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Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#121

Post by infotainment »

ck425 wrote: post #103
shreyansh_k wrote: post #31

This seems to be Beeper's insincere attempt at dressing up their grievances to appear as if they were in advantage of the [Apple's] customer. Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android. People who choose to invest in Android phones know they won't get access to iMessage. It seems a bit entitled behaviour for someone to feel like Apple should be forced to bring iMessage to Android for any reason…

Out of curiosity why does this matter? Do iPhone users not use WhatsApp or Messenger? Is this a USA specific thing? As a UK Android user I've never used iMessage and don't see any reason why I'd need or want to.

USA specific — Americans pretty much universally use SMS messages, which ends up being iMessage for Apple devices.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#122

Post by JoblessWonder »

As I mentioned in the previous discussion[1], users are going to have to put up with the system going down... and I just don't see that happening. From the article: "It was losing messages during the outage and never being entirely certain they had been sent or received. There was a gathering on Saturday, and she had to double-check with a couple people about the details after showing up inadvertently early at the wrong spot."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533775

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#123

Post by tremon »

doublerabbit wrote: post #115
dishsoap wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they stealing?

Profits. By allowing Android Apple communication, Apple has potential "loses" as they loose their lock in ability of forcing people buying a new iPhone for Christmas. iPhone $800, Android $200. If an Android can do what iPhone can do on the messaging front there's no purpose in buying an iPhone.

You can't steal profits, it's an abstract concept.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#124

Post by Spivak »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #93
Shawnj2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC that is the original goal of beeper, to act as a universal messenger front end

So the end result will be dozens of 'universal' 'standards'?

The end result will likely be a few apps that do the legwork to beat the various messaging platforms into some common denominator feature set and give you a single pane of glass.

Unsiloing messaging isn't some quick fix. It would be like saying "we have all these forums like HN, Reddit, Twitter, SpaceHey, Facebook they should all share a global identity system and be able to be used all by a single app with the same APIs." Like we can't even make a generic ActivityPub client.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#125

Post by mvdtnz »

Gud wrote: post #105
MichaelZuo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the end result will be dozens of 'universal' 'standards'?

I think in the end, whoever chooses to block these apps(Trillian, Pidgin, etc) too hard will be the ones left in the dust.

Evidently that isn't the case.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#127

Post by ck425 »

infotainment wrote: post #121
ck425 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity why does this matter? Do iPhone users not use WhatsApp or Messenger? Is this a USA specific thing? As a UK Android user I've never used iMessage and don't see any reason why I'd need or want to.

USA specific — Americans pretty much universally use SMS messages, which ends up being iMessage for Apple devices.

Huh. How does that work with multimedia? Do US carriers not differentiate between SMS and MMS?

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#128

Post by ljm »

jedberg wrote: post #119
rrreese wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m baffled as to when this time was? Back in the day there was ICQ, Yahoo Chat, MSN Messenger (and no doubt a dozen I forget). Before the there there the proprietary networks (Aol, CompuServe and others) along with BBS, IRC, Newsgroups, etc. I literally don’t remember a time in my life where messaging hasn’t been fragmented.

2001, when Adium launched. It pretty much had every messaging app that anyone was on. I used it exclusively for years. It supported all those things (or I should say if someone had multiple ways to get to them, Adium supported at least one of them).

Adium was a total lifesaver on Mac since there was never an official MSN messenger client there.

Back then a lot of services also used XMPP but that has been readily abandoned - Slack used to do XMPP, doesn't any more. Google used to do XMPP, doesn't any more...

I suppose one reason for it is E2E encryption.

Re: Apple partly halts Beeper's iMessage app again, suggesting a long fight ahead

#130

Post by MR4D »

I don't understand how this is not theft of service, or at least unlawful access.

If I am reading the articles on Beeper correctly, they've applied a pretty brilliant hack to gain access to the iMessage network without an Apple ID.

That last part seems key (pardon the pun).

Can someone explain this to me? I feel like this technical issue is really in the weeds, so I'm sure there are multiple nuances I'm missing...

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