Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’
Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’
Beeper Mini made Android users blue bubbles. Apple shut it down after only a few days.
Apple responds to the Beeper iMessage saga: ‘We took steps to protect our users’::Beeper, like Sunbird and Texts, sought to find a way to bring iMessage to Android users. Its app, Beeper Mini, worked well. But a few days after it launched, Apple took steps to shut it down.
Apple is very good at spinning things like this and anti-repair measures that benefit their bottom line as being in the interests of users. They're so good at it they don't even have to lie; using hardware IDs as part of their anti-spam strategy probably works, and locking down repair probably does reduce device theft.
That's not the world I want to live in though.
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47Apple definitely does, they just think their users are stupid enough to not know the difference.
14thinkknowYour average Apple (or Android) user is dumber than a bag of rocks when it comes to technology.
12
Infinite growth.
They must gain more profit at any cost so their personal shares and shareholders are appeased. Once you have saturated the only next step is exploitation. Push moral boundaries for profit.
3
Perhaps I just don’t understand why there is such an allure for Android users to gain iMessage…
37The default OS text messaging apps dominate the messaging space in certain markets - most notably the US. Moreover, Apple has over 50% of the smartphone market in the US.
Sending media from Android to iOS looks like flip-phone trash right now. It’s done via MMS. It’s also not secure.
This will change when Apple starts implementing RCS, but Beeper was a way to start having high quality messaging now.
44Sending media from Android to iOS only looks like trash on all carriers except Verizon. You can send high quality TO iOS if the network supports it.
You can never send high quality MMS from an iPhone, even on Verizon.
I've tested this many times. I've sent 50mb video from a Verizon Android to a Verizon iPhone, it receives a 50mb video. Send the same video back from the iPhone to Android, and iPhone butchers the quality.
3
Because iPhone owners are petty and care about the text bubble color.
8There are some people that send a lot of pictures over text messages, who want it for the upgraded image sharing quality. That's a sane enough reason, at least.
On the bright side, the kind of people who judge other people for their text message bubble color are not the kind of people I want in my life. So at least it's another asshole filter.
4
i just want to talk to my family on a single non meta owned platform... the only ones to join me on on signal are my dad and my wife, the majority have iphones.
5I’d like to use it on desktop. I have to use windows for work but I have an iPhone. People send me messages on my phone and I have to email pics to myself or use Google drive, and it’s a pain in the ass. Using a Mac shows how much more convenient it is to just have it in a desktop app.
5Especially with RCS coming to iMessage, rich media features will no longer be gatekept by blue bubbles.
Kids will still also bully other kids for having androids even if they downloaded an app to make their bubbles blue.
4Hahaha
RCS is not even in the same century as iMessage or other modern messengers. It's still tied to your SIM card. No SIM, no RCS. Why would I want to go back to the 80's for a messenging app, when I already have one in SMS?
You won't get a blue bubble still. It'll still lack encryption. You'll still cause a downgrade of iMessage groups to RCS if one person doesn't have iMessage, AND you still have the same downgrade issue to SMS if one person doesn't have RCS. I don't use iMessage much but I'm sure there are other things that won't be anywhere as good.
Besides RCS sucks. It's no more reliable than SMS (I'd say worse because it often doesn't notify you when a message fails, which for something supposedly modern is a sign of a major flaw - at least SMS has the excuse of being built on top of cell management, as a best-effort mechanism).
Metadata isn't protected like other messengers (Signal, Briar, SimpleX, etc). Even iMessage protects Metadata better.
RCS is something that cell vendors and Google, etc are doing just to prevent losing control over messaging and the data gathering it offers.
I will never use RCS. If people tell me that's all they'll use, oh well.
-22
How about "why not?"
I can use many other messenger apps on multiple OS's.
0
More like protect your profit margin lol
21Headline: Apple be Applin’
20They protected their users because if they didn't they wouldn't have users. I have asked plenty of friends why they don't use Android and their response is "it doesn't have iMessage" and that if it did they would switch.
18What's so special about iMessage?
5Nothing. iPhone users are just happily married to it. I have family/friends that would switch to a cheaper non-iPhone that performs just as well if they could keep using iMessage.
5
They spelled moat wrong. If Apple followed through with their promise to bring iMessage to other platforms then Beeper wouldn’t need to exist.
11Thank you Apple. You’re my hero. 🙄
11This is the best summary I could come up with:
“We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage,” Apple senior PR manager Nadine Haija said in a statement.
Beeper says its process works with no compromise to your encryption or privacy; the company’s documentation says that no one can read the contents of your messages other than you.
Apple has repeatedly made clear that it doesn’t want to bring iMessage to Android: “buy your mom an iPhone,” CEO Tim Cook told a questioner at the Code Conference who wanted a better way to message their Android-toting mother, and the company’s executives have debated Android versions in the past but decided it would cannibalize iPhone sales.
But Beeper Mini was exploiting the iMessage protocol directly, which clearly prompted Apple to tighten its security measures.
When I say that maybe Apple’s concern is that iPhone users are suddenly sending their supposedly Apple-only blue-bubble messages via a company — Beeper — they don’t know about, Migicovsky thinks about it for a second.
And Apple has made clear it intends to win that game, no matter how badly you want to send iMessages from an Android phone.
The original article contains 890 words, the summary contains 194 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
9Sounds like more people should use Signal
14Sounds like more people should just use the same Matrix bridges that Beeper is using for their main service and just spinning up their own Matrix server instead of trusting a third party with their Apple credentials logged into a Mac that lives on their property and is technically owned by them. The "original plan" was to send out refurbished iPhone 4's to people to use, but apparently letting consumers have a little more control was going to be too confusing or something and instead they rolled out a fleet of Macs internally.
Matrix is trusted and secure. Why bother with a third party charging for a service of... setting it up for you, with a flashy front-end?
0
I'm not sure why so many are rooting for Beeper. Apple's response is 100% reasonable - you have a 3rd party service that's making money by impersonating iOS devices in order to access Apple services. Apple has no way of controlling how many devices will use Beeper and if their system can maintain a good level of service, how these Beeper devices are interacting with iMessage, and whether Beeper is actually keeping iMessage metadata private or just giving lip service.
An analogy would be like Apple is throwing this awesome concert event and Beeper found out a convincing way to fake the tickets, and are actually actively promoting, registering people and profiting off of it. In any reasonable world outfits like this would be shut down immediately and rightfully so.
2It would be nice if beeper could do this, but it was a rather stupid idea to do it without Apple’s blessing. Of course they were going to shut it down. Pretty much the most predictable thing that’s ever been predicted.
6I mean, Beeper is the same company that was selling the main product (a matrix server to combine all your chat services into one using bridges) when it was still completely half-baked and they had a 45-minute onboarding process to get people to set up their services, because it was so complicated. They've clearly made it a lot less complicated now, so why did they feel it was necessary to charge money up-front when it was still half-baked and needed someone to guide you through complicated setup processes? It just feels like they're happy to have their asses hanging out and charge for it without really feeling the need to prove things work as intended. I was never on the service during this early time (or at all), but I remember seeing lots of complaints of failures and service interruptions, and it never made sense to me to be paying for an unfinished product.
So, in my opinion, this is entirely on brand for Beeper.
3
I don't understand why people are rooting for Beeper knowing how badly Eric Migicovsky screwed developers on the way out from Pebble Watch.
He already sold a failing company once, and he's already hit a roadblock with his current company. How long until he gets bored and sells this one?
Also, I was on the waiting list way back when, and declined to sign up for Beeper when I had no indication that my onboarding would be recorded. Then I showed up to the onboarding zoom meeting with a note about it being recorded. No advance notice from a service that claims to respect privacy? You just showed your ass, Beeper. I never signed up, and when I wrote them with follow up questions ("How can I trust that the privacy policy will stay the same if the business is sold to another party?") they declined to respond to any questions. Months later I would get an automated email reminding me about my place in line like I gave a shit anymore.
I personally don't trust this companies promises, period. They've made it clear they're less than honest about the privacy stuff and the founders past doesn't scream "He will stand by this company when things get hard."
6