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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

The way I see it Beeper are deliberately poking the bear. They knew Apple would block their implementation (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had this replacement ready to go). You don’t have to trust them, if you don’t want to use the service then don’t.

They’re highlighting the closed nature of Apple’s messaging system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I support them in doing that.

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Only question is what’s the endgame? It’s not like they’re going to gain meaningful followers from this. This happens every 3-5 years with something Apple does and all that happens is Apple hardens even more, the little guy gets some press for a month and then disappears into the ethers

The context is a little different, with the EU looking into whether iMessage is anticompetitive and should be opened up:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-argues-imessa...

I imagine Beeper is providing exhibits A and B for any such court case, should it happen. And they get some good brand publicity along the way.

The EU has already decided the iMessage is not a gatekeeper.

They are absolutely getting followers from this. You're talking about them now, whereas hardly anyone was a week ago.

> They’re highlighting the closed nature of Apple’s messaging system more effectively than anyone has in a long time. I support them in doing that.

Every major chat app is closed though? For example, I use LINE regularly, there's no way to access that chat system through anything but LINE apps.

LINE doesn’t come pre installed on your phone and automatically enable when you message certain people, though.

Sure, it's strictly better... There's nothing requiring you use iMessage and you can send send SMS messages to iPhones if you choose to do so. It's a great way to secure SMS messages by default. That iMessage acts like SMS automatically is _good_ thing.

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