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Beeper users say Apple is now blocking their Macs from using iMessage entirely

Beeper users say Apple is now blocking their Macs from using iMessage entirely | TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/16/beeper-users-say-apple-is-now-blocking-their-macs-from-using-imessage-entirely/

The Apple-versus-Beeper saga is not over yet it seems, even though the iMessage-on-Android Beeper Mini was removed from the Play Store last week. Now,

Beeper users say Apple is now blocking their Macs from using iMessage entirely | TechCrunch

Beeper users say Apple is now blocking their Macs from using iMessage entirely::The Apple-versus-Beeper saga is not over yet it seems, even though the iMessage-on-Android Beeper Mini was removed from the Play Store last week. Now,

71 comments

Merlin404

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FUCK APPLE, but they have so many people that let them ass fuck them they continue to do shits like this

vmachiel

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Devils advocate here: it’s their webservice right? They determine who can access it.

If there were legislation that would force them to make it interoperable that would be one thing. But you can’t just demand access to their infrastructure.

Deebster

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You're right - but, as Cory Doctorow points out, Apple owe their success to reverse engineering, the very thing they're busy blocking now.

helenslunch

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They're not blocking reverse engineering. They're blocking unauthorized access to their servers.

Deebster

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You're being unnecessarily pedantic. Apple was blocking interoperability and reverse engineering found a solution—and Apple is blocking that solution.

helenslunch

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I'm not being remotely pedantic.

Apple reverse-engineered MS standards to improve interoperability so you could open Apple files on Windows and vise versa. They didn't reverse engineer Windows security so that you could open Apple files on MS servers.

Deebster

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Apple reverse engineered a file format, Beeper reverse engineered a protocol.

Microsoft made several changes to try to keep Apple out, Apple's also made several changes to keep Beeper out, except now everyone's online so it's happening way faster.

It's not exactly the same kind of reverse engineering, but I never said it was. I think you've got a very narrow definition of reverse engineering in your head and you're quibbling over me using it more broadly than you would.

helenslunch

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You're hopeless

rikudou

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No one is saying what they do is illegal, people just say they are cunts.

captainlezbian

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Exactly, dick moves don’t need to be illegal to be dick moves. It’s like the constant price/ad increases. You can, but we’re gonna bitch and encourage people to stop supporting you because it’s a dick move

beatle

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Agreed. Apple provides a free service locked to their hardware. It shouldn’t be surprising that they patched the vulnerabilities and blocked accounts.

helenslunch

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They have interoperability. There are 1000+ interoperable messaging platforms you can use on iOS. Problem is they're not "convenient" since SMS is the only interoperable standard that EVERY phone already has and you can't use any other messaging app with SMS fallback, which is the only feature iMessage has that the others don't.

There needs to be legislation that requires them to have unlockable bootloaders, to allow 3rd party app stores, and to be able to use other apps for SMS. And it needs to happen 10 years ago.

The fact that you need Apple's permission before you can install any software on your device, and that Apple gets 30% of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DIME YOU SEND in literally any fucking app is appalling and embarrassing.

gregorum

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o0oradaro0o

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Yeah, I'm sure every beeper user knew the details of the iMessage tos and deserves to be locked out of a major selling point of the iMac they purchased because they tried to get access to that feature on an android phone. It's incredibly unlikely anyone getting banned knew it was a possibility.

Just because apple put some bs in a TOS doesn't make it moral or even necessarily legal.

Anyway maybe don't be a shill for making the world worse for consumers even if you were correct with this terrible take.

gregorum

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Lmao, this is the most entitled bullshit excuse for willful ignorance I’ve read since Trump claimed he didn’t know he wasn’t allowed to steal top secret documents because nobody told him espionage was against the law.

MiDaBa

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And your response is the most arrogant boot licking BS excuse for intellectual analysis I've read since Mike Lindell insisted Trump won the election. Apple is not a mom and pop shop so when they control so much of our means to connect they damn sure should be scrutinized. You may not agree with that sentiment but a growing number of people who understand the issues sure do. This includes a growing number of regulators from around the world. Japan, the European Union and the United States are all in various stages of addressing this issue. Despite your bravado you don't have the moral or intellectual high ground here.

gregorum

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MiDaBa

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To be fair, you're the one crying and twisting yourself around to defend the worlds biggest company here. What's really funny is when you talk about "the rules" when I just outlined how international law is about to change the rules. It appears it's you who isn't happy with the rules and therefore you who is the massive hypocrite. You don't like it? Well too bad. Start your own country then you lazy cry baby. 😉

gregorum

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“No u!”

Lmao

o0oradaro0o

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Which bit of this does Apple own? The beeper app? The iMac? The code that beeper wrote to communicate with Apple's libraries? Apple doesn't own shit here. It's why they're being investigated for breaking beeper multiple times. You can let Daddy Apple hit you harder if you want but consumers don't have to take it. I'm hoping you're a troll because nobody can be this stupid without really really trying.

And no, you can't kick people out from your service at any time without cause. It turns out when you sell somebody a product that relies on services you agree to provide those services, what these people do on their Android phone with another company named beeper is none of your damn business. You can't ban them. It's fucked up. It isn't entitled to expect the products you bought from Apple to continue to work. Despite what you do with your Android phone to say otherwise is insane. So again, I hope your troll or that you come to realize that you have rights as a consumer. Anyway, I'm tapping out on this one. Have a good evening everybody.

gregorum

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Apple owns its servers. Apple owns its services. And when you use them while breaking the rules, they get to kick you off of both. You are not entitled to anything.

helenslunch

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Which bit of this does Apple own? The beeper app? The iMac? The code that beeper wrote to communicate with Apple's libraries? Apple doesn't own shit here.

They own the servers and the services that run on them.

helenslunch

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just so your chat bubbles can be blue, you massive hypocrites. Ha!

I'm constantly blown away at the number of people who think issue is actually about bubble colors...

gregorum

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It is. You can get all the privacy and features you want on a dozen of other services.

jaschen

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You know what to do, the EU Government.

tostiman

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They already have

TL;DR: imessage and other big message services must be able to send messages to each other (when

noodlejetski

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iMessage isn't included in that act, since it's not big enough in Europe.

tostiman

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SirQuackTheDuck

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As said by noodlejetski, iMessage usage in the EU is very low. It hasn't been excempt completely though, it's pending investigation.

helenslunch

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What exactly are you implying they should do?

Apple has already agreed to adopt RCS. Although the exact implementation they didn't specify and will likely be "bare minimum".

JackGreenEarth

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Are there any FOSS RCS apps for Android?

jaschen

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Unfortunately RCS is on the carrier side. The most basic chat system built in by the phone carrier will likely have RCS.

helenslunch

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The only RCS apps, to my knowledge are Google Messages and Samsung Messages.

Not sure why.

JackGreenEarth

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Well as I can't use either of those on my degoogled Android device, Apple using RCS is irrelevant, and they should use a more open standard, like Matrix.

helenslunch

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Matrix is a terrible standard but otherwise I agree.

JackGreenEarth

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What do you suggest, I was just giving an example.

helenslunch

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Signal protocol is probably the best open standard?

Hard to say, they all come with their compromises but Matrix would never work, it's just too slow.

jaschen

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Antitrust laws prohibits killing off your competition. Just because they will have RCS, doesn't mean they didn't actively killed beeper.

helenslunch

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LOL that's some impressive mental gymnastics. Beeper is not "competition". If Beeper started their own messaging service, they would be competition. But that's not what they did. They were literally hacking Apple's servers and impersonating Apple devices so that they could use Apple's service.

colforge

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I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I switched from Android to iPhone after years and years of using Android while knowing I wouldn’t be able to use iMessage features texting Android users. While knowing I couldn’t and would likely never be easily able to sideload apps, heck even after they had already taken the headphone jack away. I literally do not care about any of that for the purpose for which I use my phone. I just want it to work, without having to endlessly tweak and customize and modify. I like that it does what it says it does out of the box and does so smoothly and reliably.

I like that it integrates well with other apple products. I have exactly 3 contacts I use the native messaging app for. The rest have all been communicating with me through Messenger or Telegram or WhatsApp for years anyway — I’d MUCH rather see governments prioritize making those services talk to each other so I could uninstall two of them but I don’t ever see anyone talking about that even though Apple haters love to bash Apple over iMessage - while ignoring that the RCS protocol Google uses has proprietary bullshit built on top of it meaning that even if Apple adopted the protocol itself the interaction between iPhone and android messages would still be messy.

As I said I know I’ll get downvotes for this but I also know I’m far from alone and this is exactly why Apple has the power it does: it gives its users what they want, even if non-Apple users don’t see it that way. I see so many arguments against Apple that fail to take that into account.

AFC1886VCC

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I had an iPhone 13 pro max and it was an excellent device. Everything it could do it did very well and had outstanding battery life, build quality, and cameras.

I only got rid of it because I wanted torrents and emulators. If you're aware of the limitations of iOS and you're okay with them, iPhones are really great.

ji17br

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I don’t think you’re supposed to post reasonable, level-headed opinions regarding Apple on here. Against the rules or something

Monument

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Nah, that was Reddit. We’re humans here, not caricatures.

ji17br

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Go into any technology thread that mentions Apple in the title and you’ll see that’s not the case. It’s rare to find a comment that uses actual facts, mostly just opinions of people who have never used an Apple product complaining that they suck.

lovesickoyster

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If you're aware of the limitations of iOS

including some stupidly ridiculous ones - like not being to use different volume for the ringer and notifications. Apparently too difficult for apple to implement. 🤦‍♂️

arran4

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Tried beeper?

rottingleaf

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Why would you use an OS from a company that openly messes with everything it gives you?

ICQ died for a small fraction of what they are doing, going from the default IM (in some countries, including mine) to something with only red flowers seen in the buddylist when you launch it once a month to get that sleepy graveyard nostalgic feeling, and that happened in a few months.

Now trojans are seen as normal by people who understand that they are talking about a trojan.

We often treat "normies" as people for whom fashion\easiness is more important than the reality of what they are choosing.

But apparently it's come to the situation where they just can't escape Apple, MS, Google, others, due to knowledge lacking and being hostage to some functionality and network effects, if such mechanisms are socially relevant now.

Interesting to see this dynamic of choosing protest over using something else.

Almost like all that late XIX and early XX century spirit with Marx and worker movements, only from consumers, really weird.

accideath

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Why? Because Windows is shit and Linux can’t run the software I need. Also, the Apple OSes are generally pretty nice to use, if you ignore the Apple shenanigans.

rottingleaf

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Because Windows is shit and Linux can’t run the software I need.

I've already answered something like that, but less specific, for you, it was a rhetorical question.

Also, the Apple OSes are generally pretty nice to use, if you ignore the Apple shenanigans.

I've tried and felt that Windows may not be so bad, but to each his own.

halva

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like the other person said, modern windows is infinitely worse in just about every aspect of its design (you have to fight it if you just want to use your computer without microsoft 3rd wheeling it) and linux app support ranges from "ok" to "straight up doesn't exist and cannot be ran through any shenanigans"

rottingleaf

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Well, I'm a Linux user to the degree that then I argue about other systems, it's just to blabber, I'm not really interested. It's "here be dragons" for me, some epilepsy-inducing horror on one side and Johnny Ive (or whatever it is now) on another.

So feel free to not put much effort =)

Killer_Tree

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ICQ... Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I used to use the crap out of that service, but I can't for the life of me recall what killed it anymore than I can recall migrating from AIM.

rottingleaf

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They started breaking alternative clients intentionally with small protocol changes. Instead of just eating it everybody changed IMs, fast.

beefontoast

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Microsoft pushed msn messenger as a default in windows... Autostarted the app on login, made a million popups asking people to use it.. People stared using it. Usual story.

kuneho

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I kinda liked Windows Messenger/MSN/Windows Live Messenger with all its quirks.

There were even a few MSN apps for Android back then, like Epinephrine. It was nice. I could even use MSN from my Sony Ericsson W595 through eBuddy and Bluetooth PAN networking.

Sadly, Facebook killed it and for some reason, they thought it would be nice to kill it off in favor of Skype, which never worked as intended and was a really heavy boy to run.

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

Now, Apple customers who used Beeper’s apps are reporting that they’ve been banned from using iMessage on their Macs — a move Apple may have taken to disable Beeper’s apps from working properly, but ultimately penalizes its own customers for daring to try a non-Apple solution for accessing iMessage.

But the latter only found short-lived success, as Apple quickly figured out how to disable Beeper Mini from being able to reliably deliver messages.

The tech giant’s actions soon caught the attention of lawmakers, leading a bipartisan group of legislators to implore the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Apple’s “potential anticompetitive treatment” of the Beeper Mini application.

Admitting up front that third-party software was to blame would sometimes result in the support rep being able to lift the ban, some noted.

As for Apple, it originally said Beeper techniques had “posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.”

Beeper put an end to its efforts to continue to develop an iMessage solution last month after releasing its latest software.

The original article contains 584 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Psiczar

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I’m constantly amazed at people who whine about Apple, if you don’t like their products or their business model, vote with your wallet and buy Android. Don’t try and hack the system, then bitch when they close the exploits. Apple aren’t the first to lockout compromised hardware and they won’t be the last.

Cerothen

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I think the issue here is more that interacting with certain companies or services is unavoidable. As an Android user I often will have to interact with iPhone users and the impact of their vendor lock-in techniques is that the experience of those interactions is worse on both sides.

I can't convince every person to stop using an iPhone, or even just just a different messaging app, most people can't even agree what to have for dinner...

So users that take it upon themselves to try and improve the experience by trying things like beeper or beeper mini are actually trying to help others maintain their choices and preferences without the degraded experience.

So sometimes a person voting with their dollars isn't enough, since it's others choices that still have an impact