If not for court, then at the least this is a press strategy orchestrated by someone with an interest in opening up the iMessage monopoly.
I’m sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim - the vulnerability to Apple shutting them down was obvious. Which leads me to conclude he saw value to be created in just basically messing with Apple and forcing them to ban him.
If you actually knew Eric and the history of Beeper you would understand how hilariously false, absurd and revisionist such a statement is. Eric only started Beeper after validating massive interest from Hacker News for a paid app that would unify disparate communication channels.
If my experiences as an early-stage founder have taught me anything I can assure you that we don’t know our asses from a hole in the ground. Founding a company is a game where you throw shit at the wall as quickly as you possibly can until something sticks and then you desperately try to figure out why it stuck. If you can figure that out, you might just have product-market fit.
This is especially true for a first time founder. You learn as you go.
This may be true with regard to the general concept, but how does it relate to the decision to try to skirt the iMessage rules? Validating that people want a feature is different from (and somewhat orthogonal to) ensuring you can actually deliver it.
I agree that the original intent was to do as you say. But the recent actions suggest that new motives may be in play.
Clearly Eric is a very intelligent person. I find it hard to believe that he believed that reverse engineering such an elaborate workaround would work after Apple had already proven that they were willing to shut him down.
If Eric is as smart as you say, then obviously he did not expect this latest iteration to work. Which leads me to conclude there is value (for him, for his investors) in taking these actions to force Apple’s hand.
Then again, maybe he just wants to prove a point and use the exposure to promote their next app. Whether the app will succeed is unknown but the PR strategy so far is crushing it.
I know it’s marketing but at the end of the day, they are fighting for a cause that matters to me and their bridges are open source so I wish them good luck.
That’s absolutely not true though. Discord is incredibly hostile to third-party clients today for example.
https://twitter.com/discord/status/1229357198918197248?lang=...
Can’t log into Xbox live or PS5 messaging with a third party client either I’d expect. It’s not an unusual ask for a “secure” system - even if they provide a web interface they certainly don’t let you pretend to be a fake Xbox and create an account and then connect some third-party crap that continues to pretend to be an Xbox.
Hell didn’t Microsoft just crack down on third party headsets of all things? You really, really think they’re ok with you spoofing a whole Xbox on their network?
https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-bans-unauthorized-third-p...
Hell even AIM and MSN would try to break Gaim and ban users who used it back in the day - they just weren’t starting from a good enough place to be very successful at it.
https://m.slashdot.org/story/13509
That’s the overall problem is the world doesn’t quite work the way people remembered it. AOL was never happy about Gaim, Xbox and Sony and discord carry on this legacy today. If you simplify the issue even further: Google isn’t going to leave an open smtp relay if you find a way to spoof it, they certainly aren’t going to let you run a commercial service reselling it.
The whole “but nobody EVER fought against adversarial interop or banned users for using it!” before schtick is objectively not how the world worked or works and I think most of the people saying it understand that perfectly well, it’s just an angle for them to press the attack.
I seldom buy into conspiracy theories but in this case I’d go a step further and suggest that Beeper Mini was secretly enabled in some way by other commercial entities incentivised to dismantle Apple’s walled garden. Maybe not from the start, but much more likely when the public game of cat and mouse kicked off.
They've always banned iMessage access that they determined to be compromised. It's part of security and preventing abuse.
It just probably took a couple weeks for their automated system to detect.
Hopefully affected users can get it working again on their Macs via customer service, if they even care.
I'm going to go wayyyy out on a limb and guess that people who were enthusiastic adopters of Beeper Mini, AND who own a Mac ARE probably going to care about getting their access working again.
I'd actually say the bigger thing would probably be "via Customer Service, if Customer Service even cares, and doesn't tell them to just create a new Apple ID".
This is Beeper, a for-profit company, throwing a tantrum, violating the ToS of Apple but leaving Beeper's users and their friends holding the bag.
It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real machines for this.
It’ll be interesting to see how hard Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony fight against any attempt to open up iMessage. They each depend critically on the right to block devices by device identifier using automation, and if a ruling is found against Apple in this matter, all hardware identifier enforcement is now voidable, which will destroy some of the value of their paid subscription services and worsen the safety of those services.
It's no different than if you get caught running cheat software in an online game.
The company isn't "retaliating" against you, or even "punishing" you -- they're just banning you. You broke the rules and that's what happens.
I fully support interoperability. But it needs to be done through regulation and standards.
Not through intentional abuse of the platform for monetary gains.
- Extremely responsive, native, fast app with no clutter whatsoever, on both phones and on desktop devices (personally, I highly dislike web/electron apps)
- Close to no spam (whatsapp in particular seems to have a ton, way worse than Telegram even)
- Highest quality (amongst all the apps) audio/video calls with Facetime
- e2e encrypted by default, does not have the unconscious bias that you’re using a Facebook owned product for doing something secure, even if it really is (and as far as power users go, I don’t really particularly dislike the company like many do)
My next favorite messenger, that does Groups better than iMessage, is Telegram. I don’t wish to get into the privacy concerns (and it’s valid!) but as far as making a responsive, native app that does chat and does it well, it’s pretty superior to both Whatsapp and Signal.
gTalk of old was amazing, but I don’t think that’s coming back :(
As for "fast", just the animation in the main action menu would like a word. And then try to select stickers
Signal could be like Telegram in this regard but its hardline no third party client policy means the official Electron app is the only option.
Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
99% of the time, iMessage just does what it says and at a high quality. No bullshit, barely any spam, and OS-level integration with my other devices.
I loved signal when it was my MMS client. It did what iMessage did, only for android, and it worked in my mixed env (Mac, android).
Now no more mms. I have stories now. I didn't get signal for stories, I didn't want an encrypted social network.
That's a slight annoyance but it's extremely new, and doesn't reflect the typical WhatsApp experience over its many years of explosive growth. It's just a simple cross-platform chat app that, as the de facto standard in most of Europe, nobody has trouble using.
Or if you mean why anyone uses it, it's because SMS is automatically upgraded to iMessage between two iPhone users. Most people wouldn't know how to prevent that from happening or downgrade to SMS and because it feels like texting with a few extra features, they don't want to. That approach has accumulated about a billion users.
It just works. As soon as I log into my Apple account on any Apple device I can access all of my messages, and seamlessly carry on a conversation on whatever device is at hand. It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.
I know that WhatsApp is similar, but their desktop app, especially authentication, kinda sucks (I need my phone to login, and it seemingly logs me out weekly). Whatsapp is also FILLED with weird porn spam, and scammers.
I have a mac laptop and an android phone. My son has an iphone. Half of his responses to my text messages go to my phone, the other half go to my laptop and I miss them. This is a major problem, imessage shouldn't be greedy about grabbing messages, especially when replying to an SMS. I've missed picking him up from places because I didn't get the reply.
Also, imagine this scenario from the perspective of a non-technical user: You buy an expensive but high quality phone that's easy to use and has a great camera and great apps. Most of your friends have the same phone and everything works great with them. Then you try to talk to someone new but they have a phone that was probably cheaper and has a worse camera and looks like it's harder to use and full of ads. Every time they message you it turns off a bunch of your features and ruins group chats for everyone. Who are you going to blame, your phone manufacturer whose product seems to work great, or this guy with a phone so cheap and buggy that it breaks everyone else's?
Thus, non-technical iMessage users see no reason to go out of their way to use weird third party messengers. It's not their fault - it's the android users' faults for being cheap.
(For clarity, I am a hardcore android phone but I'm not delusional enough to think the average person will have a better experience on Android then iOS. I had to install fdroid and a custom launcher and a bunch of side loaded apps to get a decent experience. The average person doesn't and arguably shouldn't need to know about all that)
iMessage just works:
• It works beautifully on watchOS, iPadOS, macOS, in addition to iOS
• there's no ads
• E2EE by default
• You can send media at full quality and the recipient receives it as as you intended
• No bullshit whatsoever
My Android friends though are never able to standardize on any one app, some of them want you to use WhatsApp, some want Telegram, some want Signal. None of them have watchOS clients, they either can't be bothered with iPadOS at all or their desktop "client" is really just an lazy Electron disaster that they expect you to put up with. And when you try to explain how all of these third party alternatives are inferior, Android people look at you like you're an alien and don't understand.
It's frustrating and I wish they would just get iMessage already.
This is an important lesson, take it to heart!
Activation is tied to the Mac's serial number, so you either need to work with Apple Support to get your Mac's serial number off the blocklist, or you need to change your Mac's serial number to a unique and valid one that isn't blocked.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-imessa...
