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Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

russelg
286 replies
18h38m

Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening. It is a bit dicey when you're charging for it, but since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist.

Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? The level of trust we have to have for Apple is approximately the same for any other iMessage client. Obviously Mini was using the encryption properly else it wouldn't have worked to begin with. Of course, it's very unlikely Apple is doing that. Just putting the thought out there.

One other point raised that I saw was about how iMessage costs Apple money to run, and non-product owners should not have access since they haven't contributed. This falls apart if you own any Apple devices. Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll.

crazygringo
107 replies
17h59m

Where is the hacker spirit here?

The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use.

It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense.

Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll.

Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac where you can use it as much as you like.

fauigerzigerk
25 replies
11h56m

> Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac where you can use it as much as you like.

For what?

I own a Mac an iPhone and an iPad but iMessage and FaceTime are entirely useless to me because no one I communicate with on a regular basis uses Apple devices. Same thing with various iCloud sharing features. Not using the family sharing offers is entirely uneconomical as well.

So what happens is that I gravitate to other ecosystems. I use WhatsApp. I upload all my photos to Google Photos. I mirror my iCloud Drive to Google Drive to share and collaborate with people on various things.

I have enabled Apple’s advanced data protection for end to end encryption but it’s entirely farcical as my stuff is all over the place anyway.

Almost everything Apple does in terms of software and services is useless to me. They are not locking me in. They are locking me out.

I’m paying for their excellent hardware, the m-series CPUs in particular, but I’m using my “spare” Pixel phone more often because the software suits me better.

I appreciate a lot of things that Apple does but it’s only a question of time until some other ARM based hardware catches up enough for me to stop overpaying Apple for software I can’t use anyway.

Grustaf
9 replies
8h23m

If you don't want to communicate with other Apple owners over iMessage, then there is no issue.

What Beeper set out to do was to solve the opposite problem, people who don't have Apple devices, but want to use iMessage.

And the poster above did have an Apple device, and wanted to use iMessage, but didn't seem to realise that iMessage works on Macs too.

fauigerzigerk
4 replies
7h13m

>If you don't want to communicate with other Apple owners over iMessage, then there is no issue.

The issue is that I as an Apple user want to be able to use iMessage to communicate with Android users.

photonerd
2 replies
6h54m

Given Android users don’t have iMessage that’s kind of not an issue then.

fauigerzigerk
1 replies
6h51m

This _is_ the issue and it's what this whole debate is about.

ToucanLoucan
0 replies
2h36m

It isn't a debate. You're demanding access to a walled garden on the grounds that you don't think the wall should be there.

You're entitled to use or not use iMessage per your preference. You are not entitled to use of iMessage on a platform of your choosing. Where do we stop this? Is Apple then required to create iMessage clients for Windows Phone as well? Perhaps a Blackberry client too? Maybe a website?

If you want to share an iMessage account and all the rest of the ecosystem benefits Apple provides, then get an iPhone. That's how you do that. And you can still absolutely talk to Android users once you have an iPhone, because the iPhone provides the essential middle-agent between iMessage and SMS that enables you to do that. Apple has done this forever and has designed Messages to degrade gracefully: you are not barred from texting anyone who doesn't have an iPhone, instead your message is converted to SMS completely seamlessly and sent from your phone even if you actually sent it from a Mac or iPad.

The endless moaning and whining from people not in their ecosystem about iMessage is so, so fucking tired at this point: from the accusations of platform lockout to the bitching about the fact that SMS messages are green instead of blue, on and on. If you guys are SO HARD UP for that iMessage goodness then just pony up for an iPhone, holy shit. Or at the very least, go bitch up Google's tree so they'll develop a decent messaging client that won't be abandonware within 6 months.

stanleydrew
0 replies
4h25m

But that's not within your control. To use iMessage with Android users you'd need to convince them to use an iMessage client. Usually that means buying an Apple device, but with Beeper Mini the burden was reduced to an app install. But you still need Android users to take affirmative action for you to use iMessage with them.

rezonant
2 replies
7h30m

Only via email address. You need an iPhone to receive iMessage via phone number, and in a country where texting is dominant, you're going to be texted via that phone number, even by your iPhone friends.

OJFord
1 replies
7h16m

If you set it up on an iPhone once, is the number then linked somehow? Since fully Apple users do get phone number iMessages pop up on macOS too right? Or is that only locally synchronised by Bluetooth or something?

rezonant
0 replies
7h7m

Yes, you can receive iMessages to the phone number on linked devices when the phone is off. You cannot receive SMS when the phone is off.

Melatonic
0 replies
4h4m

The poster does - he was claiming that since he bought one Mac device capable of iMessage that he should then he allowed to use it also in his android device (where it would be far more useful) since he already paid the apple "tax" or what have you for iMessage access.

gms
5 replies
10h27m

What’s the problem here? Seems like you found fine alternatives.

fauigerzigerk
4 replies
10h9m

My problem is that I'm paying for something that could be far more useful than it is, and I haven't actually found satisfactory alternatives. For instance, I haven't found an end-to-end encrypted and still user friendly cloud option for my photos.

Apple's problem is that they are selling less to me than they could and risk losing me as a hardware customer as well.

Now, I totally get their strategy. It's a bet that net net they are locking more people in than they are locking out. It's hard to tell whether or not this is paying off for them. Not even Apple can know the counterfactuals.

xattt
1 replies
9h11m

I’m trying to figure out why it’s a crappy experience elsewhere, but not on Apple devices. I don’t think Apple deliberately contributes to Android hardware development to just make it less usable.

The ball is in the court of Google et al. to make messaging and video chats less frustrating.

Melatonic
0 replies
4h2m

That's the thing - android to android with RCS and e2e enabled is pretty comparable to iMessage now. And apple could have just opted into adopting the open standard years ago

avianlyric
1 replies
6h54m

For instance, I haven't found an end-to-end encrypted and still user friendly cloud option for my photos.

iCloud Photos is E2EE if you turn on iCloud’s “Advanced Data Protection”. That migrates the vast majority of your iCloud data into E2EE storage.

fauigerzigerk
0 replies
6h30m

I know. That's my whole point. Apple has it but it's of little use to me because of their limited cross-platform sharing.

grishka
4 replies
6h58m

So what happens is that I gravitate to other ecosystems.

I use a Mac but an Android phone. Android because I require the ability to install apps from arbitrary sources, including piracy. Mac because modern Windows is so contemptuous towards its users, and desktop Linux falls apart unless you know the intricacies of its internals.

Anyway, transferring files between the two was a pain in the butt that eventually grew so immense I reverse engineered Google's Nearby Share and made this: https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop

Though yes, I'm not North American so iMessage is just a non-issue to me. I don't know anyone who uses it. No one uses SMS for actual messaging between people, everyone's SMS inbox is 99% OTP codes and various other automatic notifications. Literally everyone who I communicate with is reachable through Telegram.

bonney_io
2 replies
3h25m

I require the ability to install apps from arbitrary sources, including piracy.

No one "requires" access to theft.

grishka
0 replies
1h18m

Piracy isn't theft because it doesn't deprive anyone of anything, and English isn't my native language.

4ndrewl
0 replies
3h14m

If you want to play semantics, you can't "buy" a digital service

pjmlp
0 replies
4h2m

Actually it is more like knowing the intricacies of its distribution specific internals.

pbhjpbhj
2 replies
4h32m

Can you do what people did with Windows in the noughties, install a different OS and get a refund for the OS portion of your purchase (or for the apps portion??), it sounds like you're not using it?

norman784
0 replies
3h25m

AFAIK macOS is free for people with an Apple device, so this won't work.

danaris
0 replies
2h34m

...Where did you get that from their post?

Unless my eyes are just completely missing it, I didn't see anywhere that they said or implied that they weren't using macOS or iOS on their Apple devices.

rezonant
0 replies
7h28m

but I’m using my “spare” Pixel phone more often because the software suits me better.

Welcome! Pixel is all you need.

dzikimarian
19 replies
15h13m

No. Hacker spirit is owning your machine to its full extent. For fun, for profit or just for mayhem.

Apple using instant messaging, where no meaningful innovation happened for decades to build their moat is pathetic and disgusting.

tedunangst
7 replies
14h25m

If your mayhem requires communicating with third party servers, who owns those computers?

colinsane
6 replies
11h51m

then to OP’s “where’s the hacker spirit” question: the answer would be “the hacker spirit is to replace iMessage with anything less controlled”, right? that’s still equally as subversive against The Powers in the sense that “hacker spirit” implies any form of subversion.

rezonant
4 replies
11h31m

Just like how all we needed to do to replace Facebook in its heyday was to make a better Facebook! Remember Diaspora? Any day now its going to dethrone the king and I'll be able to see all my friends updates on Diaspora!

The social graph lock in problem is well documented and well understood. If most people use a certain solution (in this case texting, and particularly in regions where its dominant such as the US) then attempts to make a replacement solution whose success depends on mass adoption has an exponentially more difficult time in achieving adoption, because there's no incentive for users early on (because the social graph isnt there).

At least in the US, texting has a ton of "gravity" compared to other forms of messaging because it is built in to every phone and entirely free with your phone plan, so every user knows they can reach every other person they meet via texting.

New platforms gain critical mass more due to circumstance and luck than anything else. Or, such as the case with TikTok, via deep pockets and relentless advertising.

colinsane
3 replies
9h35m

The social graph lock in problem is well documented and well understood.

i don't actually think it is. i don't know _anyone_ who uses just a single messaging app (and thereby a single protocol-level social graph). i have some mental map in my head: "if i want to reach friend A, i do it on Signal. friend B: Discord. friend C: SMS/tel/PSTN. friend D: Matrix". i think this is a pretty common experience these days: i'd hazard that my mix of 4 apps is on the _small_ side.

i admire Beeper, JMP.chat, and other groups trying to improve messaging via better abstractions. i think it'd be cool if they could maintain iMessage support, i also think it's not critical to their success. the pain points caused by that graph problem you point to is 1) maintaining that mental map and 2) coordinating large group chats. i don't see that the client-side/Beeper-style solution to this is notably worse if they support only 29 protocols instead of 30: for as long as my peers are reachable by more than one messaging app, the odds of bridging between them isn't radically different.

rezonant
2 replies
7h58m

The social graph lock in problem is well documented and well understood. > i don't actually think it is.

Nitpicking but I was saying that the general social graph lock in problem (also referred to as chicken/egg) is well documented.

i don't actually think it is. i don't know _anyone_ who uses just a single messaging app (and thereby a single protocol-level social graph). i have some mental map in my head: "if i want to reach friend A, i do it on Signal. friend B: Discord. friend C: SMS/tel/PSTN. friend D: Matrix". i think this is a pretty common experience these days: i'd hazard that my mix of 4 apps is on the _small_ side.

Hi! Nice to meet you! I use only one messaging app for all of my friends! It's called texting. As far as I know, all of my friends do the same, with the only exception being a few Internet-only friends where we use Discord.

The "mental map" that you are describing is exactly what I want to avoid. I am thankful that I have not had to make one yet, and when people tell me to use over-the-top chat apps like Whatsapp, I can see that the map must be made.

Just because this is the norm, doesn't mean I'm going to do it, especially since we don't do it now. As much as the interoperability problem between RCS and iMessage is an incredibly annoying problem, I would take a single unified messaging experience over some crazy fragmented one with a zillion apps any day.

2) coordinating large group chats. > for as long as my peers are reachable by more than one messaging app, the odds of bridging between them isn't radically different.

A little confused by this, because Beeper and other unifying clients cannot in fact make groups which have participants on multiple platforms at all.

You said you need 4 messaging apps right now to communicate with everyone you communicate with. How many of those users also have all 4 of those messaging apps? Obviously it's not all of them, or you'd just use one messaging app. The fact that you need four implies that for a given selection of contacts, there is a chance that it is impossible to create that group chat, because there is no shared platform they are all on. Then you factor in that in some scenarios you need your contacts to include additional contacts, and perhaps your 4 messaging apps needs to grow to make it happen. And of course if you already made the group and you need to just add one more person then you might have to scrap and remake the group somewhere else. But then that group that already has some messages in it still exists, and people will keep texting it! Now you've split your group chats!

On top of this, I want to note that the mental map you have built is also prone to becoming stale. If one of your friends is on Signal and Whatsapp but prefers Whatsapp, but then uninstalls Whatsapp and forgets to tell you, then you very well may send a message to that person and have it never arrive. Of course they might bail out of both Whatsapp and Signal, and just go back to SMS. Now none of your messages will land- you didn't even think they were interested in SMS.

Sure, if they are a close friend its likely they'll let you know. Most people have 1-5 close friends. But most people also have far more contacts in their contact book, and some of those people they might only message a few times a year. That's not a mental map that can be maintained, or if it can, I don't want to.

colinsane
1 replies
7h15m

I use only one messaging app for all of my friends!

i admire the resolve. on the other hand i think that rules out iMessage playing much role in that long-term, right? like, they're just never going to play nicely with others, it's not easy for the broader developer base to integrate with much less improve, and so on. so you're back to SMS, and the baseline SMS experience now is pretty limiting and stalled (much as SMTP stalled): a big part of why people leave for app-based messengers is for features like voice memos, video-chat, multi-device (e.g. PC) support, better multimedia support, etc. to say "SMS forever" i think is to say "i'm okay never having these features" -- which is a fine decision but important to note.

A little confused by this, because Beeper and other unifying clients cannot in fact make groups which have participants on multiple platforms at all.

i'm pointing to where i understand the landscape to be headed. for channel-based chat systems like Discord, irc, Matrix, XMPP/jabber, Slack, it's common enough to find channels which are bridged across 2 or more of those protocols. my experience with ephemeral group chats is that if i want to plan a large enough event i just end up starting multiple group chats, and the unimportant details are chaotic but the important ones like where/when we're meeting i make sure find their way into both chats. there's a possible future where i start two group chats and my client bridges messages between them in the same way those channel-based systems bridge.

rezonant
0 replies
6h53m

i admire the resolve. on the other hand i think that rules out iMessage playing much role in that long-term, right? like, they're just never going to play nicely with others, it's not easy for the broader developer base to integrate with much less improve, and so on.

Well Apple is implementing RCS, so that's good. But look, I don't really think the blue bubble stuff stems from not being able to put stickers on the conversation. It definitely doesn't come from not being able to emoji-react ("tapback" as Apple calls it) because that still works on SMS, but the SMS participant receives a text message describing the tapback. In Google Messages and other modern clients, that gets interpreted by the phone and turned back into an emoji reaction [1].

I don't think the blue bubble hate comes from people not being able to do inline replies. I don't think it comes from the inability to edit your messages when in an SMS conversation.

The source of the blue bubble hate comes from group chat splitting. When you have an iMessage group chat and you hit Add to add a new user, but that user is not an iMessage user, you are shown a prompt that says "Create a New Group? Contacts not using iMesage can only be added to a new MMS group with the same members. Contacts using email address handles will use a phone number instead."

You are given two options: "Cancel" and "New Group".

If you choose New Group, you'll now have two groups. If you do nothing else, no one knows a new group was created, since no messages were received. If you send a message, its still entirely possible for the other group members to message either or both group chats. Chaos ensues.

It's not clear that Apple is actually going to fix this with RCS. Seems most likely they will not, that group chat splitting will still occur, just replacing SMS with RCS.

i'm pointing to where i understand the landscape to be headed. for channel-based chat systems like Discord, irc, Matrix, XMPP/jabber, Slack, it's common enough to find channels which are bridged across 2 or more of those protocols.

Bridging is hacky, and involves not showing contact information for each user. You (of course), can't start a DM with such a user, and I'd assume things like @ mentions are ambiguous or nonfunctional.

Sure it _can_ be done, but it is kind of a terrible experience. Even Matrix and IRC have the same problem, and that's one I've actively experienced from both sides (IRC and Matrix).

my experience with ephemeral group chats is that if i want to plan a large enough event i just end up starting multiple group chats, and the unimportant details are chaotic but the important ones like where/when we're meeting i make sure find their way into both chats.

I commend you, because you take a lot more effort than most humans to make sure things end up on both ends. In my experience, with the humans I have to deal with, its about a 5-10% of the time this happens, and usually its by sending a screenshot of the other group chat with half of the first line of the next message showing more important details that they decided "weren't relevant" or just didnt fit on the phone screen.

Also it should be obvious but some kinds of planning are simply not possible or require people to perform special courier roles to complete. Things like planning for what weekend everyone's free or what elements of a potluck everyone's going to bring are pretty tedious to manage between 2 group chats.

Furthermore, in my experience events that need planning aren't given dedicated ephemeral group chats, instead they are simply planned on whatever group chats they already have. People don't tend to put a lot of thought into making sure people are included, especially if the group chat is large. Some of the family group chats I'm in are 12-14 people. Not all of those people are coming to the potluck. They still use it, and honestly I think that's better than having to juggle every combination of every participant and keep track of whos in each one.

[1] Side note here, after Google started interpreting the (fairly annoying) iPhone tapback SMS messages as tapbacks, Apple introduced a similar feature to interpret tapback SMS messages --- but only for iPhone sent tapbacks. So the scenario is a group chat with 2 iPhone users in it-- the tapbacks show as SMS to the receiving iPhone, but it gets turned back into a tapback emoji reaction. This only works for iPhone style tapback SMS messages. The slightly different format that Google Messages sends is... ignored...

Pretty much the most smug Apple way they could possibly implement that feature... but now the Pixel in the chat works in all cases and the iPhone only works in half the cases, so it actually only hurts Apple users' experiences

corobo
0 replies
5h15m

Depends who you ask. Me personally? The hacker spirit is coming across an impossible task and doing it anyway.

Figuring it out is much more fun than just using something else!

Make money, don't make money, cash is unrelated to the definition.

nurettin
5 replies
7h52m

Hacker spirit is owning your machine to its full extent.

I thought it was about owning anyone's machine to the full extent. Did this change during the past 30 years?

mediumsmart
1 replies
6h37m
nurettin
0 replies
5h44m

I probably contributed to the how to ask section at some point.

bongobingo1
1 replies
7h19m

hacking vs cracking

segfaultbuserr
0 replies
5h30m

Hacking vs. cracking is a useful system of classification, but the distinction is not absolute, there is a gray area between these two. Many well-respected hackers started their careers by compromising systems of other organizations, cracking copy-protection in commercial systems, or obtaining privileged information about proprietary systems (famously AT&T's telephone system), but these acts were committed mostly out of curiosity, as technical challenges, or as a protest of the perceived power imbalance that violates the spirit of hacking - rather than motivated by monetary gains or a desire to bring mayhem and destruction. Whether or not these activities are acceptable depends on someone's own personal interpretation in a case-by-case basis.

dzikimarian
0 replies
23m

Well 30 years ago owning your machine could be taken for granted. Today - not necessarily.

onethought
3 replies
10h35m

What is the meaningful innovation in messaging that happened elsewhere?

dzikimarian
2 replies
6h3m

It didn't happen anywhere. Yet IM vendors (not only Apple) still pretend we need propertiary protocol to transport a few bytes of unicode. It should be standardized long time ago.

flkenosad
1 replies
5h30m

Is there an existing open standard that works just like iMessage?

tristan957
0 replies
3h44m

You mean E2EE chat? Yes. There are even federated protocols.

ed_elliott_asc
0 replies
12h25m

This is a bit strong, “disgusting” conjures up other things for me.

tibbydudeza
18 replies
11h2m

Use WhatsApp - it works on both platforms.

krrrh
15 replies
10h49m

The hacker spirit uses Signal. Promoting WhatsApp over the more open community-supported alternative is worse than gloating over Beeper.

fauigerzigerk
11 replies
9h33m

I would very much prefer to use something other than WhatsApp (especially as Facebook has banned me for life from all their other apps), but my attempts keep failing.

My wife won't use Signal because it includes a crypto wallet and crypto transactions are taxable.

Matrix/Element would be my preferred option, but it causes so many security or encryption related issues that it has scared off everyone I tried using it with. Nobody knows what to do with the incessant popups demanding to "verify" something or other. Nobody (including myself) knows why older messages often can't be decrypted.

Telegram is less secure than WhatsApp.

Threema is not free, which makes it difficult for me to ask people to install it. It's not open source either.

iMessage is Apple only.

So what's left besides WhatsApp?

kelnos
6 replies
9h12m

My wife won't use Signal because it includes a crypto wallet and crypto transactions are taxable.

I think the crypto wallet is lame, and am disappointed the Signal folks decided to integrate something like that, but it's entirely opt-in. If she doesn't want to worry about being taxed on crypto transactions, she can simply not use that part of the app. I actually forgot for a second it was there until you brought it up, and I'm a daily Signal user.

fauigerzigerk
5 replies
8h50m

I told her it's not activated by default but she doesn't want to touch crypto with a 10 ft pole. She says if it's in there then tax authorities might eventually come asking if the feature becomes popular. And then she would have to keep evidence of not actually using it.

I think her concerns are overblown, but it shows how incompatible taxable transactions are with a privacy focused app. The two things should be kept well apart.

[Edit] Politically, it kind of defeats the purpose as well. You want to be able to argue that you have a right to privacy when it comes to personal communication. You don't want to be in a position of having to defend the privacy of trading securities.

DANmode
3 replies
8h43m

It does not show this.

Separately, you've either misunderstood her position, or it's poorly thought out, and/or ideologically based.

What path would tax authorities use to ask Signal users (and only Signal users) if they've used cryptocurrency?

fauigerzigerk
2 replies
7h22m

>What path would tax authorities use to ask Signal users (and only Signal users) if they've used cryptocurrency?

Tax law. In the UK, every single payment in cryptocurrencies, however small, is a taxable disposal that you have to include in your tax return if your total proceeds or gains from all investments are above a certain threshold.

I'm not ideologically opposed to cryptocurrencies and neither is my wife. She's just allergic to anything that could potentially raise tax questions.

Maken
1 replies
6h25m

Now I'm seriously wondering how hard is to fill taxes in the UK. I think I have done worse mistakes than a few cents in crypto and all I got was having to resubmit the forms.

Edit: On second thought, I don't own a business, so I guess nobody is going to look into my tax fillings with the same suspicion since they do not expect me to be doing anything funny with my accounting.

fauigerzigerk
0 replies
4h52m

>Now I'm seriously wondering how hard is to fill taxes in the UK

Doing it correctly is non-trivial. You have to submit a so called computation for each individual disposal, which can easily run into several pages.

The algorithm for working out the cost of a disposal is actually a pretty interesting test case for learning a new programming language or paradigm. Try implementing UK share identification rules in SQL for instance :)

Podgajski
0 replies
6h17m

This is why I also have my signal set for automatically disappearing messages. I want you all to try to delete your messages if you have iCloud turned on. It’s impossible and if you managed to do it they’re stuck on the server for 30 days. Apple is a spy service.

dimask
2 replies
8h43m

You do not have to activate the "crypto wallet", even less use it.

worthless-trash
0 replies
7h12m

TIL it even has one.

fauigerzigerk
0 replies
7h8m

I responded to this in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38580504

baq
0 replies
9h12m

I wish watching ads on Facebook was treated as personal income that you have report to IRS. Social graph would fix itself in a nanosecond.

viktorcode
0 replies
8h44m

I use many messengers, Signal too. It lacks in polish and features compared to all the others. Its security premise is undermined by insistence of using a phone number – which can be spoofed or taken over – to sign up.

I see it as the result of hacking spirit running the development, not the product team. Currently it can’t compete.

op00to
0 replies
2h42m

What strange woman lying in a pond gave you a sword to make you Decider Of The Hacker Spirit?

Podgajski
0 replies
6h22m

not only does the hacker spirit use Signal, but they tell people that’s the only way they want to communicate. At least that’s what I do. It forced my friends to install Signal because of it six more people are using Signal.

People who contact me over SMS get an immediate phone call from me in response.

the_gipsy
1 replies
10h22m

WhatsApp (meta / facebook) acts exactly like apple here: they're sending cease and desist letters to OSS projects.

Better use matrix which is an open protocol.

tibbydudeza
0 replies
9h57m

Like ActivityPub ???. Problem is public mindshare and adoption.

s3p
16 replies
15h23m

Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac

As I am sure we all understood, OP meant on their Android.

martimarkov
15 replies
14h28m

The the OP should read what he is buying.

I have a TV from 95 am I not allowed to watch Netflix? It runs on my phone.

Yes the limitations are different but you know them beforehand you just go and say it’s unfair I can’t have everything just the way I want it.

You don’t like iMessage - we have plenty of alternatives.

newaccount74
6 replies
12h23m

That's a pretty defeatist take. What if I want Android because SyncThing works better on it than on iOS? Then I can't have iMessage?

If you told people in 1995 that operating system vendors and service providers would arbitrarily block certain apps to lock you into their ecosystem people wouldn't have believed you.

op00to
2 replies
11h46m

I want to use adb to communicate with my iPhones. Google is evil using adb as a moat and locking away my access to adb! See how silly that sounds?

flkenosad
1 replies
4h57m

It only sounds silly if you have a highly technical background.

op00to
0 replies
4h10m

What are you trying to say? That iMessage is somehow "required" to interoperate with others because it does not require a highly technical background to use, but adb is exempt? I'm not following your train of thought.

positus
0 replies
2h59m

What if I want Android because SyncThing works better on it than on iOS? Then I can't have iMessage?

Correct. iMessage is an Apple service. If you want to make use of Apple services you should probably use Apple products. \_O_/

krrrh
0 replies
10h41m

“DOS ain’t done til Lotus won’t run”

Whether that was ever fully policy at Microsoft, people sure believed it was.

1995 was also around the time MS was pursing its embrace-extend-extinguish strategy to the internet with internet explorer.

ffgjgf1
0 replies
10h29m

If you told people in 1995

Really? Wasn’t that somewhat common back then?

berkes
6 replies
11h50m

One of these is inherent, dictated by technological abilities. The other virtual, made up and kept in place by abusing a monopoly.

inferiorhuman
5 replies
11h10m

What monopoly would that be? Apple quite literally advertises alternatives to its Messages app on the app store landing page.

ycombinatrix
2 replies
10h5m

How many of those alternatives come pre-installed and can't be removed?

inferiorhuman
1 replies
7h24m

How is that even relevant? The stock Messages app doesn't conflict with any of the other messaging apps.

yencabulator
0 replies
2h38m

Lawsuits on Microsoft & IE pretty well established that defaults matter for antitrust actions.

flkenosad
0 replies
5h0m

You can get alternative SMS apps on iOS?

berkes
0 replies
9h25m

For the sake of the argumt, let's say there is no monopoly, but a competitive landscape filled with alternatives and switching costs are zero.

Does that change my point about the difference in those examples?

rezonant
0 replies
11h16m

iMessage is just the iOS texting app. When someone says "I'm having trouble getting Stranger Things to play on Netflix" you don't tell them "You should switch to Hulu". Netflix (iMessage / texting apps) has Stranger Things (texting) and Hulu ("alternatives" like Whatsapp et al) do not.

As an Android user, in theory I shouldn't care about iMessage. However, because of the way that iMessage creates schisms, miscommunications, lost communications, broken texting experiences and more between my Android friends and my iPhone friends, I have to. I would like the texting features of these phones to interoperate so we can all text together in peace.

I wrote up a scenario (user story?) that I think helps to explain the problems I think should be solved that seem to fly over so many people's heads, especially when they advocate for over-the-top messaging apps like Whatsapp to solve the problem (particularly in the US context): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578101

paulmd
13 replies
17h47m

It’s also at severe risk of ruining the fun for numerous other hacker-spirit communities like hackintosh or opencore. Apple can come down on this in ways that potentially make it much more difficult for hackintosh to operate, or for people to update their legitimate apple systems after the end of official support. Which was pointed out in those threads too.

See also geohot taking some other PS3 exploits that were already published and combining them into a piracy kit that caused Sony to come down on them and patch the exploits, ruining it for the rest of the homebrew community.

There’s a reason homebrew people try to keep it low-key, it doesn’t take many assholes to ruin it for everyone. Let alone turning it into an app on their own platform lmao.

A decent number of other hobbies also involve some collective good-behavior and self-control lest the hammer come down for everyone. Doesn’t take many assholes doing donuts on quads before you’ll find motor access to that area removed or prohibited, etc. Drones also ruined in like 5 years what r/c airplanes had been safely doing for decades. Etc

leidenfrost
3 replies
16h4m

it still puts the hackintosh and opencore communities in the middle as collateral damage.

Hackintosh is already on a death march.

Sooner or later Apple will remove support for all x86 OSX versions.

Its life can be extended a bit by hackers who try to backport the software from ARM to x86.

But you can't sustain the entire Apple ecosystem by volunteer work alone.

Why spend resources trying to kill it when we all know it will die ln its own in a few years?

dizhn
1 replies
10h9m

Arm based PCs are becoming a thing too. Won't the hackintosh have a new home there?

walterbell
0 replies
9h36m

Arm-based PC SoC designed by former Apple M1 team leadership, no less.

ungamedplayer
0 replies
13h52m

I feel that contributing to these closed source extension hostile software never ends up benefiting anyone long term.

I know people gotta make a buck though. Sucks.

Nullabillity
3 replies
15h51m

The only people ruining anything for anyone in your examples are Apple and Sony.

thegiogi
1 replies
11h10m

Sure, but when fighting asymmetric warfare self control is paramount is it not?

Would you not be mad at the guy bragging that he’s a member of the Resistance? They are not the Oppressor with the capital O, but they are at least an asshole.

DANmode
0 replies
8h41m

Recruiting reduces asymmetry.

paulmd
0 replies
25m

Nah, assholes ruining access to the beach is a very real phenomenon

ycombinatrix
2 replies
13h4m

what a comment. "geohot bad sony good" is certainly one of the more unusual takes i've seen on HN. however, i don't quite care for the taste of boot myself.

nine_k
0 replies
9h54m

No, it's "geohot unwise, Sony bad".

ffgjgf1
0 replies
10h38m

That’s not quite or hardly at all what they said. Nuance is a thing..

nine_k
1 replies
9h25m

All these activities live in a grey area: "We are breaking some rules, but in such a small-time way that the big guys don't bother enforcing the them". Fly below radars, and you will have your small joys for indefinitely long.

This raises the question: is that a space worth inhabiting? Are hackintosh or homebrew PlayStation games worth it, compared to more open platforms where you are not breaking ToS?

Answers, of course, differ! But the question is worth asking.

dotnet00
0 replies
2h8m

At least regarding homebrew PlayStation games, for me that was a very valuable grey area space on the PSP and then PSVita, since back then there weren't many other kid-friendly options for similar portable computers (this being relevant because as an adult I am not dependent on convincing someone else to buy me things).

Nowadays smartphones are so much more capable and so much more accessible to kids, plus you can even get literal handheld PCs like the Steam Deck, so homebrew is a lot less worthwhile in my opinion (except for just the sake of hacking, since consoles at least tended to have very interesting security/DRM arrangements).

nicce
8 replies
9h3m

It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense.

When I noticed that there is 2 dollar subscription required to use this app, then all my blame from Apple went to these developers.

You can't really expect to do business with other company's service's without asking permission or cooperating. Especially, if the required interfaces are not exactly public.

Maybe this App had hope as free version, but not as business. What they were thinking.

unyttigfjelltol
7 replies
8h16m

It's called a "phone". It works with the "phone network", AT&T communicates with Verizon. They each fund themselves and are interoperable.

nicce
6 replies
7h57m

For "phone" features, there are own standards and all the "phones" support them. They are public and everyone cooperates.

iMessage is like Discord. It is messaging service tied to specific backend, and also devices in this case.

What if I reverse-engineer Discord, make a commercial application which uses their non-public backend (not with webview) and never tell anything for Discord? Should the "phone" argument hold in this case?

Discord is not the best example, because it 'allows' third-party level clients on some level, but above should not be the case.

rezonant
3 replies
7h25m

iMessage is like Discord. It is messaging service tied to specific backend, and also devices in this case.

It's different, because the only texting app on the iPhone automatically prefers iMessage. Did you make a group with 2 iPhone friends and now you're adding a non-iPhone? Congratulations you now have two group chats. No way to merge it, and you have to manually tell everyone not to use the first one. But they will anyway, and the conversation splits.

nicce
1 replies
6h47m

The problem you are describing is more like a social problem, and applies to many other aspects as well.

Usually people know the consequences of their actions. If they don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or any other "currently" popular social platform, there is always risk that you isolate yourself from the part of group which prefers the former.

Is that one person important enough that other group members ditch the other groups?

Here comes the reason why Meta, Discord or any other social platform with enough user base is highly valuable. Social pressure keeps users on their platforms.

Apple is doing the same with iMessage in hopes of pushing device sales. But it is still messaging service. It does not forbid you using regular cellural standards.

The question is that are the set defaults same as known decision? Not for everyone, but I don't think that conversation splitting is good enough argument here to reason why making business in this case would be good decision.

rezonant
0 replies
6h39m

The problem you are describing is more like a social problem, and applies to many other aspects as well.

Yes! But it's a social problem created by an intentional product choice that makes their own users have a worse experience in service of retaining their walled garden at the expense of your customers relationships on a service that they are embracing and extending for their own ends...

And they could fix it too. There is zero reason to leave that original iMessage chat around from a technical perspective. They can even put a big scary banner at the end of the iMessage history saying Hey this is not encrypted anymore! watch out!

Usually people know the consequences of their actions. If they don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or any other "currently" popular social platform, there is always risk that you isolate yourself from the part of group which prefers the former.

Yes, choosing not to use the three Meta apps you listed is your own damn fault. You're isolated because of your own poor choices. Just give up and feed the beast instead of, you know, trusting the phone/OS manufacturer you purchased your premium phone from and the carrier that you pay for your phone service.

But it is still messaging service. It does not forbid you using regular cellural standards.

This is the part that's not actually true, because you cannot make an MMS group with only iMessage participants. You cannot opt out of iMessage on 1x1 conversations either.

Using or not using iMessage isn't actually a choice, it's an automatic "upgrade"

I'm not even sure it's possible to disable iMessage entirely. EDIT: This exists actually

EDIT 2: "Messages app automatically chooses the type of group message to send based on settings, network connection, and carrier plan." https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724

cowsandmilk
0 replies
4h42m

In the scenario you describe, you can’t add a third iPhone user either. You can only add people when there are already at least 3 participants.

unyttigfjelltol
1 replies
5h31m

The phone network in the US was basically the same 50 years ago.[1] It took a major antitrust fight to bring about "cooperation". So strange, folk strenuously defending obviously anticompetitive conduct.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

nicce
0 replies
2h38m

I would say that this is not proper comparison.

It would be proper if iMessage would be the only messaging service phone users can use and installation and usage of the others are restricted.

But anyway, my whole comment is about making commercial messenger with the expense of other product (aka. backend services of Apple) without permission, cooperation or anything else. There aren't official public APIs for iMessage other than for Business use.

truegoric
0 replies
7h15m

The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use.

„We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.”

I believe that if you want to see hackers as only kids doing „fun stuff” at their desk at night making their (metaphorical and not) parents angry then either you are missing the bigger picture, or capitalism has gotten their ideological claws on the hacker culture and turned it into an obedient bunch of techbros that wouldn’t even dream of making the information free, as it wants to be.

GeekyBear
0 replies
2h12m

It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense.

Can you even imagine the reaction if the uBlock Origin folks attempted to make the case that Youtube updating their site to prevent ad blockers from working was some sort of nefarious violation of "the hacker spirit"?

runnerup
63 replies
18h26m

I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that!

I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interoperability, and many people who LOVE the concept and technical achievements will still post mostly critical things about the business model because it’s fairly clearly a very very challenging business model.

keb_
45 replies
17h14m

youtube-dl, NewPipe, and uBlock Origin exist solely for the purpose of empowering the individual, yet they are constantly attacked on HN as being tools used unfairly to harm Google's profitability. Open-source projects like Matrix, PeerTube, Mastodon, are built to be free and open-source for the benefit of end-users and lack of vendor lockin. Yet each is derided on HackerNews for not being enough like their corporate counterparts. Yes, there are those here who don't do that, but as cynical as it sounds, I do think this site's audience is mostly folk who like the status quos set by FAANG-types and don't really care about hackerism outside of toy websites.

oneplane
18 replies
16h51m

The projects can be appreciated while also acknowledging that advertisements are part of the value exchange. There's nothing wrong with knowing that if your options are to either watch ads or pay for a service, and you privateer the service instead, that that is not as reasonable as it seems to some people.

Note: this is very different from "but I want to block all ads", that's not what I'm writing here and also not what others might be writing.

As for the audience, it varies, but this website is a VC thing, so it makes some sense that a bunch of visitors are from the VC ecosystem and as such might be very money-oriented.

kibwen
17 replies
15h55m

> The projects can be appreciated while also acknowledging that advertisements are part of the value exchange.

No, this is preposterous and I will continue to refute this silly idea every time it shows up here. It is not stealing from radio stations to change the station when ads come on. It is not stealing from TV channels to go get a drink when ads come on. There is no moral compunction to watch ads, from anyone, anywhere. Stop trying to normalize advertising, which is to say, stop trying to normalize the enshittification of the human mind.

Meanwhile, a web browser is a user agent running on my machine. Youtube's content is a guest on my hardware. Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it. If Google doesn't want to serve it to me, then it has the right to prevent me from accessing their server, such as in exchange for payment. But again, advertising is not payment, it's just corporate-sanctioned, socially-acceptable brainwashing.

crazygringo
12 replies
15h16m

Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it.

Sure, but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos. You both get to try as hard as you can, so good luck to you both.

There's no brainwashing here. It's just a business trying to make money, and trying to outsmart the users trying to outsmart it.

I_Am_Nous
7 replies
14h46m

There's no brainwashing here.

Advertising is at least trying to make you think thoughts it feeds you. "Buy Brand X, you'll get women!" If the advertising is effective, you'll associate Brand X with something positive and want to buy it.

It's kind of blanket brainwashing with extra steps because it's more indirect. Similar technological brainwashing might be joining an algorithmic social media site and becoming convinced of something the algorithm felt was the most engaging thing that day and spread, regardless of truth. Choosing to believe what social media or advertising tells without healthy skepticism you is willingly accepting some brainwashing.

There are people who feel really strongly about ads, and I'm one of them. I hate them, they don't share my values, and they are only trying to extract value from me. I run ad blocker in my browser, but mute and skip any ads I can like a peasant on my TV or phone. So overall I end up watching more ads than not since I don't watch videos on my PC much.

Nevermark
3 replies
14h23m

I can't say I never see an ad, but I avoid/cancel services with ads, or happily sign up at the no-ad level.

When I do see ads its shocking. Car ads have little to do with cars, and everything to do with insecurity and Pavlovian hacks. Idiocracy drip by drip.

People expose themselves to crap influences day in and day out, then imagine this or that ad isn't impacting them. The stream has profoundly impacted them or they wouldn't tolerate any of it.

somenameforme
0 replies
13h54m

I can't really remember the last time I saw an ad. And as a result (probably?) I find I "want" for far fewer things than most people who let themselves be drawn in by ads. If a million dollars just hopped into my bank account, I'd probably just invest it and go back to living, more or less, the same. And I'm in no way whatsoever rich. But contentedness is cheap, and easy, when you don't let yourself get drowned into the endless vacuum of artificial demand. [1]

I am absolutely certain that the exponential increase in advertising is probably going to ultimately have been found to be at least partly responsible for so many of the mental and psychological problems that seem to be on the exponential increase in places like America. Humans are not designed to live our lives as donkeys chasing a carrot on a stick.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_demand

kibwen
0 replies
13h47m

> People expose themselves to crap influences day in and day out, then imagine this or that ad isn't impacting them.

Precisely. Subjecting yourself to advertising (or allowing your children to be subjected to advertising) is simply bad mental hygiene.

godelski
0 replies
12h50m

Car ads have little to do with cars,

That's because most car ads aren't actually trying to sell you the car. They are instead trying to sell you the idea of the car's status[0]. While people are most familiar with ads that are blatant attempts to get you to buy something, many are much more indirect. It's also why native advertising is so nefarious. A large portion of ads actually aren't the direct version, but most often people don't notice they're taking in an ad, and that's kinda the point.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-26-me-62995-...

godelski
2 replies
13h22m

Advertising is at least trying to make you think thoughts it feeds you.

BuT aDs DoN't AfFeCt Me!

I'm honestly frequently impressed how how often people don't understand what ads are or do. Especially considering they funds most of our paychecks. Everyone is affected by ads and convincing yourself that you aren't makes you more vulnerable to them.

I think the problem comes from people thinking ads exclusively are about selling things that have a monetary value. But ads sell ideas. Often that idea is that you should buy something, but sometimes it is a preference like a politician or a celebrity in their latest scandal or rise to fame. Ads can be good too, like public service announcements. But for sure we're over inundated with them and there's too many bad ones.

I am also particularly peeved about the ads that come from email addresses I can't exactly block. I really don't think anyone should be accountable for missing an important email if the sender also sends 90% junk from the same address. I'm looking at you every university ever[0]

skip any ads I can like a peasant on my TV or phone.

Maybe check out reVanced. You can recompile the YouTube APK to be ad free.

[0] Here's the text from my uni's page when you click unsubscribe. What a joke. I don't need emails from the alumni association, publicity channels, or all that. And you have the audacity to try to convince me it isn't spam? What a joke. I'm glad I use a third party mail client that can filter this stuff but it is an absolute joke that we think this is acceptable. It shouldn't require special tools. There is a clear difference between police reports and the alumni association and they even come from different senders. In fact, not allowing for you to unsubscribe actually goes counter to the safety claim because it teaches people to ignore your emails.

In order to share information quickly and efficiently with faculty, staff, GEs, and students, the university uses email as its official form of communication. All emails that end in an @<theuniversity>.edu address are required to receive email communications sent by the university. As such, there is no option for @<theuniversity>.edu email accounts to unsubscribe from official university communications emails and these emails are not considered spam under applicable laws.
I_Am_Nous
1 replies
12h43m

I understand not all advertising is bad as a good product might not spread during the critical growth phase without it. It just raises a lot of red flags for me when someone is desperate for my attention like ads are. Google reeeally wants me to buy a Pixel 8 lol

Glad you can filter the crap, but I guess from a CYA perspective the school can say "we notified everyone through our official email channel" whether you were ever going to read that email or not.

godelski
0 replies
12h12m

There's also things like PSAs that can be good ads. I think it's important we remember that it's not always about consumerism.

Haha there's only a few places I get ads and I lock as much down as I can. There's a certain sense of joy when you get ads so misaligned from you that you know they are reaching.

Oh it's a constant battle to filter. But what worries me is actually that people honestly do not get it. These are clearly little metric hacking and I'm afraid we're just traveling deeper and deeper into Goodhart's Hell.

aaomidi
2 replies
14h48m

but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos

So, like use an entirely different part of the company like Chrome to push for WEI to make adblockers not run?

Or maybe use chrome to push for manifest v3?

Maybe the __moral right to do everything possible__ isn't actually moral when it's using its leverage in a separate market to protect another one of its assets. Maybe we should see this as something to anti-trust them?

crazygringo
1 replies
14h21m

I dunno -- you've still got the moral right to use Firefox or Safari or a Chromium fork.

Ads and adblockers are always going to be a cat and mouse game, so I don't see any reason to complain.

Antitrust doesn't really enter the picture. Chrome doesn't even come preinstalled on PCs or Macs anyways -- you've got to go out of your way to choose to install it. So just don't, if you don't like it.

aaomidi
0 replies
13h15m

Antitrust doesn't really enter the picture.

I don't think this is true. Google Meet, Youtube, etc all perform worse on non-Chrome/Chromium based browsers.

I do think that the world's most popular browser, being owned by the same entity that owns Youtube, actively working to block adblockers (adblockers which, do *not* harm Chrome but do harm Youtube) is something for regulatory bodies to take into consideration.

kelnos
0 replies
8h58m

Sure, but Google also has the moral right to do everything possible with their code to make it as hard as possible for you to skip ads on their videos.

The person you're replying to acknowledges this, albeit indirectly.

But the point still stands: if Google sends me the bits, I am free (morally, and, at least for now, legally) to discard the bits that correspond to the ads if I can figure out how to do so without watching them. If Google can figure out ahead of time that's what I'm planning to do, and refuses to give me the bits, that's of course Google's right.

There's no brainwashing here. It's just a business trying to make money

Advertising is psychological manipulation to coerce you to buy whatever product is on offer. The "best" advertising will convince you that you need a product that you'd never consider buying otherwise. "Brainwashing" might be a sensationalized way of putting it, but I don't think that's particularly inaccurate.

geodel
1 replies
14h58m

Once it's on my machine, I have the moral right to do whatever I please with it.

Huh, you can throw the guest out by not watching youtube. Ripping off guest seems strange moral right.

Stop trying to normalize advertising, which is to say, stop trying to normalize the enshittification of the human mind.

Seems like you are deciding on everyone's behalf on what one should do with their mind.

martimarkov
0 replies
14h34m

The alternative is to leave to a for profit company. That company should not have that right.

If the content is rendered in my browser I can manipulate the JS and HTML as much as like. If you don’t like that -> feel free to put protections. But the same way a browser interprets the code I can put stuff on top of that interpretation.

So morally I’m okay to use a blocker if that’s what I want to do. It’s also immoral to track me but Google seems to be okay with it. If that is the relationship they want to establish so be it. I will act in the reciprocal manner.

The idea is not to decide on what someone else is going to do with their mind. Hence the idea that everyone is free to do what they want. Ads are not a natural part of the world so making the argument that not watching them is somehow wrong is what is actually a decision being pushed on others.

If companies didn’t try to normalize ads and tell you off for using adblockers then nobody would have a problem with it. But given that people say: You need to watch ads otherwise you are stealing is putting decisions in someone’s mind.

freshpots
0 replies
15h28m

PREACH. I love and 100% agree with your passion.

TedDoesntTalk
0 replies
14h32m

Wow. Eloquent. Awesome!

rezonant
13 replies
16h29m

The tools should exist and Google shouldn't fight them. But at least for me, I'm usually trying to remind people that the ad money is a large part of how the content creator survives too. If you block the ads, then please consider donating to your favorite creators Patreon or using YT premium (which is actually typically more lucrative for content creators than ads are).

I don't care about Google's profits but I figure we should try to support the content we enjoy in some way or else all we'll be left with is MrBeast, PewDiePie and content farm videos (ie the stuff that is so hyper scale that no amount of ad blocking can effectively hurt them)

somenameforme
12 replies
14h8m

If it was literally impossible to profit from digital video content creation, there'd be still be countless videos, and the overall quality (in terms of content value, not production value) would also probably be higher. People like sharing content, even for free - hence sites like this one, which we've all probably spent far too many hours on, and I've yet to receive a single payment from Dang!? And Google will never scrap YouTube because they gain immense profit just from profiling you, regardless of how many ads they can force you to watch. And perhaps even scarier from their perspective is the rise in marketshare that'd give to competitors.

In many ways it'd probably be far better for the world if making videos was not perceived as being profitable. The number of children who now want to be 'streamers' or 'youtubers' instead of astronauts, engineers, and scientists is not a good direction for society.

rezonant
5 replies
11h59m

and the overall quality (in terms of content value, not production value) would also probably be higher

This is pretty questionable. Quality takes time. If you need an income to pay your rent, 40 hours or more of your work week are taken up. That leaves a few hours before dinner and sleep to work on your videos (since in this hypothetical, it is "literally impossible" to make money on your videos).

Of course you could work on the weekend, and many do. But let's not forget that making videos is work, and it's important to do the things, you know, we invented weekends for. Like spending time with your family, reading a book, or playing a video game. How entitled this content creator must be to have a weekend. This is of course assuming that the creator's day job is a traditional one-- more than likely they work partial days 7 days a week at varying hours as is the norm for crappier jobs.

That 40 hours gives you enough income to pay your expenses, but unfortunately, for most people, doesn't give you the income you need to get a real camera, so you're just using the webcam that you already had on your computer.

The audio is terrible and the video looks like it came out of the early days of YouTube, but somehow that qualifies as "high production values".

Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of reality when working in a highly paid specialized field like engineering.

In many ways it'd probably be far better for the world if making videos was not perceived as being profitable. The number of children who now want to be 'streamers' or 'youtubers' instead of astronauts, engineers, and scientists is not a good direction for society.

Well you are watching that content, presumably. Do you feel it provides value to you?

There are an awful lot of small science educators on YouTube. They are doing the work to inspire people to get into the sciences. Is that not valuable? Those people have an outsized dependency on the ad revenue and patreon income they receive so they can keep making videos that are accurate and engaging. For them, another hundred people blocking ads could mean the difference between doing what they love and releasing quality videos or having to go back to a day job that occupies all their time.

If there was no YouTube, how do our kids get inspired to become scientists-- by watching the latest MCU movie? By watching cable programming?

YouTube isn't all just MrBeast and dramatube videos but I get the impression that this is what you think of. It reminds me of the "algorithm slip" where users make broad assumptions about a platform because of what it serves to them, but really it says more about you than properly evaluating what content is on the platform.

When I sum up your take, it sounds like only those people with passive income should have the privilege to make videos, and that's actually not a world I want.

skydhash
2 replies
11h9m

If there was no YouTube, how do our kids get inspired to become scientists-- by watching the latest MCU movie? By watching cable programming?

Same as everyone before YouTube. Role models and seeing/reading things.

rezonant
1 replies
9h34m

So only people with role models close to them or in a place where inspiring things are happening should be inspired?

Before YouTube and the Internet in general, only affluent people had these things, and we left behind a huge portion of the worlds population. Those people have the same potential as people of means or the luck to be born in an affluent country or an urban area.

I do get that you also include reading things on the Internet, but that's not always engaging enough to create a spark for people.

somenameforme
0 replies
3h32m

This is bordering on ridiculous. No, not only affluent people had role models FFS. Carl Sagan, for instance, was a 1st gen son of poor immigrants. His mother was a house-wife, his father a garment worker. His inspiration came from what scientifically curious people used to do before the internet - like going to the library, talking to his teachers, or even going to a museum every once in a while.

Since the advent of the internet the entire developed world has been getting literally dumber, so far as IQ can measure. [1] That's, to my knowledge, the latest study but a quick search for 'reversal of flynn effect' will turn up a zillion hits. In other words, what I'm saying is not controversial in the least. And one of the hypothesis for why this is happening (as per the linked paper) is, unsurprisingly, increased media exposure. YouTube is playing a significant role in literally making the world more stupid.

I love plenty of 'sciency' YouTubers - Veritassium, Cody's Lab, Smarter Every Day, and many more. But in reality, you're not like to learn much of anything from these sort of scientainment. It's just candy with a sciency coating, more likely to inspire people to want to make more candy, than to actually pursue science.

[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

boredhedgehog
1 replies
10h1m

Well you are watching that content, presumably. Do you feel it provides value to you?

That's a pretty thorny question, come to think of it.

Perhaps it's like eating chocolate. It provides value to some part of me, but at the same time, a more reasonable part can judge that I as a whole would be better off if the chocolate wasn't there and I'd eat something healthier instead. So I can both consume it and desire an environment where I wouldn't consume it.

rezonant
0 replies
9h39m

You're free to not eat the chocolate, but are you suggesting that it's the chocolate's fault for existing, and that chocolate should go away so you aren't tempted?

I'd assert that a lot of content on YouTube is not chocolate. There are high quality "healthy" options right there on the app. How about Technology Connections or the 4 hour long retrospectives on your favorite book, film, or video game? What about the years of technical and learning content? Those aren't chocolate, those are spinach.

redserk
1 replies
13h24m

If it was literally impossible to profit from digital video content creation, there'd be still be countless videos, and the overall quality (in terms of content value, not production value) would also probably be higher.

A lot of YouTubers I enjoy watching are very tech/science focused and use proceeds from their videos to purchase equipment that is used to create content. I don't think their channels would be nearly as interesting if they didn't make shiny-toy-money from it.

The number of children who now want to be 'streamers' or 'youtubers' instead of astronauts, engineers, and scientists is not a good direction for society.

People desiring to be famous isn't an idea that started in the age of YouTube and TikTok. The medium changes with what's the dominant platform. If anything, YouTube and TikTok democratized the process.

kelnos
0 replies
8h48m

"Democratized" is just a fancy way of saying "made it easier for more people to get into it". So you get the same result: more people seeing that becoming famous is actually attainable, which drains talent from more useful endeavors.

(And yes, I'm going to assert that becoming an astronaut, engineer, scientist, etc. is immeasurably more useful than becoming an influencer or whatever. It's fine to disagree with me there, but that's my position.)

Having said that, I do get a lot of value and understanding and useful information from some YouTube channels (which I do my best to support through Patreon and my YT Premium subscription). But not all channels are created equal.

fiddlerwoaroof
1 replies
13h41m

I think there’s a sorites paradox here: if it were actually impossible to make money from digital video, then YouTube wouldn’t exist at all because it couldn’t pay for the hosting and bandwidth it needs to distribute videos. What is true is that YouTube is basically not harmed by some fraction of their users blocking ads but, were that fraction to hit some percentage of the total traffic, YouTube would be forced to either discontinue free video hosting or charge to watch (or it would be killed as unprofitable).

rezonant
0 replies
9h42m

Exactly right. I think we are incredibly far from that breaking point, and what Google is doing is chasing growth for their shareholders more than anything else, especially at the end of the free money era.

The platform itself may be replaced but the incredible result of the YouTube platform is that there are millions of excellent creators who are making a living by making their videos, and even making enough to keep raising the bar on their work.

It's not a given that growing such a swelling stream of creative work will ever again be possible if this one dies out. YouTube was in the right place at the right time with the right subsidization available while they made the systems work at scale, and scale them up to insane hyper scale levels. This happened because of the advertising bubble, which is showing heavy signs of stress especially in the last few years. Society is already pushing back against the data collection that makes advertising at these scales as lucrative as it is, and if the bubble finally pops it's possibly it'll never inflate this way again.

This is why it's important to support the small creators you enjoy in some way. Direct contribution is certainly the best of them all. Sure this might not be relevant for superstar YouTubers, but take for example Technology Connections. Alec is an amazing communicator who puts insane effort (full time) into producing super informative videos about electronics and engineering.

nerdix
0 replies
4h22m

This is just factually not true. A lot of YouTubers eventually quit their jobs and become full time content creators. That's means they are able to create more content and the quality of their content can increase as they are able to spend more time on production and editing.

They are also able to invest in their channels. Many bigger YouTubers have small production studios, very expensive camera equipment (think $70k Red Dragon/ARRI cameras, 5 figure lighting setups,etc), and full time staff. They can production quality that rivals a TV studio. None of that would be possible if video content couldn't be monetized.

I sort of agree about the obsession with being a "content creator". But at the same time, kids have always wanted to be rock stars, professional athletes, and movie stars. Content creator is just a new type of celebrity for kids to idolize.

necovek
0 replies
13h15m

TV, documentaries, movies and music videos are video content just the same. Even most sports is consumed in video format.

Only served via a different platform (or not really anymore for some like music videos).

People wanting to be streamers/youtubers is the same as them wanting to be any other celebrity.

To be able to show some valuable content, there has to be something valuable happening, and hopefully that still directs enough people to be astronauts, engineers and scientists (so eg NASA can live stream their flying to Moon or something).

All I am saying nothing has changed, really, other than the platform and accessibility.

aprilthird2021
3 replies
17h2m

I pretty much found out about all these from HN. I think most of their traffic / downloads comes from this site.

simfree
1 replies
16h39m

Reddit and other social media platforms almost certainly drive in order of magnitude more downloads of these extensions than HN.

rezonant
0 replies
16h26m

Reddit and other social media platforms are at least an order of magnitude larger than HN. That's a good thing honestly.

55555
0 replies
16h18m

This is extremely false.

jareklupinski
2 replies
16h35m

this site's audience is mostly folk who like the status quos set by FAANG

something something someone's salary and getting them to see something

zxt_tzx
1 replies
14h54m

”It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair

flkenosad
0 replies
4h34m

Difficult but not impossible. Like programming.

mlindner
0 replies
14h48m

I can't remember any of those being derided other than Mastodon, which has major issues nothing to do with the fact it's competing with something.

lolinder
0 replies
16h45m

There isn't one Hacker News. Nearly every product you list also has it's greatest champions here on HN.

yt-dlp's post on HN garnered a lot of overwhelmingly positive attention [0].

I learned about NewPipe from HN and am now an ardent fan. Also received an overwhelming amount of positive attention recently, with the top comment recommending a fork that blocks even more advertising [1].

Every release of uBlock Origin gets hundreds of upvotes (1.53 got 527 points [2]). Again, overwhelmingly positive attention.

There's a subset of HN that is obsessed with the fediverse, and another subset that is skeptical, but the skepticism is overwhelmingly technical in nature.

If you want to see corporate shills on HN, you'll probably be able to find some, but it's certainly not a majority (much less unanimous!) view.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37474066

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144400

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094620

kelnos
0 replies
8h43m

My experience here is exactly the opposite: I see the projects you talk about get a lot of positive attention and praise. Sure, there are detractors as you say, but they seem to me to be a very small minority.

Wowfunhappy
0 replies
17h11m

The projects you listed are overwhelmingly celebrated on Hacker News! I'm sure you can find a critical post if you look hard enough—HN isn't a hive mind—but it's not a common sentiment.

2muchcoffeeman
0 replies
15h27m

Who doesn’t like the first few tools you mentioned? YouTube-do and ublock origin are great.

pilsetnieks
7 replies
18h22m

You're allowed to admire the technical implementation while denouncing the business model at the same time.

jorvi
3 replies
17h38m

Is letting our hearts bleed for trillion dollar companies really the best way to spend our finite compassionate bandwidth?

catach
2 replies
17h24m

Observing that a particular business model is very likely to fail because of the conflict with another business model that happens to have much more powerful backing requires no compassion spend.

But also, it seems to me that compassion is an involuntary reaction.

WarOnPrivacy
1 replies
16h54m

also, it seems to me that compassion is an involuntary reaction.

Compassion is very much a quality that can be developed and nurtured.

catach
0 replies
16h39m

I believe you're talking about capacity for compassion, and I'm speaking of the triggering of compassion.

I'd agree that both capacity and scope of triggers can be altered, but it seems to me that that's a process that takes some time and effort. Distinct from choosing in the moment "I am going to feel a certain way about this, right now".

pavel_lishin
0 replies
16h57m

Are we talking about Beeper Mini, or Apple?

lostlogin
0 replies
17h33m

Pretty much all Adtech comes to mind here.

AndrewKemendo
0 replies
17h39m

This is IMO the exact spirit we should have

dcow
5 replies
14h40m

on adversarial interoperability

In what world is interoperability adversarial? What the actual?

lolinder
2 replies
13h38m

It's adversarial because one party explicitly does not want to interoperate and can be expected to try to break interop.

OP didn't coin the term, it looks like it comes from Cory Doctorow [0].

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

dcow
1 replies
3h3m

Cory is talking about it in the sense that the tech industry at large said “adversarial interop” is stupid and lobbied against it. It seems HN has lost the plot judging by the number of people on this thread defending Apple engaging in such a slimy practice.

Big Tech climbed the adversarial ladder and then pulled it up behind them.

Anyway the comment I was replying to was implying that Beeper is the adversary which is not a correct use of the term.

lolinder
0 replies
2h9m

Anyway the comment I was replying to was implying that Beeper is the adversary which is not a correct use of the term.

You can't have a single-party adversarial system. Each party is an adversary of the other: party A wants to interop against the wishes of party B, and party B wants to lock party A out. OP wasn't implying that Beeper is "the" adversary and Apple is in the clear, OP was just saying that trying to build a business around adversarial interoperability is extremely difficult and the outcome is unsurprising.

Noting that the results are unsurprising does not imply that we condone the system that makes such results nearly inevitable.

noirbot
1 replies
13h34m

Are you trying to ignore the state of what's going on? Beeper's business model was as interoperable with Apple as my neighbors cracking my wifi password to use for their household. The interoperability wasn't intended.

Forcing someone to interoperate with you doesn't immediately make it all collaborative any more than a stranger walking up to me at lunch and declaring they're my friend now makes me want to invite them home after.

dcow
0 replies
2h52m

The adversary is the incumbent that’s working to artificially stifle innovation, strong arm the market, and exclude competition.

Beeper is not someone who hacked your wifi. Beeper is sending legitimate packets to your router and Apple is saying “I don’t like those packets because they threaten my artificial hold on the market”.

badrabbit
2 replies
16h47m

Hacking? Hacking means whining when what you are hacking fights back?

I mean go for it, hack away! I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though lol

rezonant
0 replies
16h22m

Personally for me it's people who buy Frigidaire appliances. They are the worst!

kelnos
0 replies
8h39m

I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though

What a bizarre thing to say.

modeless
25 replies
13h17m

Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted?

Actually it is documented by Apple themselves that they receive the encrypted messages and the key to decrypt them when iCloud backup is used (unless you and the person you are messaging have specifically enabled their "advanced data protection" feature). They have decrypted messages in response to law enforcement requests.

mlindner
19 replies
13h8m

You left off the point that that only true if you had iCloud backup of iMessages enabled. If you didn't have iCloud backup enabled then they've always been E2EE.

modeless
18 replies
12h30m

No, I mentioned that.

If you didn't have iCloud backup enabled then they've always been E2EE.

Correction: if you and the person you're messaging both didn't have iCloud backup enabled. And also it's worth noting that Apple forbids you from using any cloud backup system other than theirs.

aryaneja
14 replies
11h36m

You seem to have written a very misleading comment. Apple is offering privacy minded folks two options:

1. Don't turn on iCloud Backups and receive E2EE on your messages 2. Turn on iCloud Backups AND advanced data protection and recieve E2EE on your messages

This is not some kind of nefarious plan on their end. Any user service will have a vulnerability on the user end of back-ups. For instance, Whatsapp backups will also have their keys available to Apple/Google. They need to offer this as for most users, the risk of losing their whole digital lives because they forgot their passwords outweights E2EE. For users who find that important, they have the two options listed above. Sounds like an appropriate trade-off to me.

the_gipsy
6 replies
10h12m

Just because WhatsApp does it too, doesn't make it right.

These apps are not e2ee if almost every user has in effect encryption disabled.

aryaneja
5 replies
10h3m

Which app would qualify in your case? Signal suffers from the same client-side problem.

ycombinatrix
3 replies
9h51m

not by default, which is a massive difference.

aryaneja
2 replies
9h47m

I am not sure what the answer is here. What you are arguing for will hurt regular users who will lose their digital lives if they lose their passwords.

Signal will be backed-up on iCloud _by default_ and client side will be an issue.

modeless
0 replies
2h4m

Signal will be backed-up on iCloud _by default_

No, it absolutely is not. It seems like you don't have a good understanding of how actual E2EE systems work.

lupusreal
0 replies
5h17m

"lose their digital lives" is hyperbolic emotive language. We're talking about a loss of chat history, not the death of people. Lots of people lose their chat histories all the time, it hurts but people get over it.

_flux
0 replies
7h48m

Matrix also provides the ability to back up keys in the server, but you select a separate passphrase for encrypting them before they're uploaded.

(Yes, it would be nice if the user didn't need two passphrases for this use, but Matrix cannot safely revert to key derivation because client could accidentally leak the master password to the server due to existing implementations.)

modeless
2 replies
11h28m

iPhones with iCloud backup enabled without ADP are almost certainly the majority. I believe this is essentially the default configuration. Even if you disable backups or enable ADP Apple almost certainly still has most of your messages from the other end of the conversation. It is false advertising to claim your service is E2EE without any disclaimer when in reality you collect the keys to the majority of messages and decrypt them at the request of law enforcement.

aryaneja
1 replies
10h2m

I have addressed your concern in my comment

They need to offer this as for most users, the risk of losing their whole digital lives because they forgot their passwords outweights E2EE.

There is no clear trade-off that is an option.

modeless
0 replies
2h17m

"I can't imagine a way for this feature we advertised to not suck" is not an excuse for false advertising! But there is a way to do better. Google's Android backup is E2EE by default. It does not require remembering a long password. All it requires is your phone unlock code, which you normally enter at least once per day and are extremely unlikely to forget. This is actually how Apple's works too, when ADP is enabled. Either it should be enabled by default or Apple should stop claiming iMessage is E2EE.

tick_tock_tick
1 replies
10h20m

Sounds like you're just confirming Apple tries very hard to make sure it's not E2EE.

katbyte
0 replies
10h1m

Turning on advanced data protection is not hard.

fsflover
0 replies
9h46m

Apple is offering privacy minded folks two options

Here is the explanation why it's completely impractical and therefore doesn't provide actual privacy, along with other anti-privacy configurations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37875370

clnq
0 replies
7h6m

I was not mislead by that comment. It was clear that most people have their messages accessible to Apple, which is what the article also talks about - how privacy of "blue bubble" messages is at the center of this.

There are ways to opt out. But that's for the margin of people who worry about these things. So what that comment said is very relevant and accurate.

vezycash
2 replies
11h40m

Apple forbids you from using any cloud backup solution other than theirs

If this is true, how is that legal?

modeless
1 replies
11h22m

What would make it illegal, short of antitrust law?

flkenosad
0 replies
4h54m

I the the argument is that it should be in the law.

madeofpalk
4 replies
5h24m

Not even that - Because Apple controls the key exchange, Apple could also just silenty register another recipient (their own mitm) and siphon off all your messages if they wanted to. You must trust that Apple (or Whatsapp or whatever) does not do that.

nojito
3 replies
3h17m

This isn’t true because you will get notified that another device was added to your account.

sbarre
0 replies
2h37m

Who do you think sends that notification?

madeofpalk
0 replies
1h52m

Do you think the Apple that would surreptitiously add another 'device' into your iMessage recipients would not be able to suppress that notification?

Or, how could you verify that you've been notified about every device added?

kaibee
0 replies
2h33m

And who delivers that notification?

lxgr
12 replies
16h23m

since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist.

It uses a server for bridging APNs to GCM. Sure, that could be maintained on a donation basis, but it’s not completely infrastructure-free in any case.

rezonant
10 replies
16h17m

If you think about it, it's actually not even a technological requirement. It's plenty possible to use an Android system service which maintains a connection for Beeper Mini persistently from the phone. After all that's what GCM does too. Yes, it would require backgrounding permissions, but that is something pretty justifiable for a messaging app, and when using the right UI practices, you can explain this to the user before they grant it.

So yes, it's absolutely possible for this app to be 100% client side and I wish Beeper would've done that to start, if for no other reason than to dispel the misinformation around that BPNs is somehow required for the core operation of the app.

To be fair, they probably thought making this explicit in their How It Works article would be sufficient.

lxgr
9 replies
15h6m

Is this actually still possible without (or even with) a foreground notification? I thought Google clamped down on that practice a while ago, since it increases power, data, and memory usage.

thaumasiotes
5 replies
11h49m

I thought Google clamped down on that practice a while ago, since it increases power, data, and memory usage.

I don't really follow the reasoning. If saving on power, data, and memory usage were more important than the ability to receive messages, it would follow that you were better off carrying around a cinder block than a phone.

charcircuit
3 replies
9h23m

Having n apps all actively querying various servers all the time will waste resources. The solution Google provides is Firebase Cloud Messaging which is the blessed notification service on the system which handles querrying notifications for all apps. FCM even avoids waking up the system from idle if the notification received is not high priority and can wait until sometime in the future when the device momentarily stops idling to processing everything at once before idling again.

rezonant
2 replies
6h17m

Well except that maintaining a connection to APNs is cheaper than spinning up periodic tasks to connect to APNs to check for new messages, and is exactly the same process that GCM itself uses (persistent connection), and you probably only have one such messaging app, so unless GCM is considered a major battery drain (hint, it's not) I think it would be fine.

And in this case, GCM actually creates potential vulnerability. This should be allowed, and if Google sees it as a problem, they should implement a system service to retrieve from APNs. I believe the API is public.

Backgrounding is problematic when devs do it wrong or disrespect the user, but this isn't one of those cases.

Android preventing background processes in this case is worse for the user.

lxgr
1 replies
6h8m

and you probably only have one such messaging app

That sounds extremely unrealistic. If nothing else, you already have GCM – I don’t think it deactivates the persistent connection even if you don’t have any notification registrations.

Backgrounding is problematic when devs do it wrong or disrespect the user, but this isn't one of those cases.

But how would Google distinguish “disrespecting” from intentional use cases?

I’ve used Android for years, and uncontrollable background services were a big problem.

unless GCM is considered a major battery drain (hint, it's not)

It’s as much a battery drain as APNs. The point is that I want as few of these persistent connections and background services as possible, and the ideal number is one.

rezonant
0 replies
5h22m

That sounds extremely unrealistic. If nothing else, you already have GCM –

I'm confused. GCM is Google Cloud Messaging. It's also known as FCM or Firebase Cloud Messaging. It is the Google Play equivalent of Apple Push Notification Service (APNs). It's job is just to provide a persistent connection for delivering push notifications.

I don’t think it deactivates the persistent connection even if you don’t have any notification registrations.

It seems almost impossible to be running an Android phone that has zero push notification subscriptions registered.

But how would Google distinguish “disrespecting” from intentional use cases?

Via app review and banning apps that abuse those use cases. It turns out you can also decimate the user's battery using the stuff Google still lets you do (like periodic background tasks), but we don't ban those things because otherwise your phone would be useless at that point. Of course both the periodic task system and the persistent background service both would show up in your battery usage statistics, so the user and the system would be plenty aware that the app is misbehaving. And of course Google Play Protect can send along that feedback back to the Play Store in both cases.

I’ve used Android for years, and uncontrollable background services were a big problem.

Cool, I also have used Android for a long time! Started on the Nexus 5 back in 2013 and have used Android devices ever since.

and uncontrollable background services were a big problem.

Hm, I wouldn't say they were a big problem but I guess I just used well behaved apps. Certainly restricting background behavior helped battery life, but at what cost?

What you might not realize is that there are a number of permissions that you can declare in the Android manifest that trigger the Play Store review to be... just a little more thorough about your apps behavior. This should be one of those permissions. Using it for a persistent connection to a messaging service is absolutely a valid use case for this sort of thing. That's not the kind of thing that caused battery problems on your older Android phones though.

This is also very analogous in App Store. You declare certain plist declarations that need to be justified, and cause your app to be more carefully reviewed.

lxgr
0 replies
6h11m

Well, Google just wants you to use GCM since it solves the same problem without reverting to a cinder block.

oynqr
2 replies
11h37m

Very possible on Android versions that are closer to AOSP. Shitty vendor forks, probably not.

charcircuit
1 replies
10h13m

Not really, unless the user goes to the settings and disables battery optimization for the app. If the device is idling the app will only be able to wake up periodically. Starting at 15 minutes and exponentially grows to up to 6 hours [0]. Element works around this by abusing exact alarms, which require the user to grant a permission, together with a wakelock, but this approach will probably not last forever.

[0] https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...

kelnos
0 replies
8h36m

Not really, unless the user goes to the settings and disables battery optimization for the app

That sounds "very possible" to me. Apps can even pop up a dialog on first run instructing the user to disable battery optimization, and then load up that settings page when the user taps a button in the dialog. Certainly some people will be confused by it, still not know what to do, or not want to do it, but it's still quite possible.

And if the user won't do it, the app can still spin up a service with a foreground notification if they really want to keep things working decently well, and use Android's scheduled jobs mechanism to restart the service every 10 minutes (or however often) to catch cases where the service still ends up getting killed.

Kab1r
0 replies
14h10m

I wanted to implement my own notification bridge and patch the app to use my self hosted instance. Now of course there may not be much point

belltaco
10 replies
18h15m

It was the same when Apple banned Fortnite for daring to accept payments outside of their walled garden and the forced 30% cut. People falling over themselves to hate on Epic and defend Apple's forced cut and the total removal of developer freedom. If it was Microsoft the entire tone would be completely different.

simondotau
8 replies
14h17m

Does Epic Games give developers "total freedom" with Unreal Engine or will they insist upon their royalty when applicable? You can read their FAQ and there's literally a section titled "Why does Epic think it’s fair to ask for a percentage of a developer’s product revenue?"

What's good for the goose, etc.

jocaal
7 replies
13h51m

5% Royalty past $1m for using the most high tech game engine in the world is a totally reasonable price. Just like 3% for using payment services is totally reasonable. But 30% for using a distribution service is just absurd. The only reason the app stores can charge that much is because of their iron grip on the platforms.

TerrifiedMouse
3 replies
11h49m

But 30% for using a distribution service is just absurd.

It’s the market rate. Almost all retail stores online and offline charge 30%.

simondotau
2 replies
11h21m

Boxed software at physical retail stores was more like 70–90% of revenues, split between the retailer, distributor, publisher, and manufacturing.

TerrifiedMouse
1 replies
11h15m

I doubt manufacturing gets a percentage cut - doubt they want such a cut. Manufacturing likely charges by how much you ask them to produce. They will quote you a price for your order and maybe include a discount for large volumes.

simondotau
0 replies
11h4m

Manufacturers gets paid, and they'll expect to make a profit. No, they don't take a percentage, but that's a rather academic distinction when the unit cost for manufacturing is $5 and your product isn't marketable with a price exceeding $50.

simondotau
2 replies
11h27m

By agreeing that some amount is acceptable, you've conceded the principle. As the famous saying goes, we’re just haggling over the price.

As for whether 3% is reasonable, again we can look to Epic for evidence. Epic's own Steam competitor takes a 12% cut — and they admitted in court that it was a money-losing venture. That should stop and make you think. The Epic Games Store isn't even a complex ecosystem, it's just a glorified Windows app downloader and even then they couldn't make a profit at 12%.

Apple argues that their 15% fee for most (30% for the ultra-successful) pays for a lot more than just payment services. It pays for absorbing the cost of fraud. It pays for dealing with refunds. It pays for developing the APIs. It pays for employing an enormous team to perform some imperfect-but-useful oversight over the 1,800,000 apps in their store. It pays for a lot of things.

If you think Apple makes too much money, fine. That's a perfectly fine argument to make. That's a very different one to claiming that they're not entitled to make money. Or that the government should dictate prices at them.

kaibee
0 replies
2h16m

EGS only loses money because they have to buy their customers by giving away free games, to try to dislodge Steam's position. The infrastructure costs of EGS cannot be that high.

jocaal
0 replies
8h49m

But we are not haggling over the price. apple has control over an enormous portion of the market. I can't haggle because the big guy controls everything.

And saying apples cut pays for more services is just hilarious. we are forced to use those services and forced to pay for them. Stripe does refunds and fraud detection. There are other app development platforms for API's like kotlin and flutter.

And you and I both know that apple's margins on the app store is a joke. Thats why they dont report it seperatly in their financials. Whether epic couldnt make it is their problem.

tinus_hn
0 replies
15h25m

You wonder why the company with 95% market share is treated differently than the company with 40% market share.

ribosometronome
8 replies
18h16m

Of course, it's very unlikely Apple is doing that. Just putting the thought out there.

Is making wild claims and then immediately trying to disavow them in the next sentences the hacker spirit?

How does it at all follow that Beeper Mini is using encryption properly (or else it wouldn't work) but it's unlikely Apple is? How would Beeper have been able to reverse engineer it if Apple's not using it? Who did they model their correct implementation of Apple's protocol off of?

conradev
5 replies
18h2m

Is implicitly trusting authority the hacker spirit?

mirashii
4 replies
17h53m

And by implicitly trusting authority, you mean trusting the device manufacturer with billions of sales and intense scrutiny from security researchers and state actors spanning decades, right? You mean trusting the entire of the security industry to have managed not to miss this glaring and easy to detect invasion or privacy? This isn’t “it’s not happening because Apple promises it’s not”. This is one of the most scrutinized platforms in the world. Making wild claims and disavowing them immediately is lazy rhetoric, just as oversimplifying this as an appeal to authority is lazy rhetoric.

conradev
3 replies
16h16m

Going back to the original claim:

Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted?

The answer here is no. Yes, making a wild claim afterwards is lazy, but the fact remains: there is no system in place to get anywhere close to "proof".

The best we have is researchers reporting trust violations when they find them, escalating those violations in the media, and sometimes forcing the company to change behavior. Relying on (ever more skilled!) unpaid volunteer work to verify the claims of the largest company in the world seems like an appeal to authority. It also doesn't scale as they make more claims and build more complex software.

Yes, breaking E2EE for everyone is so large that it would be impossible to do at scale without anyone noticing. Breaking it selectively to target individuals (the threat people are actually worried about!) is much harder to detect, no?

spiderice
2 replies
14h42m

The answer here is no

That's because it's a ridiculous premise. We don't have any evidence that Tim Cook isn't robbing banks in his spare time either. I'm not saying he does.. I'm just throwing it out there because he might be.

Not to mention the fact that you can't prove a negative anyway.

conradev
0 replies
13h0m

If it’s a ridiculous premise, then why do we even try?

Apple added Contact Key Verification to eliminate one possible class of attack involving a lack of user transparency. Still trusting a whole lot of trust in the stack, but is an improvement.

What you think of as a ridiculous premise I think of as a goal to aspire to

Kab1r
0 replies
14h12m

You certainly can prove that a system is cryptographically or otherwise sound. There is an entire field of formal verification. Proving that an implementation is correct is often more difficult, but not impossible.

wrayjustin
1 replies
17h47m

The claim is that (a) both entities are properly encrypting the data _in transit_ and (b) either company could _steal_ the plaintext client-side (after decryption).

Trust that a third-party application isn't stealing the decrypted messages requires the same type and amount of trust that Apple is not stealing the decrypted messages (or maybe less trust if the third-party solution is open source, etc.).

brookst
0 replies
14h39m

Except the stakes for Apple are so much higher. If they’ve lied to everyone and are stealing messages, that’s a multi-billion dollar class action, against very little upside to Apple.

For a tiny company like Beeper, the incentives are different. The upside of being dishonest far outweighs the risks.

Not that I believe Beeper is nefarious. They probably aren’t. But their risk/reward for abusing trust is very different from Apple’s

Klonoar
6 replies
17h17m

> Where is the hacker spirit here?

The site is called "Hacker News" but it's predominantly existed over the years as a funnel for the business-centric Valley industry.

Which is to say that I think you're trying to apply one specific definition of "hacker" when it doesn't really work that way.

lolinder
4 replies
16h55m

There's that, but I'm not an SV person and my reaction was still "well, duh!".

An app like Beeper Mini wants to be something like NewPipe for YouTube: installable only if you know how to download F-Droid, maintained by a community of fans, used only by people who understand that Google can break it at any time and it might take days to weeks for it to recover.

What Beeper did instead was build a startup and sell subscriptions to mainstream users, and now that it inevitably broke they come off as very whiny about it. It's not just Silicon Valley business types who see that and wince: it's offensive to old-school hackers too.

smeej
1 replies
15h55m

Know how to download F-droid? As in, "Google F-droid, click link to f-droid.org, click 'Download F-droid'"?

I guess I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty alright with people building apps with the expectation that would-be users will need to know how to install apps.

lolinder
0 replies
15h53m

I didn't say it was a high bar, but it's enough of a barrier to drive off most of the entitled complaints when Google periodically breaks the app.

Nullabillity
1 replies
15h55m

Everyone deserves a path around vendor bullshit, not just "true hackers".

op00to
0 replies
2h40m

Please, no. I do not want to have to clean malware off my inlaws phones in addition to their fucked up computers.

anticensor
0 replies
12m

This site was originally called "Startup News" then renamed to "Hacker News".

SaberTail
5 replies
17h19m

Apple wouldn't even exist if not for this type of hacking. One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes[1] to play around on AT&T's telephone system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

JumpCrisscross
2 replies
17h10m

One of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's first projects was selling blue boxes

Which didn’t scale because it doesn’t scale because the blue box stopped working. Sort of like Beeper.

lofaszvanitt
1 replies
11h58m

Beeper's true purpose was to show people that it's possible without an iPhone. What you don't know how many other clients like this worked and for how long...

latexr
0 replies
7h35m

Beeper's true purpose was to show people that it's possible without an iPhone.

What’s your basis for saying that? Honestly asking. Seems like Beeper’s true purpose could just as well have been to make money.

Of course this is possible without an iPhone. Apple could build it anytime they want, they just don’t. Which I disagree with, but that’s a different argument.

zer0zzz
0 replies
14h18m

This should be the top comment

epistasis
0 replies
15h8m

And the penalty for getting caught wasn't merely having your connection turned off, it was a trial.

Selling a device that transgressed the boundaries doesn't mean they thought that no boundaries should exist, it just means they knew it was possible to do something technically interesting and would allow them to make money.

If Jobs and Woz thought there should be now penalties for using blue boxes, my guess is that they thought the telco should merely implement a better system, not that everybody should get free access to it.

kelnos
4 replies
9h18m

Where is the hacker spirit here?

I'm torn on this. Is it following the hacker spirit to get more people plugged into Apple's closed ecosystem? Maybe? Maybe not? Reverse engineering a proprietary protocol is certainly hacker-y. But building a business around that -- essentially charging people to put more load onto someone else's infrastructure, who have to bear the costs (even a rich behemoth like Apple) -- I'm not sure that qualifies. If we were talking about some open source project that was releasing this app to F-Droid, maybe it'd be more clear?

The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!"

I don't think that's Apple apologism, that's just "duh, obviously Apple is going to try to shut them down, and probably succeed". It's lame. It's just as lame as when AOL kept breaking Gaim/Pidgin's ability to talk AIM's OSCAR protocol. But acknowledging that Apple is going to pull something like that isn't apologism, it's just stating reality.

(As for the AOL/AIM example, I think reverse-engineering OSCAR was actually hacker-spirit-y, as AIM was a free service open to anyone, just they didn't feel like supporting Linux users, as was the SOP of many companies at the time. Linux users were a fairly small percentage of users, so it wasn't a big thing. But there are tons of Android users; more than iOS users, globally, even. That's not really the same, to me.)

In the context of the overwhelmingly saturated messaging space, I think it'd be a lot more hacker-y to bring something like Signal up to the usability standards of iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc., and evangelize the hell out of it to get people out of closed platforms. Even Signal isn't perfect there, since they refuse to enable federation in the protocol, and only release updates to their server-side software a long time after it's been running in production. But it's certainly better than getting more people hooked in Apple's walled garden.

rezonant
0 replies
7h13m

I'm torn on this. Is it following the hacker spirit to get more people plugged into Apple's closed ecosystem? Maybe? Maybe not?

Agreed here. But I understand deeply why it's appealing for my fellow android users who are tired of being bullied into buying phones they just don't want by their friends who overwhelmingly drink the Kool aid. it's not great, and in the US the effect is very real.

I think it'd be a lot more hacker-y to bring something like Signal up to the usability standards of iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc.,

Good idea... what about an existing open standard that is already adopted by a billion devices and can be implemented by any mobile phone manufacturer and carrier network.

Something that takes what's good about SMS and adds all those nice features. I bet we'd have to work together to make end to end encryption interoperable, and some of the fancier stuff is too new to be in the spec yet, but that's not too hard in the grand scheme of things.

Oh, RCS exists.

methuselah_in
0 replies
8h59m

You need android an flash linageOs. Welcome to the club.

llm_nerd
0 replies
5h2m

I don't think that's Apple apologism, that's just "duh, obviously Apple is going to try to shut them down, and probably succeed"

As one of the top posts that presumably the GP post is talking about, precisely. Nowhere was I apologizing for Apple, nor did I "crawl out".

When this product was first announced I observed that Apple was going to shut it down, and that they had obvious avenues (both technically given the way messages are attested to, and legally -- this product is the textbook definition of computer misuse! And they're charging for it making it a slam dunk). Loads of people "crawled out" to gloat that this is it, Apple has no avenue to do anything about it. And then Apple did something. Apple did the easiest, lightest option, but they could go full scorched Earth if they wanted to. I don't want them to, and am not celebrating that, but these are basic obvious facts.

To your other point, exactly. The hacker spirit is getting your friends and family on Signal. It isn't cementing iMessages as the foundation.

grishka
0 replies
6h44m

Is it following the hacker spirit to get more people plugged into Apple's closed ecosystem?

Yes — it's adversarial interoperability, and that is always a good thing because it breaks lock-ins. Though mostly irrelevant to this particular case, adversarial interoperability also forces the service owner to compete with third-party clients which always put the user first; it removes the service owner's of control over the UX and presentation.

I don't know about AIM, but ICQ also used OSCAR protocol. The official ICQ clients were bloated, shitty and full of ads. Not many people used them. Most people used QIP, Miranda, Pidgin, Adium, Jimm, or even NatICQ. No one cared about how ICQ's owner would make money — and, really, no one should care about that, it's their own problem. Maybe if they made a client that's better than third-party offerings, then people would switch to it. But they never did.

dylan604
4 replies
18h0m

It has nothing to do with a lack of spirit. It's a 800lbs of reality crashing down. There's nothing wrong with trying to hack the Gibson. However, this wasn't just a hack, but a severe threat to Apple's walled garden. As long as they are allowed to have it, they will protect it at all costs. Thinking any differently is just naive. So of course this is the ultimate result.

martimarkov
2 replies
14h19m

It’s identical to a jailbreak which gets patched ASAP so not sure what is has to do with walled garden as much.

I’ve played with the same idea of making an Android client but I would never build a product on that because I know the limitations on my side.

As a company you are 100% allowed to break 3rd party client when they don’t have an agreement with you. It’s your product after all. Heck even with an agreement APIs don’t support old versions.

dylan604
0 replies
12h52m

It’s identical to a jailbreak which gets patched ASAP so not sure what is has to do with walled garden as much

Why do you think they don't want you to run a jailbreak? It's to protect the walled garden. If you can install apps other than their store, that's lost revenue. They claim security blah blah, but it's removing mouths from the teet. So, it has everything to do with the walled garden. How does that not make sense to you?

clnq
0 replies
7h3m

The jailbreak patches are for the walled garden, too. Security is not a concern for those who use jailbreaks. They want to get their devices in the insecure state and go to lengths to do it.

It's similar to how OpenAI uses "safety" to make sure their LLMs don't get them in hot water, and PlayStation uses "safety" to make sure their consoles do not become associated with piracy and make publishers think twice.

This kind of "safety" is about business interests. :) Some companies can say it openly that they wish to protect their business, as fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that. Others can't as that will bode poorly for their monopoly status and they will suffer (overdue) legal repercussions. So it becomes "safety".

Notice how companies that argue against user freedom for "safety" are always in circumstances where bringing up business interests behind "safety" won't bode well.

boxed
0 replies
11h18m

Seems like if this is allowed to stand you'll get massive spam issues on iMessage within a few months... better to kill it fast.

keepamovin
3 replies
12h43m

I like/love Apple, but it's not really about hacker spirit. I think Steve and Steve were at the start, for sure. But then, it's like Steve figured out how to "evolve" hacker spirit into a business model. And not just any business model: but a totalitarian vertically integrated model. I mean, fabulously successful and don't let the negative political connotations of totalitarian offend you here, it's but a minor jab, because there are downsides to this model in the Apple-verse, for sure: the lack of "hackability" of their devices.

But it's perhaps a momentary cultural variation in a sea of changing priorities for Apple. They have embraced right to repair: perhaps in future, "hacker spirit" evolves further to become, a "right" for all citizenry of the Apple-verse, backed by their tremendous business model. In the same way that you can conceptualize (again, without judgement or making regard as to truth or not), that "human rights" emerge not out of a vacuum, but out of what the infrastructure of state can conceive and provide.

In other words, today's action may be but the anachronistic kneejerk of some poobah in the Apple bureaucracy. A vestige of the old guard, perhaps soon dying out.

If that makes sense? :)

pjmlp
0 replies
11h31m

To be fair, all computing business from the 1980's was vertical integration, the exception being CP/M, the university folks porting the UNIX tapes into their vertical integrated mainframes, and Compaq getting lucky on how they reverse engineered IBM PC's.

CP/M systems eventually died, UNIX startups created by some of those university folks were just as vertically integrated as the mainframes they replaced, leaving only the PC clones.

Had Compaq not gotten lucky, and today's computing landscape would look much different, probably like the laptops and all-in-one PCs that are being pushed nowadays as the OEM margins cannot get any thinner.

mlrtime
0 replies
4h53m

Not just that but it is no longer Steve's company (If he were alive). It is now a multinational public company with shareholders, employees and 1000's of vendors (and their employees, etc...)

It is all but required for a company of this size to take action in this way.

__loam
0 replies
12h35m

I love my iPhone but apple is a publicly traded corp lol. The only reason they're embracing right to repair is because of huge efforts of people outside the company to get bills passed that make them embrace it.

tlrobinson
2 replies
14h44m

Obviously Mini was using the encryption properly else it wouldn't have worked to begin with.

Just want to point out this isn’t inherently true. For example an insecurely generated session key would work fine but not be secure.

Of course, it's very unlikely Apple is doing that. Just putting the thought out there.

Apple is doing what? Not using encryption properly? What reason do you have to believe that?

silasdavis
1 replies
12h35m

Not using encryption properly?

They didn't mean that, they meant siphoning off data client side, for reasons, like CSAM.

The point, which I agree with, is having to trust a single closed source implementation of a client is not so different to trusting the servers of a non E2E service.

simbolit
0 replies
11h25m

The BIG difference is that you have to trust the hardware and the operating system already, and as these are made by apple, you already have to trust them.

"Trusting the servers of a non E2E service" is adding another trusted party.

If you don't trust apple, you don't have an iPhone.

oneplane
2 replies
16h47m

iMessage is Apple's service, and they can do with it whatever they want. No other arguments are really relevant.

As for whatever reasons Apple comes up with: that is probably also not going to be relevant as a multinational that is beholden to money is going to have the legal department and PR do that sort of messaging and not anyone on the technical side of things.

Speculating as to why things are the way they are: Apple knows that people in some socioeconomic ecosystems value iMessage as-is, so we can expect their intent to be aligned with keeping that value. Reusing all in-house crypto and account management certainly makes it easier on the engineering side as well.

tcfhgj
1 replies
16h39m

They can't, if they have extreme market power, mich like Microsoft can't do anything they want with Windows

oneplane
0 replies
16h3m

And that's where that 'if' is important: iMessage isn't very relevant outside of the US. Worldwide it doesn't even reach the top 5. Inside the US, even Facebook Messenger is apparently used more than iMessage.

wraptile
1 replies
11h3m

HN's obsession with Apple feels like some twisted mix of Stockholm syndrome, american nationalism and sunk cost falacy. Truly bizare to the point I wouldn't be surprised if we find out Apple is actively astroturfing this and many other topics. No other tech focused forum does this.

nerdix
0 replies
4h0m

No astroturfing needed. It's called the Apple Cult for a reason.

pilsetnieks
1 replies
18h24m

The troll toll?

Just putting the thought out there.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

kurisufag
0 replies
17h19m

ratwiki is /literally/ a troll website. it has the same validity as encyclopedia dramatica.

dijit
1 replies
8h57m

Obviously Mini was using the encryption properly else it wouldn't have worked to begin with.

I tried beeper before (not Mini though, so could be wrong about Mini) but it seemed to be running a VM somewhere and passing messages to the MacOS Messages.app via some kind of scripting interface.

So beeper itself (the full version) was not “speaking” iMessage protocol at all.

djxfade
0 replies
8h48m

The old version indeed worked that way. Mini was implementing a fully reverse engineered protocol.

HenryBemis
1 replies
13h11m

siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted?

If you got iCloud backup enabled then they absolutely siphone everything that happens on your phone. And the disgusting part is that when enabling a new iphone it automatically has it switched on. I remember the case with some terrorists that Apple have to the US authorities everything on the dude's iCloud backups, but the authorities weren't content with only the backups and wanted to crack the phone - so backups have their keys managed by Apple.

Terretta
0 replies
11h31m

You mean the San Bernardino terrorist where Apple refused to break open the phone for the US government?

And recently, they've released an updated version of cloud sync that doesn't even let Apple have your keys.

viktorcode
0 replies
8h48m

Where is the hacker spirit here?

There was none to begin with. It was an attempt to build a business on top of a virtual macOS.

Edit: sorry, confused them with a different service. This one used previously published research on reverse engineering iMessage to build the business.

tinus_hn
0 replies
15h28m

You need a device key to use an iCloud account, and all Beeper clients were using the same device key. So unsurprisingly, it’s not hard for Apple to block. And this doesn’t mean they peep into the messages.

rvz
0 replies
17h46m

Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening.

You should not be surprised around the risk of depending on reverse engineered third party integrations which the provider can seek to cut you off of unauthorized interactions.

It is a bit dicey when you're charging for it, but since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist.

That makes no sense for Beeper.

pjmlp
0 replies
11h40m

The hacker spirit in relation to Apple was long gone when the Mac Classic was released.

People that imagine otherwise haven't lived through those days.

perryizgr8
0 replies
14h55m

Where is the hacker spirit here?

Kind of silly to buy apple devices (especially iphone) and expect to be able to hack their services. Apple is the last place to look for hacker friendly products. Ffs you can't even run your own software on an iPhone. Spend your hacker energy somewhere worthwhile, on devices and platforms that welcome that kind of tinkering (or at least tolerate it).

There are so many relatively open messaging services. Telegram has a rich API and bots framework. Much more hacker like to build something interesting on that. People trying to force imessage are just fighting a battle that is already lost. Why spend time and energy on something that will perpetuate closed ecosystems even if they succeed?

midtake
0 replies
16h5m

Their house, their rules.

kmbfjr
0 replies
18h34m

You are allowed, you get to use your iCloud account.

geodel
0 replies
14h53m

Go support the hackers then. Here you seem to be heckling people who don't share your viewpoint.

code_duck
0 replies
13h56m

You can use iMessage on your MacBook, right?

charles_f
0 replies
16h44m

I wouldn't take that as a lack of hacker spirit ; and honestly saying this was to be anticipated is not being an applogist. You could tell this would happen, notably because they were selling a product on top of a retro-engineered API, and it made quite the noise. Even if they hadn't closed it at a technical level, they'd probably have done it at a legal level.

And to point out the obvious, Beeper was also closed source. I don't trust apple much, but I trust a random startup much less to believe that they're not either doing something dicey, or screwing up the encryption protocol and creating tons of security holes (esp. if it was retro engineered).

Honestly, as you're pointing out the closed source character of all of that, I'd much rather use something like Signal.

brookst
0 replies
16h1m

Not much point in engaging with someone who sees all opposing views as “apologists” “crawling out”

amelius
0 replies
9h11m

how iMessage costs Apple money to run

This assumes that Apple can periodically extract money from users after they bought the product.

Garvi
0 replies
10h31m

Apple customers are the fur wearers of the tech world.

Brian_K_White
0 replies
16h19m

There is a value to the iphone users, not just the android users, but neither Apple nor most iphone users will ever acknowledge that.

Grustaf
119 replies
19h59m

"if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they stop a service that enables their own users to now send encrypted messages to Android users, rather than using unsecure SMS?" - Eric Migicovsky

1. If Apple sees this as a gap, it is very obvious that they would address that themselves, rather than by allowing a hack to exploit loopholes in their architecture

2. Since Apple has no control over the Beeper mini client, they would not consider it safe, it could easily be spying on users without their knowledge.

maxlin
46 replies
19h37m

Since apple has no control over your fire extinguisher, they sent a man to securely take it from your house and dispose of it. It could have been a bomb for all you know.

georgespencer
25 replies
19h28m

Do you really consider Apple's control over a proprietary protocol which they invented and maintain to be comparable to a scenario in which Apple "sends a man" to take "your fire extinguisher […] from your house"?

I've re-written this comment five or six times in an attempt to find the most charitable interpretation, but I just cannot comprehend how it made it through your filter and out onto the internet.

maxlin
10 replies
19h1m

It's not a super serious comment, it's more about how ridiculous the tone of "We are doing this for YOUR protection" would be.

On a more serious note though, in the end Apple absolutely has the power of increasing everyone's capability and security by doing something like setting up a playbook of how iMessage could just use Signal protocol and how other actors could join in, or really anything else but doing this.

georgespencer
9 replies
18h30m

It's not a super serious comment, it's more about how ridiculous the tone of "We are doing this for YOUR protection" would be.

Right now I can presume a basic level of device security across all iMessage threads I have. Beeper deranges that: E2EE is still there, but Beeper exposes my correspondence to device security weaknesses from other OEMs, malware, keyloggers, screen scrapers, etc. as a result of lax app marketplace security & privacy.

It seems to me to be entirely disingenuous to suggest that Beeper increases security: in fact, the opposite is true.

in the end Apple absolutely has the power of increasing everyone's capability and security by doing something like setting up a playbook of how iMessage could just use Signal protocol and how other actors could join in, or really anything else but doing this.

I don't see why any company should be denigrated for not helping the users of another competing platform, particularly when doing so likely comes at the cost of increasing the risk to its own users.

maxlin
2 replies
17h51m

The whole underlying point is that Apple will do anything to virtue signal when in reality they are making a decision on improving their profit regardless if it decreases security of its customers and other people. It is undeniable and silly to argue against.

georgespencer
1 replies
16h55m

Apple will do anything to virtue signal

Subjective, speculative.

when in reality

I think you mean "when in my opinion".

they are making a decision on improving their profit

Speculative, and "improving their profit" is clumsy enough vocabulary that it's a red flag on continuing to discuss this with you.

regardless if it decreases security of its customers and other people

The plurality of countervailing perspectives in this thread – which you have failed to address or refute, as far as I can tell – ought to indicate to you that it is arguable that Apple's decision in this case increases security of its customers.

It is undeniable and silly to argue against.

I'll let others judge who seems silly here.

maxlin
0 replies
4h11m

You know, one doesn't really even need to read the whole of your comment to know your way of "debating" is dead in the water. Take the argument as a whole. "Isolating" parts of it just makes you look like you're debating for flat earth or the like lol. "Red flag" rofl grammar police

My point stays exactly the same. You haven't said anything real against it.

scatters
1 replies
17h53m

Does Apple block imessage on rooted phones? If not, what level of device security do you really have?

georgespencer
0 replies
17h3m

In addition to explicitly prohibiting it as a violation of the iPhone EULA, Apple goes to extraordinary lengths to close the exploits which allow jailbreaking. Apple doesn't just block iMessage on rooted phones, it tries to prevent jailbreaking outright.

cremp
1 replies
17h29m

a basic level of device security across all iMessage threads I have

Is that really true though? Jailbroken phones, iMessage may still work. Any device security gets thrown out the window.

You also can't expect everyone to have an Apple device for security, which we've seen time and time again SS7 being weak - So is the requirement to remove SS7, for everyone to jump on the Apple train?

I see Beeper as doing Apple a service, not so much a competing platform, but a gateway to the iMessage ecosystem - 'Hey, this would be pretty cool to use without this app and have it native' vs the 'Only Apple devices can use this.'

georgespencer
0 replies
16h51m

Is that really true though? Jailbroken phones, iMessage may still work. Any device security gets thrown out the window.

Apple closes exploits which allow jailbreaking, precludes it in the EULA. What more would you have them do?

lelandbatey
0 replies
17h52m

If more users are sending encrypted messages over APNS instead of SMS (remember, SMS is effectively unencrypted plaintext), that sounds like the definition of "more security".

Hmmming and hawing over "OEMs... and ...lax app marketplace security" seems like quite a high bar to hold, a bar so high it ceases to be useful. Remember, iPhone users can disable passwords on their iPhone entirely; if that's not something you ever worry about, then worrying about a minority of OEM's seems like mere pretext to keep your comfy walled garden all to yourself.

danShumway
0 replies
15h31m

comes at the cost of increasing the risk to its own users.

iMessage using SMS to communicate with Android devices increases the risk to iOS users. Apple customers are still Apple customers when they communicate with Android users.

Every risk you describe is still present in the current implementation of iMessage when communicating with Android users, except the risks are much greater because SMS is much easier to exploit and intercept than an E2EE protocol would be.

A message platform that forces Apple users to use an insecure protocol when communicating with Android users decreases the security and privacy of Apple users.

So even an imperfect implementation of real E2EE between Apple and Android users, even with all the risks you describe above, is still an improvement in security over what we have right now: a situation where Apple forces iMessage users to use to what is quite possibly the least secure communication method possible when communicating with their friends and family in different ecosystems.

It's not necessarily about helping the users of another competing platform, Apple users who are using normal iPhones are sending unencrypted and unsecured messages to their friends and family members because Apple is more interested in vendor lock-in than it is interested in making sure that its customers are able to communicate securely with their contacts.

The idea that Apple users would suddenly stop caring about security or that they wouldn't want their conversations encrypted just because they're talking to someone else who's on an Android device is very strange to me -- it suggests that Apple is willing to sacrifice security for paying iOS users just to keep Android users from seeing any of the benefits of those security improvements.

Yes, there may exist reasons to distinguish between locked down vendor-controlled devices where users do not have the autonomy to change device settings that could damage encryption, and devices where users do have that autonomy. I understand that concern, even if I think it's usually disengenous. But there is really no reason and no excuse (especially now that we know how easy it would be for Apple to take its encryption multiple-platform) for going beyond distinguishing between those devices, and going so far as to actively drop all security measures and all encryption from those conversations. It's like saying that because a window can be broken we might as well take the door off of its hinges and put up a "burglars welcome" sign -- and, incredibly, it's claiming that anyone who tries to replace the door without permission is somehow decreasing security. Apple doesn't just distinguish between controlled and uncontrolled environments, it removes the door entirely by dropping its users into a messaging format with no end-to-end encryption at all. It's a bad policy that hurts Apple users and decreases their safety.

iAMkenough
9 replies
19h22m

There's an open standard they're refusing to adopt that would be more secure than forcing users back to SMS.

kamilner
6 replies
19h16m

If you mean RCS, end-to-end encryption is not part of the standard, it is a non-standard extension supported only by the google messages app https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en

Rebelgecko
5 replies
19h7m

Does RCS need E2E to be better than SMS when it comes to privacy/security?

llm_nerd
2 replies
19h2m

Yes, it does. RCS without E2E is following the SMS model and putting your telco in charge. It uses transport encryption but that is basically meaningless when every relay sees the entire contents of the message.

Rebelgecko
1 replies
19h0m

Does that mean Stingrays and just regular old SDRs can still pick up RCS messages?

llm_nerd
0 replies
18h43m

RCS uses transport encryption and I honestly have no idea if it uses cert pinning or server certs or the like. The bigger concern to me is that it puts your telco in charge, just like the old days of SMS. Without E2E they get to see all of the contents of messages and to share it with whoever they deem they want to share it with, which history has shown is too many people. Telcos were very willing partners in the development of RCS for a reason. And there's a reason the base spec doesn't include E2E. Telcos want a return to the good old days.

SMS is insecure and no one should use it. RCS isn't that much better and history is a lesson that it returns to a partner that isn't trustworthy.

dwaite
0 replies
12h9m

IMHO profiled RCS is notably worse than SMS for privacy, because the vast majority of RCS servers are hosted by Google.

SMS can be read but it is still at least somewhat decentralized. It isn't being funneled to a single party whose business model is profiling users.

NavinF
0 replies
18h40m

Yeah anything that's not E2E encrypted is pretty useless for privacy/security these days. Might as well just use DMs on reddit, twitter, etc if you don't care about E2E

georgespencer
0 replies
19h18m

Apple is adopting RCS, but as far as I can tell your reply has nothing whatsoever to do with my comment.

Hamuko
0 replies
19h20m

Are you referring to the one that they're adopting?

zem
3 replies
19h11m

i am just flabbergasted that we are living in a timeline where the phrase "proprietary protocol" is a real thing

NavinF
2 replies
18h37m

Aren't most protocols proprietary? Every app builds their own on top of standard protocols like HTTP, TLS, and IP. Not all services are hostile to third party clients though

zem
1 replies
10h6m

well, there's proprietary in the sense of "not a standard" and proprietary in the sense of "no one else can make software that uses this protocol". the latter is very weird if you think about it.

NavinF
0 replies
6h44m

Eh not really that weird. Consider how Microsoft repeatedly reverse engineered AOL for compatibility reasons and AOL actively blocked their efforts with every update: https://youtu.be/w-7PjunSxLU

Stuff like this happens all the time and the internet has always been like this. I'm sure older users will remember even older examples

willseth
10 replies
19h23m

What? Does a fire extinguisher connect to Apple servers? Does a fire extinguisher secretly being a bomb affect the security of others? I don’t know if you could have come up with a worse metaphor.

jrflowers
7 replies
18h53m

If you think about it, blocking an app and stealing your fire extinguishers are both actions that a person or corporation could theoretically do. Since they are both actions, they are equivalent. Therefore blocking an app, burning down your house, baking a pie, writing a sonnet, doing a backflip are all the same thing.

willseth
6 replies
17h29m

Ahhh and to think all this time I thought I knew what a metaphor was. It’s literally any comparison! Silly me!

JumpCrisscross
3 replies
17h0m

Really, your comment is equivalent to a black hole or pomegranate, since they’re all things.

willseth
2 replies
16h33m

I didn’t even realize my mind could expand to this level.

JumpCrisscross
1 replies
16h28m

It was always that level! Those are both things too!

willseth
0 replies
14h49m

Ok giving up software to become a monk now.

jrflowers
1 replies
17h9m

It’s spooky. If you think about it if Apple can block an app what is to stop them from breaking into your garage and modifying your car to talk like KITT from Knight Rider but instead of being helpful it makes mean remarks about your clothes that make you cry?? What if Apple filled your refrigerator with concrete? They could build a brick wall in front of your house and paint a replica of the outside on it so you run into it like a looney toon!

willseth
0 replies
16h32m

Shit. E2EE encrypting my refrigerator brb

ysofunny
0 replies
18h34m

It's a new more advanced fire extinguisher that is 'smart' and has a touchscreen and it smells really nice* and what's even better,

it's going to become illegal not to have one in california! so you better invest NOW!!!

go to double U double U double U blah blah blah dot yadda yadda yadda

*full disclaimer, this technology is patent pending**

**doubly full disclaimer, "patent pending" in the sense that the invention is still to be invented, the panel of experts said 20 (more) years!

maxlin
0 replies
17h47m

It does work as a metaphor because if Apple could force you to use their iExtinguisher and ban others they absolutely would, with the argument that they are improving fire safety.

echelon
7 replies
19h22m

It's time that we as an industry push back against Apple and Google.

The smartphone is the single most important device for modern life and society. It's news, photos, communications with loved ones, work, entertainment, food, paying for practically everything...

And it's just two companies. Two companies with an iron grip over such a wide and diverse set of functionalities that, taken together, should be as inalienable as free speech.

- They control what you can put on the devices (or in the cases where they're open, they scare you or make it exceedingly difficult).

- They tax all innovation happening on the platform. Because web is second class. If you build an app, you have to pay for ads against your own brand. You can't have a customer relationship (yet Google and Apple get that). You have to keep up with their release cycles on their timeline. They can deny you or ban you at any point. They take 30% of your margin. You're forced to use their billing. In many cases, they actively develop software that competes with you.

- They're extremely user hostile. The devices aren't easily repairable, the batteries force upgrade cycles, and they do stupid things that make your kids want to buy the most expensive model for clout. Green and blue bubbles, etc.

- On top of this, they're gradually eating away at every related industry. The music industry. The credit cards and payments and finance industry. The film industry. It's all getting absorbed into the blob that is the locked down smartphone.

- They turn their devices into "CSAM detection dragnets" (read: five eyes, US, China, and every other entity that wants to surveil).

This is fucking absurd and it needs to stop.

We need more than two device and platform manufactures.

Apps should be at least one of: (1) portable, (2) freely installable from the web without scare tactics, (3) web should be first class / native

The device provider shouldn't be able to use their platform play to maintain dominance. The cost of switching should be zero until there are enough new peer-level competitors.

I could keep going... the status quo is a tax on the public, a tax on innovation, and a really overall unfortunate situation.

fsflover
3 replies
19h6m

The alternative phones outside the duopoly exist.

Sent from my Librem 5.

nvy
2 replies
18h42m

Have Purism solved the problem where it will randomly burn through an entire battery charge in an hour?

That basically makes it a non-option for the overwhelming majority of people, and it was still an issue 6 months ago.

I really want to like the Librem but it's hard to justify the price tag when you're going to have to carry another phone around with you anyway.

fsflover
0 replies
10h3m

I don't have such issue. The battery is sufficient for one day unless I use the phone heavily.

Edit: Actually it did happen when I opened a Firefox tab with a heavy js and left it open with deactivated suspend, which you shouldn't do on any phone (and even then it's more than a couple of hours).

Hackbraten
0 replies
11h4m

I use a Librem 5 as my daily driver without carrying a second phone around.

The battery thing is not an issue for me in practice. I carry a spare battery (they're swappable), but I never actually need it because there's USB-C chargers everywhere I go, and I made it a habit to plug it in whenever I can.

rezonant
0 replies
19h4m

Agreed with all of this. I'm happy to see others who care about these issues- all too often on HN that's not the case :-\

chx
0 replies
18h46m

They take 30% of your margin.

that would be nicer than the current situation where they take away 30% of your revenue

WWLink
0 replies
18h29m

It's really not just two companies trying to pull this bullshit. Microsoft and Samsung also try to do the "ecosystem" bullshit. If you try to use a streaming music service other than Spotify, you'll eventually notice almost all social media has an exclusive connection with Spotify to do things like share "now playing" songs or your playlists or whatever. Retail companies tried to force everyone into their payment platform lol. Banks try to force you to only use iOS or locked-down android distros. (Some are even deprecating their desktop websites and forcing you to download the app now, apparently).

There's also the mountain of 'mobile first' (aka mobile-only) garbage out there, and stuff that is nerfed on mobile unless you download the app (so they can squeeze telemetry out of you).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Apple or Google - far from it - but I'm saying there's a lot of real crap going on in tech right now.

To be fair, I am a curious person and use both android and iOS. I use onedrive and (sigh) icloud for storing photos. On my android phone, I can actually have it sync pictures to onedrive and nowhere else (and it'll free up the storage, even! I think...). On iOS it either fills your phone up and then nags you constantly to manually delete pictures, or you use iCloud. There's no other choice.

vosper
0 replies
19h34m

Except that the iMessage system belongs to Apple, not to you

The app doesn’t connect to any servers at Beeper itself, only to Apple servers, the way a “real” iMessage text would.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/05/beeper-reversed-engineered...

CivBase
29 replies
19h49m

2. Since Apple has no control over the Beeper mini client, they would not consider it safe, it could easily be spying on users without their knowledge.

Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe. It could easily be spying on me without my knowledge.

willseth
10 replies
19h16m

If you don’t trust Apple, then obviously you don’t use it. If you do, then it shouldn't be possible for a 3rd party client to break that trust. Users only see iMessage vs no-iMessage and have no other way to identify the client to decide for themselves whether to trust it.

thomastjeffery
7 replies
18h46m

If you do, then it shouldn't be possible for a 3rd party client to break that trust.

A correctly implemented end-to-end encrypted protocol would be safe for all participating clients.

The only way to break that security is by copying messages outside the protocol in the app itself.

Neither of us knows whether iMessage or Beeper Mini does this. To bring up the possibility is to criticize both apps equally.

willseth
6 replies
17h31m

A correctly implemented end-to-end encrypted protocol would be safe for all participating clients.

As long as the clients are closed source, this is a circular argument. The client itself is a vector. Not just for a good E2E implementation but for the 3rd party company to not outright steal everyone’s messages, create a backdoor, etc. You have to be willing to trust every client used in the thread.

thomastjeffery
5 replies
17h29m

That was my second point.

If we must be willing to distrust one closed source client, then we ought to distrust both.

willseth
4 replies
16h36m

This is tantamount to saying we should only trust open source software. If that’s your point, then you lost me. If not, then it’s obvious that some companies are more trustworthy than others. (P.S. the many active exploits found in core low level open source software after months or years because despite the source being open almost no one audits it because they’re cheap and/or assume someone else is doing it)

thomastjeffery
3 replies
16h18m

Well why in the world would I trust iMessage and distrust Beeper Mini?

willseth
2 replies
16h6m

Are you seriously asking why someone would trust Apple over a small generally unknown Android-only app company?

CivBase
1 replies
13h27m

I don't actually think it's that unreasonable. Apple has broken people's trust many times and come out just fine in the end because they are a huge company with many products participating in many markets. A small company like Beeper is dependent on a small user base and a significant breach of trust could easily spell the end for them.

That said, I don't personally trust either of them. When it comes to matters of security, I prefer open protocols which can be proven to be secure over pinky swears from companies.

dwaite
0 replies
11h50m

Trust is generally something you build and lose, rather than something you are given by default. That reputation can be a massive asset or liability.

The level of trust I currently give in Beeper is that identity verification happened such that someone could potentially be prosecuted for abuses after-the-fact.

They have not built up a reputation, and in the face of potential scams or privacy abuses their reputation may not be as valuable as the user information they can gain access to.

Small incidents can cause significant reputation harm to Apple, and those equate to billions of dollars lost in corporate value.

Even the recent notification monitoring announcement harms their reputation, where the government itself mandated non-transparency. (For this reason, I somewhat expect they are trying to design an oblivious notification system, where role separation prevents a single intermediary from knowing both where a notification is from and where it is going to.)

johnbellone
1 replies
19h11m

Not what he said. He said he doesn’t trust them (safe). The question you should be asking is why do you?

vGPU
0 replies
18h41m

Because they’ve proven to be the most trustworthy and if you can’t trust the manufacturer of the device and OS you also can’t trust any app running on said hardware.

addandsubtract
10 replies
19h33m

Which is why most people (should) opt to use a cross platform messenger, such as Signal.

SahAssar
9 replies
19h21m

If signal would officially allow third party clients, non-phone-number-bound users and maybe federation that'd be great.

It does not.

kccqzy
2 replies
19h15m

Does iMessage allow third party clients? No? Then why the double standard?

thomastjeffery
0 replies
18h45m

It looks like we are comparing standards here, and that neither passes the bar.

SahAssar
0 replies
19h4m

I'm saying that if we hold something to a higher standard lets actually hold them to a higher standard.

Is signal better than iMessage? Probably. Should we ask for them to be better than they are? Yes.

cqqxo4zV46cp
2 replies
18h52m

As very recently made evident, Signal spends a significant amount of money maintaining their phone-number-bound infrastructure, with an entirely plausible, reasonable, user-focused reason for doing so. As a Signal user, and donator, I’m 100% okay with the trade-off they’ve made, and would hate to see it reversed just to appeal to some nerdy pipe-dream for how services should work.

noirbot
0 replies
13h11m

I'll continue to restate the thing that made me immediately quit Signal forever - I made an account, and 10 minutes later, it had alerted someone I hadn't talked to in years that I had an account, simply because they had my phone number at some point in the past, and they messaged me.

For a nominally privacy focused app, for them to literally alert people to my new Signal account I'd gotten to securely message someone violated all trust I had in them. What's to stop someone from just adding a Contact for every single valid phone number on their phone and then getting an alert for any time anyone makes a Signal account? I may as well just use Facebook then.

SahAssar
0 replies
18h35m

As very recently made evident, Signal spends a significant amount of money maintaining their phone-number-bound infrastructure, with an entirely plausible, reasonable, user-focused reason for doing so.

If there is some recent revelation that makes phone numbers all of a sudden a secure, portable and censorship-resistant identifier please link me that.

Until then I'd prefer to not have my private communication determined by telephone companies that often have not cared for either security, censorship or privacy. Regardless of signals e2e encryption having my access to the network determined by a telephone company is not the right way to go.

anigbrowl
2 replies
19h16m

Signal does allow third party clients, Beeper is one. I agree about other things, and would expand on the list.

SahAssar
1 replies
19h2m

They do not officially and discourage it. Moxie and the rest of the company has been extremely clear that all third party clients are not considered supported or allowed, regardless if they can and do interact with signal services.

anigbrowl
0 replies
18h2m

Useful (though somewhat dispiriting) to know. I would feel a lot more forgiving toward Signal's UI shortcomings if I had a choice of alternative front-ends.

judge2020
1 replies
19h44m

"they would not consider it safe" is from Apple's perspective, which is the only thing that matters when Apple is the steward of legally and technically enforcing who can use their APIs.

CivBase
0 replies
13h16m

Sure. They have every right to do what they're doing. I'm just mocking Apple because I think their implication that they're the only trustworthy entity is ridiculous. We have no reason to trust them any more than we do Beeper or any other company.

If Apple actually cared about security they'd implement an open protocol that is provably secure. Imagine if they supported something like Matrix. But that's clearly not their primary concern here. It's just a convenient excuse to maintain their walled garden.

diligiant
1 replies
19h45m

The basic assumption here is trusting Apple, provided that numerous security researchers have access to the platform. If you don't trust Apple, don't buy their products.

0cf8612b2e1e
0 replies
19h30m

It’s a two party marketplace. Even if I don’t like Apple, the alternative is not great either.

Grustaf
1 replies
19h22m

As pointed out below, "they" is Apple, but I would also assume that at least 99.9% (really) of users would trust Apple more than Beeper, i they had to choose.

cqqxo4zV46cp
0 replies
18h55m

Let’s add a few more 9s to that, just to make it even more realistic.

verandaguy
0 replies
16h20m

Since I have no control over iMessage, I would not consider it safe.

Generally fair assumption. There's been some research (both positive and negative) around their E2EE claims, though AFAIK much of what's known about iMessage's E2EE guts has been learned through unofficial means. I think that for the vast majority of users, iMessage is probably safe enough.

As a user, you have the agency to choose a messenger app that better suits your privacy/convenience balance, though in fairness, I think even among users who care about privacy, many don't know how to judge privacy features and implementation details well.

Like others in this thread, I personally recommend Signal. It's widely available, easily usable, has been audited and researched a fair bit, and though it doesn't have a self-hosted option, it does have white papers out about its protocol which IMO are worth a read.

CharlesW
22 replies
19h34m

Keep in mind that this is spin — Erik's statement is ridiculous, and he knows it. To think that Apple would somehow not treat Beeper like any other bad actor hacking iMessage protocols is delulu.

Grustaf
13 replies
19h20m

Sure, that's fair. But if he knows that, why spend the time to build this app in the first place? Is it a marketing play? It did buy them a whole lot of attention.

pjz
5 replies
18h54m

Besides the obvious attention play, he might be going for an acquisition play... "Why bother writing our own iMessage for Android when we can just buy this little company that's already done it?" There's obvious issues with that plan, but that doesn't keep delusional founders from being delusional.

paulryanrogers
4 replies
18h36m

Apple chose not to support Android on purpose. They know iMessage exclusivity drives hardware sales. The emails have come out proving as much.

It's the same reason they dragged their feet supporting RCS, until regulatory pressure started mounting.

cyanydeez
1 replies
17h59m

exclusivity is all Apple runs on after it's tech succeeds

politician
0 replies
17h22m

As much is apparent to anyone who has used Xcode or has encountered the special appeals process behind the official appeals process behind the ostensibly fair and evenly-applied public AppStore review process.

AlexandrB
1 replies
49m

They know iMessage exclusivity drives hardware sales. The emails have come out proving as much.

I find this incredibly hard to believe. And just because the Apple marketing department believes something is true, doesn't make it so.

Maybe I run in a weird crowd, but I've never met anyone who cares whether "text messages" are delivered over SMS or iMessage. In general most messaging I do happens over Signal, WhatsApp, Discord, or (in a few unfortunate cases) Instagram messenger.

paulryanrogers
0 replies
27m

Hard for you perhaps. Disclosures from the Apple v Epic litigation indicate it's true.

https://www.thurrott.com/apple/248931/apple-didnt-bring-imes...

threeseed
3 replies
18h40m

They didn't spend much time building this feature.

It was an acquihire involving a 16 year old who was doing it for fun.

singpolyma3
2 replies
18h17m

Except they didn't hire him? He gave them some kind of info about the sms verifications, which they then had their devs implement.

selectodude
0 replies
18h7m

The Github page for the iMessage hack said something about Beeper "acquiring" it. Not entirely sure what that means in practice since it was open source code on Github.

kyawzazaw
0 replies
16h38m

They contracted him

lisper
0 replies
19h14m

It did buy them a whole lot of attention.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

dylan604
0 replies
17h50m

But what kind of attention did it garner? Now, we all know that these folks are pretty delusional. They spent time developing an app that everyone except them knew was not long for the world. A rational company would realize that it wouldn't live long enough to recoup any money. Releasing such a still born product doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about it. Hell, Google releases products that live longer than this.

SCM-Enthusiast
0 replies
5h6m

Continue to watch this space, remember - He created the pebble. The cost of this "Experiment", to put forward a point at a super simple level. reverse engineering architecture and providing a service on top of this would be a huge space, if it were allowed.

ysofunny
7 replies
18h44m

but the real problem some of use have with Apple's behavior is the real underlying reasons they're doing this

I am reasonably sure that their main driver is profit which really means exploitation of people;

I consider their public arguments lies made up to cover up the fact that what they account for as profit comes from what are in the end some really ugly historical and traditional imperialistic (colonial, neocolonial, and occulted) practices

threeseed
2 replies
18h41m

I am reasonably sure that their main driver is profit which really means exploitation of people

Just wondering if you've forgotten what site you're on.

This is YC which exists to build companies whose main driver will always be profit.

singpolyma3
1 replies
18h16m

There are companies who have come out of YC who have main drivers other than profit.

meindnoch
0 replies
16h50m

Yeah. E.g. cashing out and leaving the business to bagholders.

theshackleford
0 replies
17h51m

I’m poorer for having read this unsubstantiated drivel.

anomaly_
0 replies
18h33m

so buy/use something else?

KerrAvon
0 replies
18h26m

I am reasonably sure that their main driver is profit which really means exploitation of people;

What phone do you use that does not have the same issue?

JumpCrisscross
0 replies
17h3m

reasonably sure that their main driver is profit

As opposed to Beeper?

LordDragonfang
17 replies
19h38m

(1) is exactly what that quote is pointing out. If Apple actually cared about its users' security, they would see this as a gap, and would have addressed it already. The fact that they haven't means that, despite all their posturing about being a security-first platform, they care more about lock-in and marketing than they do about user security.

georgespencer
9 replies
19h21m

Putting aside that I count at least two glaring examples from this list[^1] in your reply, I suspect Apple would argue that it is in fact _solely_ preoccupied with its users' security: that's why iMessage is end to end encrypted and Apple does not offer 2FA / OTPs via SMS. Apple does not generally try to mitigate security issues which are beyond its control (e.g. non-Apple devices, protocols).

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

jeroenhd
4 replies
19h8m

and Apple does not offer 2FA / OTPs via SMS

Last time I checked, Apple still used security questions any hacker can get answers to on Facebook. I'm not all that confident about Apple's approach to account security.

Apple has the ability to control security issues on Android: they can release an Android app, like every other E2EE messenger out there.

Apple chooses not to, and it's their choice, of course. It doesn't care about the privacy of it's non-users, and it doesn't care about the privacy of its users when they communicate with non-users. From what I can tell, it only cares if you stay within the Apple bubble.

saintfire
0 replies
14h56m

Apple has the ability to control security issues on Android: they can release an Android app, like every other E2EE messenger out there.

I'm surprised I haven't seen this mentioned more. They could even make a green (or whatever colour they wish) iMessage bubble to denote that it is not from an Apple device. Seems like it solves all the problems people present with E2EE/iMessage with Android interop. On the issue of spam, which I feel is just grasping at straws, You could allow blocking unknown non-Apple iMessages by default. Unless I am mistaken, this really only leaves the walled-garden as the thing that stops Apple from implementing something like this.

In fact, you could even only allow Android iMessage conversations that include at least one genuine Apple device. This combats the argument that they shouldn't have to give resources away to Android users for free. This would be added-value to their own customers by providing more streamlined messaging with their Android contacts. Such as situations where group chats are forced to swap to MMS for a single Android user, sending pictures/video to a friend, etc.

reaperducer
0 replies
18h29m

Last time I checked, Apple still used security questions any hacker can get answers to on Facebook.

Check again.

I recently reset a forgotten iTunes password. This required:

  - An email verification

  - An SMS verification 

  - A verification code sent to another device on the account

  - A ten-day wait

  - Another second device verification
That's 5FA authentication just to reset a password.

The days of answering personal trivia questions to reset passwords are long gone.

philistine
0 replies
18h59m

Those security questions are now very much optional. I made sure to lock down my Apple account. If I lose either my password or access to all my devices, the only thing that can unlock my account is a long printed code or permission from a trusted family member. My account no longer has security questions.

Apple is doing it optionally because they're trying to balance two opposing forces here: helping its users access a locked account, and giving users tightly locked accounts.

georgespencer
0 replies
18h42m

My points are narrowly related to the parent's assertion that Apple preventing Beeper Mini interoperability / allowing SMS is evidence of their convictions relating to privacy being hokum, but since you're not one of those 3 month old accounts I see making specious arguments…

Last time I checked, Apple still used security questions any hacker can get answers to on Facebook.

Apple's default for a number of years has been to use trusted devices IIRC. Their kb article on resetting a forgotten Apple ID password even suggests that it's better to wait until you're back with a trusted device than to immediately try to reset without one, suggesting that the process is somewhat intensive and perhaps subject to human review? I just kicked it off online and the first question _is_ to confirm an obfuscated cell phone number, but I can't imagine that after that it's mother's maiden name dreck?

Apple has the ability to control security issues on Android: they can release an Android app, like every other E2EE messenger out there.

Which would thus expose them to security weaknesses of a device and OS they do not control, and potentially expose iPhone and iOS customers to increased risk should an Android iMessage user's phone have malware, or screen scraping, or keylogging, etc.

Apple chooses not to, and it's their choice, of course. It doesn't care about the privacy of it's non-users, and it doesn't care about the privacy of its users when they communicate with non-users. From what I can tell, it only cares if you stay within the Apple bubble.

Nail on the head, but I do think that folks overstate the simplicity with which Apple could provide a comparably secure iMessage experience on Android.

goosedragons
2 replies
18h59m

They do offer 2FA via SMS. This is AFAIK the ONLY option for Android/non-Mac users. Why are those users less deserving of decent security? Apple still sells and offers services outside their platforms, so they're still customers potentially with hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of purchases and CCs attached. FFS Nintendo has better 2FA options than Apple for non-Apple platforms.

georgespencer
1 replies
18h37m

Why are those users less deserving of decent security?

Because they don't own an Apple device or have iMessage, which is the entire point of this discussion?

goosedragons
0 replies
6h24m

So Apple only cares about security for Apple platform users and not all users of Apple services? Such commitment to security...

kevincox
0 replies
7h16m

This is like making a car where the airbags only deploy if you hit another car of the same brand.

Sure, if this car is super safe it may be better if both you and the other driver both had it. But it is clearly better to have airbags, even if the other car is less safe than it could be if it was from the first-party brand.

It is one thing to not try to mitigate security issues outside their control and another thing to remove possible security because you don't control it entirely.

7e
3 replies
19h12m

A third party client in iMessage allows for spam attacks, and (worse) malicious payload attacks. It’s very much in the interests of security that Apple fence them out.

danShumway
2 replies
3h53m

I don't think it's at all clear that the approach you describe is working: https://www.wired.com/story/imessage-interactionless-hacks-g... (2019), https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/warning-... (2023)

Of course, this is a hard problem. I'm not saying Apple is bad at security, many good messaging platforms run into these kinds of problems. But the way you fix these problems (and the way Apple in fact did fix the bugs above) was through patching their own software, not by trying to control what attackers can send.

If security researches can send a malicious payload attack that compromises iMessage, the solution is not to make sure they can't send that payload (which would be impossible to guarantee anyway), the solution is to patch iMessage to no longer be vulnerable to that payload attack.

One hopes that the only thing preventing your iMessage client from being compromised is not whether or not the attacker has a spare $1,000 lying around.

api
1 replies
3h52m

The longer term solution is to stop using memory unsafe languages.

danShumway
0 replies
3h48m

Regardless, when a buffer overflow happens, it's not reasonable to say, "well, we'll just make sure nobody sends us badly formatted or maliciously formatted data. As long as only iPhone users can send us data then we can trust it."

The actual solution is to make the client/server not be vulnerable to malicious payloads that would cause a buffer overflow. Whether you do that by patching bugs individually or switching to a memory safe language, or whatever strategy is used -- "don't send our messaging platform bad data" isn't a security fix.

robertoandred
1 replies
19h38m

An intentional gap? Or a bug that they've now fixed?

Dylan16807
0 replies
19h28m

Fixing this bug leaves the gap intact.

Grustaf
0 replies
19h24m

It's a pretty indirect gap, since it has nothing to do with Apple's infrastructure, it's about users choosing to interact with users of non-Apple platforms using insecure means. There are dozens of secure cross-platform messenger apps that they could be using, and SMS is a legacy technology.

foobiekr
0 replies
18h2m

Spam. Spam is the reason and the Beeper guys know it.

llm_nerd
79 replies
18h58m

This was the obvious outcome. People were being willfully blind about how this "hack" works.

Using an exfiltrated binary they used its blackbox functions to perform a sort of device attestation using ripped Apple device identifiers. Clearly Apple simply needs to blacklist any device attestation that this service uses, which is obviously trivial. These aren't just RNGs they're fabricating, they're sets of legitimate Apple device data that isn't plainly evident to any random user-mode app.

Why would they block it? Every service has some sort of gate on who can message or it will be overrun by bad actors and spammers. Signal, Telegram and others make you validate your cell phone number -- there's a finite number of those, and they can blacklist them as necessary. Online services make you validate an email, do bot checks, etc. Beeper, and more importantly the technique they used, offers none of those gates. It was a plainly problematic free for all that was guaranteed to be closed.

empyrrhicist
37 replies
18h18m

Yes, totally understandable that this would be blocked within our legal system... but its a proof of concept that it would not be burdensome for apple to enable interoperability. We should be demanding support for open standards for messaging from mono/duopolists like Apple/Google.

bradleybuda
23 replies
17h12m

Also WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, and a handful of others with more than a half-billion users. Are those heptopolists or septopolists?

The word "monopolist" in 2023 seems to mean "a company whose corporate values are different than my personal ones and/or whose pricing and packaging don't match my consumption function and/or who has a lot of money and of whom I am jealous".

rezonant
22 replies
17h7m

I think you might be mistaking what monopoly/duopoly is being mentioned here. Those companies aren't phone manufacturers and they don't make phone texting apps. The distinction might not matter to you, but it's clearly the meaning of the GP.

You can say iMessage isn't a texting app because iMessage functionally (as in, the technical details) works like a non-texting app, but it is the only texting app on those phones and is the way normal texting is done. Perhaps it would be different if iMessage was just installable from the app store.

eek2121
21 replies
16h27m

You are aware that iPhones have many alternative messaging apps right? The second part of your comment is simply not true.

rezonant
14 replies
16h3m

Texting is a feature of a phone. You cannot, without elaborate workarounds, text from a consumer computer, tablet or other device as if it was a phone. Texting requires a phone number and a phone plan.

I understand that the distinction might seem slight, but in the eyes of most US consumers, texting is distinct from a chat app that you download from an app store even if it uses your phone number.

The absolute one way that everyone with a phone has to send a textual message to another person is to text them with their phone number.

In the US, where adoption of Signal, Whatsapp, Discord, or insert hundreds of other apps is very small, the percentage of your real world contacts using a particular app is also extremely small. Convincing all of them to use Signal would certainly be great, but in reality you will be using all of those apps if you are trying to escape the interoperability nightmare that is currently texting.

Given that everyone has a phone and they are all texting already, it would be awfully nice if we could just use texting without these interoperability problems without having to manage all of the apps, and without having to remember who prefers which one.

Group texting is also hugely popular in the US. If no single third party messaging app covers the set of friends you want to group text, what do you do? You text them. Because everyone has it. Let's say when you started your group everyone was on Whatsapp. Phenomenal! Start the group on Whatsapp. Then you meet Joe, and Joe is very cool and you definitely want him in the group chat. Joe doesn't trust Meta products and doesn't want to use Whatsapp. Should Joe capitulate, install another chat app used only for a single group chat, and grant access to their device to a Meta app? Should a negotiation occur amongst the rest of the group where they select a new common app to run the group on and split the conversation history, while also adding an app that they only use for that group chat?

Let's say they choose to switch to Signal, but Josh keeps forgetting (dammit Josh) and keeps messaging the group on Whatsapp. And instead of yell at Josh that the group is on Signal now, folks reply! Because Josh's joke was super funny. Conversation also continues on Signal. Someone on Signal now does a reference to Josh's joke on Whatsapp. Joe is confused, but everyone else gets the joke. Someone realizes what happens and sends a screenshot of the joke and ensuing replies from within Whatsapp so Joe can catch up, but the messages around the joke are longer than one phone screen so there's a lot more context that he misses. Joe is annoyed but he gets over it.

A few months pass and Sandra seems to have a bug where Signal is chewing through her battery life. Since only one of her group conversations is on Signal (she uses Whatsapp mostly) and she is fine not getting the work related banter that is often the topic of the group chat. But then she finds an article that's super interesting and she wants to share it with the group. She remembers that the group moved to Signal, but who cares, that Whatsapp group still exists and there's only, like, one person that isn't in it. She sends the link in the WhatsApp group instead. This leads organically to the group wanting to get together for a holiday. They plan out that July 12th would be a perfect weekend, and since they want to do a potluck, they all choose what part of the meal they'll bring.

A few days before the potluck, someone mentions on the Signal chat that they are excited to see everyone at the potluck. Joe is very confused and asks what they mean. They realize that this was in the WhatsApp group chat and explain what everyone is bringing. Unfortunately Joe is working that weekend, and can't come.

Should the group chat reschedule?

bambax
8 replies
12h38m

in the eyes of most US consumers, texting is distinct from a chat app that you download from an app store even if it uses your phone number. (...) In the US, where adoption of Signal, Whatsapp, Discord, or insert hundreds of other apps is very small

But do we know why that is? In Europe everyone's on WhatsApp, and while I'm not especially fan of it, the one feature that I like is that it can be used from any browser on any device, including desktops, including a work laptop where one doesn't have admin rights to install anything, etc.

I can leave my phone away in my pocket all day and still message anyone I please. I would hate it any other way. Why don't people in the US want that?

ffgjgf1
6 replies
10h32m

In Europe everyone's on WhatsApp

Or FB messenger, or actually mainly use SMS/iMessage. Europe is not as homogeneous as some people here might be implying. WhatsApp is not even the most popular messaging app in quite a few countries (Messenger is).

Also in Scandinavia, Britain and Switzerland iOS is about as popular as in the US while in some other countries it’s closer to 10%.

rezonant
3 replies
10h1m

Thanks for this- perhaps it's all too easy for both sides of the pond to look across and generalize that the other's problems aren't happening in their backyard. Because what you describe sounds quite complicated. Wouldn't everyone just prefer a secure, modern texting app that could message literally anyone with a phone number? Without having them download a specific app? Then we could all text together without the headaches.

ffgjgf1
1 replies
8h57m

Wouldn't everyone just prefer..

Sure, but I don’t think personal preferences matter that much in this case, most people just end up using what everyone else is whether they like it or not, which makes perfect sense.

But yeah, I think in most of Europe (not all, they were free/almost free since the late 2000s where I am) this started because SMS messages very relatively very expensive back when smartphones were becoming widespread.

Now WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Viber and whatever else there is are quite entrenched so even if Apple and Google get serious about properly supporting RCS it might get tricky to get users to switch back to the default client

Popular non open-source 3rd party messaging apps don’t really have much interest in supporting interoperability due to obvious reasons.

..modern texting app that could message literally anyone with a phone number? Without having them download a specific app?

Well on this thread it seems that WhatsApp might be exactly that from the perspective of some people (to the extent that they don’t even believe that anyone in Europe could be using anything else)

rezonant
0 replies
5h11m

All this is fair and your accounting of the reasons for the situation around Europe match my research so far.

I do want to say I've seen some others in this HN story contradict that Europe is as homogenous as your representing here though.

Still though, I looked at Germany's Whatsapp numbers and it's like 68% of the population, ignoring the fact that 1 account is not necessarily 1 person.

That's super dominant compared to the US which is somewhere around 22% with the same account assumption.

sbuk
0 replies
8h55m

I like the separation that different messaging platforms offer.

bambax
1 replies
9h53m

I'm in France with friends in the UK and Germany, and have never been asked to join a group on anything else other than WhatsApp. Not once.

(Well, at some point a year or two ago there was some controversy around WhatsApp, and some groups tried to migrate to Signal, but that all died out within a month -- never quite started, actually).

Believe it or not, I had almost never heard about iMessage and its specific quirks before the Beeper story (and still don't understand why the colors of the messages in green or blue matter).

ffgjgf1
0 replies
9h13m

Well.. I’m further north east and my experience is somewhat different. My only point was that Europe is not as homogenous as some people keep implying (most people still primarily communicate in their native language which creates a lot of more or less isolated bubbles)

and still don't understand why the colors of the messages in green or blue matter

Because it indicates a fallback to standard SMS/text messaging which means all the more advanced features (which everyone expect messaging apps to have these days) stop working if you get a text from an Android device.

rezonant
0 replies
12h16m

I can leave my phone away in my pocket all day and still message anyone I please. I would hate it any other way. Why don't people in the US want that?

I have that already via Google Messages, and iMessage already has that as well.

In the case of Google Messages, it's just a web app, you don't need to install it. You visit messages.google.com and scan a QR code from your phone and the devices are linked.

mlindner
1 replies
14h32m

You cannot, without elaborate workarounds, text from a consumer computer, tablet or other device as if it was a phone. Texting requires a phone number and a phone plan.

Nitpick, but I can text from my Mac laptop using the messages app. I haven't looked into exactly how exactly it works but I think it's somehow proxying/mirroring the messages through my iPhone. It's very smooth and "just works" though.

interoperability nightmare that is currently texting.

How about calling it an open competitive market? Centralizing everything on a single format would be a bad thing for the industry and for consumers. Having separate independent networks with drastically different feature sets is a good thing. Trying to find the intersection feature set of Discord, LINE and Signal would result in three applications drastically hampered in their features. LINE for example has an extensive independent industry of artists selling "stamps" that you can buy.

rezonant
0 replies
12h8m

Nitpick, but I can text from my Mac laptop using the messages app. I haven't looked into exactly how exactly it works but I think it's somehow proxying/mirroring the messages through my iPhone. It's very smooth and "just works" though.

Yes, SMS from iMessage on your non-iPhone (Mac, iPad) proxy through your iPhone. iMessages do not require your phone to be on, since Apple can deliver it directly without using SMS.

However, without a phone you cannot send an SMS message, and most people use phone numbers as contacts in iMessage, which requires an SMS based registration done transparently by your phone.

But all of this is just the technicals of how it works, to the end users it is just texting. The only reason non-technical users are even aware of, or care about, the distinction is because of how iMessage breaks group texting as soon as there's a non-iMessage user involved.

inferiorhuman
1 replies
7h19m

So adding another protocol into the mix solves, what? Answer: nothing, it solves nothing.

Bob has a hardon for mastadon so then another subgroup is created. Joan finds out that her Google Fi service is incompatible with RCS so she decides to create an email list. Joe finds a bug with Beeper and then decides that really everyone needs to move to ICQ. Marley decides maybe everyone should just try MMS again except that nobody can fall back on that because everyone except Joan has opted into RCS.

Apple's not going to solve your social problems (nor will any other company).

rezonant
0 replies
6h5m

So adding another protocol into the mix solves, what? Answer: nothing, it solves nothing.

Another protocol like RCS? RCS simply solves the problems of SMS/MMS. It doesn't add another protocol, it ultimately replaces two of them.

Bob has a hardon for mastadon so then another subgroup is created.

Good for Bob. I don't think Mastodon supports group chatting and its DM support is super nascent, its weird choice but I wish him the best.

Joan finds out that her Google Fi service is incompatible with RCS

Even though Google Fi is definitely compatible with RCS, we can assume it isn't supported for the scenario.

so she decides to create an email list.

Joan doesn't know what RCS is and doesn't care. Joan makes a group of people on Messages. It works fine, as it falls back to MMS automatically.

Joe finds a bug with Beeper and then decides that really everyone needs to move to ICQ.

Wait why is anyone using Beeper here. So the user used a unifying client and ran into a bug and blamed something about the underlying messaging system?

Marley decides maybe everyone should just try MMS again except that nobody can fall back on that because everyone except Joan has opted into RCS.

Everyone on RCS can fall back to MMS just fine, just like iMessage can. The only difference is one of these is a standard that Apple can implement and the other is a proprietary protocol that Google cannot.

drdaeman
0 replies
14h32m

Just to explain - some people may think different because they have different experience.

Personally, I don't use default texting, like, at all. Except for those notification/2FA SMSes and couple of contacts, I don't ever open it. For me, mentally, chatting with people (with 2 exceptions) is done through different apps, not the built-in one. And this forms a view that default app is just "one rarely used messenger, of many".

But then, even though I'm in the US, most of my chats are international.

empyrrhicist
5 replies
15h10m

Yet you cannot set a new default messaging app...

mlindner
2 replies
14h40m

"Default messaging app" is a creation of Android, necessitated because every cell phone manufacturer wanted its own messaging app. It somehow later became a feature people needed because those pre-installed apps were often dreadful adware junk. This was never a problem on iPhones. No one wants to set a "default messaging app". It mixes up where messages go. I want my Signal messages in the Signal app. I want my LINE messages in the LINE app. Putting them in random different places doesn't make sense and confuses where they're coming from. I don't want my contacts showing up half a dozen times repeatedly for every messaging app they're using.

I don't see anyone on Android wanting to put their SMS messages in the Discord app.

seabrookmx
0 replies
12h16m

Weird take. Default apps for certain file types and links (email, video, etc) are a precedent across multiple operatings systems.

No one wants

Quite the assumption. I had Google Hangouts set as my default SMS app for a time.. this seems quite similar to your Discord example?

It hurts nobody to have the _choice_. If you don't want to change the default that's totally OK.

rezonant
0 replies
12h19m

On Android there is no such thing as a default messaging app. There is such a thing as a default SMS app, but my point is that messaging and texting represent two different things (texting is a subset of messaging) which has an extremely material impact on the dynamics of what is happening in the US, and why iMessage, RCS, and interoperability is a very big deal to users who use a texting app.

dwaite
1 replies
13h43m

Do you mean a default "carrier SMS service" app?

In everyday iPhone usage, you would either run an app directly, use sharing intents, or use a messaging service specific identifier (eg custom URI scheme) to converse with someone. The social graph is either in the messaging app itself or in individual contact entries. There's no expectation of a Trillian/Adium style app that consolidates all information and messaging options.

rezonant
0 replies
12h21m

The confusion is that there is only one texting app on iPhone. Chat apps are done "over the top" and can be whatever you want. You or I can make one. There is only one texting app on iOS and most users in the US only use their phone's texting app. This is why Apple's iMessage is genius, insidious, and diabolical- because they took SMS which had universal adoption in the US and had it invisibly and transparently extended into a component of their walled garden. They didn't need to convince everyone to move from SMS to their own messaging app, because if you used SMS on an iPhone, iMessage just happened.

seanp2k2
6 replies
18h14m

Yearly reminder that a long time ago, chat services used XMPP and we were on the verge of having GChat interoperability with FB messages and I think Yahoo or something similar at the time. None of them really wanted to do it for business reasons, so they could “add value” (and charge for it)….same reason RSS has fallen out of favor (no good way to inject ads and tracking). IRC and Matrix still exist.

verst
1 replies
17h23m

On the Google side the XMPP federation got killed when Google Hangouts and Google+ became the core strategy. The company wanted to focus on "social" (but their own social network) and didn't care about other chat. Back then I worked on the App Engine team which had a XMPP Chat API. When GChat killed XMPP Federation that API lost the majority of target users as a result. I tried to make the case for maintaining XMPP support - taking it up with some VP of Engineering. Alas, nobody cared about the opinion of this random guy in developer support (~2012, early days of Google Cloud)

kyrra
0 replies
12h19m

You forget that Google was worried about other XMPP services stealing user data. If I remember right, some services (maybe it was FB) was not sending out all data to Google in the federation system (I forget if it was names or friends lists or something). So it would allow other services to ingest data Google was sharing, but the sharing wasn't reciprocal.

acka
1 replies
15h1m

There is hope. The European Union's Digital Markets Act allows new messaging platforms to demand interoperability with the existing walled gardens. All it takes is for other jurisdictions to follow suit.

dwaite
0 replies
13h31m

You can't use regulations to change physics, and (demands or no) it is unclear what sort of interoperability is really possible.

What will really happen is that there will be some subpar common denominator. An existing "walled garden" (WeChat?) would add support for this as well.

But this would wind up being rather insecure, because messaging services tend to use email addresses they don't control or phone numbers they don't control as identifiers. We'd have to wait for carriers and email providers to be regulated with the burden of solving this mess (for markets they aren't in).

zaik
0 replies
17h21m

Can we make XMPP popular again? We really could need an universal internet standard for IM.

rjzzleep
0 replies
4h55m

Yeah and how did that work out for google? Hangouts was their most popular product and most of my friends were using it. Incredibly stupid management decisions right there.

skygazer
3 replies
17h57m

In my experience, incoming SMS are mostly spam, and other low trust notifications, while incoming iMessages, even if unknown to me, are likely to be real people. Buying an Apple device is an expensive signal, and Apple will quickly shut down abusers, maintaining that relatively high bar.

Letting (actual) Android users use iMessage probably wouldn’t affect that, but the open source hack/reversing of it opened the door to iMessage spam that Apple, for the sake of reputation, and customer satisfaction, is obliged to close.

Anyway, I guess my point is that there are some “burdens” that are less obvious than others.

empyrrhicist
1 replies
15h11m

Who is talking about SMS? Not I.

skygazer
0 replies
14h22m

I mention SMS as a natural contrast to iMessage and to illustrate the annoyances which may burden iMessage if opened up blindly to any bot — a different variety of burdensome.

vachina
0 replies
17h21m

Huh, I used to receive spam on iMessage with blue bubbles. In fact the only blue bubbles I receive are spam.

oefnak
1 replies
12h58m

The EU will soon require interoperability between messaging apps! Real Freedom!

(for the users, not for the companies)

skygazer
0 replies
12h4m

iMessage seemingly was found exempt because too few Europeans use iMessage for business.

Although to be fair, I have a hard time imagining a world where this ever happens. So large companies have to proactively share information on all their users with all the other large companies, and vice versa? Or do I become skygazer@iMessage and everyone on instagram has to know that? This just seems like an absurd thing to mandate.

pxeboot
13 replies
18h35m

And Apple didn't even need to block any device identifiers, just the IPs Beeper Mini was using to connect to the APN service.

This could have been blocked in minutes. The delay was likely to get approval from Legal.

zxt_tzx
5 replies
17h51m

just the IPs Beeper Mini was using to connect to the APN service.

Hmm, wouldn't blocking IPs be overly broad and risked affecting regular users? Considering that IPs are scarce and constantly recycled by ISPs etc. Blocking device identifiers sounds more targeted and, for that reason, realistic.

pxeboot
3 replies
17h46m

If you take a look at their How it Works post [1] this is not an entirety client side implementation, so there would presumably be a small number of IPs that would need to be blocked.

[1] https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

zxt_tzx
1 replies
17h29m

Are you referring to the step where Beeper's servers make a persistent connection with Apple's APN service to listen to new messages ?

So your point is Apple can presumably distinguish between an actual iOS connection and Beeper's connection by looking at "how many connections per IP"? Still seems prone to false positives to me, unless there is something else I missed.

(Upon re-reading the post, I realized that the phone number registration is actually done by Apple. Wonder if this might provide another basis to block Beeper, i.e. all this SMS infrastructure is not cheap to maintain and Beeper's integration is arguably using it in an "unauthorized" way.)

pxeboot
0 replies
17h7m

Yes. An Apple sysadmin could just install Beeper, watch what IP their APN requests are coming from and block it. Then repeat the process occasionally.

They don't need to break it completely. If Beeper is unreliable, nobody is going to pay for it.

rezonant
0 replies
16h57m

In that very article they mention you can turn BPNs off, it is just used to listen to APNs when the app is not running. If that's what they blocked, Beeper Mini would still work while the app is running, or at least when that setting is turned off.

turquoisevar
0 replies
16h44m

I can’t speak for Cupertino et al., but I would take that risk, even if it weren’t IP-based but instead UDID/serial-based.

The amount of legitimate users it would affect would be trivial and can be taken care of by customer support.

The benefit of that is that I can then, at that point, verify if we’re dealing with a legitimate device or not. Geniuses at Apple Stores can obviously do this physically, and remote support has the option to run remote diagnostics and even share screens.

lelandbatey
5 replies
18h5m

I think you've got Beeper Mini mixed up with other iMessage bridges. The whole thing with Beeper Mini (vs other iMessage bridges) was that it was entirely client side on the phone, no server to block. So the "IPs Beeper Mini was using to connect to the APN service", those IPs were just the IP addresses of every individual phone with Beeper Mini installed on it, no centralized place to block.

pxeboot
1 replies
17h52m

If you check the How it Works post, they do show the Beeper Push Notification Service running in the cloud [1] to intercept 'new message available' APNs and then notify the Android device a new message is available.

[1] https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

rezonant
0 replies
16h54m

Only required when Mini isn't running.

kaladin-jasnah
1 replies
18h1m

No, the BPN server is a server side service that persistently recieves APNs to forward to the phone (that don't contain the message data) since unlike iPhones, Android phones can't persistently check for APNs (at least that's what I understood from the announcement article). AIUI that's what you're paying for. But that wouldn't explain why sending is broken.

rezonant
0 replies
16h54m

The How It Works article is clear that BPNs is only used to serve push to your phone when the app isn't running. Disabling it would not cause send/receive failures.

wkat4242
0 replies
17h11m

If it were purely client based, why did I leave to log in with Google to something then?

rezonant
0 replies
16h58m

Only BPNs used Beeper hosted services, and this is an optional component of the app (which enables push notifications when Mini is not running).

Otherwise the IP Apple sees is those of the individual handsets on whatever network they are on.

It's pretty likely that they blocked Mini based on the IDS (Identity Service) which requires the device to pass it's hardware model, serial number, and disk UUID as described elsewhere.

asylteltine
9 replies
18h45m

This is actually a great point I didn’t originally consider. People could easily infiltrate the iMessage fort with spam and other stuff which at the moment requires a genuine Apple device.

grupthink
3 replies
17h51m

Wouldn't your iPhone still receive spam SMS text messages with Apple Messages? And isn't Apple Messages commonly exploited by NSO Group (Zero-clicks)? Maybe I'm wrong, but this does not appear to be very fort-like.

rezonant
2 replies
16h39m

Yes. I believe people are just saying that they assume unknown-contact SMS is spam and that sort of sounds like Apple's SMS spam filtering isn't very good.

dwaite
1 replies
13h20m

For iPhone there are two tiers - the carrier provided SMS spam filtering, and apps written to provide such filtering[1].

1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor...

rezonant
0 replies
13h3m

Oh, so there's no builtin message filtering at all??

This explains some things. Why wouldn't they just add a spam filter. Is there still iCloud email addresses? Do they have spam filtering?

singpolyma3
2 replies
18h19m

Still need a valid phone number with a SIM that can do the special SMS needed for this, so it's hardly going to produce a big spam farm too fast.

boxed
0 replies
11h15m

Better to kill it early. I get spam calls on WhatsApp (an app which I absolutely loathe)

asylteltine
0 replies
3h33m

It’s completely trivial to get a real number for sms these days thanks to scum like twilio. You can use your legitimate Apple device identifiers to run something like a hackintosh and then use iMessage that way, or use the script linked last week.

ysofunny
0 replies
18h41m

that's one of the reasons they're doing this

but I don't think it's their main reason, if anything I see that argument as convenient posturing which aids in covering the uglier underlying reasons

spullara
0 replies
18h42m

I'm pretty sure some of the spam I am getting was using this vector. Hopefully it kills it now.

explaininjs
8 replies
18h34m

This should have been obvious to anyone who saw the code where it simply contained the raw literal string `FAIRPLAY_PRIVATE_KEY = b64decode(“…”)`. I suppose now we’ll see how accurate the commenter’s claim “if this becomes a problem, I know how to generate new keys” is.

https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush/blob/main/albert.py#L16

mintplant
7 replies
14h14m

What's the link between this repo and Beeper?

gabeio
6 replies
13h29m

What's the link between this repo and Beeper?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759

jaktet
5 replies
12h25m

I might be missing it but still don’t see how that answers the question about how that repo is related to beeper mini. Did they use this directly or the same methodology?

FoeNyx
2 replies
12h4m

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759 its OP states "A team member has published an open source Python iMessage protocol PoC on Github: https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush."

jaktet
1 replies
11h49m

Maybe there’s an easy way to just read all their replies but I see now that in the linked blog post it links https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works which goes over the technical details and mentions the python repo. Thanks

FoeNyx
0 replies
10h4m

Oh, it wasn't lost among all their replies, it was in the 4th paragraph of the header text section of that Show HN post.

yurishimo
1 replies
11h59m

Beeper Mini's implementation was built on top of this repo. I'm sure it was cleaned up and modified for the production release, but the gist is largely still the same.

jaktet
0 replies
11h48m

Thanks I see that mentioned here https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

thathndude
1 replies
15h44m

And there was major hubris from the makers. They were arguing that because it was all totally above board Apple wouldn’t be able to block the service without impairing iMessage entirely.

Wrong

ehsankia
0 replies
15h22m

because it was all totally above board

What do you mean by above board? What they claimed is that there is no way of telling Beeper Mini clients from an old iPhone, therefore Apple wouldn't be able to block one without blocking the other.

Clearly Apple managed to find a way, and who knows if there will be some more cat and mouse happening here. In theory though, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to have a service that's indistinguishable from an old iPhone.

Newer devices can use device attestation, but old iPhones don't have secure enclave.

namdnay
1 replies
10h26m

Interestingly enough, there are companies out there making a business of doing this with WhatsApp! I have no idea why Meta isn’t cracking down in it, it seems absolutely insane

https://www.telemessage.com/mobile-archiver/whatsapp-archive...

It’s literally a hacked WhatsApp binary (that logs all your messages) that they sell to corporate clients…

password4321
0 replies
4h34m

https://twitter.com/LiamCottle/status/1406616490783117322

Snapchat as a service is no more. But there may be other options:

https://github.com/rhunk/SnapEnhance

commandersaki
1 replies
18h21m

Not disagreeing, but I do not think Beeper Mini used the binary method for registering accounts. I think that was the way to do it for non-mobile devices that couldn't receive SMS, but there is also a way to register an account using SMS which I believe Beeper Mini uses.

winterqt
0 replies
14h51m

I believe that you are correct: https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

yincrash
0 replies
18h35m

They had a cloud of Apple devices that they already used for their relay service, and could easily generate keys using several devices. From my understanding, the best vector for Apple was to actually block their "BPN", the push server.

rezonant
0 replies
17h11m

Signal, Telegram and others make you validate your cell phone number

For what it's worth Beeper Mini did support using Apple's iMessage registration system to use your phone number.

StressedDev
75 replies
19h39m

One thing which is really confusing is why are Android users obsessed with iMessage? Android users can send text messages to iPhones, the can call iPhone users, and they can use third party messaging apps to communicate with iPhone users.

It really isn’t clear to me why so many people are so angry they cannot use iMessage on Android.

Brian_K_White
21 replies
19h14m

I think they don't like being spit on and excluded by iphone users. Iphone users don't like when there are android users in group chats.

The reason the iphone users don't like it is because Apple specifically and artificially makes the experience annoying and shitty in several different ways, for the iphone users not just for the Android users.

Pulcinella
20 replies
18h48m

Good grief! No one is spitting on people with Android phones. If you really feel this way you need to put your screen down and spend time talking to people in real life. No one is persecuting you.

Brian_K_White
15 replies
18h15m

Yes in fact they are. I have the amazing ability to recognize a problem even if I don't have it myself*. If you really can't do that, perhaps you should try.

* Android user in the US where this dynamic primarily exists, but I just don't care because I'm not 20 any more. I only very occasionally need to send a video or picture to anyone, and in those cases, I know enough to use email or a google photos link or something, which probably annoys the recipient a little and makes me weird to them, but I'm just ok with that since I know where the blame really lies. Similarly in the occasional times I txt with family members or friends, we're not in high school and so they don't care about my green bubble, and I just accept the annoying stupid extra txts I get that say "x smiled" or whatever. That ux don't bother me in the sense that I don't spend any time thinking and caring about it, but that doesn't make it not utterly stupid and ridiculous, and especially so when you know it's a deliberate act and not an honest technical limitation. Astonishingly it's possible to both recognize that something is not worth investing much care over, and recognize that it's wrong and that it's a deliberate wrong commited by someone and not just the weather. Amazing!

Pulcinella
14 replies
17h56m

Do you have a single piece of evidence that anyone using an iphone has spat on anyone with an android phone because of imessage?

LargeTomato
8 replies
15h35m

I can anecdotally confirm this is real. And not only that, I'm actually surprised you've never seen this or heard of this. Maybe you aren't in the US? Surely you're not arguing in bad faith.

jaktet
4 replies
12h0m

They’re just asking for actual evidence that iOS users think down on Android users. There are multiple articles that talk about this in the social circle of teens, and likely exist in various adult circles as well. What I can say is that it is extremely frustrating that texts don’t just work between users of different platforms. Some Android users don’t want to use WhatsApp, Signal, etc. and that’s totally fine. This feels like a closed wall two party system debate, it shouldn’t just be one or the other they should just work together.

As an iOS user I do not look down on Android users, I have separate reasons for not using Android. That said I think it’s dumb that we need to use a different app to communicate effectively in a group setting, and I’m willing to use other apps, but not everyone is. So we end up with the current state where sometimes new groups are created when someone responds from a different device, or a different experience occurs when someone reacts to a message in a group thread.

gkbrk
3 replies
2h46m

They’re just asking for actual evidence that iOS users think down on Android users.

From their reply after you commented, no. That user is asking for actual evidence that iOS users throw saliva from their mouth at Android users. Not a figure of speech, real liquid saliva.

paulryanrogers
2 replies
1h10m

Which is absurd. "To spit upon" is a common figure of speech, and the person using it was clearly being metaphorical. Even iMessage doesn't support saliva transfer among iPhones ... as of 2023-12.

Pulcinella
1 replies
51m

I have literally never, ever, ever in my entire life heard people say "I was spit upon" as a figure of speech. Ever. Please don't accuse me of being absurd just because I have not had the same life experience as you.

paulryanrogers
0 replies
34m

The context should be clear in their comments. If not a web search usually helps me clear up any such misunderstandings before any doubling down.

Pulcinella
2 replies
3h45m

People literally spit on you for having an Android phone? Like they literally hacked up a glob of saliva and spat on you as if you were doing a lunch counter sit in during the civil rights movement?

gkbrk
1 replies
2h49m

> Surely you're not arguing in bad faith.

People literally spit on you for having an Android phone? Like they literally hacked up a glob of saliva and spat on you?

Soooo, you're arguing in bad faith. Could have saved people some time and said so.

Pulcinella
0 replies
2h31m

No. "Spit on" is a serious accusation with real life historical analogs. I have literally never, ever, ever in my entire life heard people say "I was spit upon" as a figure of speech. Ever. It's not a figure of speech I would personally ever use because of the implications.

Please don't accuse people of arguing in bad faith just because they haven't had the same life experiences you have had. You are spitting in me when you do so.

hu3
1 replies
17h1m

Took 5 seconds to search and copy first link:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

Pulcinella
0 replies
16h48m

No one in that article mentions spitting. By your and the OP's definition, everyone downvoting me is literally[0] spitting on me and the WSJ locking the article behind a paywall is also literally[0] spitting on me.

This is of, of course, silly. The OP could have just said they didn't like being excluded and doesn't like what Apple is doing. That's fine. But spitting? That isn't something that is happening. The language of "spitting" is far to strong a description for what is effectively console war, consumer electronic purchase fandom BS. Some of use face actual prejudice you know!

[0]metaphorically

SOLAR_FIELDS
1 replies
8h7m

Go on /r/tinder and the like and you see posts like this all the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/v7a7s3/your_phone_s...

lotsofpulp
0 replies
7h10m

“You’re in for a treat buddy” is a weird response and probably confirmed her biases.

Brian_K_White
0 replies
17h38m

Are you really this obtuse?

somebodythere
3 replies
18h35m

No one is literally spitting, but Apple intentionally creates enough friction that Android users really do regularly get excluded from group chats in the US where iMessage is the convention for group chats.

Pulcinella
2 replies
17h58m

Chat app friction is not being spat on which is what the OP literally said. Perceived inconvenience is not persecution.

inoop
1 replies
17h51m

You may not have ever experienced this yourself, but it's a known cultural phenonemon. Here's a New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/technology/personaltech/a...

Over time, the annoyance and frustration that built up between blue and green bubbles evolved into more than a tech problem. It created a deeper sociological divide between people who judged one another by their phones. The color of a bubble became a symbol that some believe reflects status and wealth, given a perception that only wealthy people buy iPhones.

...

On dating apps, green-bubble users are often rejected by the blues. Adults with iPhones have been known to privately snicker to one another when a green bubble taints a group chat. In schools, a green bubble is an invitation for mockery and exclusion by children with iPhones, according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that focuses on technology’s impact on families.

“This green-versus-blue issue is a form of cyberbullying,” said Jim Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense, which works with thousands of schools that have shared stories about tensions among children using messaging apps.
Pulcinella
0 replies
17h47m

That's very unfortunate and all, but, again, it's not spitting. I don't think it's correct or good to say you were spat on by iphone users for having an android phone as if you were being persecuted for your religious beliefs or race, especially if it literally never happened. You can just factually describe events. The OP doesn't need to lie or grossly exaggerate.

haswell
14 replies
19h27m

An android user in an otherwise iMessage only group chat tends to mess things up. Those Apple users tend to get frustrated by it and group chat exclusion is a real thing.

It’s less about a specific feature set and more about inclusion and acceptance from/by peers.

This is especially prevalent among the younger crowd. Think high school group dynamics playing out with phones.

And then on top of that, photos/videos are terrible quality.

prmoustache
8 replies
17h53m

Are these iMessage group chat really a thing?

In my part of the world Whatsapp is the defacto standard for group chat and even for things like scheduling anpointment to a doctor/dentist/hairdresser.

And that is because it is available on android, apple devices and even those cheap kaios halfsmartphones.

lotsofpulp
2 replies
17h42m

Are these iMessage group chat really a thing?

For some, but everyone knows and has the capacity to download WhatsApp.

The root issue is there is a lot of judgment about Android users, hence wanting to restrict chats to iMessage. It’s a signal that you are part of the in group vs out group.

Although, it is objectively convenient to have a group of all iMessage users at events, because any pics/video get shared at high quality with no extra work.

adaptbrian
1 replies
17h12m

Walled garden development practices sold under the guise of privacy and security. It's a very tired and old playbook that has real societal damage. So. Tired. Of. It.

sneak
0 replies
1h49m

There’s a reason why robocalls and spam emails and spam paper mail are a nearly universal thing and iMessage spam is not.

interpol_p
1 replies
15h38m

In my family they are. I am in Australia and almost everyone I text has their phone number come up in blue, signifying iMessage/iPhone

For example, when RSVPing to a kid's birthday party, other parents' numbers are inevitably blue. When selling and buying items, the contacts for those sales have always been blue numbers, it's rare to encounter a number that doesn't "turn blue" when I enter it into the "to" field

I would say maybe 5% of the people I know and text use Android. For one of those people I use Signal, one other has asked me to use Facebook Messenger, one has asked me to use WhatsApp, and the remaining few use SMS. It's a pain to use three separate apps to message just these three people!

One of my cousins switched to an Android phone. This broke our long-standing group message in iMessage, so she was no longer able to be included in it. After two years of this her siblings simply ordered her a new iPhone and she is back in the group chat

Getting everyone to move their default messaging behaviour for one person is a huge ask. It was easier for one person to just relay the group chat info instead, but when this became annoying, it was even easier to buy her a new phone

octodog
0 replies
7h7m

It's highly dependent on the demographic I think. I'd guess that I'm younger than you based on your comment about having kids, and everyone in my social circles use Facebook messenger or instagram.

wbobeirne
0 replies
16h22m

At least in the US, it's very common. The iPhone has ~60% market share here, skewed even higher if you limit to higher income individuals. Text messaging is still the lingua franca of communication here, likely due to the lack of a single dominant messaging app. For those iPhone users, the UX of texting someone on an iPhone with iMessage is vastly superior to texting via MMS with Android users.

rtkwe
0 replies
15h54m

The US is odd that way that unified chat apps haven't made as much of a headway. iMessage way more dominant in the US and is the leader.

georgyo
0 replies
20m

My daughter's parents group is all iMessage. The group is too large to even downgrade to SMS. I am excluded entirely unless I figure out methods to get into that group.

It is very annoying and quite real.

cycomanic
4 replies
18h46m

I realised this the other day, a friend send me a video via mms (I'm on android) and the quality was super poor (like 90s gif like quality). I though she must have some issue with her camera or so, no next time I saw her we looked at her phone (which is an iPhone), perfectly fine video. It's just apple degrading the performance for who is not on an iPhone.

I mean just imagine they'd degrade sound to nearly noise if you'd call a non-iPhone.

meepmorp
3 replies
18h13m

It's just apple degrading the performance for who is not on an iPhone.

The reason the video looks like ass is because MMS messages aren't meant to be very large. While (iirc) there isn't a hard limit, the recommended maximum message size is ~600KB. The only way to fit a video into that range is to compress the hell out of it.

hu3
2 replies
17h4m

That's the technical reason.

Apple knows of such limitations and does nothing to improve the situation. In fact they ban those who try. FTA.

meepmorp
0 replies
11h52m

Apple knows of such limitations and does nothing to improve the situation.

Why would they? It's not their problem, nor does it seem to be a big deal for their customers because they're not clamoring for a fix.

In fact they ban those who try. FTA.

They don't, thiugh. The App Store has tons of photo and video sharing services, email, and other messaging services; I'm sure any number of them would let your iPhone-using friends and family easily send you a non-mangled videos. This is a solved, dozens of times over.

iMessage, on the other hand, is a service Apple provides for Apple customers. They get to set the terms under which it's used, and Beeper did not abide by those terms.

haswell
0 replies
16h34m

Apple announced RCS support in 2024, so they’re doing more than nothing. Don’t think we know yet how fully they’ll support it though.

increscent
12 replies
19h28m

I recently switched from Android to iOS just for iMessage. SMS is quite unreliable even in 2023. SMS messages don't have the same delivery guarantees as IP-based messaging services. And often I have internet access, but spotty cellular service. The thing that pushed me over the edge was that my carrier happened to block all my SMS for a day. I only found out about it later in the day, after I had missed many (unrecoverable) messages. To avoid this, I could either blindly trust some other carrier, or use IP-based messaging. In my area, all my friends use iMessage. Ideally, people would use Telegram, WhatsApp, or even Matrix, but they don't. It's not uncommon to leave someone out of a group chat just because they don't have iMessage--the alternative is a subpar MMS experience. At some point, I'll probably buy a cheap Mac Mini and run BlueBubbles, but for now it's nice to not have to worry about messaging reliability, and I get the added bonus of being able to Facetime my family members, who all use iOS.

HKH2
5 replies
18h4m

I don't get why Americans cling so dearly to SMS.

inoop
3 replies
17h56m

As a European living in the US, it's been baffling to me. Everywhere else in the world people use WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc. This iMessage green/blue bubble nonsense just isn't a thing outside the US.

noirbot
1 replies
13h3m

I mean, isn't this just trading one bad monopoly for another? It's weird to me that everyone's like "oh, the backwards US where they gave in to the Apple monopoly. We enlightened rest of the world use Facebook's Whatsapp like real free people".

iforgotpassword
0 replies
10h12m

Yes, but at least you get the same experience on every device with the other monopolies.

rtkwe
0 replies
15h49m

Apple has 56% of the US market compared to just 36% in the EU, afaik the number gets even higher as you go younger so the clique-iness is a lot stronger.

JeremyNT
0 replies
15h52m

This thread basically sums it up:

* Apple is really popular in the US

* Apple users tend to rely heavily on Apple's default applications

* Apple's messaging app is the default, and works fine with other Apple devices, but sends shitty SMS or MMS to non-Apple devices

SMS would disappear tomorrow if Apple adopts RCS.

And if they allowed iMessage clients on other platforms, they could corner the entire messaging market.

throw310822
4 replies
7h55m

I don't understand, why don't you force them to use Whatsapp (or Signal, or whatever) to contact you? Get an app that rejects by default SMSes coming from certain numbers. They want to text you at all? They need to use Whatsapp, otherwise they can go fuck themselves. (It worked for me when a friend wanted to force me to contact him on Telegram rather than Whatsapp- I resisted for weeks but at the end I gave in).

Once you automatically reject SMSes from those contacts, such that you don’t even know they're trying to contact you, the ball is entirely in their park to take action.

doubledash
1 replies
5h8m

Is this a legitimate question? No one is going to download an app and use it to message one guy.

throw310822
0 replies
4h48m

No one? I did. Normal, if you really care about that guy. In any case, the app is free, what does it cost you? Plus, the more people do it, the easier is for everyone to move to an app that works for everyone.

Raicuparta
1 replies
7h6m

I don't use SMS myself but in this case it sounds like I'd be better off just not being your friend.

throw310822
0 replies
6h40m

Sounds like you'd prefer to keep inflicting to me and to yourself a degraded experience rather than making the tiny, one-time effort of installing a free app. Because that's the whole point of this issue: the fact that you can still get what you want (reaching me) is what prevents you from making the smallest effort to make both our lives better and easier. And I also don't expect my friends to behave like that.

girvo
0 replies
18h50m

FaceTime is the real lock-in service for me. I use it for all my video and most of my audio calls, it’s second to none in terms of reliability and quality. I wish that was accessible from my work laptop!

Despegar
4 replies
19h10m

It's just become a meme among tech enthusiasts (on Reddit, HN, etc) and tech journalists that "blue bubbles" are a real social problem. The origin of the meme was this amusing post by Paul Ford 8 years ago [1]. They took it and ran with it for their own purposes. For some it was to explain away the iPhone's success versus Android and for some interested actors like Epic it was part of their antitrust campaigning to illustrate the "lock in" effects. It however was never a social problem in the real world (more than, say, young people feeling depressed about seeing their peers' manicured lives on Instagram) or the reason why iPhones sell well (you only had to look to China, or now India, to see the success of the iPhone in places where iMessage wasn't the dominant messenger).

[1] https://archive.ph/OcDaO

haswell
3 replies
18h3m

Even if this was a meme at some point in the past, it’s a very real issue now.

I know multiple people who have switched to iPhone just for iMessage. And the kids these days won’t accept anything but the blue bubble. This is no longer a meme. Or if it is, it’s also real.

LargeTomato
2 replies
15h36m

I switched because people think android users are poor and I don't want to signal to others that I am poor.

nani8ot
1 replies
15h0m

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Once everyone has an iPhone to not be perceived as poor, the only people still using Android will actually not be able to afford an iPhone.

At least it sounds like that's what happens across the ocean.

lotsofpulp
0 replies
7h47m

Even the bottom income quintile in the US uses iPhones, especially young people. They are not that expensive.

Knowing someone has an iPhone tells you nothing about their wealth/power.

What people think it does tell them is where someone is on the cool / weird spectrum. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578103

jgaxn
3 replies
19h30m

The iPhone user experience for messaging with Android users (especially MMS) is awful and the Android users in the group chat get blamed for it. Having blue text bubbles show up when someone texts you can be seen in some circles as a status symbol.

cqqxo4zV46cp
2 replies
18h26m

Let’s be clear here: Apple not yet implementing RCS aside, the experience is horrible because SMS/MMS are horrible.

mission_failed
1 replies
12h28m

I can send the same mms from Android to Android and Apple recipients and they receive the same media. Yet sending from Apple to both the Apple users get good quality and Android Apple deliberately sends pixelated rubbish.

MBCook
0 replies
2h46m

Apple to Apple is not MMS.

LordDragonfang
3 replies
19h33m

Because I want the pictures and videos my iPhone-using parents send me to not be crunched to shit, and I'm not going through the effort of teaching non-technical users to use a different messaging client. Same with the group chats that my partner's extended family keep including me in.

MBCook
2 replies
19h32m

Apple announced RCS support. That will provide what you want.

LordDragonfang
1 replies
19h24m

Right, but that's likely not coming out for another year yet, and requires everyone involved to update their phones (yet another hassle for non-technical users, they will put updates off for as long as they can). As the quote in the article says, Apple clearly recognizes the issue, and beeper mini fixes it now, not "at some point in the future".

cqqxo4zV46cp
0 replies
18h22m

Getting someone to update their iPhone is a matter of them not actively dismissing iOS’s repeated attempts at updating itself. This isn’t a good-faith argument.

bitwize
2 replies
18h30m

Green bubbles means you won't be called back for a second date.

zappb
0 replies
16h3m

No, the holier-than-thou attitude of typical Android users shitting on the Apple Sheep is why they don’t get called back.

bigstrat2003
0 replies
14h42m

That's a feature, not a bug. Anyone who does that would be a miserable significant other.

im_thatoneguy
1 replies
18h50m

Because iMessage users won't let you join iMessage group chats. They don't want to lose features. So your choice is to just not be friends anymore or have an iphone device.

I have an ipad just to chat with people who refuse to use anything other than imessage.

I don't want anything to do with iMessage, but I have to.

azubinski
0 replies
20m

This is the first time I've heard that people who put features above friendship are called friends.

Well, the time has come.

trevor-e
0 replies
19h20m

From Google themselves: https://www.android.com/get-the-message/

Apple is arbitrarily and intentionally making it a worse experience than it needs to be.

mission_failed
0 replies
12h30m

Because Apple deliberately screws with messages to non Apple users. Every video my family sends to me is low res heavily pixelated trash, to the point that you can't even recognise faces.

esrauch
0 replies
17h47m

My mother sends me videos from her phone and I literally can't see what she's trying to show me.

dvngnt_
0 replies
19h15m

it's the other way around

cphoover
0 replies
15h19m

My whole family uses iMessage because it is the default client on their iphones. I'd love to partake in the family group chat.

For those technically savvy enough to download an additional client like Meta's Whatsapp or Messenger... it's no problem, but for the less technically inclined (like my mother) they will just use the default client.

ciabattabread
0 replies
19h28m

Fashion statement

MBCook
0 replies
19h33m

You know that’s a great question. I’ve never thought to ask that but boy does it seem to come up a lot.

doctoboggan
15 replies
19h56m

My guess is Beeper calculated this was likely to happen eventually (maybe not this fast), but that they would get good press on the initial launch and on the shutdown announcement and that press would be worth the technical investment they made. They do have a different service they still offer and some percentage of people are looking at that now.

etrautmann
11 replies
19h52m

I find this a bit confusing though. It seems like this was an inevitable outcome, but what do they gain from this technical investment aside from exposure. Their website doesn't steer users to anything other than the now cut-off Beeper mini?

MBCook
4 replies
19h39m

Exposure is something. The fact the developer had the chops to do this is now on the public record. That could be very valuable for getting a job or a college scholarship (since they’re in HS).

yellow_lead
1 replies
19h23m

Are you referring to the developer of the GitHub project they bought or the Beeper Mini devs?

MBCook
0 replies
14h3m

Were they not the same person? You’re right that doesn’t make sense.

The GitHub developer I guess. Still his project got noticed because of all of this so it still sort of fits.

iKlsR
1 replies
18h36m

I did something similar, built an entire app around an undocumented developer api, got a lot of users and then ended up in a good enough position to find out there was a "hidden" official api for sale and it opened a lot of doors as well even to the same site had gotten it from. For someone as young as that with nothing but time, I'm sure they knew the outcome and it blowing up was probably more than they could ask for.

MBCook
0 replies
14h2m

Anyone who has paid any attention to Apple knew this was gonna happen relatively fast.

Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be an awesome project to do. I don’t blame them one bit. It’s an awesome achievement.

KomoD
2 replies
19h39m

They have another product, Beeper Cloud, does the same thing + includes a bunch of other messaging services but (as the name implies) runs in the "Cloud"

okdood64
1 replies
19h10m

Wait, how do they run cloud with iMessage?

dlazaro
0 replies
16h28m

They send your Apple credentials to a machine (possibly virtual) that runs macOS, which sends and receives messages. Those messages get relayed through Beeper.

sgjohnson
1 replies
16h20m

from this technical investment

What technical investment? They bought an open-source project from a high-school student.

Beeper Mini is an app they would have built anyway. They simply implemented the bare minimum of iMessage functionality there. Which is a couple of days worth of work, maximum. Maybe a week. And some for testing.

I’m somewhat certain it cost them less than 5 figures. And if it did, what a great marketing campaign. I had no idea what Beeper even was before this whole fiasco.

manmal
0 replies
10h52m

More like a few weeks to months since there‘s also emoji support and endless scrolling etc, but yeah. I agree it’s doable by one developer and that’s quite affordable to do, considering the scale Beeper is at now.

aftbit
0 replies
19h12m

Why? Because they could!

evbogue
1 replies
19h53m

Yah, this is a great runway to launch a chat app with real encryption.

jeroenhd
0 replies
19h2m

They already sell a wide ecosystem based on Matrix. The whole point of this app was to connect without relying on Matrix bridges.

willseth
0 replies
18h52m

Agree. It shows off their technical chops and gets a lot of press attention and goodwill for their target market of Android users who mostly don’t like Apple.

z7
14 replies
19h48m

This is a wake-up call. It's high time we demand open-source messaging standards across all platforms. Imagine a world where communication isn't dictated by corporate interests but by user needs and innovation.

schrodinger
6 replies
19h38m

Apple is probably the company that most has my interests at heart: they're very privacy focused, masterful at encryption and making it simple, and makes products I love.

Do you really think they're the worlds most valuable company because of "corporate interests" and not because people like their products?

doublerabbit
5 replies
19h30m

Apple is probably the company that most has my interests at heart: they're very privacy focused, masterful at encryption and making it simple, and makes products I love.

Apple is a business, they have no users interests at heart. They may be very privacy focused, and maybe masterful at encryption but for sure they do not make products I love. Their instant change of UI, forceful updates and territoriality behaviour are some of the toxic behaviours that drive me mad.

As the same of Google. After Google banning my email for "non-inclusive" reasons wolfcub@gmail.com when I was 17, I will never return.

So within mobile, while only real alternative is Apple. Apart from my computer which is FreeBSD which will soon to be Haiku once it matures. I just couldn't get everything working with OpenIndiana and how I wanted it to be.

schrodinger
3 replies
19h28m

We can all have our preferences. But I love having a very fast laptop that lasts 18 hours on a single charge, for under $1,000, with a high-dpi screen. My Macbook Air M1 is a product I and a lot of people love.

doublerabbit
2 replies
19h14m

I'm sure, and I'm not one to launch flame at those who do love. If it works for them, great! I'm glad those find pleasure in them. They have pros/cons, as does cloud services which stems off for me in to another dislike. I'm used to my own ways, as everyone else is.

There's not much else I can say to the discussion but just wanted to reiterate my point that I'm not hating others for the reason but just disliking for the reasons. I've never been a laptop fan.

With awkward hands, handheld consoles, controllers, laptops have never jelled for me. Yet constantly disappointed for that they've have never been taken catered for. As VR with glasses, Netflix non-continuing content I enjoy; everything I seem to enjoy just vanishes. Sad, as after experiencing tech at such a young age with so much potential; for it to be regurgitated to how it is, singular devices makes it depressing.

I must be a niche but I just assume companies have to cater to the majority, for which I'm not one.

schrodinger
1 replies
19h5m

I was only giving an example of an Apple product that _I_ love, and can just as easily described my iPhone, except I think and Android is probably just as good, or very close, where the Macbook Air's leaped ahead of competition.

But anyway, this is only _my_ beloved product, and I certainly hadn't even considered a disability that would get in the way, and apologize for my ignorance. I hope you can find some setup that works well for you specifically that you end up loving :)

Truly sorry—certainly didn't mean to offend.

doublerabbit
0 replies
17h55m

Oh, no offence taken at all. If anything it's something I've been willing to express found the right time to comment.

I'm not psychically disabled as I have no deformities, have fingers which work but it just seems that any portable device I use gives me hand cramps or just not enough room to flow.

It would just be nice for the factory default to just be usable. Thank you.

schrodinger
0 replies
19h16m

Btw I can totally understand your point. If I wasn't happy with the choices that Apple "made for me" I'd be on your side here. And getting blocked for that gmail address is ridiculous! Just trying to find common ground—I think you're reasonable for disliking Apple for blocking an other-platform iMessage clone, but I also understand some logical reasons for it and am ok with it. I hope that we can all have our preferences without hostility (not that I'm accusing you of it, but these convos often degenerate into it imo).

Hope you're having a great day :)

sbuk
4 replies
19h32m

It's high time we demand open-source messaging standards across all platforms.

What, like this https://github.com/signalapp?

The only thing holding this back are end users. Not corporations or governments. A safe, vetable 'standard' exists, it just needs ratifying by a standards body. It is available cross platform and is free of charge and free-as-in-beer (mostly AGPL I believe).

Messages app exists to send SMS, MMS and soon RCS. Apple developed a convenience feature that allows users to send enhanced messages to other users of the platform. Since the platform is successful and has had compelling and useful features added, it has found popularity in territories that traditionally had free or cheap SMS bundles. The rest of the world didn't have this golden noose and settled on other platforms (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Line, WeChat, Signal, Viber, etc...) across all platforms.

Edited spelling/layout.

greyface-
1 replies
19h22m

Signal isn't a protocol; it's a centralized service that wants you to use their official client only. The Signal Foundation gets weird and starts making trademark threats whenever someone makes moves towards interoperability (see e.g. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...).

foobiekr
0 replies
17h55m

It isn't weird, its completely straightforward why this is a problem.

globular-toast
1 replies
10h10m

Nope. You can't blame uses for this. The reason we have governments at all is because individuals all operating independently cannot get out of local optima like this

sbuk
0 replies
7h30m

I can and I did - installing alternatives is easy, as is using them, as proven by literally the rest of the world oustside of North America. In fact, free and open alternatives exist.

madeofpalk
0 replies
19h43m

There actually a bunch of competition for messaging apps, which put forward user needs and drives innovation though.

MBCook
0 replies
19h27m

Tell me when Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, and all the others are opened.

Oh right. No one cares. Apple’s iMessage is the only one a large number of people seem to care about.

I’ve never seen anyone call for opening the others. But Apple? Constantly.

blindriver
14 replies
19h51m

As someone in tech, I think it's awesome they were able to find a way into iMessage.

As an iPhone user, I hate the idea that spammers can now use iMessage, and I'm glad the service was taken down.

Both things can be true at once.

makeitdouble
9 replies
19h46m

Won't spammers just continue using the macos bridged other services instead of the direct to Apple way ?

mh8h
5 replies
19h9m

If they have to use real Apple hardware, and those devices are blocklisted by Apple when the spam is reported, spamming stays cost prohibitive.

jeroenhd
2 replies
19h0m

With how many "rent a mac mini stuffed in a datacenter" services are out there, I wonder how cost-prohibitive blacklisting specific devices really is.

sdfhbdf
1 replies
18h26m

If a serial number of the mac mini is blacklisted by apple from registering for example with apple updates or any other apple connected services, then probably it's in datacenters' best interest to keep spammers out of them.

aeyes
0 replies
13h27m

Cutting anyone off from security updates is a step too far.

nomel
1 replies
19h1m

I also assume there are iMessage rate limits in place, that if exceeded, trigger some analysis. If that's true, then hardware costs would also be proportional to rate.

I suspect there's some dark market for broken iPhones, and perhaps some rate limit for activations within a city block/building. The last time I had iMessage spam was years ago, so maybe it's not so practical.

lotsofpulp
0 replies
7h34m

The first time I received iMessage spam was Aug 22, 2023 from +1 626 453 4929. And the second time was Oct 11, 2023 from edgardonikko@gmail.com trying to get me to click a link to malware.

MBCook
2 replies
19h29m

What do you mean? There are no services bridged to iMessage.

tredre3
0 replies
17h56m

Beeper Cloud, their other product, does exactly this...

https://help.beeper.com/en_US/chat-networks/imessage

1123581321
0 replies
19h11m

He refers to Mac apps like AirMessage that relay information from iMessage’s SQLite database or control the screen, and are connected to a messages app on Android.

xyst
1 replies
19h7m

Spam is not really an issue. For me, it just goes to the "Unknown Senders" tab. No notification, so I am not bothered. Occasionally check it if I am expecting a message from a random number.

cqqxo4zV46cp
0 replies
18h36m

Not really an issue for you. There are plenty of people for whom this is not viable.

Arch485
1 replies
17h0m

but... Spammers can still message you via SMS? In either case, they just need to get your phone number. SMS vs iMessage doesn't make much of a difference.

lotsofpulp
0 replies
7h32m

The difference is that spam is so rare on iMessage that the blue color message has the trait of being more trustworthy. In 15 years, I have only received 2 blue message, both within the last few months.

SirMaster
5 replies
19h1m

So does this also now break iMessage for older iOS devices too?

I thought someone said something about that to block beeper mini, Apple would have to also block older iOS devices as that’s the method they were using that wasn’t as locked down.

SparkyMcUnicorn
1 replies
18h57m

Looks like iMessage stopped working on my hackintosh...

usui
0 replies
16h27m

Your Hackintosh is not working properly not because of this reason, then. Or if it is because of this, then it's not blanket-wide and it's based on generic model-based identifiers or heuristics. iMessage still works.

turquoisevar
0 replies
15h55m

They were wrong insofar as there are multiple ways to combat this.

One of the easiest ways is to block Beeper's encryption key from generating encryption tokens. Another way is to block the fake serial numbers and UDIDs Beeper uses. Yet another way is to block Beepers push notification servers.

A more long-term solution is to require device attestation. This functionality is already built into iOS, and on newer devices, it utilizes the Secure Enclave on the device.

This doesn’t require older iOS devices to be excluded from iMessage because the attestation can partially be done via Apple’s servers. For the most secure method, however, you’d want the device to have a Secure Enclave.

Breaking compatibility with older devices isn’t unheard of, however, when Apple upgraded the FaceTime protocol, older devices that didn’t support the newer iOS versions were left out and couldn’t make FaceTime calls with more recent devices on the more recent protocol.

All in all, many tech tubers were talking out of their behind because they didn’t understand the inner workings and were parroting what others told them.

sbuk
0 replies
7h32m

Take anything any of these "tech" YouTubers say with a dumpster-full of salt. It makes my blood boil when I read "But Linus says..." or "MKBHD did a s test where..." They are all just fanboys in the truest sense.

SilverBirch
0 replies
18h46m

There's been a lot of speculation about this, and in principle it's correct. At the end of the day Beeper can work to spoof genuine devices until its indistinguishable from an old iPhone and to block it Apple would essentially have to either force push an update to every device and enforce its installation (they probably can't/won't do this). But in reality Beeper probably leaks a load of data to Apple that Apple can use to block it and it's just a cat and mouse game between Beeper bringing in new workaround vs Apple blocking whatever they notice abusing the system. It really just depends how motivated Apple is to chase this down, and the low cost way for Apple to chase this down is.... to sue Beeper. Beeper might actually be able to outsmart them over time in engineering, but they sure as hell can't outspend them on lawyers.

nickorlow
3 replies
19h30m

I'm guessing the binary they use from Apple (IMDAppleServices) to generate part of the registration information probably adds metadata to the "validation blob" that gets sent to apple when registering beeper mini as an iMessage device.

If the metadata includes the OS version, Apple probably blacklisted any new devices registered in the past few days with validation blobs generated from that binary.

(The binary was sourced from OS X 10.8 which is ~11 years old now)

threeseed
1 replies
18h35m

My suspicion is this is going to be a cat-mouse situation for a while.

Apple would've found some easy way to identify these users and Beeper will likely release a patch to fix it.

nickorlow
0 replies
17h55m

Agreed. I think Apple wins easily though. If they can break it once a month for a day or two, I think that makes it inconvenient for beeper mini users.

Maybe not though, who knows

winterqt
0 replies
14h45m

It doesn't look like that binary is used for Beeper Mini, unlike pypush: https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

gigatexal
3 replies
19h8m

Absolutely hilarious. Did people actually think this was going to be allowed? iMessage is a huge moat and only an act of Congress or a case verdict will force their hand. Maybe the EU legislation might.

sbuk
1 replies
18h47m

Maybe the EU legislation might.

Why? iMessage simply does not have the market share enjoyed by WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Telegram EU-wide. iMessage was temporarily removed from the DMA in September and noises coming out of the commission favour Apple's stance that it is simply not big enough to warrant inclusion as a gatekeeper for messaging apps.

thomastjeffery
0 replies
18h33m

Those lucky bastards...

If the EU won't solve America's problems for us, who will?

jeroenhd
0 replies
18h57m

Apple and the EU don't agree on iMessage's status as a gatekeeper. Apple's argument is that it doesn't have the required amount of users (10% of EU population/10k business users).

If they're right and Apple doesn't have the user base, the EU gatekeeper laws won't have an effect on iMessage.

chatmasta
3 replies
16h35m

I'm pretty sure this quote from the founder is wrong on multiple levels:

“That means that anytime you text your Android friends, anyone can read the message. Apple can read the message. Your phone carrier can read the message. Google… literally, it’s just like a postcard. Anyone can read it. So Beeper Mini actually increases the security of iPhones,” he [the founder of Beeper] had told TechCrunch.

The phone carrier can read the contents of the unencrypted SMS. But the contents of the message never traverse Apple or Google networks.

If an iPhone user's device attempts to send an iMessage, and it fails to send, then the device falls back to sending an SMS via the cellular network (actually, it's not even a fallback - the user needs to long-press the message and resend it as an SMS).

The content of the message never reaches Apple because the device never sends it to them. It doesn't even send the encrypted content because it wasn't able to exchange keys. I'm not even sure it sends the unencrypted phone number of the recipient to Apple...

And certainly, no part of the message is ever sent to Google's network... that doesn't even make sense.

Now, maybe he's arguing "Apple can see it because they control the operating system," but that's a ridiculous argument because you may as well say they can access every iMessage too...

wkipling
2 replies
15h42m

Push notifications

yellow_lead
0 replies
13h8m

SMS doesn't go through APNS, that's not how cellphones work.

chatmasta
0 replies
14h19m

Are you sure? So if I disable cellular data, I won't receive a notification for an incoming SMS?

I would assume that text message notifications are generated locally on the device when it receives an SMS message.

satchlj
2 replies
14h39m

Beeper Cloud has also been cut off, even though they are running virtual MacOS machines for every Beeper Cloud user... not sure how they managed that

lxe
0 replies
14h38m

That's a shame :/

apfsx
0 replies
10h58m

I think I saw somewhere (somewhere in the Beeper updates channel) that Beeper Cloud switched to using their new method a little while back before releasing Beeper Mini, which would explain the cut off.

leshokunin
2 replies
18h28m

Reminder that BlueBubbles and AirMessage both are working and fairly robust. I've used them daily over a year. The downside being that they need a Mac and iPhone to run. But in the spirit of self hosting, you do run the server yourself and don't share your credentials. I don't see a more viable path in the near future.

meepmorp
1 replies
18h5m

The downside being that they need a Mac and iPhone to run.

Then why would anyone use BlueBubbles? If you already need the hardware, and presumably an Apple account, what advage would there be? Legitimately curious.

leshokunin
0 replies
16h45m

Well I use a Samsung Fold 4 as my daily phone. I want imessage too. I use a cheap iPhone 8 and Mac Mini to get the feature.

jamesdepp
2 replies
16h47m

I feel like this could be a part of a weird plan to trap Apple into an antitrust lawsuit about iMessage. Beeper's CEO has been claiming that the existence of Beeper Mini actually improves iPhone users' experiences. He could argue that Apple shutting off access is not meant to improve Apple users' experiences, but rather, to keep people off of Android.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings. I REALLY think that iMessage needs to be opened up, but this was not the way to do it. Really hoping the EU swoops in and saves the day here.

hu3
0 replies
2h49m

iMessage is mostly a US problem.

EU usage of iMessage is minimal compared to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and Facebook Messenger.

So there's little incentive for EU to get involved.

aslilac
0 replies
16h29m

it’s absolutely the right way to do it. third party clients are a dying breed, because people have forgotten why they’re necessary.

garysahota93
2 replies
15h50m

What if they create a version of Beeper Mini that spoofs an apple device you own? For example: I don't want to own an iPhone, but I do have a MacBook. So rather than use a randomly generated device that tricks Apple's servers to allow me to connect, I can just use a device a legitimately own (and just trick apple to think my phone is my laptop).

I know this won't work for everyone (especially folks that don't have an Apple device). But this might be better than losing the app all together ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(PS - I don't know much about how Beeper Mini's reverse engineering worked. Just going off what I believe I understood)

eiiot
1 replies
14h5m

This already exists!

https://airmessage.org

jaktet
0 replies
12h13m

I was using this before beeper and switched to beeper since I could also use WhatsApp on my iPad. Worked just fine on an old otherwise unused MacBook Air I keep in my garage. I only used airmessage for iMessage on windows

123sereusername
2 replies
19h51m

Why not just use signal?

wffurr
0 replies
19h35m

No one is stopping you and everyone you know from switching to Signal.

You can even use Beeper (Cloud) as a client if you don’t mind using a relay. They also had plans to extend Beeper Mini to support Signal and other e2e encrypted chat apps with no relay.

mrweasel
0 replies
7h37m

This comes up in just about any conversation regarding iMessage, and it's pretty out of touch with the real world. Apple backed iMessage into the same app that does SMS, so you can't not use that app, SMS is still relevant. So iPhone users are going to use that app. Now imagine that 90% of your friends and family use iMessage, but not by some deliberate choice, but because they just view it as fancy text messaging. How on earth are you going to convince all those people that they should download Signal, WhatsApp or Telegram? The answer is that you don't. You might get a few people who already use Signal to start contacting you that way, but the rest... they aren't going to install yet another app just because you don't like iMessage, and when SMS still works just fine. But now you're excluded from all group chats and videos or largish images.

thatkid234
1 replies
1h28m

To my understanding, Beeper uses some random Mac's serial number to complete device attestation. Would this be salvageable if I could provide my own legitimately purchased iPhone or Mac serial number?

ghqst
0 replies
1h1m

Beeper fixed their other iMessage bridge service last night by rotating device serial numbers on their server farm, so I would guess this would work? To my knowledge the pypush library itself isn't broken.

tantalor
1 replies
19h24m

Blue bubbles is not a business model.

hellotomyrars
0 replies
18h57m

For third parties at the mercy of Apple? No.

For Apple? Demonstrably so. Apple has stated as much in court filings against Epic. This is largely an American trend, third party messengers are much more popular outside of the US as the defacto standard, Apple sees clear value in the blue bubble.

smeej
1 replies
15h53m

Sometimes I think this whole "blue bubble" thing is a gigantic opt-in psych experiment about how biases like racism can start absolutely anywhere.

azubinski
0 replies
10m

First you need to infantilize them to the level of “I’m ready to do anything to be in their gang.”

But at the same time, you need to feed snobbery so that you get a safe mixture of 80% immaturity and 20% snobbery.

Let’s add two drops of self-deprecation, that boring feeling of “I don’t have blue bubbles, I’m worthless and a loser.”

And now you can take a large bag for money and leave it open - they will fill it themselves, tie it and send it to the address :)

mattbee
1 replies
18h31m

Apple could have been a lot meaner about this.

If they really wanted to discourage 3rd-party clients they could just _subtly_ break them for users of Beeper Mini: Late messages. Truncated messages. A blue bubble that slowly turns brown. The wrong font. Zalgo text.

sgjohnson
0 replies
16h9m

That’s something that Microsoft would do in the 90s.

Apple’s MO clearly is breaking something and refusing to elaborate further.

howenterprisey
1 replies
11h49m

Seems to be back now for original beeper, although not yet for beeper mini, the app in question (beeper ceo just sent out a global message). Your move, Apple...

lstamour
0 replies
9h58m

Latest updates from Beeper as of two hours ago:

### Beeper Mini - fix coming soon

Our fix for Beeper Mini is still in the works. It’s very close, and just a matter of a bit more time and effort.

In the meantime, we have deregistered your phone numbers from iMessage so your friends can still text you. Sorry, you’re temporarily a green bubble again. Annoyingly, the iPhone Messages app ‘remembers’ that you were a blue bubble for 6-24 hours before falling back to SMS, so it’s possible that some messages will not be delivered during this period.

Also, we are extending your 7 day trial by one additional week.

I just want to say thank you for bearing with us through this wild day (week!). I feel awful about important messages you may have missed today because our iMessage connection stopped working. My sincere apologies for this.

Tomorrow is a new day. Onwards!

### Beeper Cloud - iMessage works again!

I am very proud to say that iMessage is now working again on Beeper Cloud. After a Herculean effort from my amazing colleagues, our iMessage bridge is back in action. Unfortunately, messages received during the outage are not recoverable.

If you have a Mac or iPhone, you may see an alert that a new device has been added to your account. This due to the bridge update. The update is rolling out over the next hour.

And...it's not working for everyone yet. We're going to call it a night and get back to it tomorrow.

g42gregory
1 replies
19h14m

This is what monopolies (or duopolies) usually do. Basically, they can do whatever they like in the market. I think that the antitrust enforcement is critical in a “free” market. But neither parties would do it. I am guessing Democrats think that they can get some benefits from Apple’s control. And Republicans are simply paid off. The consumers end up bearing a brunt of it.

Arch485
0 replies
16h58m

Small correction: Republicans _and_ democrats get paid off. Both groups are made up of politicians, after all.

dkga
1 replies
2h58m

Seriously what I don’t get is the number of people complaining about iMessage for Android vs Apple when free, encrypted and widely used system-agnostic alternatives like WhatsApp exist.

4oo4
0 replies
2h54m

Network effects. In the US at least WhatsApp and Signal are barely used in comparison to iMessage, despite them being solid cross platform alternatives.

diebeforei485
1 replies
17h0m

Of all the text message spam I receive, 100% of them has been green bubbles.

I don't want spam in my blue bubbles.

chatmasta
0 replies
16h30m

I get a fair amount of iMessage spam, which always disturbs me because does the sender get a confirmation it was delivered to an iMessage account such that I'm tagged as an Apple user?

bastard_op
1 replies
19h49m

I knew that was going to happen, it's become a status symbol of like good vs. bad, the blue vs. green.

Its become like a racial slur the blue vs. green, and that's exactly what Apple wants to sell cellphones. You can't contact the cool kids until you have a blue bubble, that means you're like, cool or something. You can message me if you can afford an iphone apparently.

meepmorp
0 replies
19h9m

Its become like a racial slur the blue vs. green

Take a moment to say this out loud to yourself, so you can hear how fucking ridiculous it sounds. Notwithstanding the trivialization of actual racism, it's just a throughly silly statement.

anigbrowl
1 replies
19h20m

The security argument is all very well, but I don't care for iMessage distinction between iP* users and Android/others. It reminds me of Jane Elliot's experiments*. Reinforcing your brand identity by structuring the private conversations of your users is weird and somewhat creepy.

*https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/osi04.soc.ush.civil...

justin_oaks
0 replies
18h21m

Thanks for sharing the link about Jane Elliot's classroom lessons. I only learned about this today.

Aeolun
1 replies
12h21m

To the surprise of absolutely no-one. Seriously, what did they think was going to happen?

quickthrower2
0 replies
9h10m

Maybe this. 2 HN blow ups in a week. Any publicity as they say…

voongoto
0 replies
16h28m

Stopped using beeper when random bearded dude appeared randomly in my private facebook group chat. And he’s not even in that group. Then, checkedy fb logins and saw some weird google pixel 4 logged in somewhere in the states. Deleted beeper and not using again ever

trinsic2
0 replies
3h7m

Didn't see that coming (Sarcasm)

tibbydudeza
0 replies
11h3m

Using the same device serial number and not having Apple onboard was bound to end up like this.

Epic Games tried the same thing with Fortnite to force Apple's hand, it worked in the court but Apple only bends to laws of the land.

I don't see the big deal over iMessage - we use WhatsApp for chats in our family and it is cross platform.

tedunangst
0 replies
19h38m

I was told this was impossible. What happened?

sotix
0 replies
17h18m

I would love to see hackers continue making it viable to use iMessage on Android until Apple concedes and launches their own client. Sometimes you have to ruffle some feathers to enact change.

rickreynoldssf
0 replies
19h26m

I'm not sure what was expected after they reverse engineered a private API and used it.

resters
0 replies
17h7m

My iPhone receives dozens of robocalls per week yet Apple blocks Beeper Mini in a few days! Each of those calls use my minutes, battery life, voicemail, time, etc.

realusername
0 replies
11h12m

A bit sad but that's Apple we're talking here, we all know how despicable they are.

raverbashing
0 replies
11h43m

This green bubble/blue bubble crap is too much ado about nothing

Just use literally any other messaging app

pradn
0 replies
12h28m

What’s between the lines is that iMessage is critical as a way to lock in users to iOS. People care about security somewhat but they care way more about being ostracized for having green bubbles. I bet few common users could tell you the security properties of major messaging apps. This app, if allowed, would have shaved off a parentage points off iPhone market share.

poundtown
0 replies
13h50m

shocker.. be serious youre never going to out wit apple. esp if u have the nerve to charge for it.

pat64
0 replies
10h28m

This immediately reminded me of the Palm Pre iTunes/iPod protocol reverse engineering debacle from the oughts.

It became a game of whackamole where by Palm would update their OS (RIP WebOS) to reintroduce support for iTunes to their devices and Apple would bend over backwards to break it again.

Did Beeper not anticipate that this was inevitably coming and put fallbacks and rotational serial numbers in place if Apple start getting blocky?

npalenchar
0 replies
16h11m

No one is surprised at all by this, right?

nilespotter
0 replies
2h10m

Beeper would have interested me, maybe in 6 months if it had seemed like Apple was willing to live with it. I don't want to use iMessage though, I just want to use it more than SMS or RCS. I have gotten a few of my close contacts on Signal. The whole landscape is completely chaotic. All I really want is to be able to send and receive e2ee messages with everyone else who has an extremely capable computer in their pocket.

nickez
0 replies
3h10m

The reason gsm, 3g, 4g, sms and so on succeeded was because everyone could implement them. I guess you had to pay license or patent fees, but they are not walled gardens. Phones from different manufacturers and/or different operators can communicate. I'm surprised that "chat"-protocols are allowed to be monopolies by the regulators. The regulators probably don't understand tech.

neilv
0 replies
19h52m

Of course, open standards are part of the answer.

Even if Apple would permit something like Beeper Mini for now, that would not only relieve demand for actual open standards efforts, but also put more people at the mercy of Apple.

(This is not a new idea. For example, every time I see another open source project push people to Discord for support/discussion/community, I make a big sad and disappointed face.)

mlindner
0 replies
11h59m

How did these guys raise $16M? Do the VCs have no understanding of things? The round was apparently led by the CEO of Y Combinator. Makes no sense.

mjg59
0 replies
17h45m

For those arguing that this is a privacy or security response: the first pypush commit was in April, with the first working demo commit at the beginning of May. If it's a security or privacy issue, that means it's been exploited for over 6 months without Apple taking action. How many other iMessage conversations have already ended up in non-Apple clients? Why didn't Apple notice until there was a big public splash about it?

(edit: typo)

mgh2
0 replies
16h52m
methuselah_in
0 replies
8h59m

How can someone has thought, they will create a app that can work with apple messages and they can make it able to work with android? Now they disconnected the access.You will never be allowed to have money over apple or google. Choose XMPP, it will reach there. who needs blue green bubbles lol.

maxdo
0 replies
8h14m

RCS will be on iPhone next year . Problem solved

m3kw9
0 replies
18h6m

Just look one step ahead, they got the attention on their names and company, it was all expected. The play was to be first to donut and get lots of new. Apple allowing it to work means pigs fly

lxe
0 replies
18h21m

Hope they don't go after Beeper "cloud" version.

kbenson
0 replies
10h47m

The way Beeper-mini addressed the "criticism" that Apple would shut them down in their show HN post to me seemed like their were either completely naive, or far more likely that they understood that it would only last a short time and that it was all a PR stunt to get you to notice their product and become a user to try it out, and maybe switch to it.

It's not bad marketing strategy at all, I'm sure they gained a huge number of new users, and some percentage of them will stick around even without iMessage support (because there's not really someone else to switch to), but it seemed a bit too manipulative for my personal taste. They could have just said "try us out and see if you like us, we'll keep iMessage support going as long as we can" but instead they dodged the question entirely.

jonplackett
0 replies
7h24m

Most predictable headline award goes to…

jFriedensreich
0 replies
6h38m

We finally need a giant lawsuit and final verdict to end messenger lock ins. This has been going on for nearly a decade now and all started with facebebook and google closing their xmpp apis. I just hope that the EU Digital Market Act interoperability requirements have teeth and we can finally get some freedom.

irdc
0 replies
8h9m

This is likely going to be buried, but: now Bleeper has standing to argue that Apple, as owner of the largest mobile messaging platform in the US, is a monopolist.

ipcress_file
0 replies
17h18m

I remember the webOS iTunes fiasco. This kind of thing isn't worth the waste of your time.

gardenhedge
0 replies
18h40m

I am very surprised that Beeper is a company with a CEO and everything. It's a hack on top of other services! This was always going to be the end result.

Also, the whole use case is funny to me since everyone in my country (including iPhone users) use WhatsApp.

faverin
0 replies
7h5m

Jesus i'm old. This happened twenty years ago with the ICQ/Yahoo/MSN messenger wars. Everything old does become new again. I wish Congress and the EU figured this out with crypto expert advice - surely we can have apps that only show you the recent messages or something. All on phone so secure but convenient.

A/S/L anyone? +5 Insightful

Some links for the befuddled

An overview: This made the front page https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/24/business/in-cyberspace-ri... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/oct/13/yahoo.digitalm... A delightful internal MS assembly hacking rivals message apps interview. https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-19/essays/chat-wars/

dishsoap
0 replies
18h59m

I for one am shocked

cirrus3
0 replies
19h22m

Building a startup around this neat trick was always as doomed. It is incredible the amount of delusion they would have needed to assume this was sustainable.

Edit: not a whole company, just a side project within a company I guess. Still, seems like a waste of time/effort to have even attempted.

circuit10
0 replies
19h21m

While I do wish this was allowed I think it’s pretty clear that using Apple’s iMessage servers without permission is probably not legal

busymom0
0 replies
18h52m

This reddit comment is exactly what I thought when I first saw this:

The sheer fucking hubris of these clowns to charge a subscription to forge device identifiers and transfer data through Apple's servers for users that have in no way actually paid Apple for that service and then say "there's no way they can shut us down!"

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/18dy7ip/apple_has_se...

bluedays
0 replies
18h34m

I'm probably leaping to conclusions here but I think this is going to end up in court, and that was beeper's intention to begin with. It just seems way too easy to block so they had to know this was going to happen.

benreesman
0 replies
19h18m

I’ll give a fuck one way or the other when shifting capital markets don’t make it a Wozniak moment to participate at all.

Ranking how much it’s all captured and handed out to buds and pre-IPO AirBnB stock funded. Snooze.

Call me when you want to knock this thing over.

benkarst
0 replies
14h55m

So they built an entire company betting that little old Apple wouldn't mind hacking a proprietary protocol? Hmm.

ben_w
0 replies
5h48m

This may explain why I got my first ever "who dis?" iMessage yesterday, from an unknown number, on a device with cellular switched off.

badrabbit
0 replies
16h44m

Personally I don't want anything to do with a google device, so on the other end as a recipient I am glad apple did this swiftly. But I applaud and encourage people to try and get around it, perhaps they might even help find vulns in imessage.

angry_octet
0 replies
17h20m

Inevitable, and correct of Apple to do so.

aizyuval
0 replies
10h54m

Good advertisement for beeper. Now we'll see if they're true.

TheMagicHorsey
0 replies
4h8m

What if people ran their own local gateway that forwarded messages to a third party message broker?

Melatonic
0 replies
3h54m

It was a great party trick while it lasted !

KingOfCoders
0 replies
11h21m

Predictable comments.

If Facebook does it, uhhh evil.

If Apple does it, right so!

INGSOCIALITE
0 replies
17h31m

i will never understand the absolute hatred people have toward imessage. it's an app that runs on apples platform, for apple users. people can still communicate or text between android and apple. if you want inter-OS encryption then use whatsapp or signal or whatever the hip new thing is today.

apple owes nothing to anyone. they have created an ecosystem for their walled / gated devices that works extremely well. they don't have to let anyone else play in their pool.

this is really about blue bubbles vs green bubbles, it's the most asinine thing to waste thought on.

FridgeSeal
0 replies
18h24m

Is anyone genuinely surprised by this?

My mate and I had a bet on how long this would take (since the thread the other day), my guess of “3 weeks tops” was far too generous.

AndrewKemendo
0 replies
17h40m

Say it with your chest:

Building an application on someone else’s platform means they control your product

Doesn’t matter that “we all know that” this will continue to happen as long as closed platforms are the only thing people are incentivized to build/use.