Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage network | Hacker News Reader

Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage network

appleinsider.com

117 pointslnguyen109 comments

My take on this whole thing is that this is basically an elaborate plan to eventually use this in court against Apple to prove its anti-competitive practices.

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.

I’m genuinely surprised that this theory isn’t more pervasive.

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.

I agree. There have always been highly skilled programmers capable of reverse engineering imessage, but everybody knew it would immediately get shutdown and not be worth the effort.

That's definitely possible, the beeper mini case will be used in courts against Apple, that's for sure.

> I’m sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim

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.

On Hacker News and Reddit especially I am always flabbergasted by the tendency to ascribe some sort of wisdom and intent to the actions of early-stage founders.

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.

True that you learn as you go. Also true that motives change - the world in 2024 looks very different to the world in 2020. Founders adapt, bring on new investors, find new ways to create value.

In regards to intent, I am not suggesting that he founded the company to do this. I am suggesting that the motives for their recent actions are driven by something other than finding product market fit.

> Eric only started Beeper after validating massive interest from Hacker News for a paid app that would unify disparate communication channels.

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.

People had found all sorts of paths that semi work, & Beeper tried to use this well known path. It was working. It still is working. But only to a point.

It seems silly to me to condemn Beeper, when Apple doesn't have any published followed enforced rules. It has a term of service, and it has behaviors others get away with, but it's unclear and undefined from Apple what actually will cause a problem & get your registration data cancelled.

There s almost no part of me that considers such a small narrow stance where it's on Beeper to be 100% exactly how the future is going to go before they make any moves.

I have no personal information on this matter, this is pure speculation.

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.

Early stage is sort of a long string of Hail Marys. Critical problems that create new critical problems not far down the road.

I’m guessing that Eric knew that he had days before Apple patched whatever exploit he found. I’m guessing he was hoping to find another move he could make before that happened.

Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Big risk for big reward — imagine what a big deal it would’ve been if Beeper Mini actually found a sustainable way to make iMessage work outside of Apple?

I would not be surprised if it comes out that he has some backing from other companies that want to disrupt Apples monopoly on their service endpoints.

Collectively, there are many businesses that just need some precedent to give them ammunition to open up the App Store, iCloud, and more. It would not cost them much to back this kind of effort.

Since Beeper main product is a multi protocol messaging app and iMessage is the only protocol that resists them, yes, it’s probably both.

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.

> Since Beeper main product is a multi protocol messaging app and iMessage is the only protocol that resists them,

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.

An elaborate plan by who? If Apple opens up iMessage to RCS as promised to EU markets, Beeper Mini becomes obsolete overnight.

i really doubt it was an elaborate plan. more, people were annoyed by apple's monopoly, engineered a solution, and apple proceeded to shoot themself in the foot by trying to hold on to the said monopoly. beeper mini is probably leaning into provoking apple after witnessing the reaction, which makes sense. it gives them press. we'll see how this plays out. i know the justice department is building a case, and they're probably salivating at this evidence, but the 2024 election could result in less antitrust friendly actors working against the case. possibly. i need to research the justice department more.

Went from "Here's to the crazy ones" to "we'll punish our customers for not jumping how we say" in 30 years.

Completely disagree on this.

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.

Beeper would have to have agreed to the ToS for them to have broken it. It's apple's users who agreed to a ToS, and apple users who got the boot. The lesson is that apple doesn't treat their users very well, not that some no name company who's fifteen minutes of fame are done isn't responsible enough.

I'm interpreting this as incredibly pedantic.

Just because Beeper is delegating the ToS violation to a bunch of random people doesn't mean they aren't complicit. It appears they are acting in even worse faith than Apple here by suggesting their new mechanism is safe and has no side effects when it actually does.

If the cost for me to enjoy a relatively spam-free and stable iMessage experience is to simply not do dumb things, then I will voluntarily not do dumb things (at least not with an account/machine I care about).

Don't sacrifice your devices for another company's attempt at 15 minutes of fame.

These people are customers of both beeper and apple. Both beeper and apple made a set of decision that led to their own customers being hurt. Somehow the resolution is that beeper is uniquely responsible for course correcting. Maybe they should have put language in their ToS to the effect that if your device id is banned, they disclaim all responsibility. Surely that would have smoothed things over?

I highly doubt they're "punishing" customers or even "retaliating" like the article says.

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.

> 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".

I dunno. Is iMessage all that useful if it's only on your Mac?

It's nice as a second screen if you already use it on your phone. But getting messages only on your computer isn't so useful in our mobile-first world -- at least not for a lot of people.

Yeah this isn’t surprising, I’ve had this happen to hackintoshes over the years. Apple has always had the ability to ban serials from iMessage afaict, and it also (seemed) to be some automated process.

It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real machines for this.

Everyone thinks it’s personal when anti-abuse automation detects token reuse and blocks the hardware ID that issued it. It’s not. It’s just an HSM-secured communications network, same as Xbox consoles use for their player messaging network, complete with the anti-abuse automation that can lead to hardware bans.

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.

Calling this “retaliation” is rather dramatic. There are a number of communication platforms that don’t allow 3rd party apps to access their networks and will ban people who attempt it.

What would you call it other than retaliation? Punishment? Surprise behavior?

Expected behavior.

Consequence for acting against Apple's terms of service.

Everybody be on the lookout for ToS breakers! The scum must be outed, shamed and alienated. No one should feel sorry for them and we should all compare their actions to piracy or cheating in a video game. Clearly these “beeper” using are infiltrating the platform so they can spam our legitimate users by purchasing $3000 laptops and claiming that they’re only using said app for convenience!

Round them up boys!

PS: my iMessage account was flagged for sending spam (never happened) and unsolicited messages from a legit device. Apple can’t tell where the messages are coming from is what that means.

Protecting the security and integrity of the platform.

I fully support interoperability. But it needs to be done through regulation and standards.

Not through intentional abuse of the platform for monetary gains.

Protecting imaginary security is no protection at all.

If Apple doesn't like the particular way Beeper works, they're free to give them a better API to use.

They are free to give them the hammer too.

It's just banning.

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.

This site rightly has a different attitude when, say, HP remotely bricks working printers because someone used unauthorized ink. We don't sit back and say "you broke the rules and that's what happens."

You cannot argue with Apple users on any topic that is critical of Apple. For them, Apple can do no wrong. If Apple hardware breaks due to manufacturing fault, they will criticize the person for not buying Apple-care and then suggest just buying another Apple device. Apple is their identify. In this case iMessage is the safe haven that they can trust and allowing external (non-Apple) users would violate that feeling of safety.

Jeez, you’re painting with a broad brush here. I use Apple products and like them but I think they should open stuff up more. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time I used to for dealing with tech issues on Linux or the other open source stuff, so I buy Apple which is certainly better to customers than Microsoft, for example.

I don’t get where the idea that Apple users are zombies came from. Apple users like the products and services Apple provides, nothing else, there’s no ulterior motive there.

I've remarked many times but it's absolutely insane just how casually android users drop the "apple SHEEPLE" or "brainless blue bubbles" shit. It's so absolutely completely normalized that they don't even comprehend that it might be offensive to the people actually in the discussion with them.

statistically speaking about half this site probably has apple and most people have very specific reasons for picking them. And they've been hearing people exactly like GP casually dump on them for years - even if a particular person isn't being this direct and coarse about it, they know that's the thought process underneath.

After a while it's just another microaggression, and since they're micro you're not really supposed to call them out or act on them, but again, everyone knows what the score really is.

> but again, everyone knows what the score really is.

That's the problem, innit? Both Apple and Android users see the writing on the wall, nobody is winning. The only people who actively frustrate themselves on tech sentiments are the ones that honestly believe that Apple/Google knows what's best or that Elon Musk is a benefactor to humanity. Rationally, those are wrong conclusions. You're not mad because Android/iOS pundits are harassing you, you're mad because a false assumption about businesses and your personal identity is falling apart. That's fine. Conscious smartphone users everywhere should feel that way.

Similarly, there are people on this website that will laugh you off the stage if you admit to daily-driving Emacs or BSD. Opinionated people are like that everywhere from the CNBC comment section to 9to5Mac. You and me are not obligated to respond to them, and sometimes there is no rational response. Apple does a lot of irrational things, like telling their customers "you're holding it wrong" in response to hardware antennae problems. You don't need to take it personally that you can't defend the indefensible. Most Android users are really in the same boat, tied to a bloodthirsty OEM and Google who will both make irrational choices on the regular. You could call them out, but then you're arguing against your own side. It's a duopoly designed to suck people's egos into it, and the only way to meaningfully discuss change is to acknowledge that neither solution is perfect. It's hard to do when you're fully invested in any ecosystem, but Apple's (and Google's) flaws are self-evident.

Apple will continue to get criticized for as long as they earn the criticism, like how Microsoft and Google were (rightfully) dragged through the mud before them. If you want to change that, vote with your wallet and encourage your favorite company to act the way you want them to.

> when, say, HP remotely bricks working printers because someone used unauthorized ink

There is evidence of intent and immutability, i.e. nobody has shown Apple won’t reverse the ban when shown the device is legitimately accessing iMessage.

Kinda like how HP will make your printer work again if you simply buy and install approved ink?

> The company isn't "retaliating" against you, or even "punishing" you

yes they are

> You broke the rules and that's what happens.

And when it happens its called a "punishment", which is a kind of "retaliation". Words don't stop applying because you don't like their connotation.

> Words don't stop applying because you don't like their connotation.

Yes they do. The world is full of shills and boiled frogs.

No -- words like punishment and retaliation have a connotation of being personal and being emotional, or punishment can be linked to the justice system.

They're not appropriate words for mere policy. Like if you damage your apartment and don't get your security deposit back, that's not punishment or retaliation. It's just policy.

Same thing if you try to return something after thirty days and that's against policy. When they don't take the return, they're not punishing you.

Does that help clarify?

The difference is in trying to highlight the "policy" as being fundamentally just and fair, versus arbitrary and capricious. If I have a "policy" of beating up anybody who looks at me funny, that doesn't make it any less retaliatory. On the other hand, the justice system has a habit of avoiding the term "punishment" because they don't like the connotation.

I don't understand the obsession with imessage, what is so special about it?

It's what 50% of the US population uses for sending short messages.

Of all the messengers I have and my friends and family use iMessage is easily the worst designed one (well, Viber is probably worse), and no one I know uses it

Guessing you’re not in the US? It’s super common here.

What are its design problems?

off the top of my head:

- all useful interactions are hidden behind useless slow animation and multiple additional clicks

- photo selection is an awkward double scroll

- stickers are tied to external apps, cannot be searched, take ages to load when you switch between sets

- link unfurling and file previews are hit and miss, often take ages to happen

- pinned chats are useless awkward circles that take up space instead of being actual pinned chats

- continuously broken on MacOS (photo selections, unread status synchronizations, keyboard shortcuts etc.)

And it's a key app they have on two platforms.

Compare that to Telegram which exists on 5 platforms and web, developed by just a handful of people, and has everything and more.

> all useful interactions are hidden

Maybe this is why I prefer it. Text is first class on iMessage.

WhatsApp and Telegram messages tend to have crud, e.g. stickers and weird shit happening with photos. To each their own.

Text is first class in all messages. You don't have to add photos, or stickers, or anything.

But when you need to, it's there at your fingertips, not hidden behind laggy animations, seconds of loading, and awkward interactions

I think being presented with these options on every line of text is the crud. It’s exhausting and cluttered.

Telegram is my favourite messenger indeed.

I don't care much for its stickers but it has a ton of quality of life features. Group chats with topics. Built in translation. Fully supported bots that can add tons of functionality. Voice message transcription. Full access to everything on the web. No problems with bridges (eg to matrix). I'm happily paying the premium fee too which is only 30€ a year. It provides even more quality of life stuff like fully automatic translations (my Spanish isn't the best yet)

Here in Spain it's used a lot especially for groups. WhatsApp is still #1 for 1:1 chats but all the groups (eg associations) i know use telegram.

Why do you consider it bad?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39007004

My wife uses it. There's no way in hell I'll get her off it... Thus, I use it.

It's simply that it has a lot of users. Any popular enough communication protocol attracts interest in interoperating with it.

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.

Android folks upset Google hasn’t been able to crack unified messaging despite ~45 attempts.

In the US, it's mostly a network effect I think. It was the default on half of people's phones and it managed to be good enough over time (unlike sms defaults on Android) to stay entrenched.

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)

This is exactly what it's like for us iMessage users.

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.

Let's open WhatsApp… It's recommending that I follow channels. Do I want to follow Man City, Real Madrid, or FC Barcelona? I watch zero sports and want nothing to do with any of this. I've used the app a handful of times over the years, yet I have three threads/groups from December that are cryptocurrency, investment, and market insight scams. To me, the interface also looks bad—and it's a Facebook product.

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.

The obsession with iMessage and the "blue bubble" seems to be a US only thing, no? All group chats I've ever been part of, and 99% of all other messaging, in the UK and every European country I've been in happens on WhatsApp.

It's Apple memetic marketing, it isn't real.

> Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.

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.

MMS were not encrypted and stories have been the most requested feature.

It made totally sense to go this way.

> MMS were not encrypted a

iChat and signal had parity at that intersection. The color of the bubbles means something in ichat, there was a known ui component to convey that message...

Signal went from being mms + encrypted side channel to ... another messaging app adding social media features.

No it didn't.

It is and always wanted to be a secure messenger which does not share your data with some big company.

Providing an insecure feature within the app was stupid. People didn't even realize that this was an issue, and those who ran away now never even cared about the core features of Signal. They just wanted to have another SMS client.

https://www.signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/

It actually started as an encrypted messenger on top of SMS, TextSecure. From that perspective the inclusion of SMS made a lot of sense.

> It's recommending that I follow channels

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.

From an average consumer perspective (not a HN user perspective):

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.

> It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.

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.

The fact that the iMessage team still can't figure out how Apple's own sync works is mind boggling.

Messages are always lost, or marked as read when they are not, or marked as unread even if I deleted them on other device, or...

Isn't this only a problem if one of your devices trying to access these messages is a non-apple device?

For a while I was switching between an iPhone and Android (I was deving on both platforms and so would switch them out regularly).

Then I found out the Apple would think I was still using the iPhone, and would therefore would send my messages via iMessage, and I'd have no idea I wasn't getting them.

But what incentive does Apple have to change this? And realistically, how many people does it impact.

Do most apple people know that iMessage isn't using SMS? I think they just look at it as an app that sends messages to everyone.

> Isn't this only a problem if one of your devices trying to access these messages is a non-apple device?

Funnily enough, no. iOS <-> MacOS sync has been broken for ages, and keeps being subtly broken in different ways with each new oOS release

That truly sucks.

I was speaking to my own experience. Across an iPhone, Watch, two laptops (one corporate managed), and an iPad, it all 'just works' so to speak.

I've seen your issue before and it usually is because your non-iMessage phone number is associated with the same contact record as your iMessage computer account (probably your email). The iPhone will preference sending an iMessage over a text, so if your computer is on, you won't get a text. Sadly there is no 'force-sms' setting so the (admittedly awful) workaround is to create a second contact in your son's phone that is just your phone number.

It is indeed bullshit that it doesn't work for you.

It just works. You may think that this is a meme, but it really is not. Let’s say you and someone else that you wish to communicate with has an iPhone (parent, SO, friend, whoever) and things just click into place.

- 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 :(

That "no clutter whatsoever" results in every action requiring two-three more clicks than necessary.

As for "fast", just the animation in the main action menu would like a word. And then try to select stickers

Don't forget one of its best selling points (especially in the US in ~2010): phone numbers as IDs. Everyone has a phone number, and your friends all know yours and you know theirs. It is the least common denominator of all digital communication. This really reduces friction compared to, say, having to share a username.

It working well on desktop is a big one. The only other messenger that comes close (that I’ve tried anyway; haven’t had a need to use WhatsApp for example) on that front is Telegram, which not only has a Qt-based client that’s decent everywhere but several native clients (Swift/AppKit/UIKit client on macOS on iOS, UWP client on Windows, GTK client for GTK desktops on Linux, etc).

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.

This further undermines the "are they supposed to let Android users use iMessage for free?" defense, given that these users already bought a Mac. And now those paying customers eat hardware bans for using their own hardware in a way Apple doesn't like.

Never would have happened if instead users relied on Briar/Jami/Session/Tox on a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS.

This is an important lesson, take it to heart!

Thus completely missing the point of this product’s entire existence and value proposition. This is not helpful and bordering on snarky. ‘Take note’ that people are well aware of the existence of other messaging services. They don’t want them. They want iMessage. The kid saying that they’re using “Tox on a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS” is sitting by themselves during recess whether you like it or not.

They don't want iMessage. They want what their friends have. If their friends used something else they would use something else.

Eh, many of my friends have WhatsApp, and I don't really like it. Almost all of them "have" Facebook messenger, but again, no one wants to use it. Maybe I'm biased because it's true for me, but I don't really buy this "nothing's special about iMessage" claim.

Which sucks, because Apple's approach here (while not unexpected) is very disappointing.

The other day I found myself logged out of iMessage for Mac and had to reboot to get it to work; wonder if it was related to this. (Never used Beeper)

I bet if you sign out of iCloud then reinstall the Mac and sign in again it'll work again. This is probably the machine signing key being shot down for using it with an unauthorised client rather than the mac being completely banned itself.

Nope. And they’re not detecting the client but going by usage patterns.

Is there a reference for this anywhere / secondary confirmation? Would like to understand risk exposure of relying on iMessage going forward.

This is based on personal experience and user reports where those whose beepers installed displayed errors continued to work, whereas beeper installs configured to refresh registration codes automatically were much more likely to be banned.

It’s important to note that an error in the former config could be ignored for like a month without any actual service disruption; it was 100% aesthetic in some cases.

A week ago I updated my beeper client and it set itself to automatically refresh registration tokens and got banned. I disabled iMessage on all my devices after that.

So against the vendor's advice you sort of shot yourself. Appreciate taking one for the team but I don't see any risk to myself here as I have no intention of using Beeper.

Yep. I know I did something that could jeopardize the service but I will never chastise myself for it...and as someone who spends a sizeable sum yearly on Apple product, I'm going to make it my choice to boycott them unless they do a 180.

I won't abide a company punishing its users for wanting the convenience of picking up their text message convos from Linux because it's otherwise too distracting to pick up a phone each time.

Really happy to take one for the team. I mean that. This was going to happen at some point in the future whether or not I liked it, glad it happened now. I can't live in a world this connected where my linux box and 12 years of texting history is totally cut off from it. No thanks.

The hackintosh community has been troubleshooting iMessage activation issues for a decade.

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...

I got similar issues even with Beeper proper.

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