Whole saga has been stupid
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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The whole reason for Beeper to even exist is stupid.
It was never going to work, but they shouldn't have needed to try in the first place.
Yeah also iOS is getting RCS support soon so the whole point is moot. The whole blue bubble thing is a lot of people with way too much time on their hands to get worried about stuff that doesn't matter at all.
I'd count on Apple making the RCS bubbles green too, just to sow further confusion.
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I recall some pretty bold statements being made that Apple couldn't stop this reverse engineering from working ever in the early days of tech reporting on this.
Even as a Android user I thought this was pretty bold claims to make as this whole walled garden is a big part of the Apple brand and they will need to protect this as they really don't have leading software inovation and they are no longer ahead on tech advances or specs that made the first couple of iPhones ground breaking.
Since they are a couple to a few years behind the Android features and specs, they need to protect the special brand identity above all else so I expected them to tweak things to break anything they don't want to have happen to their systems.
I can't blame them at all from a business prospective. While I don't like or enjoy their products, they had built a great brand that sells itself for those that "want to be different" but actually the same as all of their friends.
Yeah. I mean, the actual reverse engineering is something Apple wouldn't be able to stop them from doing. But anyone who thought Apple couldn't stop them from using that reverse engineering to connect to iMessage was delusional. And if it had become more of a cat and mouse situation where Beeper was able to keep gaining access, Apple would have sued the pants off them. Apple, as shitty of a company as they are, have every right to control access to their own APIs.
No matter what the technical reality of Beeper was, this was like claiming God couldn't kick you out of Heaven if they wanted to.
Apple has army of devs, a bottomless wallet, and is extremely petty and controlling about their garden. If you found a hole in the wall, they'd go as far as to build a whole new wall just to stop you. And they can do that, because it's their garden. You have no power there.
I support what Beeper tried to do, but it was never going to work. Apple's garden needs regulation to crack open, you can't do it with software.
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it’s now fully focused on “our mission beyond iMessage” and building “a universal, multi-network chat app.”
I would absolutely love this. I really miss Gaim, Adium, libpurple, etc..
Speaking of, does anyone remember Rockmelt? It was a weird older browser that had all the popular chats in its sidebar where you can access them without going to each website separately. It was pretty cool until Yahoo bought it and it died instantly.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Rockmelt is a discontinued proprietary social media web browser developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria based on the Google Chromium project, incorporating social media features such as Facebook chat, Twitter notifications and widgetised areas for other content providers such as YouTube and local newspapers. The Rockmelt web browser project was backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. In April 2013, Rockmelt discontinued its desktop web browser, replacing it with a collaborative project bringing together social elements from various sources. Rockmelt was created by Rockmelt, Inc. , located in Mountain View, California.
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
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fyi the mentioned app they're working on is already available in limited release: https://www.beeper.com/
just keep in mind that if you connect any service to it, the messages will be decrypted on Beeper's server before sent either way, so theoretically they could be reading your messages even if you send them through an e2ee service.
I recall the early days of PC chat services like ICQ, MSN, AOL and the clients like Pigeon and Trillian to try to have them all in one place. It didn't always seem to work the best for long.
It's too bad BBM took way too long to open up to others beyond BB devices. They had some of my favorite emojis and they had for a time a big user base that they could have kept in their services.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Beeper announced it’s removing the Beeper Mini app from the Google Play Store and moving the iMessage bridge to the “Labs” section of its cloud version.
No new users will be able to use Beeper Cloud to gain entry into Apple’s messaging service, but the chat app acknowledged that iMessage may still work on Beeper Cloud for some existing users.
Beeper also made the iMessage bridge (which it noted cost $750,000 to build) open source.
The company doesn’t plan to provide help or troubleshooting to current users who run into problems with the iMessage fix, as it’s now fully focused on “our mission beyond iMessage” and building “a universal, multi-network chat app.”
The chat app released one last workaround (asking its users to buy or rent a jailbroken iPhone) but stressed it would not respond if Apple retaliated.
Several Beeper customers lost access to Apple’s messaging service on their Macs, too, reported The New York Times on Friday.
The original article contains 216 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 24%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!