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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

#631

Post by shrimpx »

grok25 wrote: post #272
shrimpx wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because SMS is unencrypted, and this is an effort to have secure communication between iOS users and Android users (since iMessage is Apple-device-only). There's also a status factor, where Android users are lowly "green bubbles" in iMessage, which signals decreased security and questionable support for the interactions available to iMessage users. Of course everyone can switch to Signal and this is a moot point…

> Of course everyone can switch to Signal and this is a moot point, but millions of Apple users use iMessage and aren't likely to switch. Doesn’t this mean that most people simply don’t care?

On the iOS side people don't care, but apparently on the Android side they do?

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

#632

Post by shrimpx »

jmye wrote: post #328
shrimpx wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because SMS is unencrypted, and this is an effort to have secure communication between iOS users and Android users (since iMessage is Apple-device-only). There's also a status factor, where Android users are lowly "green bubbles" in iMessage, which signals decreased security and questionable support for the interactions available to iMessage users. Of course everyone can switch to Signal and this is a moot point…

How many people really care about encrypted text messages? Most of the time, I’m sending my girlfriend pictures of our dogs. If I cared about encryption, we’d download something else (or use gchat or whatever). This just doesn’t seem like it should be that big a deal.

Yeah it seems like it's more about "blue bubble" status than it is about encryption.

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

#633

Post by hnuser435 »

GeekyBear wrote: post #229
MR4D wrote: post #130

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...

It certainly seems like it would have to be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If you recall, Aaron Swartz was hounded to death using that law after accessing JSTOR's servers without permission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

Never forget.

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

#634

Post by StressedDev »

unstatusthequo wrote: post #327
rezonant wrote: post #313

I think this is kinda technically a win for Beeper. I would've expected another 100% lockout to be Apple's priority. They were instead only able to block 5%, which sounds like a heuristic being applied, and possibly not even an intentional block of Beeper (in the sense that some anti-spam service may be identifying some Beeper users). They can certainly escalate with protocol changes, but they still have to contend w…

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?

I agree with you. This obsession with iMessage does not make a lot of sense. Apple created a better messaging experience because they wanted to add features to SMS. This is good and it makes things better when both people have iOS.

That being said, the reactions in this thread are way over the top. A lot of Android users in this thread seem to think there are a huge number of Apple users who refuse to talk to Android users or that iMessage is some sort of messaging nirvana. Both are not true.

The other elephant in the room is Apple created iMessage, Apple pays for the service's costs, and therefore Apple has the right to decide who can use it. Third parties do not have the right to use it. It's sad that sone non-Apple users feel entitled to use iMessage.

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

#635

Post by JohnFen »

vintermann wrote: post #468
zem wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the alternative is just continuing to sms people from your android because at least you know the messages are definitely going through, green bubble or not

You still face such problems as being left out of group chats.

I think that's a great thing, actually. I'm included in too many group chats as it is. Group chats are awful.

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

#636

Post by JohnFen »

geraldwhen wrote: post #536
zem wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the alternative is just continuing to sms people from your android because at least you know the messages are definitely going through, green bubble or not

SMS is not reliable. Messages are routinely lost.

I haven't had an SMS message get lost in over a decade now. It used to happen every so often, but apparently whatever the issue was got fixed.

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

#637

Post by timmg »

soerxpso wrote: post #590
timmg wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that bothers me is that Apple’s actions hurt iPhone owners. Making it harder for them to communicate with non-iPhones is a bad experience. Intentionally making their product worse to encourage lock-in is anti-user. I’m oddly surprised that iPhone owners are ok with this.

Most iPhone owners are unaware that it's intentional on Apple's part, and are lead to believe that other devices just aren't sophisticated enough to make the bubbles blue.

That's a pretty good theory/explanation, tbh.

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

#638

Post by jkarneges »

derefr wrote: post #610
jkarneges wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is there no Lambda-like serverless compute substrate that allows your function to speak a connection-oriented protocol, by externalizing the connection-hold-open and per-connection book-keeping state into the routing layer, such that your own function in the system could scale-to-zero? Fastly Fanout + Compute? (disclosure: Fanout tech lead)

Not generalized, AFAICT; from reading the docs, Fanout just does websockets, no? I'm talking about a routing layer that could allow a serverless function to be the backend for an arbitrary stateful TCP protocol, e.g. IRC, SMTP, FTP, PGSQL, etc; where the service doesn't need to add support for a new L7 protocol for functions to use it; instead, the support for the L7 protocol is part of the function, the same way it'…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. What you describe sounds awesome, and in fact some of these concepts are present in our stack but not fleshed out to this level, so maybe we could get there someday. The challenge is making it practical.

Currently, Fanout supports HTTP in addition to WebSockets. We consider the system to be generalized, in the sense that the user can build whatever they want on top of the available primitives, and we can always add more primitives. Most people are implementing "web" protocols (REST, SSE, GraphQL, etc), so what's available today gets us pretty far. You're right of course that we don't support arbitrary TCP protocols.

I suppose the reason we don't support bare TCP is Fanout is optimized for implementing pub/sub-style interfaces with minimal compute. In that context, it is preferable to work with coarse-grained input in order to avoid per-session processing. However, with Fastly Compute now in arms reach, I think we could embrace per-session processing, in which case implementing arbitrary TCP protocols could become practical.

Your idea of supplying custom L7 parsers to the routing layer is clever, and is not too far off from some things already on our mind. For example, our routing layer supports inspecting requests using custom rules supplied by the compute layer, though this is not yet exposed to Fastly users. Relatedly, the routing layer has an internal component that parses TCP streams into messages (by known protocol) and ships them over an IPC without caring about their content. So it's not too much of a jump to imagine how we could get to user-supplied L7 parsing.

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

#639

Post by jauntywundrkind »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #520
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does everyone care so much? Happy to explain. First thought, why do you care so much? > Nor do I want it. Why? What about exclusivity makes the world better? Why shouldn't I be able to communicate well with someone using an Apple device? Why should someone using an Apple device not want someone to communicate well with them? Sure there are other systems. But switching costs are so high. Especially with iMessage…

What a complete load of nonsense. iMessage is apples system, we live in an app world, you don’t have to use it, most people use WhatsApp so just download that, Google users have to download it too because it’s a third party service. How is downloading a free app a high switching cost? You can use it alongside iMessage. Most people use There is plenty of freedom of choice without a third party app hacking into another…

It's easy for individuals to switch, but that's good for nothing when your friends and family use other services.

> most people use WhatsApp

I only know of one person who uses WhatsApp and it's to keep on touch with folks in Brazil. No one uses it here, from what I can see, and no one has offered to share WhatsApp ever.

The ease with which you suggest yeah everyone can just use an obvious easy to agree upon other central alternative is so facetiously ridiculous and painful. Everyone has a mish-mahs of preferences & existing accounts. It not just that you've deeply shirked what the actual switching costs are (since everyone will pick different things), it's that having these crazy anti-cirumvention laws is stupid, that not having adversarial Interoperability like what Beeper is doing is a sad corporate lichdom sucking the lifeblood of what should be the most vibrant sector of our age: communications technologies. Babel fell, and these merchants of disconnection have been keeping us from communicating with each other ever since, to make a couple more sales. Vulgar pieces of anti-human garbage, just disgraceful.

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

#640

Post by extraduder_ire »

zem wrote: post #466
vintermann wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, if the alternative is getting rid of your Android phone and go buy an iPhone, it needs to be a lot worse than that.

the alternative is just continuing to sms people from your android because at least you know the messages are definitely going through, green bubble or not

If you're (iphone) sending a message to an imessage user (beeper, or someone switched off iphone) with their phone number, and they're enrolled in imessage, an SMS will not be sent and they will not get it.

This is hearsay based on prior threads, but I haven't read a word against it.

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