Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beeper Mini is back

blog.beeper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 1001 posts

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#631

Post by lxgr »

modeless wrote: post #427
lxgr wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beeper Cloud was running on actual Apple hardware until October 2023, which is when they switched to the software emulation approach that Beeper Mini is also employing.

Yes, but if Apple's complaint is truly about security then they should have blocked it even harder before, because the cloud version wasn't E2EE. Their behavior reveals that security is not their real concern here.

Structurally, the cloud version was you logging into your iMessage account on a friend's computer. How could Apple possibly prevent that?

I think it actually makes a pretty strong case for Apple opening up a better interface that lets people achieve the same outcome they clearly desire so much, they'd even compromise their own security to achieve it.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#632

Post by rezonant »

oneplane wrote: post #590
babl-yc wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selfishly I'm most excited about this project as a demonstration that secure and reliable communication across platforms is pretty straightforward. The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist. If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise. And yes, iOS allows 3rd party ap…

Don't WhatsApp and Signal already do exactly that?

> And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with enough permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage alternative.

Not an Apple user, but I imagine even though there's some allowances for third party messaging, there's a lot of holes. For instance, what happens if I ask Siri to send a message to a specific contact from my Apple Watch. Will it send it over Signal if I've added a Signal address to their contact card and went the mile to set that as the default messaging app for that user? Curious.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#633

Post by tinus_hn »

rplnt wrote: post #582
tinus_hn wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wonder how anyone survives in all of the world where nobody uses iMessage (which is everywhere except the US). How do people even manage to open WhatsApp? How do people survive this horror!

I have an iPhone (and macbook if that matters) and have no idea what all the rage is about. Is iMessage the default sms client? It's just called Messages on my phone. What does it offer? Mine looks like the stock android one. I see virtually zero options to do anything else than to send a message. Is it US only thing?

If you only have friends that also have iOS devices, you can create an iMessage group and send messages in it. I don’t know how that works in the US but apparently it’s really popular.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#634

Post by carstenhag »

ksherlock wrote: post #560
kevinsync wrote: post #528

Maybe this came up in the earlier threads (announcement, outage) so I apologize if it's been discussed ... This project is fantastic. The hacker spirit is in full force, and I love a good David and Goliath story. However, all the comments about demanding interoperability and protocols keep confusing me -- I don't consider APNS a protocol (like TCP anyways), it's also not incidental, extra header space to stuff data i…

Apparently, blue bubble envy is a thing people have. The beeper home page mentions blue bubbles 9 times (and not being a green bubble twice). WSJ reported in August that 87% of teens have an iPhone so anybody with an android or a green bubble therefore stands out and is a loser. https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/why-teens-hate-androi...

On the Beeper website it sayss they use "blue bubble" to refer to iMessage.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#635

Post by haswell »

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #604
haswell wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are pro user - for Apple ecosystem users that is. And I’m good with that. I don’t really agree. The interoperability impact means that I’m affected as an iPhone user too. I’m only not impacted when I communicate with other iPhone users. And it matters to me that my choice of device impacts the users I interact with. Apple just knows that their lock-in is strong, and the impact is disproportionately felt by non…

Did you actually read the parent comment? They consider a worse chat experience with Android users a feature, because God forbid someone prefers Android, or shudders doesn't want to spend $1000 on a phone.

I think you and I are interpreting “riffraff” differently.

I took it to mean the myriad of SMS scams and spam that is rampant outside of iMessage, not Android users broadly.

My point was that Apple isn’t caring about their users by doing this. They’re negatively impacting my ability as an Apple user to communicate with people who prefer Android, and that is a stance that affects both parties. It’s not pro user.

I suspect we’re in violent agreement that excluding-Android-as-a-feature is not a pro-user stance.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#636

Post by mrlatinos »

standardUser wrote: post #511
knowald wrote: post #106

It might be a controversial topic, but this post had some oddly rapid upvotes for HN. I'm trying to understand what the target of this hacky iMessage spin-off of Beeper is. The whole idea of subscription-based monetization. Rather no way of Apple not patching quickly, dealing with this as soon as it raises attention. But maybe that was the intent of a hack they found? A clever marketing strategy, to gain some rapid t…

Gatekeeping iMessage has become one of the most despised facets of Apple's many gatekeeping techniques, primarily because of widespread bullying.

Bingo. I was excluded from a group chat of ~15 people because I was the only one without iMessage.

Eventually they included me. I showed one of them the chat in Google Messages and he was amazed at how nice it looked, since Android supports Apple reactions. They're also jealous of all the emojis I can react with (and I admit I do it just to rub it in their face).

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#637

Post by brigade »

zeven7 wrote: post #526
arilotter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK they are using a reverse-engineered Apple binary that does the real iMessage - and since Apple doesn't update apps outside of iOS updates, Apple can't, in theory, patch it without also breaking iMessage on older iPhones.

I'd have assumed there'd be something more going on in iMessage, like each device has a private key that needs to sign the messages, and Apple can ban any private keys that leak -- but in theory couldn't they even be prevented from leaking by secure enclave? I'm just speculating on what would have made sense, but I'm guessing that's not how it's working since Beeper Mini exists. It begs the question: why isn't that t…

You're asking why cryptographic attestation isn't a requirement to use a service that still supports >10-year old x86 Macs?

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#638

Post by whycome »

kevinsync wrote: post #528

Maybe this came up in the earlier threads (announcement, outage) so I apologize if it's been discussed ... This project is fantastic. The hacker spirit is in full force, and I love a good David and Goliath story. However, all the comments about demanding interoperability and protocols keep confusing me -- I don't consider APNS a protocol (like TCP anyways), it's also not incidental, extra header space to stuff data i…

Apple hijacked SMS. You can't CHOOSE to send SMS. If your phone is tied to a computer for a shared imessage account, if you're outside with your phone alone (while computer is online) the phone cannot receive text messages. (The sender ios device presumes 'success' in sending the message because it is received by the computer. It does not have the ability to send just sms).

So, i'm all for anything that shakes up messaging and maybe returns some of it to users.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#639

Post by realusername »

beejiu wrote: post #583
kevinsync wrote: post #528

Maybe this came up in the earlier threads (announcement, outage) so I apologize if it's been discussed ... This project is fantastic. The hacker spirit is in full force, and I love a good David and Goliath story. However, all the comments about demanding interoperability and protocols keep confusing me -- I don't consider APNS a protocol (like TCP anyways), it's also not incidental, extra header space to stuff data i…

It's my understanding that in the European Union, the new Digital Markets regulations will require interoperability. It's still not 100% what it will cover, but it could become a requirement.

iMessage is pretty much dead in the EU though so I doubt the EU regulators will ask for interoperability.

Re: Beeper Mini is back

#640

Post by hornban »

js2 wrote: post #471

> Messages will be sent and received via your email address rather than phone number. [...] Even worse, when iPhone customers added an Android phone number to an existing iMessage secure encrypted group chat, the Messages app would by default switch the entire group chat to using unencrypted, unsecure SMS. These two Messages features combine to create a terrible UX. When someone starts a group chat in Messages and in…

From everything I've read on the matter, I believe that the UX nightmare when you include a non-apple user is an intentional design choice, rather than an engineering problem that hasn't been solved. They want the experience to suffer when somebody outside of the ecosystem is involved so as to create social pressure for the outsider to change.

The ironic part of all of this is that while the EU may be forcing Apple into supporting RCS to fix the situation, Google has resisted every effort to extend RCS to their own Voice platform.

It's really a shame that Microsoft gave up on mobile, because they really could be a real middle ground for the rest of us that just want interoperability.

Post reply on HN