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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

#611

Post by text0404 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #499
StressedDev wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is ostracizing you because you do not own an iPhone, you probably want to avoid that person. I have never met anyone who would do this and frankly, only an extremely nasty person would do this. I am mean seriously, why ostracized someone because they use a different type of phone?

Do you forget being a teenager? /s It's not simply a MeanGirls experience of not being cool enough. Most Americans don't use or have 3rd party apps like WhatsApp, so most people will fall-back to SMS, which is objectively a much worse experience. I feel like the adult equivalent is getting group dinner with a friend with severe allergies or dietary restrictions. You care about your friend, and you want to invite them…

sorry but this sounds like it's written by someone who is definitely not a teenager and who hasn't experienced this before.

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

#612

Post by Grustaf »

realusername wrote: post #515
Grustaf wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never received a single spam message through iMessage, but regardless. If they have to keep buying new phones all the time as they get blacklisted, in order to keep spamming, the economics of spamming changes.

That does raise the bar a little bit but it's probably mitigated by the combination of targeting higher spending users and the additional trust iMessage provides.

The difference between being able to send unlimited messages for free, and having to get a new phone every hundred or so texts is pretty large. Free vs 1 dollar per spam text.

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

#613

Post by MuffinFlavored »

Wingy wrote: post #573
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if apple checks an online database for "you authenticated and paired this hardware ID to this apple ID", is that a "Beeper Mini" killer?

I have Apple devices that are allowed to use iMessage including some that I don't use. If my computer can impersonate one of them to allow me to message from my workstation that's success.

> If my computer can impersonate one of them to allow me to message from my workstation that's success.

But Beeper Mini isn't asking users to bring-their-own valid hardware registered Apple hardware ID tied to their Apple ID, they're doing something different/unknown behind the scenes

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

#614

Post by MuffinFlavored »

nneonneo wrote: post #404
saintfire wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, and I could be wrong, beeper mini registers a new HWID with apple for each phone. Which is why they thought it was unpatchable, at first, as they would need to determine which phone is in fact an iPhone.

There's much more to the validation protocol than just HWID/serial. See https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/emulated/data... for a list of the data that is pulled from the platform and used for validation. I would assume that Beeper registrations either use data from a pool of real devices, or made-up data that Apple might "permit" (because hackintoshes) but can definitely detect and block at any time.

> use data from a pool of real devices

This feels super against terms of services. Taking a paying Apple user's hardware ID and using it for a non-paying user?

Also, I thought you had to tie/pair hardware ID to Apple ID.

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

#615

Post by geraldwhen »

withinboredom wrote: post #561
geraldwhen wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS is not reliable. Messages are routinely lost.

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

Once my now wife switched to iOS at my cost, we’ve had 0 issues.

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

#616

Post by nvy »

turquoisevar wrote: post #433
nvy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they're buying actual Mac minis and using those device IDs. If you have evidence to the contrary I would be very interested in seeing it.

Pretty sure you’re mixing up Beeper Cloud with Beeper Mini. Beeper Mini is based on pypush, which they’ve bought, and is clearly using spoofed data in the data.plist[0]. I’ve searched, but I’ve found no mention of them purchasing Mac Minis en masse to support the $2/mo Beeper Mini customer’s texting habits. Besides, it wouldn’t make sense anyway because they used to tout you didn’t need an Apple ID and instead could…

Oh maybe I'm mixing up their products.

They've gone full Microsoft with the naming. Next release will be called Cloud.BEEP Core

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

#617

Post by jacquesm »

danaris wrote: post #589
kelnos wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how experiences work. If someone says "I saw X" and you say "I didn't see X", that doesn't necessarily mean X doesn't exist, it just means you didn't see it. Sure, the person who saw X might have been hallucinating, but you don't have enough information to know either way. It's a little weird to so strongly believe that a rare, intermittent bug (no one suggested it's "widespread") couldn't exist with a mes…

But tshirthoodie isn't just claiming "this extremely far-fetched things happened to me". They're explicitly claiming "this happens all the time ."

To his family.

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

#618

Post by vineyardmike »

text0404 wrote: post #611
vineyardmike wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you forget being a teenager? /s It's not simply a MeanGirls experience of not being cool enough. Most Americans don't use or have 3rd party apps like WhatsApp, so most people will fall-back to SMS, which is objectively a much worse experience. I feel like the adult equivalent is getting group dinner with a friend with severe allergies or dietary restrictions. You care about your friend, and you want to invite them…

sorry but this sounds like it's written by someone who is definitely not a teenager and who hasn't experienced this before.

Not a teenager today but I was ~13 when iMessages came out, and owned an iPhone since. Except for 3mo when I was 16.

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

#619

Post by [deleted] »

freedomben wrote: post #569
Jtsummers wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Americans are this dumb, I don't see why they need any laws to protect them. They aren't. The bubble color thing is an exaggerated claim and a lot of whining from a bunch of clowns. No one actually cares in the US except for a bunch of children (who are always prone to following trends for the sake of following the trend) and a handful of immature adults. The rest of the country doesn't know or care

That's a very ignorant thing to say. Try to force yourself to live with images and video of quality to SMS so you can actually understand the problem, and let's see how long you think it's just immaturity. We can disagree about solutions, but strawmanning stuff is dumb, and then dismissing the problem that you strawmanned is even more dumb

[deleted]

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

#620

Post by Jtsummers »

freedomben wrote: post #569
Jtsummers wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Americans are this dumb, I don't see why they need any laws to protect them. They aren't. The bubble color thing is an exaggerated claim and a lot of whining from a bunch of clowns. No one actually cares in the US except for a bunch of children (who are always prone to following trends for the sake of following the trend) and a handful of immature adults. The rest of the country doesn't know or care

That's a very ignorant thing to say. Try to force yourself to live with images and video of quality to SMS so you can actually understand the problem, and let's see how long you think it's just immaturity. We can disagree about solutions, but strawmanning stuff is dumb, and then dismissing the problem that you strawmanned is even more dumb

What's ignorant about it? MMS sucks, I didn't say otherwise. Android Android MMS also sucks. That is not an iPhone Android specific issue. MMS was an adequate solution in the feature phone days when the phones and displays were mediocre at best. It's been a terrible solution since mobile phones became cameras with a phone.

The strawmanning is done by the people claiming iPhone users are, as a whole, excluding Android users from their communications over it. That's what I'm rebutting, not that MMS sucks. Only children and immature adults do that. The vast majority of people don't care. They either use MMS and accept it sucks or switch to another service, they don't exclude people over it.

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