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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

#651

Post by rezonant »

HenryBemis wrote: post #480
flomo wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem hard, people like your father can be allow-listed, he's not signing-up out of the blue. (I'm wondering if this "works" because the early adopters were hackintosh types who were already on imessage and not abusers. When the H3rb8l V18gr8 crowd shows up, that is the end.)

Now then.. if I am a professional spammer (which I am not), what stops me from buying a second hand mac or a second hand iphone (for $150 each) and start 'doing business' with iMessage? Unless it's an issue of 'iPhones can't be JB-ed like Androids can be rooted to run all shorts of malware/spamming softwares'. I get Apple's "this is our toy, you won't be making $2/month/user on us". But "keeping the spammers out" it'…

> Unless it's an issue of 'iPhones can't be JB-ed like Androids can be rooted to run all shorts of malware/spamming softwares'.

We're also talking about old, non-updated iOS versions here, jailbreaks are more likely to last when they target these versions.

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

#652

Post by averageRoyalty »

rezonant wrote: post #346
averageRoyalty wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

I am not refering to myself or my friends at all.

That said, I've only seen this green vs blue debate reported on in the context of American teens. Even if it is accurate in that group (questionable), that group make up a tiny portion of global smartphone users. Even if the actual group who care are double that, it's still tiny.

As such, it seems unlikely this is such a critical thing that Apple bigwigs are sitting around discussing this group.

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

#653

Post by averageRoyalty »

standardUser wrote: post #291
averageRoyalty wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You don't think Apple brass is doing everything in their power to convince non-iPhone users to switch to an iPhone? Every excluded teen is another potential customer and to pretend they don't know that is beyond naïve.

I do, but the group that consists purely of American teenagers (even if it's 100% of them), is one of many demos, and a relatively small one globally.

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

#654

Post by withinboredom »

StressedDev wrote: post #626
withinboredom wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessages too. "failed to send" is a real thing, with no notification.

Messages / lets you know if it could not send a message. I do not know if these are iMessages or SMS messages, but I have seen the error message.

Yes, there's an error message, but if you close your phone, it won't notify you that it failed to send. Hours/days later, you might reopen the message thread to find the message was never sent.

Just pointing out that effectively, it is the same "problem" that SMS has with dropped messages that happens quite rarely (both are rare, actually).

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

#655

Post by throwaway290 »

MissTake wrote: post #650
throwaway290 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reread what I said. I did not say "you are wrong" or "RCS is iMessage". I said "Apple might disagree with you" and "RCS is pretty much iMessage". Why don't you stop trying to make me seem wrong by putting words into my mouth.

This is the original message you replied to: ‘Apple has made it clear that they won't bring iMessage to Android.’ This was your reply: ‘Apple might disagree.’ and you then proceeded to supply a link to 9to5Mac about Apple interfaces iMessage to RCS. TFA states: “But at the same time, iMessage isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to be the messaging platform used for all communication between iPhone users. RCS will…

> This is not Apple opening up iMessage to other platforms.

Which I never claimed.

> Sorry, but iMessage is not RCS.

The only person who keeps repeating "iMessage is RCS" is yourself.

> You can claim they’re the same as much as you’d like, but their only similarities is that iMessage will send messages to RCS and support the native carrier chosen RCS features.

Less than 1% of iphone users even know what e2ee is. Less than .01% disable that icloud backup thing that makes iMessage e2ee useless for them and their contacts.

If iOS has a messaging system that is capable of things imessage today is capable of and is interoperable with android then the only people for whom the separation between imessage and RCS matters is pedantic nerds, no offence.

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

#656

Post by smcin »

filoleg wrote: post #583
smcin wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They switched to that ~2020/1. You can no longer make a Genius Bar appt by browser on an Android phone; you used to be able to. Seems grossly unreasonable to assume "user has an Android phone" indicates "possible spammer".

> Seems grossly unreasonable to assume "user has an Android phone" indicates "possible spammer". I think you got it in the reverse order. “User has an android phone” doesn’t indicate “possible spammer”. However, “spammer” typically indicates “user has an android phone.”

No, I described it the way Apple implements it; I'm aware of the Bayesian ridiculousness. Anyway, I object to Apple enforcing "all users of non-Apple phones as of 2020/1 can no longer make service appts [for an MBP] from the Apple webpage".

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

#657

Post by spectre3d »

whyoh wrote: post #513
Twisell wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in Europe Android is dominating the market (but with a very fragmented experience depending on Android version). The result is that as an iPhone users I feel sometimes feel left out because different friends circles on Android turn to different secured messaging services (WhatsApp, FB messenger, Telegram, Signal, etc...). I firmly refuse to give my personal ID to all theses companies just to keep in touch so I o…

>Apple kept conformance with SMS/MMS standards from the beginning and added a secure layer on top. iMessage is not a "secure layer on top", it's a totally separate proprietary protocol and it requires an Apple account to work. It just happens to run in the same app as SMS/MMS messages, which has its pros and cons.

>it requires an Apple account to work

Not true.

“The “magic” is that you don’t have to sign up for an account, or create a new username or account identifier. You just send a message from your phone number to another phone number, and if both numbers are registered for iMessage, the message goes over iMessage instead of SMS, even if you don’t have an Apple ID. Beeper had that working last week. Now, Beeper users need to have an Apple ID, and sign into that Apple ID within Beeper. (Beeper should actively encourage users to create and use an app-specific Apple ID password[1] for Beeper.)”[2]

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102654

[2] https://daringfireball.net/2023/12/beeper_mini_is_back

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

#658

Post by out-of-ideas »

maxcoder4 wrote: post #340
SpaghettiCthulu wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am at a loss on this "spam" argument. I haven't received a single spam message on either SMS or Signal in the at least last year.

Same experience with signal, but SMS phishing is a very large issue, at least in my country. Maybe your phone number was just never leaked and you're not present in the spammers databases?

email and phone spam would be a bit easier to mitigate if places-we-enter email+phone (websites that want this info) would give us a list of Emails and Phone-numbers it uses to contact us with, and even email-subject prefixes; it is no different than when you meet an old friend and you each, mutually, exchange phones/emails/physical addresses; why are the UX of all the websites so poorly designed that we consumers do not get to see, proactively, the address they intend to talk to us from?

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

#659

Post by Sunspark »

dylan604 wrote: post #586
Sunspark wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the iOS 6 to 7 transition where the security certificates expired and Apple wouldn't issue a new one and said you needed to switch to iOS 7 if you wanted Facetime to work again? That was my last iOS device.

I don't remember that as I just upgraded the OS. Why would an OS upgrade be some thing you wouldn't do? Seems to me like you have bigger personal issues than some technical one with this situation.

I just really liked the old skeuomorphic UI which dripped gorgeousness and didn't want to switch to a bland flat white interface.

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

#660

Post by rekoil »

dylan604 wrote: post #587
rekoil wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't have predictable serial numbers anymore, they're all just random numbers corresponding to rows in a database. There's no way to generate them.

It wasn't a serious idea. The fact I mentioned it along side Serial Box should have been a clue. Maybe you're too young to know what Serial Box was, or the 90s cracking culture. Shh, the adults are speaking =)

No, I remember Serial Box, serials.ws, MegaGames, scene intros, etc. I just have trouble determining tone on the internet sometimes is all.
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