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Apple Confirms It Shut Down iMessage for Android App Beeper Mini
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Revenue is meaningless.
Discussions of subjects like this on the internet are virtually worthless because the participants don’t understand the most basic concepts involved, but insist on opining anyway.
Have you offered your neighbours the option to use your electricity supply?
Would you then be happy if they hacked in and started using it?
"Open source" is the key word and signal actually came after WhatsApp and neither is hacking into each others servers
the entire discussion on blue vs green bubbels is also worthless, but yet here we are.
You can customize your bubbles to be any color on Android. It isn’t about the color of the bubbles. Do you actually think that’s what this is about?
That’d be nice if it were true, but it’s not. You can hide the Messages app from the Home Screen, but it remains installed and in the App Library. For certain messaging services (SMS, MMS, iMessage, and soon RCS), you must use Messages.
Note: This is neglecting third-party apps that let you use SMS/MMS with some other phone number than the number(s) directly associated with your iPhone, like Google Voice and Burner.
Come on already.
Nobody cares about the color of the bubble. We care about the fact that our iPhones does not allow us to send secure messages to people not using Apple products. Apple have dug themselves into a childish hole that makes all Apple user exposed when they need to communicate with people not in the Eco system. Apple users are the losers in this case. It has nothing to do with Android at all.
How is this monopolistic and anti-competitive?
A monopoly is defined as market with a single supplier. Here we are talking about a market (messaging) with multiple options (iMessage, Android, SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, etc.) from multiple suppliers. This is the definition of a competitive market. The fact that consumers choose one supplier at a higher rate does not make that supplier a monopoly — that is the market choosing a winner.
Anti-competitive practices are practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market or that harm smaller competitors, new entrants or consumers. Apple created a strong feature set (including privacy capabilities) that made iMessage a popular alternative for consumers in the messaging market. Beeper did not provide a new messaging alternative to iMessage, Android, SMS or others — it simply exploited a vulnerability in iMessage to provide an app that bridges iMessage and Android. As such, Beeper is not a competitive messaging service, a new entrant or smaller rival in the messaging market.
Apple’s actions were neither monopolistic nor anti-competitive — they simply eliminated a security vulnerability (spoofing) that was being exploited by Beeper. The fact that this vulnerability existed and was previously exploited does not change the fact that it was a vulnerability and does not preclude Apple from eliminating it now.
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Here’s the article talking about it. but I read in the comments that the author maybe didn’t explain it correctly. The author says that Meta would be able to ask Apple to open up messages, but it’s more like any company would be able to ask Apple or Meta or whatever other big one to open up.
Apple's iMessage May Dodge EU Regulatory Demand for Interoperability
Apple's iMessage chat service may dodge EU regulatory demands for platform interoperability after all. Bloomberg reports that an investigation by...
www.macrumors.com
I would say is quite legitimate in a stage like this where it’s very difficult to new apps to show up. It’s like in Spain the big communication companies (and I think electric companies work the same) are forced to rent their infrastructure to smaller companies so they can offer their own service.
Seems like smaller companies would be “stealing” from Apple/Meta coming late to the party and having tools to connect to their message apps, but I mean, they’re ultra big companies and they’re not always looking after their users satisfaction, they’re not gonna go bankrupt after that and after all it may improve the official apps besides having alternatives suited for each kind of user.
My iPhone can communicate securely with an Android phone user over WhatsApp. Not sure why yours can’t.
It not so much the color of the bubbles, it's the functionality associated with them. A green text bubble on an iPhone says nothing about delivery, read status, having the ability to cancel the message if desired, plus dozens of other niceties we iPhone users have come to use with iMessage. Oh, and security.
WhatsApp is not free. It comes at the expense of your privacy being sold to Meta. I won't do that.
They're pretending to be something they're not to illegally gain access to someone else's servers and charging users for the service... the very definition of a hack and illegal. What did they expect from Apple? For them to be like, gee, thank you for illegally accessing our systems and charging users for a service and brand we have spent lots of money to build? Android users are seriously delusional if they believe what Beeper CEO is trying to do is legal. If they really wanted to bring iMessage to Android, they should've been working directly with Apple for some type of partnership not illegally hacking their servers this way. I'm happy Apple is working hard to protect its users from malicious actors.
of course not, I know what it's about. don't mansplain to me! just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I'm thick.
But Apple has already promised RCS is coming soon. And at the end of the day, Apple is a business that built a brand with iMessage. Of course they want to keep these features and brand they spent a lot of R&D money on exclusive to their company to sell their products. I don't see Microsoft offering their suite of products free to other companies.
I, for one, much prefer the green bubble as heads up it's from an Android device. That's my expectation. I have several apps that have peers available for Android and that several colleagues and I use that are encrypted for important stuff. Anyone on Android who contacts me out of the blue (ahem) usually hears from me they can start using other secure apps to communicate with me. If not, their call. And of course friends/fam using Apple and blessed with the blue bubble are fine. I do NOT want a blanket blue over green double bubble like Beeper. I look forward to RCS and expect an accent on the blue bubble indicating it's been translated.
They are sending request to someone else's servers according to how those servers are supposed to be interacted with and the servers are complying with the requests. There is nothing illegal in that.
Well, they publicly stated they are open to such a collaboration but Apple definitely is not, so I doubt such collaboration will ever happen...
If Apple believes the access was illegal they would sue without question, but note that interestingly Apple in their own statement never claimed the access was illegal.
It's not? But the whole premise behind Beeper Mini and their marketing directly says "now you can be a blue bubble too" - clearly they care that the Bubbles are blue, they're trying to use someone's else's brand to make profits.
What a comparison! Nobody “hacked into” anything here.
The only reason why we keep hearing from Epic and now Beeper, is Apple. We will not stop hearing from them until Apple enables extremely commonsense functionality like cross-platform iMessage and sideloading.
Apple built this market of sketchy iMessage solutions for Android, and only they can end it by releasing iMessage on Android. Until then, there will always be annoying entities like Beeper Mini playing the hero in trying to force Apple to make iMessage cross-platform.
I don’t like the idea of a third party enabling a hacky workaround for iMessage. I don’t like using AltStore to sideload. But as long as the demand is there, someone will move to fill the void.
What beeper did was hack plain and simple. I wouldn’t be surprised if apple was discussing this with the FBI as they entered apples servers without permission.
It’s not “common sense” functionality. If you don’t like you can’t do it- don’t use their (apples) services and hardware.
Does anyone think apple can be forced - except in the case of regulations?
I truly didn’t mean to offend. But also why would you make it about the bubbles?
Just say what you mean: If you want to have seamless chats without annoying your iPhone friends, just get an iPhone.
It’s quite notable these days that if someone describes something as “common sense” you can be assured it most definitely isn’t.