My take on this whole thing is that this is basically an elaborate plan to eventually use this in court against Apple to prove its anti-competitive practices.
If not for court, then at the least this is a press strategy orchestrated by someone with an interest in opening up the iMessage monopoly.
I’m sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim - the vulnerability to Apple shutting them down was obvious. Which leads me to conclude he saw value to be created in just basically messing with Apple and forcing them to ban him.
> I’m sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim
If you actually knew Eric and the history of Beeper you would understand how hilariously false, absurd and revisionist such a statement is. Eric only started Beeper after validating massive interest from Hacker News for a paid app that would unify disparate communication channels.
Since Beeper main product is a multi protocol messaging app and iMessage is the only protocol that resists them, yes, it’s probably both.
I know it’s marketing but at the end of the day, they are fighting for a cause that matters to me and their bridges are open source so I wish them good luck.
I agree. There have always been highly skilled programmers capable of reverse engineering imessage, but everybody knew it would immediately get shutdown and not be worth the effort.
i really doubt it was an elaborate plan. more, people were annoyed by apple's monopoly, engineered a solution, and apple proceeded to shoot themself in the foot by trying to hold on to the said monopoly. beeper mini is probably leaning into provoking apple after witnessing the reaction, which makes sense. it gives them press.
we'll see how this plays out. i know the justice department is building a case, and they're probably salivating at this evidence, but the 2024 election could result in less antitrust friendly actors working against the case. possibly. i need to research the justice department more.
I’m genuinely surprised that this theory isn’t more pervasive.
I seldom buy into conspiracy theories but in this case I’d go a step further and suggest that Beeper Mini was secretly enabled in some way by other commercial entities incentivised to dismantle Apple’s walled garden. Maybe not from the start, but much more likely when the public game of cat and mouse kicked off.
Yeah this isn’t surprising, I’ve had this happen to hackintoshes over the years. Apple has always had the ability to ban serials from iMessage afaict, and it also (seemed) to be some automated process.
It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real machines for this.
Everyone thinks it’s personal when anti-abuse automation detects token reuse and blocks the hardware ID that issued it. It’s not. It’s just an HSM-secured communications network, same as Xbox consoles use for their player messaging network, complete with the anti-abuse automation that can lead to hardware bans.
It’ll be interesting to see how hard Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony fight against any attempt to open up iMessage. They each depend critically on the right to block devices by device identifier using automation, and if a ruling is found against Apple in this matter, all hardware identifier enforcement is now voidable, which will destroy some of the value of their paid subscription services and worsen the safety of those services.
Calling this “retaliation” is rather dramatic. There are a number of communication platforms that don’t allow 3rd party apps to access their networks and will ban people who attempt it.
It just works. You may think that this is a meme, but it really is not. Let’s say you and someone else that you wish to communicate with has an iPhone (parent, SO, friend, whoever) and things just click into place.
- Extremely responsive, native, fast app with no clutter whatsoever, on both phones and on desktop devices (personally, I highly dislike web/electron apps)
- Close to no spam (whatsapp in particular seems to have a ton, way worse than Telegram even)
- Highest quality (amongst all the apps) audio/video calls with Facetime
- e2e encrypted by default, does not have the unconscious bias that you’re using a Facebook owned product for doing something secure, even if it really is (and as far as power users go, I don’t really particularly dislike the company like many do)
My next favorite messenger, that does Groups better than iMessage, is Telegram. I don’t wish to get into the privacy concerns (and it’s valid!) but as far as making a responsive, native app that does chat and does it well, it’s pretty superior to both Whatsapp and Signal.
gTalk of old was amazing, but I don’t think that’s coming back :(
Let's open WhatsApp… It's recommending that I follow channels. Do I want to follow Man City, Real Madrid, or FC Barcelona? I watch zero sports and want nothing to do with any of this. I've used the app a handful of times over the years, yet I have three threads/groups from December that are cryptocurrency, investment, and market insight scams. To me, the interface also looks bad—and it's a Facebook product.
Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
99% of the time, iMessage just does what it says and at a high quality. No bullshit, barely any spam, and OS-level integration with my other devices.
It's simply that it has a lot of users. Any popular enough communication protocol attracts interest in interoperating with it.
Or if you mean why anyone uses it, it's because SMS is automatically upgraded to iMessage between two iPhone users. Most people wouldn't know how to prevent that from happening or downgrade to SMS and because it feels like texting with a few extra features, they don't want to. That approach has accumulated about a billion users.
From an average consumer perspective (not a HN user perspective):
It just works. As soon as I log into my Apple account on any Apple device I can access all of my messages, and seamlessly carry on a conversation on whatever device is at hand. It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.
I know that WhatsApp is similar, but their desktop app, especially authentication, kinda sucks (I need my phone to login, and it seemingly logs me out weekly). Whatsapp is also FILLED with weird porn spam, and scammers.
In the US, it's mostly a network effect I think. It was the default on half of people's phones and it managed to be good enough over time (unlike sms defaults on Android) to stay entrenched.
Also, imagine this scenario from the perspective of a non-technical user:
You buy an expensive but high quality phone that's easy to use and has a great camera and great apps. Most of your friends have the same phone and everything works great with them. Then you try to talk to someone new but they have a phone that was probably cheaper and has a worse camera and looks like it's harder to use and full of ads. Every time they message you it turns off a bunch of your features and ruins group chats for everyone. Who are you going to blame, your phone manufacturer whose product seems to work great, or this guy with a phone so cheap and buggy that it breaks everyone else's?
Thus, non-technical iMessage users see no reason to go out of their way to use weird third party messengers. It's not their fault - it's the android users' faults for being cheap.
(For clarity, I am a hardcore android phone but I'm not delusional enough to think the average person will have a better experience on Android then iOS. I had to install fdroid and a custom launcher and a bunch of side loaded apps to get a decent experience. The average person doesn't and arguably shouldn't need to know about all that)
Of all the messengers I have and my friends and family use iMessage is easily the worst designed one (well, Viber is probably worse), and no one I know uses it
This further undermines the "are they supposed to let Android users use iMessage for free?" defense, given that these users already bought a Mac. And now those paying customers eat hardware bans for using their own hardware in a way Apple doesn't like.
Thus completely missing the point of this product’s entire existence and value proposition. This is not helpful and bordering on snarky. ‘Take note’ that people are well aware of the existence of other messaging services. They don’t want them. They want iMessage. The kid saying that they’re using “Tox on a Google Pixel running GrapheneOS” is sitting by themselves during recess whether you like it or not.
I bet if you sign out of iCloud then reinstall the Mac and sign in again it'll work again. This is probably the machine signing key being shot down for using it with an unauthorised client rather than the mac being completely banned itself.
The hackintosh community has been troubleshooting iMessage activation issues for a decade.
Activation is tied to the Mac's serial number, so you either need to work with Apple Support to get your Mac's serial number off the blocklist, or you need to change your Mac's serial number to a unique and valid one that isn't blocked.
clay_the_ripper|2 years ago
If not for court, then at the least this is a press strategy orchestrated by someone with an interest in opening up the iMessage monopoly.
I’m sure the founder realized early on that the prospects of this becoming a valuable company on its own merits were slim - the vulnerability to Apple shutting them down was obvious. Which leads me to conclude he saw value to be created in just basically messing with Apple and forcing them to ban him.
ccamrobertson|2 years ago
If you actually knew Eric and the history of Beeper you would understand how hilariously false, absurd and revisionist such a statement is. Eric only started Beeper after validating massive interest from Hacker News for a paid app that would unify disparate communication channels.
pjerem|2 years ago
I know it’s marketing but at the end of the day, they are fighting for a cause that matters to me and their bridges are open source so I wish them good luck.
pxeboot|2 years ago
realusername|2 years ago
nixonaddiction|2 years ago
rchaud|2 years ago
cqqxo4zV46cp|2 years ago
I seldom buy into conspiracy theories but in this case I’d go a step further and suggest that Beeper Mini was secretly enabled in some way by other commercial entities incentivised to dismantle Apple’s walled garden. Maybe not from the start, but much more likely when the public game of cat and mouse kicked off.
ericzawo|2 years ago
crazygringo|2 years ago
They've always banned iMessage access that they determined to be compromised. It's part of security and preventing abuse.
It just probably took a couple weeks for their automated system to detect.
Hopefully affected users can get it working again on their Macs via customer service, if they even care.
redserk|2 years ago
This is Beeper, a for-profit company, throwing a tantrum, violating the ToS of Apple but leaving Beeper's users and their friends holding the bag.
pram|2 years ago
It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real machines for this.
eek2121|2 years ago
[deleted]
altairprime|2 years ago
It’ll be interesting to see how hard Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony fight against any attempt to open up iMessage. They each depend critically on the right to block devices by device identifier using automation, and if a ruling is found against Apple in this matter, all hardware identifier enforcement is now voidable, which will destroy some of the value of their paid subscription services and worsen the safety of those services.
kayodelycaon|2 years ago
kevingadd|2 years ago
cosmin800|2 years ago
isatty|2 years ago
- Extremely responsive, native, fast app with no clutter whatsoever, on both phones and on desktop devices (personally, I highly dislike web/electron apps)
- Close to no spam (whatsapp in particular seems to have a ton, way worse than Telegram even)
- Highest quality (amongst all the apps) audio/video calls with Facetime
- e2e encrypted by default, does not have the unconscious bias that you’re using a Facebook owned product for doing something secure, even if it really is (and as far as power users go, I don’t really particularly dislike the company like many do)
My next favorite messenger, that does Groups better than iMessage, is Telegram. I don’t wish to get into the privacy concerns (and it’s valid!) but as far as making a responsive, native app that does chat and does it well, it’s pretty superior to both Whatsapp and Signal.
gTalk of old was amazing, but I don’t think that’s coming back :(
ryanwhitney|2 years ago
Signal is great for certain times and places, but as a daily app it's still a bit clunky and not widely adopted.
99% of the time, iMessage just does what it says and at a high quality. No bullshit, barely any spam, and OS-level integration with my other devices.
aidenn0|2 years ago
1123581321|2 years ago
Or if you mean why anyone uses it, it's because SMS is automatically upgraded to iMessage between two iPhone users. Most people wouldn't know how to prevent that from happening or downgrade to SMS and because it feels like texting with a few extra features, they don't want to. That approach has accumulated about a billion users.
mmh0000|2 years ago
dghlsakjg|2 years ago
It just works. As soon as I log into my Apple account on any Apple device I can access all of my messages, and seamlessly carry on a conversation on whatever device is at hand. It works with SMS as well, and I just don't have to think about it.
I know that WhatsApp is similar, but their desktop app, especially authentication, kinda sucks (I need my phone to login, and it seemingly logs me out weekly). Whatsapp is also FILLED with weird porn spam, and scammers.
63|2 years ago
Also, imagine this scenario from the perspective of a non-technical user: You buy an expensive but high quality phone that's easy to use and has a great camera and great apps. Most of your friends have the same phone and everything works great with them. Then you try to talk to someone new but they have a phone that was probably cheaper and has a worse camera and looks like it's harder to use and full of ads. Every time they message you it turns off a bunch of your features and ruins group chats for everyone. Who are you going to blame, your phone manufacturer whose product seems to work great, or this guy with a phone so cheap and buggy that it breaks everyone else's?
Thus, non-technical iMessage users see no reason to go out of their way to use weird third party messengers. It's not their fault - it's the android users' faults for being cheap.
(For clarity, I am a hardcore android phone but I'm not delusional enough to think the average person will have a better experience on Android then iOS. I had to install fdroid and a custom launcher and a bunch of side loaded apps to get a decent experience. The average person doesn't and arguably shouldn't need to know about all that)
troupo|2 years ago
anomaly_|2 years ago
kevingadd|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
rustcleaner|2 years ago
This is an important lesson, take it to heart!
cqqxo4zV46cp|2 years ago
wwalexander|2 years ago
crimbles|2 years ago
iAMkenough|2 years ago
Activation is tied to the Mac's serial number, so you either need to work with Apple Support to get your Mac's serial number off the blocklist, or you need to change your Mac's serial number to a unique and valid one that isn't blocked.
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/an-idiots-guide-to-imessa...
heyoni|2 years ago
nikolay|2 years ago