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Selfishly I'm most excited about this project as a demonstration that secure and reliable communication across platforms is pretty straightforward. The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.

If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise.

And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with enough permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage alternative.

Don't WhatsApp and Signal already do exactly that?

> And yes, iOS allows 3rd party apps but not nearly with enough permissions to act as a full Messages+iMessage alternative.

Not an Apple user, but I imagine even though there's some allowances for third party messaging, there's a lot of holes. For instance, what happens if I ask Siri to send a message to a specific contact from my Apple Watch. Will it send it over Signal if I've added a Signal address to their contact card and went the mile to set that as the default messaging app for that user? Curious.

While I don't mix text and voice control that often myself, it appears to be fully supported: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1803878309981730/?locale=sv_SE&cms_... as for what actions an app supports, that appears to vary based on what the developer included.

But do you have to say "Send a WhatsApp message to X" or does it work with "send a message to X"?

> If Apple were truly acting in their users best interest, they would want their users to have encrypted and fast communication with all devices, through an open protocol or otherwise.

yeah that protocol exists. it’s called RCS and it is coming to ios soon. imo apple is allowed to gate imessage behind ios-only if RCS support is a thing

RCS has no end-to-end encryption in the standard, though. That's a non-standard google messages extension. I think a better example would be the cross-device messengers like signal/whatsapp/etc.

Google is slacking here and I hope Apple's involvement in RCS will help to move this forward. Samsung Messages also does not support Google's E2EE even though it supports RCS and pretty much all of the user-facing features Google Messages provides. Based on Google's whitepaper [1] about their E2EE support, I imagine it's because of the identity service they use for key exchange being centralized and internal (when really the identity service a contact uses should be an RCS capability in the extended contact system [RCS terminology here], and they should interoperate).

[1] https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf

I believe encryption is not in the RCS spec yet.

> The only blocker is that Apple doesn't want it to exist.

This is my main source of excitement around this project. The existence of this project shows that there is no technical reason it can't exist. So, what is the reason it doesn't exist? Exactly what you said: Apple thinks it is in its best interest not to.

That couldn't possibly have ever been in doubt, though.

There’s also the fact that iMessages have a cost to them. An individual message might not amount to much, but millions of them? Apple is hosting the computing to manage the delivery of iMessages. Should they provide that free of charge to the world out of the goodness of their heart?

As of iOS 6.1 (2013), Apple said APNS had delivered over 4 trillion notifications already. A 2018 paper [0] claimed (with an admittedly-small sample size) that people receive on average 56 notifications a day (delivered, not necessarily interacted with). It's almost 2024. Even going off those old numbers, assuming 2 billion active devices [1], APNS would be delivering close to 41 TRILLION messages a year, and likely growing.

That's a lot of pepperoni, guys. Expensive pepperoni. Just some food for thought.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3229434.3229445 [0]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1383887/number-of-apple-... [1]

I am an Apple user. I've owned more iPhones and MacBooks than I can remember.

I am the one who foots the bill for iMessage and APNS.

I want to be able to message my friends with Androids with the same ease as I do my friends with iPhones.

I also would like to be able to access my messages when I run Asahi Linux on my MacBook.

Use Signal. Get your friends to do so. What you are describing is a multi-platform ecosystem so don't rely on one of the platform vendors to enable something for everyone else.

Or better, use matrix/element if you can (the backbone technology of Beeper). It's an open protocol not beholden to one central server (Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord) that could go out of business, get bought, or change their usage policy at any time.

Yep, its really a lose-lose for everyone except Apple. Apple could even release a client that doesn't allow Android<->Android iMessage and I doubt many Android users would care. Personally, I just want a decent messaging experience and I would be willing to jump through the extra hoop of downloading another app even if my iPhone using contacts aren't willing to.

Apple hijacked SMS. You can't CHOOSE to send SMS. If your phone is tied to a computer for a shared imessage account, if you're outside with your phone alone (while computer is online) the phone cannot receive text messages. (The sender ios device presumes 'success' in sending the message because it is received by the computer. It does not have the ability to send just sms).

So, i'm all for anything that shakes up messaging and maybe returns some of it to users.

you can choose; there's an option buried in settings somewhere

But, there's no ability on a per-message basis. If they have their phone set up with iMessage, I cannot just send them an SMS if they lose their data connection.

I mean you can literally just set the iMessage toggle to 'Off' on your phone

It's not even buried. Settings -> Messages -> iMessage == Off

But, that party uses imessage for some things. I want to be able to send them an SMS.

How would that be done?

> You can't CHOOSE to send SMS

You can turn off iMessage and force sms unless you are referring to something else.

You can also press and hold the send button to swap over to SMS.

This isn't true. That ability is no longer there.

That's on the receiver party. I'm the sender using an iOS device. I can't CHOOSE to send an SMS if they have iMessage on.

That’s entirely incorrect.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349

This isn't related to the ability to just send someone an SMS if they're using imessage.

Apparently, blue bubble envy is a thing people have. The beeper home page mentions blue bubbles 9 times (and not being a green bubble twice). WSJ reported in August that 87% of teens have an iPhone so anybody with an android or a green bubble therefore stands out and is a loser.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/why-teens-hate-androi...

It’s not just about that. I want to be able to use my Apple message id on other devices.

I want to be able to send messages from Signal to WhatsApp! Alas, I am not entitled to that.

What? That’s not even the same thing. I can install signal on all my devices. I can’t do the same with messages. It’s about device vendor lock in.

I think people wouldn't mind the green bubble if it had a good contrast ratio.

My son had an Android phone. I don't think anyone considered him to be a loser, but he did get very sick of everyone why he had a green bubble.

I have a green bubble because I don't want to live in a walled garden. I'd like to think there are still youth social circles where that'd get you clout.

I'm shocked your son and his friends were using iMessage, even in the US. My teens are using Snapchat/IG/TikTok mostly for messaging.

iMessage or SMS is exclusively how they communicate with their parents.

On the Beeper website it sayss they use "blue bubble" to refer to iMessage.

> Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

I hereby demand that Google stop making changes to YouTube that prevent ad blockers from working.

Or more to the point, I should have the right to sell hacked access to Microsoft's Office 365 servers to end users and Microsoft must not take any action that interferes in those user's access.

That's reasonable, right?

I hereby demand that Apple stop supporting email interoperability with non iCloud users. The current situation, where the iCloud email users enjoy first class communication with gmail users, is tantamount to theft.

That’s reasonable, of course.

That does not seem like it follow from the person you are replying to's examples. Pretty much nothing is about removing functionality?

What does that have to do with a company's right to control access to the services it runs?

>Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked into Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any other reason.

This language about "entitlement" feels like when Google complains about people using adblockers on YT - I don't care because they're both $2T corporations, and the only "entitlement" I see is the way Apple and Google think they're entitled to my money and my data.

> Because I want to talk to my friends without being locked into Apple's ecosystem. Simple as that, I don't need any other reason.

You can't do that now with SMS and a plethora of other messaging apps?

I think the "send my grandmother non-pixelated photos of my kid using the default messaging app" is a fair ask.

She doesn’t have an email address? You’re not in a walled garden, just self host it and send her a link.

You're really suggesting that Android users go back to 1996 just to talk to their friends and relatives who use iPhones?

Sure, I can print and mail her the picture, too - the point is convenience. Sometimes, people want to send photos back and forth, too, so asking the technical user of the two to setup a host isn't a solution.

(But I'm guessing you already knew that)

Yes! All I hear when entitlement comes up is "Why do you feel entitled to text message your iPhone friends if you don't use an iPhone?"

because there IS an open SMS standard, and Apple has hijacked all their phones to use iMessage in it's closed ecosystem, saying to the rest of the world: "Go Fork Yourselves".

So, right back at ya, Apple. If you cannot make it by distinguishing your products on their MERITS vs the amount of lock-in you can generate, I feel no reason to help protect your brand, or access to it

Why are you entitled to use Apple's messaging servers without paying for access?

People are willing to pay but Apple won't take their money.

Is this an answer to my question? I’m allowed to add more load and increase your infrastructure costs just because you won’t take my money in the way I want you to?

The argument is that iMessage is a de facto monopoly utility and should be operated accordingly.

Uhhhh, what does APNS have to do with any of this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people want iMessage to be an open protocol. You're talking about APNS, the "apple push notification service", which is something completely different than what beeper is doing and what folks are asking for. The message schema, format, types, encoding, max length, delivery guarantees, etc, like jabber/xmpp [1]. Push notifications are sent for iMessage, but that isn't what people want to be turned into an open protocol

[1] https://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc6120.html

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/how-imessage-sends-...

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

APNs is used as the backbone of iMessage, it's not an optional component. It is not just used for the push notifications you see on your phone, but for the actual delivery of the messages.

> Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Network effects.

This would be "enticed", not "entitled". What a user is entitled for is listed in the ToS; who did not accept them, is not entitled. Not necessarily forbidden or blocked, but any bets and guarantees are off.

If many people around you are participating in something but you're left out because of your phone OS choice, you do still feel entitled to participate in that by whatever means necessary. It's about the social aspects more than anything else. See other comments here for people apparently getting shamed and left out of group chats for having wrong color bubbles.

Remember Clubhouse, and how it was iOS-only when it was actually popular for a month? I felt entitled to build an unofficial Android app for it because so many people were on there doing interesting things, and so many other people were complaining loudly about it being iOS-only.

FOMO is a powerful force.

> Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

Vertical tying.

You could say the same thing about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)

Samba is a protocol, Microsoft doesn't have any costs associated with more users of it. GP is asking about APNS, which involves Apple servers and therefore costs Apple to handle more requests, however minimal per individual request/message

Support costs for Microsoft definitely go up.

Explain your perspective on this. Here is a probing question.

How does support costs for Microsoft go up when I communicate from my linux workstation to my linux server using SMB implemented by Samba.

I think Samba was my first introduction to the idea that using a non-official/reverse-engineered implementation of something to piggyback into a closed ecosystem may not actually be preferable to either shunning that ecosystem entirely, or just buying into it. I loved it in concept, but in practice not so much.

It's my understanding that in the European Union, the new Digital Markets regulations will require interoperability. It's still not 100% what it will cover, but it could become a requirement.

As far as I could find, the text suggests that only applies to market giants (i.e. Meta with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger). iMessage is not even breaking the top 5 in the EU. It's not even in the top 5 world wide, and even in the US it's only somewhere in position 4 or 5. If they go for absolute numbers (i.e. X million users) instead of market share that might be different, but it's unlikely to really be relevant to the EU considering from a user's perspective it's already interoperable (messages sent on one device end up on the other device, even if it's technically a mix of SMS, MMS and iMessage - that part is not really relevant).

I think the only source of all this iMessage this that and the other comes from parts of American society where they value the color of a chat bubble. Ironically that value has nothing to do with iMessage and just to do with "this persion I am chatting with can afford an iPhone", which in turn is what people appear to value.

In countries where iMessage is not really used, it doesn't matter at all. I would be surprised if most users would even know about different chat bubble colours and what they mean.

It's already been made public that iMessage will not (currently) be covered under this.

iMessage is pretty much dead in the EU though so I doubt the EU regulators will ask for interoperability.

It's the same as XMPP/etc vs proprietary chat protocols.

"Slack chat is only for Slack customers."

"Google chat is only for Google customers."

And so on.

Well....if you say it is, then it is.

But the supporters of interoperability would like to...interoperate. So non-Apply customers can send messages to Apple customers and vice versa.

> It's Apple's private message delivery system!

It's not!

> Note: Beeper Cloud’s new Oct 2023 iMessage bridge never used Mac relay servers and still does not today. It uses a similar method to Beeper Mini, but runs on a cloud server.

I think you misunderstand that quote. Prior versions of Beeper Cloud hosted Mac Minis in data centers and used genuine Apple hardware and software to automate iMessage in order to function.

This quote simply says that Beeper Cloud is using the same direct implementation of iMessage that Beeper Mini does. It does not indicate that Beeper Cloud & Mini do not communicate with Apple's servers (they do).

> Why does everybody feel entitled to use it if they're not using Apple products?

I'm only speaking for myself here, but I don't look at it as "being entitled to use Apple's services". I look at it as closed, non-interoperable systems as being fundamentally bad for people and for the internet. I hesitate to call them immoral, but I feel like I could argue that competently as well, if pushed to do so.

So if Apple isn't willing to allow interoperability with their messaging service that is used by hundreds of millions (billions?) of people, then I support every effort to "sneak in" and make that happen anyway. And if that means using some Apple service that isn't intended for use outside the Apple ecosystem, that's just how it has to be.

On the other hand, I would frankly just prefer that non-interoperable systems die, instead, and be replaced by functionally equivalent, but more open, systems. So I am also uncomfortable with Beeper Mini pushing more people into Apple's closed ecosystem, even if overall (in the short term, at least) it will mean a better, more secure experience for both iOS and Android users. (It's gross that Apple talks about the security and privacy afforded to users of their products, but at the same time forces their own iPhone users to send unencrypted SMS/MMS messages to anyone who doesn't have an iPhone, because keeping non-iPhone users off iMessage is a competitive advantage for them.)

> It's Apple's private message delivery system!

In the US, where democratic principles govern and capitalism drives the economy, the regulation of corporations emerges as a necessary practice. This approach rests on the understanding that while corporations are essential for economic growth, they must operate within a framework that prioritizes the public's interest.

In a democracy, every entity, including corporations, should answer to the people. Corporations wield significant influence and power, and without oversight, this power could be used in ways that harm the broader society.

Corporations should reflect the values of the society in which they operate and not undermine social, environmental, and ethical standards set by the democratically elected government. Regulation of corporations is not about impeding economic growth but about guiding it in a direction that is beneficial for all members of society.

This is a wonderful speech full of noble platitudes. None of this actually answers the question of why Apple (or really anyone) should let anyone have free and open access to something they paid and keep paying a lot to create, deploy, maintain, and iterate on. It’s their stuff, not the public’s. Nobody should expect corporations to be charities.

Or, to expand a bit:

If Apple should be expected to open up iMessage, then why shouldn't Facebook be expected to allow interoperability with Messenger, and Telegram and Signal forced to open those up, too?

Or, if you wish to take it a slightly different way: Why shouldn't the New York Times be expected to give everyone a copy of their paper for free? Information and good journalism are a public good, after all.

Why shouldn't pharmaceutical companies be expected to make all life-saving medications available for free?

Why shouldn't ISPs be expected to make Internet access available to all for free?

I mean, we could structure our society so that everything wasn't arbitrarily gated but that would be gasp socialism.

Also, Telegram and Signal are already open and can be bridged from anything to anything so yeah, we should force Messenger and Imessage to accept, at a minimum, bridging as well.

To be honest, I personally agree that we should be forcing at least some of these things for the common good (and, to the extent necessary, funding them with significantly-more-progressive taxes). My point is primarily that it's not particularly logical to single out Apple for this treatment if that's your principle.

Good to know about Telegram and Signal—I don't use or know much about them. IMNSHO, my argument still holds even removing them from the equation.

We force companies to incur costs for the public's benefit all the time. In special cases we even require them to serve loss generating customers as a condition of operation. No one is forced to operate a power company, but if you do you are bound to provide power to customers regardless of their individual profitability. Similarly, dominant vertically-integrated messaging systems could be required to provide interoperability at a reasonable charge (or even no charge!). Apple could then decide whether or not they want to operate a system under those terms.

OK! Let's assume you've built a water delivery system, a series of pipes. You attach anyone who buys a licensed faucet, and collect a modest monthly payment, as a typical utility would do. You use these funds to cover the operation costs of the pipe system.

Your pipes use a standard threaded connector.

If somebody attaches to your pipes without buying your licensed faucet and without paying, just due to the interoperability of threaded pipes, do you have the right to disconnect them, and rework your pipe connectors in a way that prevents unpaid connections in the future? If not, why?

Any sane company with the goal of making money from operating a service would just meter water from a device they own and charge a reasonable fee. Most of the people complaining would be completely fine with Apple charging a reasonable fee for Android access to iMessage. A system like yours would only make sense if your goals had nothing to do with covering the costs of operating the service, and were instead growing and maintaining your licensed faucet marketshare. Some people might think that isn't in the public's benefit and want to change the law. In the case of water services we already have, and the licensed faucet scheme would likely be illegal basically everywhere in the US.

At my last house, we had a private well and, later, a private company laid water pipes in the street and offered for us to connect to them via their own meter. I don't think anything was illegal about that company offering for me to rent a meter from them for the ~$10/mo connection [aka "meter rental"] fee, and use whatever mix of water that I wanted from their metered source or my own well, provided I had a backflow preventer to prevent any of my well water from entering their metered water lines.

If someone chooses not to rent an Orange water meter, they can't have Orange water. That seems like a choice that Orange can make. Changing Orange to Apple and water meter to smartphone messaging, I don't see any inherent reason why the rules should be different.

> Changing Orange to Apple and water meter to smartphone messaging, I don't see any inherent reason why the rules should be different.

Their choice of what water meter to use is completely transparent to you provided it works properly. It has no effect on how you use the service or any other aspect of your life. This is obviously not true of phones. The bundling of separate product categories is what makes the situation different, the same way that bundling water service with the arbitrary requirement of a "licensed faucet" would likely be illegal many places.