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Comment by LeafItAlone | Hacker News Reader

> “Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. It’s unsustainable,” Beeper writes.

This was my feeling from the first time I saw it on HN. I am in the Apple ecosystem, so I had no need for it anyways, but I didn’t expect a product to last when it relies on Apple not restricting something they clearly want to restrict.

It clearly got them a lot of press, attention, and recognition. But also indicated, to me, that they are just not reliable.

The team seems very intelligent and capable. I truly hope they find something to do next that doesn’t rely on such a fragile bridge.

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> I am in the Apple ecosystem, so I had no need for it anyways

I would like apple to allow chats to be exported. They kind of let you export photos and videos, but not chats, which also include photos and videos.

I know people who have chats with their (dead) loved ones who have lost everything when they lost or broke their phone.

If you have a mac there’s an open source project that exports iMessage messages: https://github.com/ReagentX/imessage-exporter

Yep. Apple doesn’t care if you dig through the on device message buffer. They just don’t want people spoofing non apple devices onto the service.

Thanks for sharing my work!

My pleasure, thanks a lot for making it!

A clear example of why you should own your data. Sadly, the prevailing sentiment even here on hn is "but apple's ecosystem is soo pretty".

There’s no problem with getting the data on a mac. You just can’t spoof devices onto the service to do it.

https://imazing.com/ can do it, but yes, would be nice if it was built in

photos and videos and notes you can bulk download from https://privacy.apple.com/ - like google takeout, takes several days before they mail you a link to the zip.

Unless somethings changed in the very recent term, a few years ago I was still able to find the messages locally in, IIRC, an sqlite DB file (unless I'm thinking of iTunes stuff being in the sqlite db but I definitely also backed up very old stuff, even from the iChat AIM days).

That is a very good use case. Thank you for identifying that one for me.

I still think Apple has a missed opportunity with iMessage - dual platform support 10 years ago would mean no WhatsApp, which is universal is much of the world. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.

Does this matter to them though? Does apple care about having the dominant messaging platform if it's no longer a hook to get people to buy apple devices.

Having blue bubbles instead of green definitely motivates some people to buy Apple devices in the US.

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

The US is one country, and what happens there is not representative of the rest of the world.

We were using whatsapp before iPhone even came to my home country, and living in Ireland now, everyone seems to be using it here as well. In fact, I'll venture as far as saying /not/ having WhatsApp is considered weird and you will no doubt exclude yourself from a lot of spcial circles.

A big part of Apple's appeal outside of tech circles is exclusivity. When people talk about premium whatever, more often than not it just means "what the plebs don't have". From that perspective, performative exclusion of oneself from some circles can be seen as a feature and not a bug. Nor is this US-specific - iPhone is even more of a luxury status symbol in much of Asia.

It’s representative of where most Apple software and hardware is designed and where their customers have atypically high disposable income compared to most other countries. They’re obviously doing pretty well with this strategy.

Yeah, why be the dominant messaging platform when you can be the the dominant platform without any qualifier.

They aren't the dominant platform regardless of qualifier. Android has a 70% global market share. They aren't even the dominant platform in any country, barely breaking 50% in a few.

What's next, are we going to call OSX the dominant OS platform lol

They are coming to be.

First of all, it's simply completely unaffordable in developing countries so you can't realistically consider them part of the market. In rural India, an iPhone 15 pro Max or whatever is more than a year of income for many.

Coming to countries like the us, studies show that among younger folks, apple's market share is close to 90% [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rules-gen-z-nearly-90-...

The legal jargon surrounding what dominance is remains completely irrelevant, just like the legal system itself -- the punishments are pocket money for these companies, so it's mostly ceremony to keep lawyers employed.

But from a logical standpoint, they most certainly already are in many segments, and are coming to be in other segments.

"As long as you ignore poor people and only look at this generation of American teenagers, Apple is hugely dominant!"

I'm not sure this is the win you think it is ?

Androids 70% marketshare has been extremely stable over the past decade. That is the dominant platform, no qualifiers.

WhatsApp is owned by Meta, and the revenue model is based on usage of it (i.e more users = more potential eyeballs for paying businesses to get access to). It’s not quite as creepy as the Facebook revenue model but it’s not that far from it.

iMessage is an ecosystem perk for buying Apple hardware - it has no intrinsic revenue (and as shown in every one of these discussions, in many parts of the world is largely unused by iPhone buying customers).

Interoperability is a good thing. Apple has committed to supporting RCS and doing what Google never did, and bringing E2EE to the standard rather than bolting their own shit on, and limiting who can use that.

10 years ago Whatsapp had 420 million users It has 1 billion 7 years ago Now it has over 2 billion

1. WhatsApp came out two years before iMessage.

2. Apple has made it clear that they want iMessage to be an exclusive app and it works as intended; people are literally buying iPhones to use it.

> WhatsApp came out two years before iMessage

A vast majority of WhatsApp users joined long after those two years

From a marketing point of view, I agree - for a paid product it's not exactly reliable. If you take away all the marketing fluff though it's a pretty cool open-source project, like yt-dlp or adblock origin.

And I doubt it would have gotten killed, or certainly not as swiftly, had it been an open source community based project, e.g. Hackintosh. But obviously that wasn't the point.

This is what I have been saying every time this is posted! There is no way they had the runway to continue this and alienating their customers by being unreliable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38649081

> The team seems very intelligent and capable

They (founders/team) will be fine. Young, ambitious, and now well-known.

I’m sure they had this coming. It’s obvious Apple wouldn’t let them use their servers for free.

The only positive outcome from this endeavor is recognition, which they achieved.

> It’s obvious Apple wouldn’t let them use their servers for free.

People keep repeating this line .... but would Apple have allowed them to pay f or iMessage ? How much ? Would then Google be able to pay to access iMessage ?

I see no price or condition where Apple would have let anyone touch their walled garden. Free or not has never been an element of the conversation.

Right, not even paid. It’s their servers, they can choose who uses it.

The intersting part of this is to find where the line gets blurry. For instance is it ok for legitimate Apple ID owners (e.g. people who actually own an iPhone) to access iMessage through a third party spoofing their devices.

I'd say yes, even if Apple can't separate them from the other problematic accesses.

> It’s obvious Apple wouldn’t let them use their servers for free

This is ridiculous. It's like comcast restricting or charging people for emailing customers with a comcast address.

If you know how either service works, it’s not like that at all.

ah but I do.

Remember apple's cutomers might WANT to receive the messages others are sending.

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