Apple has seemingly found a way to block Beeper Mini

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38574888, which was posted earlier and is also on the front page.

> Reached for comment, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky did not deny that Apple has successfully blocked Beeper Mini. “If it’s Apple, then I think the biggest question is... if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS? With their announcement of RCS support, it’s clear that Apple knows they have a gaping hole here. Beeper Mini is here today and works great. Why force iPhone users back to sending unencrypted SMS when they chat with friends on Android?”

Does it come down to The Law of Leaky Abstractions?

>> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...

Which means that if Apple wants to change something eventually, then they will possibly break downstream abstractions and then people will complain and the downstream abstraction will say "Well Apple changed their API, it is their fault". Letting someone do it from square one would be enabling that future scenario, as it isn't "if" it changes, it is "when".

If it was an open source API that would be different, but Apple's is closed source, that is Apple's philosophy at the core. It is a closed API yah? Not even an open spec right?

An open source client for iMessage is going to be used for fraud and spam. Before this, a device being blocked by Apple because it was used for fraud or spam would increase the cost of business for fraudsters and spammers. But now it's a matter of picking a new phone number.

Of course Apple would try hard to stop this.

time for walled gardens to be killed by EU's DMA