Beeper pulls the plug on iMessage in response to Apple banning users | Hacker News Reader

Beeper pulls the plug on iMessage in response to Apple banning users

androidpolice.com

29 pointsraybb22 comments

People complain about the green/blue bubble thing that Apple does, but I like to be able to see if the other user is using iOS, because SMS has no encryption whatsoever, and this iMessage shim that Beeper is using effectively opens the possibly of MITM the iMessage traffic without one’s knowledge. From this security perspective, I don’t have a problem with Apple cracking down on this misuse of iMessage.

But you can run the bridge locally, so the "MitM" is the user themselves, and not actually a threat.

Seems like Apple is well capable of enabling secure messaging to and from outside the Apple-ecosystem and are using security as a red herring, in that case.

If that was really Apples only concern too then they'd separate the bubbles color from having both security and non-security indications (and probably publish a library, or at least not take down any reverse engineering attempt, so the e2e can be maintained fully instead of relayed). They don't because security is just a convenient pitch for why things have to be this way when the bubble is overloaded and nobody else can connect to the servers without getting banned.

But there are only two ways to have a message appear in Apple's Messages app:

1) If it's an SMS, which has no encryption possible

2) If it's going through the iMessage service, in which case it has all the protections and features that Apple puts there.

(At some point in the future, there will be a third way: if it's an RCS message. We don't fully know what features that will support on Messages, or what bubble color it will have.)

What you're suggesting would only make sense if there were some kind of "Messages API" that various companies could use to get their chat apps to interoperate with it. Maybe there should be, but there isn't, and suggesting, in isolation, that Apple separate out the security indicator from the platform indicator of the bubbles is like suggesting that supermarkets be required to put clear notifications on their apple pies that contain salmon.

I'm suggesting Apple will continue to do anything that aligns opening up iMessage in any way with the maximum amount of security implications. They will continue to require any conversation about opening up iMessage to become focused on arguments of the security implications instead of just letting it be secure in general. I'm not suggesting they've left any way around that today or that it behaves differently today, just that it's a weapon they use today.

That the conversation has turned into comparison to "contains salmon" labels on pies is a great example the strategy is wonderful at complicating any discussion around whether it should be opened up.

I was reminded that live bridges are also still allowed, e.g. how "Microsoft Phone Link for iPhone" works. So keep in mind even with banning relays there are officially supported ways an app can MITM iMessage traffic, regardless of bubble color you see on your end.

Extremely disappointing, I had hoped Apple would stop caring once things got to the point of "the user has a MacBook and iPhone, now they want to run something on them".

I'd say maybe Beeper could be the local SMS app (no iMessage) and bridge that way but I think that's still not possible on iPhone even after the DMA changes. The best possibility remaining would be something like the Google Voice(or other VOIP) bridge they've floated.

10 years later and I'm still waiting for something that worked as 2014 era Hangouts - everything in one app or web page on any device you use.

I wish they had stayed under the radar. I paid $120 for Beeper back in 2022 because it provided one thing that was absolutely game-changing for me: the ability to access Apple Messages through the web. I use an iPhone, as do the vast majority of people I communicate with regularly. Our conversations are stuck in the locked Apple ecosystem.

But I spent my days (happily) using a Chrome OS computer that is (unfortunately) disallowed from running Android or Linux applications. I find it super annoying to have to use my phone for messages, especially if they're longer conversations. And when someone sends me a link, or I want to send them one, it is a tremendous hassle where I often have to e-mail it to myself.

Beeper fixed this perfectly. I could sign in on their (technically unsupported but has always worked fine for me) web version and do all my messaging from the broswer on my computer. It was all fine until they made a big splash and tickled the dragon. Now it's ruined for everyone.

I don't care that 99.9% of commenters on these Hacker News (and elsewhere) threads are just saying "why would anyone want this?" or "serves 'em right" or whatever. You don't have to understand it. It had a use case, I got a lot out of it, and I would gladly have paid an ongoing subscription.

P.S. Advice as to what I should just do instead of what I want to do is not desired.

I hope someday we get the real story of what Eric was hoping to accomplish with Beeper. His previous company Pebble was basically annihilated by the Apple Watch—was this an attempt to give regulators the opening they needed to take Apple down? If so, the choice of iMessage is utterly baffling, as it's only popular in the US and has plenty of very popular alternatives.

The whole thing just feels like a monumental waste of human effort.

Beeper was always about more than iMessage. It just turned out to be the most desired/special integration, despite supporting so many other networks. A good example is one of the employees posted an image from 2020 in the community server. It was of back when it was called "NovaChat" and the purpose then was still just to aggregate all your chat apps, no specific mention of Apple or iMessage even.

> I hope someday we get the real story of what Eric was hoping to accomplish with Beeper

Beeper is bridging many services, such as LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter DMs, Slack etc. I really like this, as I miss an all-in-one messenger app like Pidgin.

Just because Beeper includes iMessage, I wouldn't view Beeper as his personal vendetta against Apple for the Pebble vs Apple Watch thing.

It bothers me because they poked the bear and i lost a feature, to use iMessage from my work computer (Linux). Really makes me dislike Apple, but still - Beeper basically nuked the feature themselves by making such an odd move.

I really need to switch away from Apple. Ugh.

Beeper was always going to grow and go (back) to being paid. It would have happened eventually, even without Beeper Mini.

I still have my pebble(s, actually, originals and time). I haven't yet found any smartwatch with as much of a community around it as it had (and still does, many years after the company was sold).

My (attempt at a) replacement is a withings scanwatch, but it doesn't do color or have apps. The pebble physical buttons are awesome for doing something when you're restricted from using your phone somehow. The two weeks of battery life was also amazing. Anybody know any smartwatches with two weeks or more of runtime on a charge?

I loved Pebble. My wife and I had multiple watches and I was very active in the dev community. If Pebble were still around I’d still be a customer.

Pebble’s problem wasn’t the Apple Watch, although it certainly didn’t help. What killed Pebble was its growth. They hired a lot of people and rented a very expensive office, but they just didn’t have the sales to support it. The Time Round was an absolute marvel of engineering, but it should’ve been put on the back burner until the OG and the Time actually sold.

Out of all the money Pebble spent very little was for actually advertising their product. Outside of tech circles it just wasn’t a known thing, which was a shame.

It also didn’t help that their app store had no payment solution. One was eventually released by a third party but that didn’t help draw developers. Their SDK was a joy to use and Pebble Cloud was awesome. But if you can’t really get a return on investment because you can’t sell your app then nobody is going invest.

I miss Pebble a lot. I still pull out my Time Steel every so often just to admire it.

The Beeper debacle perfectly captures the walled garden of the Apple ecosystem. Kinda poetic given the name too. Stay inside this little block of paradise but don't you dare eat the apple.

Before this entire debacle unfolded, I really liked having Beeper on my iPhone to send and receive texts from my Windows computer and mix my chat platforms together like the old days of IM. I was on the waitlist early and I even got the Beepy Mini and have had a lot of fun messing with it. The visual design of their app/logo is distinct and charming. I told people to try it out. I would make detailed bug reports for issues I hit and the team would reply, and fix them.

But the shine really wore off over the last couple months, and I finally uninstalled it yesterday. It’s just become less and less reliable throughout, with messages arriving out of order, etc. There was plenty of room left to polish and improve the experience as an iPhone messaging client too, but instead of doing that they picked this fight with Apple and it feels like any other roadmap items and general stability fell by the wayside.

I wonder what the master plan for Beeper was here. Because I feel like as a user of their original offering I was pretty much left aside so they could fight this battle that unfolded exactly as futilely as skeptical HN commenters predicted it would on day 1. Were there just not enough of us using the original offering, they had to throw this Hail Mary?

The updates channel used to be full of incoming features and enhancements, once it became a constant drumbeat of the next flailing attempt to circumvent Apple with the Android client I figured we weren’t ever getting Stickers support. iMessage sending and receiving performance in my iPhone and computers has generally degraded over the last couple months too, and I have to assume it’s related.

I only care about imessage in that there is no easy way for my child to use an iPad (without a SIM card) to use the messages app to message me on my phone.

Luckily, I own a MacBook that's almost always on, so I can at least use AirMessage.

Huh? WiFi and an iCloud account works fine.

Yes, if the recipient has an iPhone or another Mac device. Less so if the recipient only has an android phone and no always-on Mac devices.

"All right, then keep your 'precious'" is also my reaction to this kind of thing.

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