They're either going to keep getting their access cut, or sued into bankruptcy. You can't really piggyback off another companies service in violation of their TOS without things working out poorly for you IMO.
Yeah, not the point. The point is to prove that it's possible and relatively simple, and the only reason Apple operates this way is to lock people into the ecosystem.
Thats the entire point of the Apple ecosystem. They want to control the entire user experience end to end, and it is why many people like Apple products so much.
I wonder how many of the people complaining about the Apple ecosystem are doing so using a Google browser on a Google operating system running on a Google hardware device and found this site using the Google search engine and signed up using a Google Mail mail address and do work using Google's office suite and are listening to a video or music on Google's video sharing platform in the background as they type.
> They want to control the entire user experience end to end, and it is why many people like Apple products so much.
Totally. But in a messaging app context, that doesn't apply or even make sense. They could just release an iMessage app for Android and keep the experience exactly the same for their iPhone users.
> Thats the entire point of the Apple ecosystem. They want to control the entire user experience end to end
I don't doubt that.
> and it is why many people like Apple products so much.
No. People like the quality and the refinement and polish. In most cases those things to not require (as much of) a closed ecosystem. Beeper is proof of that.
I would say people like the marketing. The average consumer gives no shits about product quality (see: the race to the bottom in basically every industry). But Apple has somehow convinced people that they are cool, so people buy their products.
> The average consumer gives no shits about product quality
It's exactly this sort of contemptuous attitude that "techies" have towards "average users" that enabled Apple to become the most valuable company in history.
> But Apple has somehow convinced people that they are cool, so people buy their products.
That "somehow" is pretty easy to explain. Apple creates innovative products - the iPod, iPhone and AirPods were all the first-of-their-kind products - and especially, it creates long lasting products, both in terms of build quality and support.
Good luck getting security updates (including drivers) for your 5 year old typical Windows laptop (or getting a modern OS running on it, see the issue with TPM requirements). Apple, on average, supports a device for ~6 years, and up to 9 years (!) for mobile devices [2].
Meanwhile, you're lucky if your Windows or Android device even lasts that long physically.
On top of that, the battery lifetimes for Apple devices are insane compared to the competition - a feat that neither Windows nor Android can achieve as they lack the complete control over the entire stack, from CPU design over firmware over hardware to the OS and user-space libraries, that Apple has.
Not for sure where the claim of Windows machines lasting less than Apple products comes from. Before Windows 11, you could easily be running Windows 10 on a 10-15 year old computer.
Apple is often less shitty than the alternative. Yes, the standards have dropped, but the competition has too, so the status quo stands. It's not just marketing.
I have seen this argument so many times and it has never made sense to me. There is so much quality software that is free and open and interoperable. It is more than possible to be both open in nature and of high quality, to me that is indisputable. Apple obviously has a financial incentive to be locked down, they're not locked down out of any sort of necessity or as a concession for the sake of quality.
In the case of Beeper Mini, the proof is in the pudding. You have evidence right in front of your face that an Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now exists. Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?
> You have evidence right in front of your face that an Android client for iMessage is possible, because one now exists.
Sure, but I'm not the one who has to handle customer service for it.
Apple can have a test suite that encompasses every possible supported device (and OS combination). That's much tougher if they want to support Android.
> Does your iPhone suddenly feel lower quality to you?
No, but that's missing the point. If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
> If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
You realize that's been Apple's fault right, intentionally breaking Beeper?
Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if they simply open their protocol and let whoever develops the Android client take care of that, as evidenced by Beeper Mini.
> If Beeper catches on, and all my Android friends install it, and some of my messages start getting lost, delayed, what have you, that's when I'd start to feel it.
In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to them getting dropped and having to go through SMS instead...
> Apple doesn't need to provide support for Android if they simply open their protocol and let whoever develops the Android client take care of that, as evidenced by Beeper Mini.
Now they have to support an open standard/protocol, though. That's not negligible effort.
> In that case, you might be shocked to learn that before Beeper Mini you simply couldn't send iMessages to Android devices at all. Imagine that, ALL of your iMessages to them getting dropped and having to go through SMS instead...
But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that choice.
When there's some kind of iMessage failure, though, they sit around and don't send, until I get a delivery failure and "send as SMS" as the fallback. This is rare, but extremely annoying. Adding third-party services into the mix doesn't seem like it's going to reduce these instances.
> Now they have to support an open standard/protocol, though. That's not negligible effort.
Evidently not, given the existence of Beeper Mini without intervention on their part. In fact, they're actively spending effort on breaking a working implementation that took them no effort. And either way, they have trillions of dollars and some of the brightest people in tech under their belt. If your argument is that they're not capable of making that protocol work, you're wrong.
>But that's seamless; I've never had to wait or make that choice.
It's seamlessly giving you less functionality, sure. This is not a matter of opinion: Being able to send iMessages to Android users is a feature that iPhones currently do not have at all. Apple is choosing to not give you that functionality when they could be. With something like Beeper Mini, you as an iPhone user gain more functionality by being able to send iMessages to some Android users. Even if it fails sometimes, it is still functionality that simply did not exist at all before. This is only beneficial to you as an iPhone user because you now have functionality that you did not before. I don't know if that can be phrased any more directly.
> They're spending effort fixing a security hole in an internal protocol.
Then they're spending effort regardless, and your argument was that they shouldn't spend effort at all. If that is the case then it would be better spent opening the protocol in the first place.
> That's like saying Toyota doesn't offer "driving a Ford" as a feature.
Fun hyperbole, but no, there's an obvious difference and this is a reach.
> I don't give a shit? Sending an SMS to Android users is fine.
Good for you, but it's obvious that a lot of people do care. Look around in this very thread, even. Apple users complain that things like group chats and read receipts don't work with Android users. The whole fickle green bubble thing originates from this. Plenty of people do care about this functionality and are happy that this exists, iPhone users included. And if you don't care, then why would you be so insistent about not wanting it added?
The relevant example here is that Apple supports the lowest common denominator standard: SMS. iMessage is what makes the experience "magical" on iPhones.
The total failure of any open messaging standard to capture the market seems to imply to me that control is actually pretty important to the experience of using the service!
That doesn't seem like a comparable scenario; Apple implements the Bluetooth standard (along with a bunch of others), which is defined by industry groups.
I actually like the walled garden, things “just work” in here…
I also have devices outside of the the walled garden but they take a bit more effort as far as initial set up and upkeep, things I’m willing to do but average Joe just wanting his tech to do what he tells it to do might not have the patience for.
Running the iMessage service for a billion iPhone users can't be cheap. Opening up the API and running it for the entire rest of the world for free is a non-starter.
No company on earth is that generous, let alone Apple.
Why should Apple be bullied to enter a market they clearly have no interest in?
Apple's message is clear: if you want iMessage, get an Apple device. And I fail to understand how "access to iMessage" should be considered a public good that Apple must be forced to allow others access to, there's nothing special about it, there's plenty of different services providing the same experience, anyone can launch an iMessage competitor.
> there's nothing special about it, there's plenty of different services providing the same experience, anyone can launch an iMessage competitor.
There very evidently is something special about it. It comes from Apple, so it enjoys the advantages of their closed ecosystem and Apple can get away with offering an inferior product.
Apple has no interest in a market they control which has interested customers. Apple should be bullied into it because any other option is an utter failure of capitalism.
Apple does not "get away" with offering an inferior product. Any other messenger can be installed on Apple's devices and the OS does not penalize the user in any way for choosing e.g. WhatsApp over iMessage.
> Apple should be bullied into it because any other option is an utter failure of capitalism.
This is an extreme hyperbole, capitalism isn't going to fail because some people think less of "green bubble folks". Also, that scheme failed in any other market than the US. US folks engaging in bullying because of some messenger preferences does not mean you get to dictate the market, and if it does, please provide me some information about that law from which you derive that justification.
It's probably my favorite part of HN, at this point. The reaction from people the other day when Google/Apple admit to cooperating with FIVE-EYES was priceless.
Expect another one of those once it gets revealed that marketing/analytics providers (whose spyware litters every single mainstream website & app) are also compromised by intelligence agencies.
There are systems designed to be federated, like email, mastodon, matrix and SMS/RCS.
Signal, WhatsApp, Slack, and iMessage are examples of services which were designed to be run by one company as part of their product. They _might_ have certain SDKs to extend that service (like bots for slack, or app extensions in iMessage) - but generally they aren't excited to shoulder the additional cost and support headaches of third parties using their infrastructure or arbitrarily interacting with the official software clients.
I don't know exactly what you mean by "ecosystem" - I'd argue the first set form ecosystems, while the second set form products.
> Yeah, not the point. The point is to prove that it's possible and relatively simple, and the only reason Apple operates this way is to lock people into the ecosystem.
Is that the point? Everybody already knew that Apple's messaging strategy was a business calculation based around lock in.
Beeper also presents itself as a company, so I'm not sure how releasing software that annoys Apple just to make a point could possibly help their bottom line. If that was the goal, they should've released the code as an anonymous open source project rather than painting a huge target on their own backs.
Other messaging services are available on iOS. In much if the world, iMessage is barely used. This is not lock-in, at all.
If anything, this is lock-out - it's a service that Apple provides to its customers and they don't want 3rd party clients and/or non-customers using the service.
I don’t think anyone thinks it’s impossible for apple, or even relatively difficult for them. I also don’t think anyone doesn’t understand that they try to lock people into their ecosystem. Not my favorite choice of theirs, but largely a business choice they’ve decided to make.
It's their right to not respond, but people here seem to be mad at Beeper for producing software which sends packets that Apple servers want to respond to.
Maybe true, but 87% of teens self-reported owning an iPhone [1]. The blue-bubble effect is real, and this cohort is facing enormous pressure to use iMessage specifically. I wouldn't call it a footnote, personally.
What is the reason you want your kids on the same platform?
Is it perhaps because it's easier to message them, do photo sharing/albums, see their location, have airtags work on both? At least for a sizable group my extended family included it's a lock-in for iPhones (or a very strong social disincentive to switch).
Yes exactly - it’s the whole Apple experience. If iMessage started working on android it would remove one reason to get my kid an iPhone. I still have 20 more.
I don't think that list of reasons are long, for me personally iMessage is the reason I'm not switching to Android alone. For others, it might take more but once you start to remove reasons, switching can be based on competitive reasons instead of lockin, ie iPhones are better devices than Pixels and worth the premium vs today I have to get an iPhone because I want to use the dominant communication tool to talk to family.
Except what they are doing is specifically legal under the DMCA, and protected under the EU SDA. Under the EU SDA, Apple might even have to assist them.
I suspect the end-game of Beeper is to explicitly set a legal precedent or at the very least a highly publicized fight over adversarial interoperability, something no other company dared to do (because most tech companies nowadays themselves make money out of interoperability restrictions).
I assume there's some very rich benefactor behind it that is willing to fund it.
