Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage network(appleinsider.com) |
Beeper Mini users find Macs banned from iMessage network(appleinsider.com) |
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.
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.
If my experiences as an early-stage founder have taught me anything I can assure you that we don’t know our asses from a hole in the ground. Founding a company is a game where you throw shit at the wall as quickly as you possibly can until something sticks and then you desperately try to figure out why it stuck. If you can figure that out, you might just have product-market fit.
This is especially true for a first time founder. You learn as you go.
This may be true with regard to the general concept, but how does it relate to the decision to try to skirt the iMessage rules? Validating that people want a feature is different from (and somewhat orthogonal to) ensuring you can actually deliver it.
I agree that the original intent was to do as you say. But the recent actions suggest that new motives may be in play.
Clearly Eric is a very intelligent person. I find it hard to believe that he believed that reverse engineering such an elaborate workaround would work after Apple had already proven that they were willing to shut him down.
If Eric is as smart as you say, then obviously he did not expect this latest iteration to work. Which leads me to conclude there is value (for him, for his investors) in taking these actions to force Apple’s hand.
Then again, maybe he just wants to prove a point and use the exposure to promote their next app. Whether the app will succeed is unknown but the PR strategy so far is crushing it.
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.
That’s absolutely not true though. Discord is incredibly hostile to third-party clients today for example.
https://twitter.com/discord/status/1229357198918197248?lang=...
Can’t log into Xbox live or PS5 messaging with a third party client either I’d expect. It’s not an unusual ask for a “secure” system - even if they provide a web interface they certainly don’t let you pretend to be a fake Xbox and create an account and then connect some third-party crap that continues to pretend to be an Xbox.
Hell didn’t Microsoft just crack down on third party headsets of all things? You really, really think they’re ok with you spoofing a whole Xbox on their network?
https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-bans-unauthorized-third-p...
Hell even AIM and MSN would try to break Gaim and ban users who used it back in the day - they just weren’t starting from a good enough place to be very successful at it.
https://m.slashdot.org/story/13509
That’s the overall problem is the world doesn’t quite work the way people remembered it. AOL was never happy about Gaim, Xbox and Sony and discord carry on this legacy today. If you simplify the issue even further: Google isn’t going to leave an open smtp relay if you find a way to spoof it, they certainly aren’t going to let you run a commercial service reselling it.
The whole “but nobody EVER fought against adversarial interop or banned users for using it!” before schtick is objectively not how the world worked or works and I think most of the people saying it understand that perfectly well, it’s just an angle for them to press the attack.
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.
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.
I'm going to go wayyyy out on a limb and guess that people who were enthusiastic adopters of Beeper Mini, AND who own a Mac ARE probably going to care about getting their access working again.
I'd actually say the bigger thing would probably be "via Customer Service, if Customer Service even cares, and doesn't tell them to just create a new Apple ID".
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.
It was frankly pretty risky to tell people to use their real machines for this.
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.
It's no different than if you get caught running cheat software in an online game.
The company isn't "retaliating" against you, or even "punishing" you -- they're just banning you. You broke the rules and that's what happens.
I fully support interoperability. But it needs to be done through regulation and standards.
Not through intentional abuse of the platform for monetary gains.
This is an important lesson, take it to heart!
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...
- 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 :(
As for "fast", just the animation in the main action menu would like a word. And then try to select stickers
Signal could be like Telegram in this regard but its hardline no third party client policy means the official Electron app is the only option.
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.
I loved signal when it was my MMS client. It did what iMessage did, only for android, and it worked in my mixed env (Mac, android).
Now no more mms. I have stories now. I didn't get signal for stories, I didn't want an encrypted social network.
That's a slight annoyance but it's extremely new, and doesn't reflect the typical WhatsApp experience over its many years of explosive growth. It's just a simple cross-platform chat app that, as the de facto standard in most of Europe, nobody has trouble using.
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.
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.
I have a mac laptop and an android phone. My son has an iphone. Half of his responses to my text messages go to my phone, the other half go to my laptop and I miss them. This is a major problem, imessage shouldn't be greedy about grabbing messages, especially when replying to an SMS. I've missed picking him up from places because I didn't get the reply.
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)
iMessage just works:
• It works beautifully on watchOS, iPadOS, macOS, in addition to iOS
• there's no ads
• E2EE by default
• You can send media at full quality and the recipient receives it as as you intended
• No bullshit whatsoever
My Android friends though are never able to standardize on any one app, some of them want you to use WhatsApp, some want Telegram, some want Signal. None of them have watchOS clients, they either can't be bothered with iPadOS at all or their desktop "client" is really just an lazy Electron disaster that they expect you to put up with. And when you try to explain how all of these third party alternatives are inferior, Android people look at you like you're an alien and don't understand.
It's frustrating and I wish they would just get iMessage already.
In regards to intent, I am not suggesting that he founded the company to do this. I am suggesting that the motives for their recent actions are driven by something other than finding product market fit.
It's nice as a second screen if you already use it on your phone. But getting messages only on your computer isn't so useful in our mobile-first world -- at least not for a lot of people.
Which sucks, because Apple's approach here (while not unexpected) is very disappointing.
Round them up boys!
PS: my iMessage account was flagged for sending spam (never happened) and unsolicited messages from a legit device. Apple can’t tell where the messages are coming from is what that means.
It seems silly to me to condemn Beeper, when Apple doesn't have any published followed enforced rules. It has a term of service, and it has behaviors others get away with, but it's unclear and undefined from Apple what actually will cause a problem & get your registration data cancelled.
There s almost no part of me that considers such a small narrow stance where it's on Beeper to be 100% exactly how the future is going to go before they make any moves.
I’m guessing that Eric knew that he had days before Apple patched whatever exploit he found. I’m guessing he was hoping to find another move he could make before that happened.
Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Big risk for big reward — imagine what a big deal it would’ve been if Beeper Mini actually found a sustainable way to make iMessage work outside of Apple?
Collectively, there are many businesses that just need some precedent to give them ammunition to open up the App Store, iCloud, and more. It would not cost them much to back this kind of effort.
Just because Beeper is delegating the ToS violation to a bunch of random people doesn't mean they aren't complicit. It appears they are acting in even worse faith than Apple here by suggesting their new mechanism is safe and has no side effects when it actually does.
If the cost for me to enjoy a relatively spam-free and stable iMessage experience is to simply not do dumb things, then I will voluntarily not do dumb things (at least not with an account/machine I care about).
Don't sacrifice your devices for another company's attempt at 15 minutes of fame.
It made totally sense to go this way.
iChat and signal had parity at that intersection. The color of the bubbles means something in ichat, there was a known ui component to convey that message...
Signal went from being mms + encrypted side channel to ... another messaging app adding social media features.
It is and always wanted to be a secure messenger which does not share your data with some big company.
Providing an insecure feature within the app was stupid. People didn't even realize that this was an issue, and those who ran away now never even cared about the core features of Signal. They just wanted to have another SMS client.
Messages are always lost, or marked as read when they are not, or marked as unread even if I deleted them on other device, or...
For a while I was switching between an iPhone and Android (I was deving on both platforms and so would switch them out regularly).
Then I found out the Apple would think I was still using the iPhone, and would therefore would send my messages via iMessage, and I'd have no idea I wasn't getting them.
But what incentive does Apple have to change this? And realistically, how many people does it impact.
Do most apple people know that iMessage isn't using SMS? I think they just look at it as an app that sends messages to everyone.
Funnily enough, no. iOS <-> MacOS sync has been broken for ages, and keeps being subtly broken in different ways with each new oOS release
I was speaking to my own experience. Across an iPhone, Watch, two laptops (one corporate managed), and an iPad, it all 'just works' so to speak.
I've seen your issue before and it usually is because your non-iMessage phone number is associated with the same contact record as your iMessage computer account (probably your email). The iPhone will preference sending an iMessage over a text, so if your computer is on, you won't get a text. Sadly there is no 'force-sms' setting so the (admittedly awful) workaround is to create a second contact in your son's phone that is just your phone number.
It is indeed bullshit that it doesn't work for you.
- all useful interactions are hidden behind useless slow animation and multiple additional clicks
- photo selection is an awkward double scroll
- stickers are tied to external apps, cannot be searched, take ages to load when you switch between sets
- link unfurling and file previews are hit and miss, often take ages to happen
- pinned chats are useless awkward circles that take up space instead of being actual pinned chats
- continuously broken on MacOS (photo selections, unread status synchronizations, keyboard shortcuts etc.)
And it's a key app they have on two platforms.
Compare that to Telegram which exists on 5 platforms and web, developed by just a handful of people, and has everything and more.
I don't care much for its stickers but it has a ton of quality of life features. Group chats with topics. Built in translation. Fully supported bots that can add tons of functionality. Voice message transcription. Full access to everything on the web. No problems with bridges (eg to matrix). I'm happily paying the premium fee too which is only 30€ a year. It provides even more quality of life stuff like fully automatic translations (my Spanish isn't the best yet)
Here in Spain it's used a lot especially for groups. WhatsApp is still #1 for 1:1 chats but all the groups (eg associations) i know use telegram.
Maybe this is why I prefer it. Text is first class on iMessage.
WhatsApp and Telegram messages tend to have crud, e.g. stickers and weird shit happening with photos. To each their own.
But when you need to, it's there at your fingertips, not hidden behind laggy animations, seconds of loading, and awkward interactions
It’s important to note that an error in the former config could be ignored for like a month without any actual service disruption; it was 100% aesthetic in some cases.
A week ago I updated my beeper client and it set itself to automatically refresh registration tokens and got banned. I disabled iMessage on all my devices after that.
I won't abide a company punishing its users for wanting the convenience of picking up their text message convos from Linux because it's otherwise too distracting to pick up a phone each time.
Really happy to take one for the team. I mean that. This was going to happen at some point in the future whether or not I liked it, glad it happened now. I can't live in a world this connected where my linux box and 12 years of texting history is totally cut off from it. No thanks.
yes they are
> You broke the rules and that's what happens.
And when it happens its called a "punishment", which is a kind of "retaliation". Words don't stop applying because you don't like their connotation.
They're not appropriate words for mere policy. Like if you damage your apartment and don't get your security deposit back, that's not punishment or retaliation. It's just policy.
Same thing if you try to return something after thirty days and that's against policy. When they don't take the return, they're not punishing you.
Does that help clarify?
Yes they do. The world is full of shills and boiled frogs.
There is evidence of intent and immutability, i.e. nobody has shown Apple won’t reverse the ban when shown the device is legitimately accessing iMessage.
I don’t get where the idea that Apple users are zombies came from. Apple users like the products and services Apple provides, nothing else, there’s no ulterior motive there.
statistically speaking about half this site probably has apple and most people have very specific reasons for picking them. And they've been hearing people exactly like GP casually dump on them for years - even if a particular person isn't being this direct and coarse about it, they know that's the thought process underneath.
After a while it's just another microaggression, and since they're micro you're not really supposed to call them out or act on them, but again, everyone knows what the score really is.
That's the problem, innit? Both Apple and Android users see the writing on the wall, nobody is winning. The only people who actively frustrate themselves on tech sentiments are the ones that honestly believe that Apple/Google knows what's best or that Elon Musk is a benefactor to humanity. Rationally, those are wrong conclusions. You're not mad because Android/iOS pundits are harassing you, you're mad because a false assumption about businesses and your personal identity is falling apart. That's fine. Conscious smartphone users everywhere should feel that way.
Similarly, there are people on this website that will laugh you off the stage if you admit to daily-driving Emacs or BSD. Opinionated people are like that everywhere from the CNBC comment section to 9to5Mac. You and me are not obligated to respond to them, and sometimes there is no rational response. Apple does a lot of irrational things, like telling their customers "you're holding it wrong" in response to hardware antennae problems. You don't need to take it personally that you can't defend the indefensible. Most Android users are really in the same boat, tied to a bloodthirsty OEM and Google who will both make irrational choices on the regular. You could call them out, but then you're arguing against your own side. It's a duopoly designed to suck people's egos into it, and the only way to meaningfully discuss change is to acknowledge that neither solution is perfect. It's hard to do when you're fully invested in any ecosystem, but Apple's (and Google's) flaws are self-evident.
Apple will continue to get criticized for as long as they earn the criticism, like how Microsoft and Google were (rightfully) dragged through the mud before them. If you want to change that, vote with your wallet and encourage your favorite company to act the way you want them to.