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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

#341

Post by rez9x »

threeseed wrote: post #98
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is this referencing Spotify launched on iOS. Apple saw them competing with iTunes and basically stole their idea to compete with them. That, alone, would be okay. But Apple Music is privileged within iOS and Apple's marketing in a way Spotify cannot be.

None of this is true. a) Spotify didn't invent music streaming. There were many services e.g. Pandora that were doing in the years before. It was a pretty obvious idea once devices had faster bandwidth. b) Apple didn't steal their idea. They acquired Beats who had launched a similar service soon after Spotify. c) Apple Music isn't privileged. It comes pre-installed but otherwise you can delete the app and use Spotify…

Apple Music is privileged when it comes to Siri. I currently have both a Spotify and Apple Music subscription, and one of the main reasons I prefer Apple Music, aside from shuffle not playing the same 20 songs in a 2000 song playlist, is the great hands free functionality. I can add songs to playlist, play a song next instead of adding it to the end of the queue (which is more of Spotify STILL not having deque support), and I know there are other things I've run into Spotify can't do on Siri, but I'm blanking at the moment.

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

#342

Post by the_mar »

trws wrote: post #306
danaris wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use iMessage regularly, and have done so since it was first released. I have never , to my knowledge, had a message sent to me lost (which I would have found out because my family members, who would have been the ones to try and fail to send it to me, would have mentioned it), nor lost a message I sent (except for obvious cases where I had insufficient signal, and the app clearly notified me of it). I have never re…

The most common case I know of for what looks like misdirection is having one contact with multiple iMessage phone numbers, especially if multiple contacts share one or more of them. Real world example, my wife and I each have both a work iPhone and a personal iPhone. If both are listed in a single contact, iOS will “helpfully” merge the iMessages from both on a sender’s device, but not on the receiver’s. It’s very d…

Yeah, that’s how contacts work. What would you like to happen instead?

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

#343

Post by hx8 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #336
unstatusthequo wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple owns the delivery mechanism. I don’t believe that a third party using their ecosystem will last long. Nor do I want it. There are plenty of cross-platform things out there. Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp. Why does everyone care so much? Google can paint their Android robot blue. Then maybe all this silliness will end?

> Nor do I want it > Why does everyone care so much? You seem to both care about it, and also wonder why other people care about it ? Otherwise, looking from the sideline it's fascinating seeing Apple fighting this battle that they brought upon themselves and have no chance of winning.

> have no chance of winning

I think Apple will almost certainly win on a purely technical game of cat and mouse.

I think you need to adjust your definition of winning. Blocking 5% of messages is a 'win' for Apple. I won't use a messaging service with a 95% success rate. I won't migrate from iMessage to Beeper. I will submit, Apple would have liked a more decisive victory.

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

#344

Post by hn_acker »

drexlspivey wrote: post #287
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…

Is Beeper’s whole purpose to satisfy people’s vanity to have blue bubbles or what’s wrong with plain ol’ SMS?

SMS is not end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). The purpose of Beeper Mini (not to be confused with Beeper Cloud, which is not E2EE) is to allow Android users to send encrypted texts to Apple iMessage users the same way iMessage users can send E2EE texts to each other.

An Android user and an iOS user could both use a third-party app like Signal. But Beeper Mini's main feature is maintaining encryption for chats between Android users and iMessage users, saving the Android users the need to convince iMessage users to switch to a different messaging app. 1. The benefit of E2EE applies to the users on both ends, including iMessage users. 2. With Beeper Mini instead of an E2EE-dedicated multi-platform app like Signal, only one side of the communication pair needs to install something.

Beeper Mini Apple doesn't want to make an iMessage implementation for Android.

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

#345

Post by jacquesm »

wrboyce wrote: post #307
tshirthoodie wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's iMessage implementation loses messages all the time. It happens about once every month between my girlfriend and I. I have also had iMesages be sent to the wrong recipient. In one ongoing case, my aunt and uncle frequently receive each other's iMessages, suggesting it's related to their group carrier plan but it's hard to say. The extended family all knows to use SMS instead, which reliably goes to the intend…

This has never, ever, happened to me and I have been using iMessage daily since its inception. I call shenanigans.

So if something never ever happened to you it isn't true? That's a pretty self centered view of things.

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

#346

Post by rezonant »

averageRoyalty wrote: post #277
standardUser wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, it is beyond depressing to imagine Apple bigwigs sitting around discussing ways to make absolutely certain teens keep getting ostracized until they buy their overpriced product.

Given the majority of their users don't care about that, it seems unlikely to be an accurate portrayal of the internal discussions.

Do you have data about that or are you assuming you and your friends are representative of the majority of users?

It seems like one side of the debate says "I have experienced this, and the product features seem to encourage this behavior" and the other side says "No one really does this, you just have a few insane friends who happen to use iOS".

Feels like gaslighting when you've experienced this sort of behavior yourself, and not even from tweens who aren't well adjusted to the world, from your middle aged and up friends and family who are bought into that ecosystem.

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

#347

Post by makeitdouble »

wrboyce wrote: post #307
tshirthoodie wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's iMessage implementation loses messages all the time. It happens about once every month between my girlfriend and I. I have also had iMesages be sent to the wrong recipient. In one ongoing case, my aunt and uncle frequently receive each other's iMessages, suggesting it's related to their group carrier plan but it's hard to say. The extended family all knows to use SMS instead, which reliably goes to the intend…

This has never, ever, happened to me and I have been using iMessage daily since its inception. I call shenanigans.

https://www.coolmuster.com/ios-recovery/iphone-text-messages...

Doesn't feel like some rare issue. Googled it by curiosity, and there's a ton of "help" articles and support post on people randomly seeing messages disappear or not getting delivered.

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

#348

Post by notnmeyer »

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 is more than beeper mini.

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

#349

Post by makeitdouble »

joshmanders wrote: post #60
dataangel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entitled, it's pushing back against a gigantic company exploiting network effects to create user lock-in, because that's easier than competing on the merit of your products.

Now apply this logic to any other company product, maybe even your own or the company you work for and tell me if this sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me.

Any other company using network effect to force lockin should have the same logic applied, yes. That feels like a pretty sane philosophy to me.

To turn it around, which company do you see this not applying ? What services with a strong position do you see justify to abuse it to lock users ?

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

#350

Post by wrboyce »

jacquesm wrote: post #345
wrboyce wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has never, ever, happened to me and I have been using iMessage daily since its inception. I call shenanigans.

So if something never ever happened to you it isn't true? That's a pretty self centered view of things.

I shouldn’t form an opinion based on my own experiences because it might upset you? That’s a pretty self centred view of things.

I could’ve expanded, I’m pretty much de facto “IT Support” for a lot of the friends/family I’ve spent those years communicating with using iMessage so I can pretty confidently say it has never happened to any of them either. I could go on to say that if it was a widespread issue this wouldn’t be the first we are hearing about it, and it absolutely would’ve been covered in some sort of tech news - possibly even the regular old news.

But sure, let’s go with self centred.

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