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Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

arstechnica.com

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Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#131

Post by tetrisgm »

Really don't encourage using an external service to use imessage. Giving your apple credentials and also the dependency on Sim cards to make it stable is just trouble waiting to happen.

To this day, the best solution for imessage on Android is BlueBubbles or Airmessage. I use both for redundancy. It does require having my Sim in an iPhone, and having a Mac, for everything to be bulletproof.

I don't recommend it to people who aren't technical, but it's helped me with my dating life to have blue messages...

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#132

Post by upon_drumhead »

modeless wrote: post #126
mdasen wrote: post #116

It looks like this is powered by Sunbird: https://www.sunbirdapp.com . Another alternative for iMessage is Beeper: https://www.beeper.com/imessage They both have a waitlist at the moment, but Beeper seems to be opening up to a lot of new people.

I have Beeper. It works well, except that it doesn't support registering your phone number without an iPhone, so you can only use iMessage with an email address. I believe they are working on fixing that now.

How could they work on fixing that? iMessage currently requires a cell phone to activate a number on the iMessage network. Are you saying they're partnering with Apple to change this? Are they going to sim clone your number?

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#133

Post by tigroferoce »

korhojoa wrote: post #91
happymellon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? No one uses RCS in the EU, who would Apple users talk to?

Arguably false. Are you trying to imply that Apple users are the only common users of messages other than text or that Apple users use third party messaging instead? Lots of providers implement RCS, lots of people use it. Perhaps none of the people in your particular region/circle of contacts do? My contacts almost all use signal. The exceptions where there are people that don't have any third party messaging apps, t…

I’m curious about your region and your social circle (genuine question, not provocative).

Absolutely zero of my contacts use signal. Some use element. Zero use iMessage. Almost 100% use WhatsApp.

I’m in Europe, middle class, family with kids, both parents working here.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#134

Post by charcircuit »

mu53 wrote: post #94
aurareturn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why punish Apple for Google failing to create a good messaging service? Google failed to compete against iMessage in the US and failed to compete with Whatsapp worldwide. Now you want the government to step in to help Google make more money? Let the competition dictate it. No need for the government to get involved. Maybe Google can spend $50 billion to create and market an alternative to iMessage if they truly care…

Apple implementing RCS messages should allow anyone to build a messaging app that will be able to integrate directly with iMessage. It is letting the competition dictate it by leveling the playing field for a behemoth like Apple with every single other messaging app developer/company. Large tech companies vertically integrating by using their walled gardens as a weapon is literally the point of the EU regulations. Fo…

>Apple implementing RCS messages should allow anyone to build a messaging app that will be able to integrate directly with iMessage.

Anyone is a weird way of spelling Google and Apple. Neither Android nor iOS let anyone make an app that can do RCS.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#135

Post by qeternity »

user_named wrote: post #108
aurareturn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't believe that. That's why I said it's a ridiculous idea.

You still don't get it. EU wants interoperable standards. Clear?

There are interoperable apps. People choose to use alternatives. Why do EU bureaucrats get to make these decisions?

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#136

Post by lloeki »

Ographer wrote: post #120
lloeki wrote: post #115

AFAICT this is the thing enabling the "blue bubbles", which the Nothing Phone bundles: https://www.sunbirdapp.com/ Not to be confused with Mozilla's (if anyone remembers that one): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Sunbird

FYI for others, MKBHD just did a video on this and he warned that when using sunbird you are signing onto a physical mac mini somewhere, giving it access to your apple account which isn't great if you keep important things on there. https://youtu.be/ji5HwS3bhlU?si=2iW4zELhePyzV0rj

Short of someone having fully reverse-engineered iMessage I didn't see it any other way given the way it operates (e.g messages in browser).

Their piece about E2E seems especially misleading. I can see how it's "technically true" i.e it's E2E from their servers to the clients + iMessage being E2E itself, but consistent omission of what the E are sounds designed to mislead into thinking that it's device to device. The consequence of a hosted server being pwnd would be catastrophic, essentially meaning full access to the iCloud account.

One of the unspoken underpinnings of iMessage not being available on Android is that the endpoint (the phone) might not be secure, so iMessage had a sort of guarantee that its E2E wasn't compromised via that endpoint. Now I wish Apple would just get an iMessage app on Android out of the door.

I also don't see how they plan to have this be free forever (and what the business model is), especially given the costs associated with hosted Macs.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#138

Post by modeless »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #132
modeless wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Beeper. It works well, except that it doesn't support registering your phone number without an iPhone, so you can only use iMessage with an email address. I believe they are working on fixing that now.

How could they work on fixing that? iMessage currently requires a cell phone to activate a number on the iMessage network. Are you saying they're partnering with Apple to change this? Are they going to sim clone your number?

The entire integration with iMessage is reverse engineered. They need to reverse engineer the phone number registration part to get it working on Android phones.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#139

Post by daeros »

icy wrote: post #117

Looks like Nothing is partnering with a US-based third party called Sunbird to build this service. From Sunbird’s site ( https://sunbirdapp.com ): > Will the app be open source? > Some of the messaging community believes that software that is open source is more secure. It is our view that it is not. The more visibility there is into the infrastructure and code, the easier it is to penetrate it. By design, open sourc…

I take the opposite view, look no further than all the security holes in Microsoft Windows compared to Linux which is more difficult to actually maliciously hack that windows.

Security by obscurity has failed every time it's been attempted. every. time.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#140

Post by daeros »

as to the rest of you like you have to share your Apple ID with Nothing/Sunbird and are like that's a disaster waiting to happen not for me, I barely used my Apple ID and actually since their cloud service wasn't end to end encrypted and zero knowledge I started disabling my cloud backup and deleting what was in my Apple cloud before I went over to Android. I told people my Tech Tip was not to to use them but use SpiderOak, Very little has changed. Only problem with my advice is like, Write your password down and put one in a secure deposit at the bank because if you forget it they can't help you.
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