocol is pretty much the only way right now. Even most Android users don't use RCS among themselves, because only newer phones have it enabled by default and it only works in some apps.

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