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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

#351

Post by ethanbond »

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.

I care about it because lack of iMessage is still a very good heuristic for spam. Not perfect anymore, but I reckon this will make it much worse.

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

#352

Post by alexchantavy »

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.

Adding my own datapoint: I’ve absolutely had this happen on iPhone to iPhone where the message appeared to be sent on one device but the other received nothing

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

#353

Post by jacquesm »

wrboyce wrote: post #350
jacquesm wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You misread me: if something didn't happen to you that doesn't invalidate the GPs experience, it just means that your experiences differ. Now you have to figure out why they differ.

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

#354

Post by wrboyce »

alexchantavy wrote: post #352
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.

Adding my own datapoint: I’ve absolutely had this happen on iPhone to iPhone where the message appeared to be sent on one device but the other received nothing

If I was being asked to debug this for someone I know, my first two questions would be “did your phone say delivered?” and “does the recipient have a Mac/iPad/etc that could’ve received the message?”; do you know the answer to either of these?

I worry that sounds accusatory but that’s not my intention, I’m curious and too tired to attempt to reword it.

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

#355

Post by Terretta »

rezonant wrote: post #337
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?

Because Apple embraced texting by supporting SMS, then extended it by forcing all the text conversations that they could into their own proprietary infrastructure, and is extinguishing it by using punitive product design to create pressure on communities of people to all use their products so that everything goes over their proprietary network. I don't want an over the top chat app, I just want to text people.

How do you want Apple to tell iPhone users whether their messages to someone are being recorded by that person's telco and made available to other plan holders on that phone plan?

How do you want Apple to indicate if this chat participant is costing you money by the message or free?

Everyone's concerned about teens. Presumably teens know that T-Mobile and the other carriers give the family plan adults the ability to read their dependents text messages. As a teen I would want to stick with the encrypted bubbles your parents can't read and tell my parents about, thank you very much.

It's not punitive product design. It's seamlessly integrated and meaningful, both on chat leaks and on costs of messaging: Blue sky, text safely. Green could literally cost you.

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

#356

Post by danielheath »

tshirthoodie wrote: post #270
JoblessWonder wrote: post #122

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 wr…

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…

One obvious cause comes to mind: If your aunt and uncle use the same apple login for both phones, they'll often get each others imessages.

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

#357

Post by Terretta »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #11
nocoiner wrote: post #4

Beeper CEO, from the article: "If there's enough pressure on Apple, they will have to quit messing with us." "Us," he clarified, meant both Apple's customers using iMessage and Android users trying to chat securely with iPhone friends. "That's who they're penalizing," he wrote. "It's not a Beeper vs. Apple fight, it's Apple versus customers." Not really sure how this is anti-customer. Apple customers have ample acces…

Apple has customers who want to use iMessage. Those customers are not able to use iMessage to securely communicate with Android users. That's pretty clear. If Apple's customers want to be able to use iMessage for such communications then (1) the Android user buys an Apple product, (2) a third party makes a cross-platform iMessage client, or (3) Apple open iMessage to other platforms. Apple is blocking on (2) and (3).

First, it's not just security.

It's also, does this message cost money or not.

Blue sky, text freely. Green could cost money by hitting your SMS message bill.

This color difference matters even if you don't care about security at all.

. . .

Second:

> That's pretty clear. If Apple's customers want to be able to use iMessage for such communications then (1) the Android user buys an Apple product, (2) a third party makes a cross-platform iMessage client, or (3) Apple open iMessage to other platforms. Apple is blocking on (2) and (3).

Option 4, run any other app that's on both platforms, which is what most of the world does anyway, including any iPhone user I know in the US who chats regularly with anyone International. For EU it's WhatsApp, China WeChat, and in USA it's privacy minded Signal, PTA parents Facebook Messenger, etc.

Given no cross platform is blocked, you'll see many iPhones do not have Messages in the launch bar, but one of those others.

This seems ... fine!

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

#358

Post by jwells89 »

rezonant wrote: post #331
jwells89 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason they’re not doing that is because it could have unintended consequences as some are using someone else’s actual device serial number and those people would be inconvenienced. One is supposed to try to find a plausible (follows certain rules) but invalid serial to use for hackintoshing and not use real serials, but of course in practice there’s always some number of careless users…

This is interesting. How do you define "invalid" and why can Apple not also detect such invalidity? There's been some talk that blocking this for Beeper will also block this for Hackintosh, but are we just talking about iMessage? Because I have a hard time believing that (A) Apple can't just block this for iMessage without affecting whatever other system services rely on it and (B) That Apple would care if Hackintosh…

My understanding is that the serials represent information, including model and date/location of manufacture. It’s therefore possible to create correctly formed but impossible serials, for example one that represents a pre-touchbar 2015 MBP manufactured in Ireland in 2018.

Apple should easily be able to tell when someone has done this.

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

#359

Post by sircastor »

It seems fairy obvious to me that the simple solution here is for Apple simply send a cease-and-desist to Beeper to stop using their network in an unauthorized manner (and I mean that in the literal sense of “you don’t have permission to do this”)

The only reason I can think of that Apple is willing to let this go on is to plug holes in their system shown by a relatively benign opponent.

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

#360

Post by brandon272 »

Terretta wrote: post #355
rezonant wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Apple embraced texting by supporting SMS, then extended it by forcing all the text conversations that they could into their own proprietary infrastructure, and is extinguishing it by using punitive product design to create pressure on communities of people to all use their products so that everything goes over their proprietary network. I don't want an over the top chat app, I just want to text people.

How do you want Apple to tell iPhone users whether their messages to someone are being recorded by that person's telco and made available to other plan holders on that phone plan? How do you want Apple to indicate if this chat participant is costing you money by the message or free? Everyone's concerned about teens. Presumably teens know that T-Mobile and the other carriers give the family plan adults the ability to…

I have recent experience talking to non-techie younger people recently about this very issue and none of them were aware of the security differences of SMS vs. iMessage.

Teenagers know that blue = iPhone and green = non-iPhone/SMS and that blue offers significantly more features and functionality vs SMS (delivered/read receipts, group chats, stickers, rich media, memojis, etc), which is the overwhelming reason why blue is preferred.

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