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It was a waste of time beginning to end. If they were smart, they were doing this for a quick cash grab. If they were dumb, then they legitimately thought this would work long-term.
Whatever their motives are I'm glad it brought the interoperability conversation into the spotlight.
It's a marketing and publicity stunt, kinda like Nothing's fiasco with the Sunbird app. The goal is to get people talking about them and come out looking like the good guy underdog vs Apple. To be fair their plan is probably working judging by how many people are jumping out in front of Beeper and condemning "Big Apple", even though Apple is just doing what any service provider should be doing.
I just don't understand how anyone could base a company on an exploit. That is what it is in the end - the found an exploit and took advantage of it. Seems like the logical thing would be for apple to immediately close the exploit.
The answer is right there. If Apple wanted iMessage on Android it would be there. It isn't so they don't want it.
Beeper isn't relying on this tho. It's whole USP is unified messaging and it wants iMessage.
Beeper predates this new iMessage thing by a few years. You just hadn't heard of them apparently.
See news story from 2021:
It was a waste of time beginning to end.
Sounded like the original effort was hobby reverse engineering for fun by a smart school kid and then Beeper went ahead and tried to turn it into a product.
It's almost like when companies try to build a wall, some people will try to break in, even for the sake of it, maybe the thrill of it, even if it worked for a minute.
Whatever their intentions, I'm glad they did. Apple got to strengthen their infrastructure (somewhat, users are still using it with access to a Mac), and it brought messaging interoperability conversation to congress.
People seem to forget Apple founders were doing this shit too. They build a blue box and sold it too.
That's why nobody thinks the 16 year old who found the method is in the wrong here. It's really cool they found that, especially at that age. Now to build an entire product off of an exploit while loudly announcing it is just stupid.
And a lot of people went to jail for phreaking, I guess the beeper guys are lucky.
They need to go to the EU and get them to intervene! Only the EU can stand up to apple.
The EU doesn't care about iMessage. Almost nobody uses that thing over here. Usually Applie die hards try it out after new features have been released, try to convince everyone that it's the year of iMessage now, and move back to WhatsApp what the vast majority is actually using.
Oh I know.... I wasn't being serious. π
Good. I can't wait to stop hearing about this app and their stupid feud with Apple.
You don't need iMessage. Your iFriends need RCS. Beeper is not the solution.
And while they wait for RCS, they can just install Signal. Signal works and is funded by a non-profit who puts in more work to know as little as possible about you than any other company/org out there.
i dont want to download another app to talk to one person
Fair, let me buy a new phone to talk to one person instead.
fair. anyone who doesn't want to install Signal can reach me via text/SMS or RCS. those are the options.
I wish there was like a way to just have a 1-to-1 voice conversation with someone on my phone and it be universally supported across all phones.
Unfortunately Signal, unlike Telegram, breaks when I uninstall google play services.
You have to reinstall Signal after uninstalling play services. Then it detects that play services aren't there and sets itself up to receive push notifications without it.
But to be on the safe side, I'd install Signal-FOSS instead which has no Google dependencies at all.
Thanks for this, today I learn
It doesn't for me? I run it on Graphene without google play services. You just have to turn off battery optimization, but it's very reasonable in its battery usage. I've been off battery for 18 hours, and am at 81% on my Pixel 8. Signal is at less than 1% of battery use, and it still will be in a few days when I'm ready to charge, unless I use it significantly on my phone. But I mostly use it from my laptop, and just get notifications on my phone, so probably not.
In contrast, K9 Mail is at around 3%, it's running at battery optimized, and I haven't opened it at all.
get the signal apk from their website instead of downloading with aurora store
weird, works on my de-google'd OnePlus 6T running Android 13
Settling for RCS means no E2EE. It's also handing control over messaging back to carriers (or most likely, Google, because not many carriers have RCS servers) which is a step backwards.
For all of Apple's many many faults, iMessage is a pretty good service once you pay the Apple tax to get in.
It is a really nice app though. I have never even used the iMessage feature.
I'll do one better, I've been a beeper (not beeper mini) beta tester for a while, and I've had uninterrupted imessage access through their older method which never had a single outage!
I imagine though they have been using a method like spinning up virtual mac machines or matrix bridge to get it to work.
either way it is by far my favorite messaging app, I'm so damn tired of all these companies walling their messaging service into some enclosed garden while everyone I know decides that THEIR favorite app is the one everyone should be using.
I mostly blame Apple for walling off the default text messaging app on the iOS platform. It is ridiculous to me that we are over 10 years into the smartphone era and are stuck in a duopoly with two players that would rather degrade communications between platforms than prioritize interoperability for some base level functionality. I hope that Beeper's campaign forces regulation that puts an end to the insanity.
Remember when Android was entirely open source?
Why not go whinge to Google to develop a messaging system that Apple users want to integrate with..
They did. RCS. And it sounds like Apple will be adopting it due to regulatory pressure. But the idea of "Apple users will want to integrate with" has a flaw. A lot of their userbase happily drinks the Kool-aid and want their walled garden, even if it's not in their best interest.
Maybe there is no kool-aid and it is just better, hence why these apps exist. As you said, RCS is coming yet people still arenβt happy. It sounds like Google canβt make a decent messaging app and is mobilising itβs user base to force the issue instead of innovating
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