Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 665 posts

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

#181

Post by sroussey »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #120
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.

A brief period (~2008-2015) when XMPP had momentum and federation was trendy, if incomplete. Apps like Trillian, Pidgin (Gaim), Adium actually allowed chatting across many platforms on the client side. To some extent they still can, with add-ons.

So did iMessage back then.

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

#182

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #159
madeofpalk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsensical. Reddit has a monopoly on Reddit - of course it does. Any service online is under no obligation to allow for widespread interpoperation - that would be madness.

> Any service online is under no obligation to allow for widespread interpoperation - that would be madness. Lol, "madness". The Digital Services Act in the EU would like a word.

[deleted]

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

#183

Post by theturtletalks »

function_seven wrote: post #143
josephcsible wrote: post #126

When Ma Bell didn't let people use third-party phones with their service, the government made them change their ways. Why is the government letting Apple get away with the equivalent?

Because Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly, and iMessage is not a monopoly. People routinely use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, SMS, FB Messenger, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love that these guys are poking the bear. I wish Apple would do something to let me send high-quality photos and videos to my Android-owning friends via "text". But I don't think the government has a place to force that issue. Plenty of alternatives e…

What’s stopping an open source beeper alternative where users host their own notification server? The rest is client-side anyways.

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

#184

Post by lm411 »

josephcsible wrote: post #126

When Ma Bell didn't let people use third-party phones with their service, the government made them change their ways. Why is the government letting Apple get away with the equivalent?

It's not the equivalent.

If the third party phones allowed users access to Ma Bell's network, switching systems, etc, without paying Ma Bell - then it might be equivalent.

I'm pretty sure that would be considered theft of communication services.

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

#185

Post by commoner »

madeofpalk wrote: post #162
notnmeyer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

attention? this has brought beeper _tremendous_ publicity. i think it’s naive to think that beeper didn’t expect this—its win-win for them no matter what. they could and so they did.

Win-win no matter what? An extremely likely scenario is that Beeper becomes completely defunct, and Apple has no legal or regulartory pressure applied to them. What's the win for Beeper here?

Beeper (Beeper Cloud) is a cross-platform stack that supports multiple messaging systems (not just iMessage) and has been in development for years.[1] This is different from Beeper Mini, which is a recently launched Android-exclusive app that only supports SMS/MMS and iMessage.[2]

The release of Beeper Mini certainly gained publicity for Beeper Cloud, and I don't see why Beeper Mini would cause Beeper Cloud to go defunct.

[1] Beeper Cloud: https://www.beeper.com/cloud

[2] Beeper Mini: https://blog.beeper.com/p/introducing-beeper-mini-get-blue

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

#186

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

madeofpalk wrote: post #169
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's madness for monopolistic communications providers to refuse interoperability.

iMessage is far from monopolistic. Messages on iPhone is interoperable with any other mobile device - it supports SMS!

> it supports SMS!

and isn't RCS support coming too?

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

#187

Post by solardev »

theturtletalks wrote: post #183
function_seven wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Ma Bell was a regulated monopoly, and iMessage is not a monopoly. People routinely use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, SMS, FB Messenger, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love that these guys are poking the bear. I wish Apple would do something to let me send high-quality photos and videos to my Android-owning friends via "text". But I don't think the government has a place to force that issue. Plenty of alternatives e…

What’s stopping an open source beeper alternative where users host their own notification server? The rest is client-side anyways.

Network effect? The whole value of it is that it lets you use existing networks (iMessage and SMS). Otherwise people could just switch to WhatsApp or any of twenty Google messaging services.

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

#188

Post by sroussey »

madeofpalk wrote: post #162
notnmeyer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

attention? this has brought beeper _tremendous_ publicity. i think it’s naive to think that beeper didn’t expect this—its win-win for them no matter what. they could and so they did.

Win-win no matter what? An extremely likely scenario is that Beeper becomes completely defunct, and Apple has no legal or regulartory pressure applied to them. What's the win for Beeper here?

It’s better than a message app that no one knows about.

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

#189

Post by unsignedint »

dishsoap wrote: post #90
paulmd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is actually an interesting analogy because they share apple’s overall philosophy here. Discord doesn’t absolutely firewall themselves with attestation/etc but they will absolutely ban you for using alternative clients like Discord Advanced if they notice you behaving differently from an official client on the API. Some of the things the discord advanced client can do like animated smilies or cross-server smil…

I don't think many people actually like discord, they just feel compelled to use it because their friends use it

Discord excels particularly in group communications involving more than a dozen people. Its ability to organize access levels through roles and topics is a standout feature, offering significant advantages over other platforms. However, these features may not be as crucial in casual conversations among friends.

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

#190

Post by mnutt »

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 very well-designed mac app that I used for many years. All of its messaging connectivity was due to its use of libpurple (formerly libgaim).
Post reply on HN