I know it's been said before a million times but I can't read a blanket statement like this and not point it out. The reason is not Android and iPhone customers desperately wanting to have better...
The reason for its success is clear: Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis, typing status, read receipts, and all modern chat features.
I know it's been said before a million times but I can't read a blanket statement like this and not point it out. The reason is not Android and iPhone customers desperately wanting to have better communication between platforms, that problem has been solved years ago by all the multi-platform chat apps.
What it makes clear, at least to me, is that the iMessage lock in is really strong, specifically in the US. So strong that people with Android phones are willing to try any app that allows them to chat with their friends who are so locked in to this system that are completely unwilling to try any other messaging solution that is not the default.
The problem is that there are a dozen alternatives, no one of them has all your friends and family, and they all have varying deficiencies. If your whole family has iPhones then they have iMessage...
The problem is that there are a dozen alternatives, no one of them has all your friends and family, and they all have varying deficiencies.
If your whole family has iPhones then they have iMessage by default, and it offers better privacy than most alternatives while also eliminating the friction of getting people to adopt it. iMessage just happens when you go to text someone else on a compatible device.
It doesn't help that you can't change the default messaging app on iPhones. If you choose to message a contact or share something with them you get iMessage. There's more friction than on Android.
completely unwilling to try any other messaging solution that is not the default.
It doesn't help that you can't change the default messaging app on iPhones. If you choose to message a contact or share something with them you get iMessage. There's more friction than on Android.
This isn’t entirely true, at least not anymore. If you have multiple apps on iOS, the “share” function brings up your most recent contacts in the app you use to communicate with them: be that...
This isn’t entirely true, at least not anymore. If you have multiple apps on iOS, the “share” function brings up your most recent contacts in the app you use to communicate with them: be that iMessage, LINE, WhatsApp, etc.
And below the common contacts, the “share” function also includes a list of all available messaging apps on the device, so you can select the app, then select the contact.
But if I ask Siri to message someone to tell them I’m driving and will be a few minutes late… it’s admittedly been a while since I tried, but I don’t think there’s any way for me to tell Siri that...
But if I ask Siri to message someone to tell them I’m driving and will be a few minutes late… it’s admittedly been a while since I tried, but I don’t think there’s any way for me to tell Siri that “message should be the keyword to use Signal, or WhatsApp, or etc”
You can, just say something along the lines that you want to send a message to X person using Y app. Siri will or should open the app and allow you to send the message. Just tried with WhatsApp
You can, just say something along the lines that you want to send a message to X person using Y app. Siri will or should open the app and allow you to send the message. Just tried with WhatsApp
Beeper Mini is the perfect example of what Cory Doctorow (and probably others) labelled "Adversarial Interoperability". It's how the tech giants were born. It's the only way to take them down....
It's how the tech giants were born. It's the only way to take them down. Beeper Mini will need all the help it can get against Apple's legal department.
I doubt Apple would be willing to do this but it would be great is they took them up on that offer.
Today, we’re taking that dedication to security and privacy even further.
If Apple doubts the security and privacy of our app, we’re willing to share the entire Beeper Mini codebase with a mutually agreed upon 3rd party security research firm.
If Apple insists, we would consider adding a pager emoji 📟️ to metadata on all messages sent via Beeper Mini. This would make it easy for Messages App to filter out any messages from Beeper Mini users.
I doubt Apple would be willing to do this but it would be great is they took them up on that offer.
I would also be shocked in Apple participated in this at any level, other than blocking any efforts made by a second party to connect Android and iPhone users. They don't want to review the...
I would also be shocked in Apple participated in this at any level, other than blocking any efforts made by a second party to connect Android and iPhone users. They don't want to review the security credentials of any small dev's app, they just want to know enough about it to make it obsolete, until they can comodify or isolate the functionality to their platform.
Apple has had years and years, not to mention petitions by other companies and users, to create functional rich message chatting between android and iPhone users. To pretend it's that, somehow, the functionality is locked behind a necessity of security or interoperability is laughable. Apple doesn't want that functionality until they know how to control it to their advantage. This is a classic method of control Apple has always used, releasing features on the iPhone that have existed in the market for years and branding it as some breakthrough feature that Apple spearhead. I'm not going to say they don't do it better sometimes, but that's not always the case.
Yeah I think Beeper knows it too, but it's all sort of just part of the show I think. Like it's the game they have to play. The reality is that I don't think Beeper can exist with the support of...
Yeah I think Beeper knows it too, but it's all sort of just part of the show I think. Like it's the game they have to play.
The reality is that I don't think Beeper can exist with the support of Apple in any way, it can only exist so long as Apple technically has no way of stopping them (obviously if Apple has technical ways of stopping them then that can prevent Beeper from existing). The moment Apple supports Beeper is the moment that Apple might as well release their own iMessage app on Android. The cost in making the app would be relatively low considering the resources they have, they would also have control over it so they don't need to trust someone else's source code, and they get the money rather than Beeper getting the money (if they wanted to charge a subscription like Beeper wanted to do).
Obviously the cost to sales for Apple is the bigger cost, not the cost of developing the app. Beeper isn't doing them any favors by making the app for them.
Agreed. It's so frustrating to see companies intentionally restrain development for the sake of their profits. Apple is one of the biggest offenders in this regard, withholding simple...
Agreed.
It's so frustrating to see companies intentionally restrain development for the sake of their profits. Apple is one of the biggest offenders in this regard, withholding simple functionalities because a slower rollout of it means more sales without the cost of development, imo. Whenever I think about this, I think of that meeting in the early 20th century amongst light bulb manufacturers to discussing how they could intentionally create a flawed product to increase profits.
As with many things, Technology Connections has a great video on this. There are some legitimate tradeoffs with incadecents...namely it's a "pick one" between efficiency and durability. Not to...
As with many things, Technology Connections has a great video on this. There are some legitimate tradeoffs with incadecents...namely it's a "pick one" between efficiency and durability.
Not to excuse the cartel, but there is at least some legitimacy to the problem, and TC does a great job probing them.
I certainly admire Beeper's gumption, but charging a subscription for a service you don't own nor maintain seems irresponsible and something a scrappy teenager hacking away in their bedroom would...
I certainly admire Beeper's gumption, but charging a subscription for a service you don't own nor maintain seems irresponsible and something a scrappy teenager hacking away in their bedroom would do, not a company with a payroll department. Maybe I just don't have the same entrepreneurial spirit as Eric Migicovsky? I'd be afraid to poke the bear at Apple with their hulking legal team ready to put an end to this at a moment's notice.
You know a good bit of the modern computing industry as it exists happened because a bunch of scrappy teens and college students hacked together/apart software and hardware in their garages right?...
You know a good bit of the modern computing industry as it exists happened because a bunch of scrappy teens and college students hacked together/apart software and hardware in their garages right?
The modern PC only exists as-such because someone reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS. The only reason Linux can host SMB shares is cause a PhD student reverse-engineered Microsoft's proprietary stack and released it for free.
The only hope we have for a free internet is to ignore the lawyers, do what is useful, and hope for the best.
The difference is that Beeper mini uses Apple's servers, most notably the Push Notifications server to both authenticate users, send messages, receive new updates, and read messages. It's not like...
The difference is that Beeper mini uses Apple's servers, most notably the Push Notifications server to both authenticate users, send messages, receive new updates, and read messages. It's not like it's some p2p chat service, or a case of two servers federating. Beeper is just using up bandwidth on Apple's servers, so it's hard to expect this union to continue when it's fundamentally parasitic. Not that I think there would be any chance, but Beeper should offer Apple payment at least.
It's called adversarial interoperability for a reason. Facebook did it to MySpace. A whole bunch of third-party clients did it for AIM/MSN/ICQ. Stuff building bridges into other services to be...
It's called adversarial interoperability for a reason. Facebook did it to MySpace. A whole bunch of third-party clients did it for AIM/MSN/ICQ. Stuff building bridges into other services to be compatible with other services are neccessarily using the services of those other companies. But as long as it's not going against the original spirit of the service...namely its in service of users, not bots....thats the cost of doing business.
If Beeper also bridged into Discord, Slack, and Teams for me so I could use a single app...is that somehow wrong? No, so long as I'm not using it tangibly different than I would normally.
Kodi addons for Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, and others...all also adversarial interop.
It also seems like it could easily run afoul of the ever-popular; overly broad computer fraud act...and probably not unreasonably so. iMessage isn't peer-to-peer: it's specifically an Apple-hosted...
It also seems like it could easily run afoul of the ever-popular; overly broad computer fraud act...and probably not unreasonably so.
iMessage isn't peer-to-peer: it's specifically an Apple-hosted service, where access is only given to Apple customers, and Beeper Mini is basically spoofing legitimate device IDs and circumventing access controls to push messages to a service they're not permitted to.
So Apple has tightened phone number registration somehow. I don't know if there are downsides or what the downsides are to Apple users in adding an email address as a contact and messaging back...
So Apple has tightened phone number registration somehow. I don't know if there are downsides or what the downsides are to Apple users in adding an email address as a contact and messaging back and forth through that, but if there isn't any other than it just being unusual to add, then hopefully this catches on. I'm sure Apple will then find a way to crack down on communicating with just the email address. I wonder if there is any reason they need to keep the website creation of Apple IDs available rather than forcing Apple IDs to only be created through Apple devices, as I could see that being a target.
Out of curiosity, for any iPhone users that may be familiar with this, if you have someone on your contact list that has an Apple ID email added to their contact, but also has a phone number that Apple will only communicate as SMS, how does Apple know where to send the message? Do you have to choose which method to contact each time? Do you have to create a second contact for that person and one of them is just their Apple ID email address?
Not totally sure, but I'm assuming it probably always tries to communicate via iMessage's protocol first, and then it probably defaults back to SMS/MMS if it doesn't get a message received...
if you have someone on your contact list that has an Apple ID email added to their contact, but also has a phone number that Apple will only communicate as SMS, how does Apple know where to send the message?
Not totally sure, but I'm assuming it probably always tries to communicate via iMessage's protocol first, and then it probably defaults back to SMS/MMS if it doesn't get a message received confirmation back from another iMessage compatible device. The reason for me thinking that is because in cases where a person has a new non-Apple phone with the same phone number as their old iPhone, and they still have other Apple devices that can send/receive iMessages (which will likely send back a message received confirmation), then they won't actually receive any messages via SMS/MMS on that new phone. And so if that person wants their new non-Apple phone to actually get SMS/MMS messages from people using iMessage to contact them, that person needs to deregister that phone number with iMessage: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203042
Do you have to choose which method to contact each time?
Nope, and AFAIK there is no way to even manually choose the specific outgoing message protocol. iMessage just decides automatically.
Do you have to create a second contact for that person and one of them is just their Apple ID email address?
Not that I'm aware of. AFAIK you can still have someone with an Apple ID registered email address, and a non-Apple phone number, in your contact list under the same contact info. But just keeping in mind the caveat from above about that person needing to deregister with iMessage under that particular circumstance where they no longer have an iPhone, but have other Apple device that can still receive iMessages.
The one reason I wasn't sure about this is because the last place I worked at, when I eventually got an iPhone for work, I still had my personal Android phone, and some coworkers had put both...
Not that I'm aware of. AFAIK you can still have someone with an Apple ID registered email address, and a non-Apple phone number, in your contact list under the same contact info. But just keeping in mind the caveat from above about that person needing to deregister with iMessage under that particular circumstance where they no longer have an iPhone, but have other Apple device that can still receive iMessages.
The one reason I wasn't sure about this is because the last place I worked at, when I eventually got an iPhone for work, I still had my personal Android phone, and some coworkers had put both numbers under the same contact with work and personal, but occasionally in messages and group chats, it would mix up which phone number to send to. It seemed the best way for them to deal with this was to make a second contact for me that was for my personal phone and one for the work phone.
I wasn't using that iPhone for long and don't have one now so I never really tested out all those things out much.
Ah, having multiple mobile phone numbers in someone's contact info, both an iPhone and non-iPhone, is something I'm not entirely sure how iMessage would handle. However, I suspect if your...
Ah, having multiple mobile phone numbers in someone's contact info, both an iPhone and non-iPhone, is something I'm not entirely sure how iMessage would handle. However, I suspect if your coworkers had labeled your non-iPhone number as "Home" or "Work" (which typically don't support iMessage) in your contact info, or specifically labeled your iPhone number as "iPhone" (which you can also set), the issue might not have persisted though.
Yeah that seems quite plausible that they had mislabeled the numbers as you provided an example of. I'm betting that they set my work iPhone as "work" instead of "iPhone". I was just imagining...
Yeah that seems quite plausible that they had mislabeled the numbers as you provided an example of. I'm betting that they set my work iPhone as "work" instead of "iPhone".
I was just imagining that there might somehow be something wonky to it that would happen to emails, which would then cause iPhone users to dislike adding an Apple ID email to a contact, but perhaps that wouldn't happen.
Hmm. I have several contacts in my phone with Apple ID emails, and non-Apple phone numbers, and AFAIK I've never had a problem sending them messages on their phones via iMessage. But I don't know...
Hmm. I have several contacts in my phone with Apple ID emails, and non-Apple phone numbers, and AFAIK I've never had a problem sending them messages on their phones via iMessage. But I don't know if any of them also have Macs though, and if they did whether they would only receive the messages I sent them on that Mac via iMessage, on their non-Apple phone via SMS/MMS, or on both. I would assume both, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Huh well I guess we might find out soon enough if Beeper Mini is actually able to stick around long enough with this current method. I was just concerned that it won't be good enough if the...
Huh well I guess we might find out soon enough if Beeper Mini is actually able to stick around long enough with this current method. I was just concerned that it won't be good enough if the process gets confusing, especially because Android users won't know the exact steps to tell iPhone users to resolve it, much like I couldn't tell that person why having both of my numbers under one contact was causing them issues.
Yeah, that might turn into a bit of a clusterfuck... which may also be another reason why Apple has decided to fight against Beeper. I guess we shall have to wait and see what happens, and if more...
Yeah, that might turn into a bit of a clusterfuck... which may also be another reason why Apple has decided to fight against Beeper. I guess we shall have to wait and see what happens, and if more issues like you experienced pop up on Beeper. :P
Yeah you're missing the initial release of Beeper Mini, this is just an announcement in response to Apple having broken parts of it. https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works That details...
Maybe I'm missing something or they've explained it elsewhere? Don't get me wrong, I hate apple and their ridiculous predatory business tactics, but if beeper wasn't ready for apple to just shut off whatever exploit they were using then I don't know what beeper was expecting.
Yeah you're missing the initial release of Beeper Mini, this is just an announcement in response to Apple having broken parts of it.
That details how it works. The short of it is, they just tricked Apple's authentication servers into thinking the Android device with Beeper Mini installed was an Apple device, and Apple's servers responded by giving that device the same credentials it would give an iPhone. At that point, it was effectively as secure to communicate between Beeper Mini and any iPhone, as long as you trusted Beeper Mini that the source code did only what they said it did. The response they have here is why they said they would allow Apple to have a trusted 3rd party to review their full source code.
On a related note, there was some progress towards a better messaging protocol to replace MMS a while back. I forget the details of the story now, but there are efforts to kind of force both Google and apple to meet in the middle and end the bubble color pissing contest by just deprecating SMS and MMS and replacing it with end to end RSA encrypted messaging (basically Signal). Sadly I don't think it will ever catch on though because it would make it much harder for the DHS to dragnet all messages and store them for later indexing.
You're probably referencing RCS, which Apple has announced they will support next year, but that isn't exactly as clear as it might seem, because RCS as it's being utilized isn't that clear. RCS was more of a carrier based standard and Google sort of adopted it to try to leverage carrier support to catch up with Apple but they also added onto it because RCS didn't include any kind of end-to-end encryption. There's also seemingly multiple versions of RCS. Apple has announced they will support the universal profile, but they aren't going to support Google's end-to-end encryption, and seemingly they're still going to treat it much the same as they do SMS now, but the details haven't been made clear yet. So they could still try to make group chats wonky between iMessage and RCS, the green bubbles will still be there seemingly so all of the associations that iPhone users have been accustomed to with green bubbles will probably still be there, so the biases they have might still be there even if some things have improved.
This bit from jjtech's (the engineer) original blog post may be of interest: So I'm guessing Apple identified a tell in these emulated validation datum and Beeper reverted to a more tried and true...
This bit from jjtech's (the engineer) original blog post may be of interest:
Perhaps the most important step of the IDS setup process is registration. This is where public encryption and signing keys are uploaded to the keyserver, as well as various other “client data” about what features the device supports.
When making an IDS registration request, a binary blob called “validation data” is required. This is essentially Apple’s verification mechanism to make sure that non-Apple devices cannot use iMessage.
Warning: In order to generate the “validation data”, pieces of information about the device such as its serial number, model, and disk UUID are used. This means that not all validation data can be treated equivalently: just like with Hackintoshes, the account age and “score” determine if an invalid serial can be used, or if you get the “customer code” error.
Note: The binary that generates this “validation data” is highly obfuscated. pypush sidesteps this issue by using a custom mach-o loader and the Unicorn Engine to emulate an obfuscated binary. pypush also bundles device properties such as the serial number in a file called data.plist, which it feeds to the emulated binary.
So I'm guessing Apple identified a tell in these emulated validation datum and Beeper reverted to a more tried and true method by the way of registering with Apple IDs and utilizing the email instead.
That does seem like a potential weakness for Beeper considering the elements of information it requires, though curiously I would think that wouldn't be the place that Apple broke it because if...
That does seem like a potential weakness for Beeper considering the elements of information it requires, though curiously I would think that wouldn't be the place that Apple broke it because if they brought Beeper Mini back, then they seemingly would have to have used some method like that to validate the Apple ID was capable of using iMessage.
Right now anyone can just go to Apple's site and create an Apple ID, so seemingly there just needed to be a way for 3rd parties like Beeper to get the encryption keys in order to be able to participate in iMessage conversations. Since Beeper Mini is still doing this, the breakdown seems to be however Beeper Mini was specifically getting the phone number registered as iMessage capable.
I actually like the current solution of requiring use of an Apple ID. Means I don't get duplicate iMessages/SMS any more. This makes the app better until they add proper RCS/SMS support. Assuming...
I actually like the current solution of requiring use of an Apple ID. Means I don't get duplicate iMessages/SMS any more. This makes the app better until they add proper RCS/SMS support.
Assuming they make it that far instead of Apple blocking them or suing them out of existence.
Eric Migicovsky
We're investigating reports that some users cannot receive iMessages on Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud.
7:35PM
Apple appears to be deliberately blocking iMessages from being delivered to ~5% of Beeper users.
Uninstalling and reinstalling Beeper Mini fixes the issue.
Affected Beeper Cloud users - please contact Beeper Help. We can fix it very easily for you if you let us know
10:06PM
Eric Migicovsky
Fix for Beeper Cloud is done, rolling out patch to all users now (3.5 hours remaining til everyone is fixed). No need to contact Beeper Help regarding this issue.
Testing fix for Mini now. Will require app update.
We realize how incredibly inconvenient this is for you. It's super annoying that Apple is penalizing their own customers and Android users who just want secure and encrypted chats.
We understand if you choose to disable the iMessage bridge at this time. We'll try to stabilize this and get you back in future.
10:09AM
More than 60% of Beeper Mini and Cloud users are currently unable to send or receive iMessages at this time. We’re fighting to get this fixed 🤞. In the meantime, you may see notifications or emails that a ‘new Mac’ has been added to your account. We do not use Mac servers anymore, but our bridge appears to Apple as if it were a Mac.
6:53PM
Not a very promising update for those of us without Macs. So it sounds like it might be RIP to iMessage on Beeper for me. :( cc: @Grumble4681
Eric Migicovsky iMessage status update - fix coming tomorrow
We've found a solution to stabilize the iMessage situation for Beeper Cloud and Mini. It works well, and, in our testing, is very reliable. The only downside is that the solution requires you to have access to a Mac computer, or have a friend on Beeper with a Mac.
Here's the backstory. When you sign into iMessage on Beeper, we need to send identification information called ‘registration data’ from a real Mac computer. We have, up until now, we been using our own fleet of Mac servers to provide this. Unfortunately, this has proven to be an easy target for Apple because thousands of Beeper users were using the same registration data.
Registration data is used only to indicate that a Mac is available during registration. The Mac in no way is given any access to your account, or your messages.
Tomorrow, we'll publish an update for Beeper Cloud (Mac version) that generates unique registration data just for you. This 1:1 mapping of registration data to individual user, in our testing, makes the connection very reliable. If you use Beeper Mini, you can use your Mac registration data with it as well, and Beeper Mini will start to work again. Beeper needs to periodically regenerate this data even after you've connected, roughly once per week or month, so the Mac needs to switched on regularly.
If you do not have access to a Mac computer, but have a friend on Beeper with a Mac, you can ask them if you can use their registration data. In our testing, 10-20 iMessage users can safely use the same registration data.
We'll also be open sourcing our full iMessage bridge, as well as the Mac code that generates registration data. If you prefer, you can choose to self-host or inspect our code.
11:18AM
Not a very promising update for those of us without Macs. So it sounds like it might be RIP to iMessage on Beeper for me. :(
Hmm that's interesting, I wonder if it has to be a Mac, or why wouldn't any iOS device also work? You would think you could use your iPhone registration data, but they didn't state that was an...
Hmm that's interesting, I wonder if it has to be a Mac, or why wouldn't any iOS device also work? You would think you could use your iPhone registration data, but they didn't state that was an option. Maybe there's something about registration data on iOS devices that is tracked better than for MacOS devices and Apple can tell when one is fraudulent or being used multiple times somehow.
My assumption is that it could probably work on a jailbroken iOS/iPadOS device, but not an unjailbroken one due to how locked down they are compared to MacOS. That and how many people have...
My assumption is that it could probably work on a jailbroken iOS/iPadOS device, but not an unjailbroken one due to how locked down they are compared to MacOS. That and how many people have jailbroken iPhones/iPads these days? I used to, but it was a PITA so now I just have stock ones.
It seems unlikely that they're going to beat Apple on this. I think there may have still been some hope that they only got busted the first time because they included the phone number registration...
It seems unlikely that they're going to beat Apple on this. I think there may have still been some hope that they only got busted the first time because they included the phone number registration trick as part of the setup and maybe after that they could have been riding on the possibility that Apple couldn't stop them without breaking actual Apple devices, but it seems clear now that isn't the case.
Once I saw the new reports coming in, I went a different route. I happened to have a Mac Mini that I never used and so I booted it up and installed BlueBubbles on it pretty easily and seems to work just fine. I was initially considering just sticking with Beeper if they were able to keep it working because I think the electricity costs of running a Mac Mini were about on par with what Beeper was charging per month.
I can understand why they are trying to do it without the Mac Mini server farm like they were previously doing, because that probably wasn't sustainable and if this new way doesn't work then it might be more like they planned giving up on iMessage at some point anyhow. Then they can go back to focusing on combining all other messaging platforms into one.
It's also clear that "our bridge appears to Apple as if it were a Mac" isn't exactly the case because if it were actually a Mac, presumably they wouldn't be having those issues. So it may appear as if it were a Mac at a glance, but the moment Apple does any work in rooting out Beeper it seems easy for them to determine it isn't a Mac and to cause some pretty major disruptions to Beeper's iMessage service.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Apple has figured out how to identify their traffic somehow. I am thankfully still unaffected, and can still send/receive iMessage on my PC, but I imagine it's only a...
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Apple has figured out how to identify their traffic somehow. I am thankfully still unaffected, and can still send/receive iMessage on my PC, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before it stops working for me too. :(
Such a shame, since I really really love being able to use iMessage on my PC. It almost makes me wish Beeper had not tempted fate and drew Apple's attention with the whole Beeper Mini Android app blue-bubble thing, and just stuck to quietly providing iMessage access via Beeper Cloud instead. :(
Ah well, this is why we can't have nice things. I'll stick with them until this all plays out, but losing iMessage is gonna sting. It was the primary reason for me using Beeper. Goddamn Apple. :(
not a fan of how this portrays all these things as groundbreaking new features when as far as I can tell basically everywhere in the world bar the US figured this out years ago. I live in the UK...
Android and iPhone customers desperately want to be able to chat together with high quality images/video, encryption, emojis, typing status, read receipts, and all modern chat features.
not a fan of how this portrays all these things as groundbreaking new features when as far as I can tell basically everywhere in the world bar the US figured this out years ago.
I live in the UK and the vast majority of people use WhatsApp for communicating. this sort of thing is basically not an issue here (and if it is I can imagine the response being "just get WhatsApp mate"). it's not even like the majority use Android devices here!
I know it's been said before a million times but I can't read a blanket statement like this and not point it out. The reason is not Android and iPhone customers desperately wanting to have better communication between platforms, that problem has been solved years ago by all the multi-platform chat apps.
What it makes clear, at least to me, is that the iMessage lock in is really strong, specifically in the US. So strong that people with Android phones are willing to try any app that allows them to chat with their friends who are so locked in to this system that are completely unwilling to try any other messaging solution that is not the default.
The problem is that there are a dozen alternatives, no one of them has all your friends and family, and they all have varying deficiencies.
If your whole family has iPhones then they have iMessage by default, and it offers better privacy than most alternatives while also eliminating the friction of getting people to adopt it. iMessage just happens when you go to text someone else on a compatible device.
Most places where SMS is not the default have one de facto standard which can be Whatsapp, maybe Telegram or something similar.
Yup. I'm in Japan and for better or worse, LINE is the only way to communicate. No one uses SMS for anything besides maybe receiving 2FA codes.
It doesn't help that you can't change the default messaging app on iPhones. If you choose to message a contact or share something with them you get iMessage. There's more friction than on Android.
This isn’t entirely true, at least not anymore. If you have multiple apps on iOS, the “share” function brings up your most recent contacts in the app you use to communicate with them: be that iMessage, LINE, WhatsApp, etc.
And below the common contacts, the “share” function also includes a list of all available messaging apps on the device, so you can select the app, then select the contact.
But if I ask Siri to message someone to tell them I’m driving and will be a few minutes late… it’s admittedly been a while since I tried, but I don’t think there’s any way for me to tell Siri that “message should be the keyword to use Signal, or WhatsApp, or etc”
You can, just say something along the lines that you want to send a message to X person using Y app. Siri will or should open the app and allow you to send the message. Just tried with WhatsApp
Ah, this i don’t know about, as I don’t use Siri.
Beeper Mini is the perfect example of what Cory Doctorow (and probably others) labelled "Adversarial Interoperability".
It's how the tech giants were born. It's the only way to take them down. Beeper Mini will need all the help it can get against Apple's legal department.
Agree wholeheartedly. The tech giants were founded on it, and they are pulling the door shut behind them.
I doubt Apple would be willing to do this but it would be great is they took them up on that offer.
I would also be shocked in Apple participated in this at any level, other than blocking any efforts made by a second party to connect Android and iPhone users. They don't want to review the security credentials of any small dev's app, they just want to know enough about it to make it obsolete, until they can comodify or isolate the functionality to their platform.
Apple has had years and years, not to mention petitions by other companies and users, to create functional rich message chatting between android and iPhone users. To pretend it's that, somehow, the functionality is locked behind a necessity of security or interoperability is laughable. Apple doesn't want that functionality until they know how to control it to their advantage. This is a classic method of control Apple has always used, releasing features on the iPhone that have existed in the market for years and branding it as some breakthrough feature that Apple spearhead. I'm not going to say they don't do it better sometimes, but that's not always the case.
Yeah I think Beeper knows it too, but it's all sort of just part of the show I think. Like it's the game they have to play.
The reality is that I don't think Beeper can exist with the support of Apple in any way, it can only exist so long as Apple technically has no way of stopping them (obviously if Apple has technical ways of stopping them then that can prevent Beeper from existing). The moment Apple supports Beeper is the moment that Apple might as well release their own iMessage app on Android. The cost in making the app would be relatively low considering the resources they have, they would also have control over it so they don't need to trust someone else's source code, and they get the money rather than Beeper getting the money (if they wanted to charge a subscription like Beeper wanted to do).
Obviously the cost to sales for Apple is the bigger cost, not the cost of developing the app. Beeper isn't doing them any favors by making the app for them.
Agreed.
It's so frustrating to see companies intentionally restrain development for the sake of their profits. Apple is one of the biggest offenders in this regard, withholding simple functionalities because a slower rollout of it means more sales without the cost of development, imo. Whenever I think about this, I think of that meeting in the early 20th century amongst light bulb manufacturers to discussing how they could intentionally create a flawed product to increase profits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
Thanks for the link, this is exactly what I was referencing! The cost of human greed to civilization and our planet is abhorrent.
As with many things, Technology Connections has a great video on this. There are some legitimate tradeoffs with incadecents...namely it's a "pick one" between efficiency and durability.
Not to excuse the cartel, but there is at least some legitimacy to the problem, and TC does a great job probing them.
I certainly admire Beeper's gumption, but charging a subscription for a service you don't own nor maintain seems irresponsible and something a scrappy teenager hacking away in their bedroom would do, not a company with a payroll department. Maybe I just don't have the same entrepreneurial spirit as Eric Migicovsky? I'd be afraid to poke the bear at Apple with their hulking legal team ready to put an end to this at a moment's notice.
You know a good bit of the modern computing industry as it exists happened because a bunch of scrappy teens and college students hacked together/apart software and hardware in their garages right?
The modern PC only exists as-such because someone reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS. The only reason Linux can host SMB shares is cause a PhD student reverse-engineered Microsoft's proprietary stack and released it for free.
The only hope we have for a free internet is to ignore the lawyers, do what is useful, and hope for the best.
The difference is that Beeper mini uses Apple's servers, most notably the Push Notifications server to both authenticate users, send messages, receive new updates, and read messages. It's not like it's some p2p chat service, or a case of two servers federating. Beeper is just using up bandwidth on Apple's servers, so it's hard to expect this union to continue when it's fundamentally parasitic. Not that I think there would be any chance, but Beeper should offer Apple payment at least.
It's called adversarial interoperability for a reason. Facebook did it to MySpace. A whole bunch of third-party clients did it for AIM/MSN/ICQ. Stuff building bridges into other services to be compatible with other services are neccessarily using the services of those other companies. But as long as it's not going against the original spirit of the service...namely its in service of users, not bots....thats the cost of doing business.
If Beeper also bridged into Discord, Slack, and Teams for me so I could use a single app...is that somehow wrong? No, so long as I'm not using it tangibly different than I would normally.
Kodi addons for Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, and others...all also adversarial interop.
If Beeper bridged to...cough... If only.
They actually announced they are no longer charging for the service
It also seems like it could easily run afoul of the ever-popular; overly broad computer fraud act...and probably not unreasonably so.
iMessage isn't peer-to-peer: it's specifically an Apple-hosted service, where access is only given to Apple customers, and Beeper Mini is basically spoofing legitimate device IDs and circumventing access controls to push messages to a service they're not permitted to.
So Apple has tightened phone number registration somehow. I don't know if there are downsides or what the downsides are to Apple users in adding an email address as a contact and messaging back and forth through that, but if there isn't any other than it just being unusual to add, then hopefully this catches on. I'm sure Apple will then find a way to crack down on communicating with just the email address. I wonder if there is any reason they need to keep the website creation of Apple IDs available rather than forcing Apple IDs to only be created through Apple devices, as I could see that being a target.
Out of curiosity, for any iPhone users that may be familiar with this, if you have someone on your contact list that has an Apple ID email added to their contact, but also has a phone number that Apple will only communicate as SMS, how does Apple know where to send the message? Do you have to choose which method to contact each time? Do you have to create a second contact for that person and one of them is just their Apple ID email address?
Not totally sure, but I'm assuming it probably always tries to communicate via iMessage's protocol first, and then it probably defaults back to SMS/MMS if it doesn't get a message received confirmation back from another iMessage compatible device. The reason for me thinking that is because in cases where a person has a new non-Apple phone with the same phone number as their old iPhone, and they still have other Apple devices that can send/receive iMessages (which will likely send back a message received confirmation), then they won't actually receive any messages via SMS/MMS on that new phone. And so if that person wants their new non-Apple phone to actually get SMS/MMS messages from people using iMessage to contact them, that person needs to deregister that phone number with iMessage: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203042
Nope, and AFAIK there is no way to even manually choose the specific outgoing message protocol. iMessage just decides automatically.
Not that I'm aware of. AFAIK you can still have someone with an Apple ID registered email address, and a non-Apple phone number, in your contact list under the same contact info. But just keeping in mind the caveat from above about that person needing to deregister with iMessage under that particular circumstance where they no longer have an iPhone, but have other Apple device that can still receive iMessages.
The one reason I wasn't sure about this is because the last place I worked at, when I eventually got an iPhone for work, I still had my personal Android phone, and some coworkers had put both numbers under the same contact with work and personal, but occasionally in messages and group chats, it would mix up which phone number to send to. It seemed the best way for them to deal with this was to make a second contact for me that was for my personal phone and one for the work phone.
I wasn't using that iPhone for long and don't have one now so I never really tested out all those things out much.
Ah, having multiple mobile phone numbers in someone's contact info, both an iPhone and non-iPhone, is something I'm not entirely sure how iMessage would handle. However, I suspect if your coworkers had labeled your non-iPhone number as "Home" or "Work" (which typically don't support iMessage) in your contact info, or specifically labeled your iPhone number as "iPhone" (which you can also set), the issue might not have persisted though.
Yeah that seems quite plausible that they had mislabeled the numbers as you provided an example of. I'm betting that they set my work iPhone as "work" instead of "iPhone".
I was just imagining that there might somehow be something wonky to it that would happen to emails, which would then cause iPhone users to dislike adding an Apple ID email to a contact, but perhaps that wouldn't happen.
Hmm. I have several contacts in my phone with Apple ID emails, and non-Apple phone numbers, and AFAIK I've never had a problem sending them messages on their phones via iMessage. But I don't know if any of them also have Macs though, and if they did whether they would only receive the messages I sent them on that Mac via iMessage, on their non-Apple phone via SMS/MMS, or on both. I would assume both, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Huh well I guess we might find out soon enough if Beeper Mini is actually able to stick around long enough with this current method. I was just concerned that it won't be good enough if the process gets confusing, especially because Android users won't know the exact steps to tell iPhone users to resolve it, much like I couldn't tell that person why having both of my numbers under one contact was causing them issues.
Yeah, that might turn into a bit of a clusterfuck... which may also be another reason why Apple has decided to fight against Beeper. I guess we shall have to wait and see what happens, and if more issues like you experienced pop up on Beeper. :P
Yeah you're missing the initial release of Beeper Mini, this is just an announcement in response to Apple having broken parts of it.
https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works
That details how it works. The short of it is, they just tricked Apple's authentication servers into thinking the Android device with Beeper Mini installed was an Apple device, and Apple's servers responded by giving that device the same credentials it would give an iPhone. At that point, it was effectively as secure to communicate between Beeper Mini and any iPhone, as long as you trusted Beeper Mini that the source code did only what they said it did. The response they have here is why they said they would allow Apple to have a trusted 3rd party to review their full source code.
You're probably referencing RCS, which Apple has announced they will support next year, but that isn't exactly as clear as it might seem, because RCS as it's being utilized isn't that clear. RCS was more of a carrier based standard and Google sort of adopted it to try to leverage carrier support to catch up with Apple but they also added onto it because RCS didn't include any kind of end-to-end encryption. There's also seemingly multiple versions of RCS. Apple has announced they will support the universal profile, but they aren't going to support Google's end-to-end encryption, and seemingly they're still going to treat it much the same as they do SMS now, but the details haven't been made clear yet. So they could still try to make group chats wonky between iMessage and RCS, the green bubbles will still be there seemingly so all of the associations that iPhone users have been accustomed to with green bubbles will probably still be there, so the biases they have might still be there even if some things have improved.
This bit from jjtech's (the engineer) original blog post may be of interest:
So I'm guessing Apple identified a tell in these emulated validation datum and Beeper reverted to a more tried and true method by the way of registering with Apple IDs and utilizing the email instead.
That does seem like a potential weakness for Beeper considering the elements of information it requires, though curiously I would think that wouldn't be the place that Apple broke it because if they brought Beeper Mini back, then they seemingly would have to have used some method like that to validate the Apple ID was capable of using iMessage.
Right now anyone can just go to Apple's site and create an Apple ID, so seemingly there just needed to be a way for 3rd parties like Beeper to get the encryption keys in order to be able to participate in iMessage conversations. Since Beeper Mini is still doing this, the breakdown seems to be however Beeper Mini was specifically getting the phone number registered as iMessage capable.
I actually like the current solution of requiring use of an Apple ID. Means I don't get duplicate iMessages/SMS any more. This makes the app better until they add proper RCS/SMS support.
Assuming they make it that far instead of Apple blocking them or suing them out of existence.
Didn't I hear Messages is getting RCS support soon?
If you are talking about Apple then yes, they said they would support RCS next year but we don't really know what that will look like yet.
Latest posts in Beeper Update channel:
Not a very promising update for those of us without Macs. So it sounds like it might be RIP to iMessage on Beeper for me. :(
cc: @Grumble4681
Hmm that's interesting, I wonder if it has to be a Mac, or why wouldn't any iOS device also work? You would think you could use your iPhone registration data, but they didn't state that was an option. Maybe there's something about registration data on iOS devices that is tracked better than for MacOS devices and Apple can tell when one is fraudulent or being used multiple times somehow.
My assumption is that it could probably work on a jailbroken iOS/iPadOS device, but not an unjailbroken one due to how locked down they are compared to MacOS. That and how many people have jailbroken iPhones/iPads these days? I used to, but it was a PITA so now I just have stock ones.
It seems unlikely that they're going to beat Apple on this. I think there may have still been some hope that they only got busted the first time because they included the phone number registration trick as part of the setup and maybe after that they could have been riding on the possibility that Apple couldn't stop them without breaking actual Apple devices, but it seems clear now that isn't the case.
Once I saw the new reports coming in, I went a different route. I happened to have a Mac Mini that I never used and so I booted it up and installed BlueBubbles on it pretty easily and seems to work just fine. I was initially considering just sticking with Beeper if they were able to keep it working because I think the electricity costs of running a Mac Mini were about on par with what Beeper was charging per month.
I can understand why they are trying to do it without the Mac Mini server farm like they were previously doing, because that probably wasn't sustainable and if this new way doesn't work then it might be more like they planned giving up on iMessage at some point anyhow. Then they can go back to focusing on combining all other messaging platforms into one.
It's also clear that "our bridge appears to Apple as if it were a Mac" isn't exactly the case because if it were actually a Mac, presumably they wouldn't be having those issues. So it may appear as if it were a Mac at a glance, but the moment Apple does any work in rooting out Beeper it seems easy for them to determine it isn't a Mac and to cause some pretty major disruptions to Beeper's iMessage service.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Apple has figured out how to identify their traffic somehow. I am thankfully still unaffected, and can still send/receive iMessage on my PC, but I imagine it's only a matter of time before it stops working for me too. :(
Such a shame, since I really really love being able to use iMessage on my PC. It almost makes me wish Beeper had not tempted fate and drew Apple's attention with the whole Beeper Mini Android app blue-bubble thing, and just stuck to quietly providing iMessage access via Beeper Cloud instead. :(
Ah well, this is why we can't have nice things. I'll stick with them until this all plays out, but losing iMessage is gonna sting. It was the primary reason for me using Beeper. Goddamn Apple. :(
not a fan of how this portrays all these things as groundbreaking new features when as far as I can tell basically everywhere in the world bar the US figured this out years ago.
I live in the UK and the vast majority of people use WhatsApp for communicating. this sort of thing is basically not an issue here (and if it is I can imagine the response being "just get WhatsApp mate"). it's not even like the majority use Android devices here!