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It was a waste of time beginning to end. If they were smart, they were doing this for a quick cash grab. If they were dumb, then they legitimately thought this would work long-term.
Whatever their motives are I'm glad it brought the interoperability conversation into the spotlight.
It's a marketing and publicity stunt, kinda like Nothing's fiasco with the Sunbird app. The goal is to get people talking about them and come out looking like the good guy underdog vs Apple. To be fair their plan is probably working judging by how many people are jumping out in front of Beeper and condemning "Big Apple", even though Apple is just doing what any service provider should be doing.
I just don't understand how anyone could base a company on an exploit. That is what it is in the end - the found an exploit and took advantage of it. Seems like the logical thing would be for apple to immediately close the exploit.
The answer is right there. If Apple wanted iMessage on Android it would be there. It isn't so they don't want it.
Beeper isn't relying on this tho. It's whole USP is unified messaging and it wants iMessage.
It was a waste of time beginning to end.
Sounded like the original effort was hobby reverse engineering for fun by a smart school kid and then Beeper went ahead and tried to turn it into a product.
It's almost like when companies try to build a wall, some people will try to break in, even for the sake of it, maybe the thrill of it, even if it worked for a minute.
Whatever their intentions, I'm glad they did. Apple got to strengthen their infrastructure (somewhat, users are still using it with access to a Mac), and it brought messaging interoperability conversation to congress.
People seem to forget Apple founders were doing this shit too. They build a blue box and sold it too.
That's why nobody thinks the 16 year old who found the method is in the wrong here. It's really cool they found that, especially at that age. Now to build an entire product off of an exploit while loudly announcing it is just stupid.
They need to go to the EU and get them to intervene! Only the EU can stand up to apple.
The EU doesn't care about iMessage. Almost nobody uses that thing over here. Usually Applie die hards try it out after new features have been released, try to convince everyone that it's the year of iMessage now, and move back to WhatsApp what the vast majority is actually using.
Oh I know.... I wasn't being serious. π
Good. I can't wait to stop hearing about this app and their stupid feud with Apple.
You don't need iMessage. Your iFriends need RCS. Beeper is not the solution.
And while they wait for RCS, they can just install Signal. Signal works and is funded by a non-profit who puts in more work to know as little as possible about you than any other company/org out there.
i dont want to download another app to talk to one person
Fair, let me buy a new phone to talk to one person instead.
fair. anyone who doesn't want to install Signal can reach me via text/SMS or RCS. those are the options.
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I wish there was like a way to just have a 1-to-1 voice conversation with someone on my phone and it be universally supported across all phones.
Unfortunately Signal, unlike Telegram, breaks when I uninstall google play services.
You have to reinstall Signal after uninstalling play services. Then it detects that play services aren't there and sets itself up to receive push notifications without it.
But to be on the safe side, I'd install Signal-FOSS instead which has no Google dependencies at all.
It doesn't for me? I run it on Graphene without google play services. You just have to turn off battery optimization, but it's very reasonable in its battery usage. I've been off battery for 18 hours, and am at 81% on my Pixel 8. Signal is at less than 1% of battery use, and it still will be in a few days when I'm ready to charge, unless I use it significantly on my phone. But I mostly use it from my laptop, and just get notifications on my phone, so probably not.
In contrast, K9 Mail is at around 3%, it's running at battery optimized, and I haven't opened it at all.
weird, works on my de-google'd OnePlus 6T running Android 13
get the signal apk from their website instead of downloading with aurora store
Settling for RCS means no E2EE. It's also handing control over messaging back to carriers (or most likely, Google, because not many carriers have RCS servers) which is a step backwards.
For all of Apple's many many faults, iMessage is a pretty good service once you pay the Apple tax to get in.
Doesn't RCS support E2EE if properly implemented? I seem to recall reading that the spec for RCS supports this, but it's just that carriers won't enable it.
No, E2EE is not part of any RCS spec yet. Based on news articles, Apple is implementing RCS but will supposedly ask the governing standards bodies to add E2EE to the spec so they can implement it according to the official specifications.
Google has implemented their own E2EE on top of RCS (based on Signal's messaging for one to one conversations, based on MLS for group chats), but they haven't published any specifications for that. It shouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer, but that shouldn't be necessary for any open protocol.
Google has implemented their own E2EE on top of RCS (based on Signalβs messaging for one to one conversations, based on MLS for group chats), but they havenβt published any specifications for that.
Ahh, this must be what I was thinking of, then. Thanks for clarifying!
https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en
E2EE White paper (technical specifications) is listed on this site (pdf)
If you mean this link: that's a high level description of the protocol, but it leaves out important details.
For example, Google uses MLS for group chats, but the document only mentions the Signal protocol. In other words, E2EE for group chats is broken even if you manage to implement the protocol exactly as they describe.
For example, they say the client "registers with the key server" and "uploads the public key parts". What server is that? What protocol do we use? HTTPS POST? Do we use form/multipart? Do we encode the key in PEM or do we submit they bytes directly?
Another example: "Key material, digest, and some metadata are encrypted using the Signal session". Whay do you mean "some"? What algorithm is used to generate the digest?
The document is a nice high level overview, but worthless if you want to implement their protocol. It basically says "we put signal, and send the signal messages over RCS, with out own key servers. Here's how the Signal protocol works". If, for example, Ubuntu Touch would like to implement this into their messenger, they'll need to reverse engineer Google's Messages app, guided by the description in their whitepaper.
Thanks for this explanation!
It is a really nice app though. I have never even used the iMessage feature.
I'll do one better, I've been a beeper (not beeper mini) beta tester for a while, and I've had uninterrupted imessage access through their older method which never had a single outage!
I imagine though they have been using a method like spinning up virtual mac machines or matrix bridge to get it to work.
either way it is by far my favorite messaging app, I'm so damn tired of all these companies walling their messaging service into some enclosed garden while everyone I know decides that THEIR favorite app is the one everyone should be using.
I mostly blame Apple for walling off the default text messaging app on the iOS platform. It is ridiculous to me that we are over 10 years into the smartphone era and are stuck in a duopoly with two players that would rather degrade communications between platforms than prioritize interoperability for some base level functionality. I hope that Beeper's campaign forces regulation that puts an end to the insanity.
Remember when Android was entirely open source?
Why not go whinge to Google to develop a messaging system that Apple users want to integrate with..
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