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Not sure why anyone would think they could build a business around this?
Pretty clear that Apple would and will close any loopholes, even if they have to upgrade the OS itself and make it incompatible with older versions.

Exactly, that was the biggest mistake. Once something goes from a hobby to trying to make money, the situation changes. If he had reverse engineered it and just used it for himself Apple would have ignored it. Charging money is the line. They might have shut it down anyway but charging for it makes it commercial gain from Apple’s service. There’s no way to justify that, whatever you think of it.
 
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I'm not faulting you for thinking this; hell I know how most of this works and have monitored network traffic from my iPhone to confirm only to find nothing, and even I sometimes catch myself wondering the same things because it also happens to a lesser degree to me, despite taking almost all the available precautions.

The truth is that they're just getting better and better at targeting, mixed with a little bit of coincidence here and there.

One of the more famous examples from a decade ago was how Target was (and still is) able to predict pregnancies based on nothing more than shopping habits.

Technology has since come a long way, and data is now more than ever correlated to target ads.

I myself sometimes get ads for things I’ve had on my mind but haven't even talked about with anyone.

So I can't blame anyone for thinking they're being spied on (they are, just not in the way they often think), but it's important to stay level-headed.

I hear ya, it's just that so many of the things I experience are really really specific. The other day I had a patient with a really out of left field fairly rare diagnosis which we had a 30 minute conversation regarding. The next day I see a bunch of news stories on it in my news feed. It's just interesting that if my data profile, or whatever profile is digitally sold and distributed, inferred that I would be interested in news stories about this condition why have I never, ever, seen a single news article on it until the very day after I was speaking about it? And no, I did not use the internet, do a search, or anything else on the subject. It's not isolated either, I have very very specific stuff like this happening all the time. I've just grown to accept it.
 
I agree, but on the other hand I strongly disagree with them locking down iMessage like this in the first place. Beeper Mini did not have malicious intentions.

Surely there should be a way to provide a hardware key from any other device and log in using it. Surely, someone who owns an Apple device should at the very least be able to authenticate an iMessage system on a 3rd party device.

They say it's about spam - I don't believe that. The amount of spam even in Discord is as small as it is on iMessage. I'm not buying it.

PS: Also, I should note that the exploit they were using wasn't new. I used it for a Hackintosh over 10 years ago. They certainly did know about it for a long, long time. The only reason they did this was to kill Beeper, not because of the security breach. Don't kid yourselves.

You can do this yourself if you legitimately own an Apple device. It can be relayed from a Mac.

The two big issues here is they were impersonating an Apple device ID, and they were trying to charge for it.
The hackintosh was probably doing the same thing but nobody made money and it wasn’t worth it to Apple to try to limit MacOS as it is such a small market anyway. They are clearly more protective of iMessage.

Apple is right though that this does leak metadata, to Beeper if no one else. Now Beeper’s security becomes important. And recall the company that Nothing used wasn’t even using https. Maybe this could be done securely but at the very least it adds another third party to trust.

Apple has clearly decided iMessage is a commercial advantage, and considering how much interest there seems to be in it, they are probably right. It’s within their right to do this. The EU appears to be trying to tackle the issue of interoperability in messaging but for now this is what we’ve got.
 
Exactly, that was the biggest mistake. Once something goes from a hobby to trying to make money, the situation changes. If he had reverse engineered it and just used it for himself Apple would have ignored it. Charging money is the line. They might have shut it down anyway but charging for it makes it commercial gain from Apple’s service. There’s no way to justify that, whatever you think of it.

He simply thought it would be much harder for apple to shut down his app than it actually was.
 
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He used fake OSX mountain lion device serial numbers, that was what he used. Apple just blocked those.

He simply thought it would be much harder for apple to shut down his app than it actually was.

He shouldn’t have thought that then. He might have just broken Mountain Lion activation for everyone. This was my concern that I expressed with the fact that this was all reverse engineered, by a high school student. He can’t know what he doesn’t know. Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns.” And being so young he may lack the experience to realize that. Yikes he wasn’t even alive when Rumsfeld said that.
 
He used fake OSX mountain lion device serial numbers, that was what he used. Apple just blocked those.
So people with old Mac with Mountain Lion can no longer register with iMessage (or use iMessage?) Way to go Apple -- now that I'm mad about.
 
hahaha wow look at how much you need to dictate the terms of the discussion to defend your argument in order for it to be valid at all.

it’s almost like you’re wrong 🤯
Because you know that vendors customize the operating system for their ecosystem. It’s a bit more nuanced than yes or no. But you got caught as you were backing up the “platform” argument but it’s much more nuanced than that.
 
I hear ya, it's just that so many of the things I experience are really really specific. The other day I had a patient with a really out of left field fairly rare diagnosis which we had a 30 minute conversation regarding. The next day I see a bunch of news stories on it in my news feed. It's just interesting that if my data profile, or whatever profile is digitally sold and distributed, inferred that I would be interested in news stories about this condition why have I never, ever, seen a single news article on it until the very day after I was speaking about it? And no, I did not use the internet, do a search, or anything else on the subject. It's not isolated either, I have very very specific stuff like this happening all the time. I've just grown to accept it.

But your patient likely did do searches about it. And your phones were in the same place at the same time. Same thing happened to me helping an elderly relative with pairing her hearing aid to her iPhone. I did the search on her phone, and now Apple News is convinced that I want to hear all about hearing aids. She was on my wireless at the time as well.

Also I notice Google bugs me every time now to enable microphone access so I can play Name That Tune. Yeah, I’m sure that’s the only thing they want it for…
 
Instead Apple’s likely going to kick Beeper off the App Store, terminate the developer account, remote erase and brick the devices logged in with Apple ID associated either device and ban them from owning Apple device for life, and potentially turn on the KILL SWITCH to remotely delete the app from all the installed devices. (No refunds for paid users)

Basically, you break Apple’s rule, you pay the price by not only being banned from App Store, they ban you from ever owning Apple devices and ecosystem for life.

I would say this is over the top but the fact is Apple does have the power to do all of those things.
 
My iPhone can communicate securely with an Android phone user over WhatsApp. Not sure why yours can’t.

No, we’re talking about proper safe and first party app communication. Not giving your data to the Zucc. I thought that was obvious.
 
You're not an iPhone user!

What are you on about?

Your iPhone allows you to install everything from Signal to Telegram and everything in between. Hell, you could even install whatever Google’s latest name for their messaging service is.

The App Store is literally there for you to get apps and services that Apple doesn’t provide by default.

All of those options allow you to send messages to people that don’t use Apple devices, secure or otherwise, so that can't be what you care about.

Which leaves me wondering, what it truly is that you want.

Ah, so I need to commit my data to a third party provider in order to securely communicate with Android devices?
If you can’t see the problem, I think you are in too deep in the Apple pool. Time to get out, my dude.
 
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The problem is, however, that with any relationship, if something is such a dealbreaker to you to the extent that you keep complaining about it, it might be time to end the relationship and seek a new one.
“Dealbreaker”. That’s the key word here. It’s not a dealbreaker for most people. It is just a persistent annoyance for both iOS and Android users which only Apple can solve. People on here act like there’s already a solution for consumers to fix this annoyance. THERE ISN’T.
 
What are you on about?

Your iPhone allows you to install everything from Signal to Telegram and everything in between. Hell, you could even install whatever Google’s latest name for their messaging service is.

The App Store is literally there for you to get apps and services that Apple doesn’t provide by default.

All of those options allow you to send messages to people that don’t use Apple devices, secure or otherwise, so that can't be what you care about.

Which leaves me wondering, what it truly is that you want.

Kind of reminds me of Microsoft in the 90s and their antitrust case because they were bundling Internet Explorer. Although Apple has less penetration (that's why they are getting off on this issue in the EU) so maybe it doesn't approximate antitrust yet. Or maybe society and governments just have a more corporate view on antitrust issues than they did 25 years ago. But I would think there should be some responsibility for a company to ensure that a basic and required communication service was universal. I get it, SMS exists, but that should not be considered the minimum anymore. And no, the argument that consumers can just install apps doesn't really make sense because go try and convince the hundreds of contacts in my phone list to download and switch to a 3rd party app. It's like Microsoft in the 90s saying they should not have lost their anti trust case because Netscape was available, that's the whole point, that it's skewed because it's the default app when people unwrap their phones.

Anyway the argument is moot because Apple has agreed to include RCS, which is more of an acceptable basic minimum. I can't blame them if they want to keep all the other bells and whistles locked behind their walled garden. It's a smart move on their part, appease the regulators, shut Google up, but keep their walled garden.
 
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But your patient likely did do searches about it. And your phones were in the same place at the same time. Same thing happened to me helping an elderly relative with pairing her hearing aid to her iPhone. I did the search on her phone, and now Apple News is convinced that I want to hear all about hearing aids. She was on my wireless at the time as well.

Also I notice Google bugs me every time now to enable microphone access so I can play Name That Tune. Yeah, I’m sure that’s the only thing they want it for…

Yes you might be right, but I'm not seeing the connection big data could make between myself and my patient other than maybe our phones were in the same geographical location, but so were 50 other people on that day. How do you think your relative's phone knew YOU were doing the search? I don't doubt there is a connection somewhere and I'd be supremely curious to have a data scientist chime in.
 
i honestly can’t believe how some people are reacting to this. there’s an ios elitism that some people have that i haven’t seen since like 2011 and it’s so embarrassing.
Elitism? Some of us just want to engage with a platform that is serious about privacy and security, is that a lot to ask for? What's so wrong about that?
 
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I really don't understand why iOS users (mainly in the US as elsewhere we use apps that aren't limited to one brand) don't want better communication with people who opt not to use apple devices. WhatsApp works as well as iMessage. And you can use it on more devices.
Maybe it's really not that big of a problem to the rest of us because there are other platforms available like Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp etc., if that's necesssary. I'd much rather have my primary messaging app remain secure.
 
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I really don't understand why iOS users (mainly in the US as elsewhere we use apps that aren't limited to one brand) don't want better communication with people who opt not to use apple devices. WhatsApp works as well as iMessage. And you can use it on more devices.

I'll ask the same question I ask anyone else confused why in the US we just don't use 3rd party apps, how easy do you think it would be to convince HUNDREDS of my contacts to trust and download a 3rd party app and switch to it when texting with me? I wish I could put up a big banner saying this every time someone from the EU comes in and asks why we all just don't use Whatsapp.

I kind of find it amusing that so many are talking about security/privacy and how Beeper deserves what they got (and I personally don't disagree), but are more than willing to let Meta/Facebook handle their texting as I see Whatsapp as the service most recommend.
 
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Ok I’m not an advocate of ‘throwing Timmy in jail’, but you’re kidding yourself if you think Apple isn’t anti-competitive when it comes to iMessage. Apple could offer iMessage on Android, but intentionally chose not to do so because they were afraid more kids would chose Android relative to their parents - this actually came out in public discovery in the Epic v Apple court case.

Also, when asked publicly about RCS or cross platform support for secure, rich communications between Apple and Android users, Tim famously said ‘buy your mom an iPhone’

I would posit to you a company whose answer to cross compatibility is simply ‘Make everyone on planet Earth buy our iPhones, problem solved!’ is extremely monopolistic and anticompetitive.

Source: Yahoo News
“During a question-and-answer session, a journalist raised the issue of the iPhone’s incompatibility with rich communication services (RCS) messaging, preventing the seamless sharing of video clips with their Android-using mom. It’s been a longstanding issue between Apple and Android devices. Cook acknowledged that it isn’t a top priority for the company. If the reporter wanted to fix the issue, Cook joked, “buy your mom an iPhone.””

Source: The Verge
“Eddy Cue pushed to bring iMessage to Android as early as 2013, according to a new deposition made public as part of the Epic case. Currently Apple’s senior VP of software and services, Cue wanted to devote a full team to iMessage support on Android, only to be overruled by other executives.
The line of questioning is likely to play a significant role in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit, which argues that iOS app store exclusivity represents an illegal use of market power. Epic has made clear in previous filings that it plans to make iMessage exclusivity part of that argument, citing a 2016 email from Phil Schiller that argues iMessage expansion “will hurt us more than help us.””
Apple does not have to write a core app on a rival platform. Ask much as you don’t like that it is not anti competitive.
 
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I really don't understand why iOS users (mainly in the US as elsewhere we use apps that aren't limited to one brand) don't want better communication with people who opt not to use apple devices. WhatsApp works as well as iMessage. And you can use it on more devices.
WhatsApp has 90% market share across much of the EU. And yet it's the US that's limited to one brand? Hah!

Especially a brand that's a privacy and social disaster fully under the control of one person.
 
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