Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's 'iMessage to Android' solution
Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's 'iMessage to Android' solution
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage,
Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's 'iMessage to Android' solution::U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage,
What's the point of asking questions when this community just downvotes? Why even have a forum if it's only use is to.upvote things that agree with your pre established opinions?
Your primary contribution to this conversation is to bitch about how no one engages with you? I see users responding to you but then all you are responding back with is editing your comment to say "thanks for answering"? Idk man... maybe it's your approach to dialogue. Being super dismissive and retaliatory tends to bring downvotes.
If it accessed the message system directly then it makes sense. They're was one just before it that ran on Mac mini farms.
Beeper Mini registered your phone number with Apple and connected directly to the iMessage servers. That version was killed after three days of usage. The mac mini farm still works but that's just through an apple ID email address.
I recall reading somewhere that you could register your number by putting your SIM card in some old iPhone and activating iMessage and your number gets linked to your Apple ID, once that's done, you could power off the iPhone and put it back in your Android. Although there was some caveat like needing to repeat this process a few months(?) or something otherwise your number would drop off. Not sure if all of this is still valid though.
I have such a love/hate relationship with my senator.
- She basically brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into existence, which helps TONS of people not get fucked over by banks and stuff
- Simultaneously, she tends to support corporatist stuff a frustrating amount of the time, and (similar to how Feinstein was, but not quite as bad) doesn’t really know what she’s talking about when it comes to tech and the nuances involved
Edit: to be clear, this isn’t me doing a “hail corporate” and saying Apple is categorically in the right here - simply that there are a LOT more technical complexities going on here than the (reductive) statement Warren made seems to indicate
Get the fuck out of here with your nuance. You have no business being on the internet.
/s (in case it isn’t obvious)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor.
In explaining its decision to cut off Beeper’s access to its servers, Apple said that it took “steps to steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.” It also suggested that Beeper’s techniques “posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks.”
In addition, Cupertino-based tech giant argued against Beeper’s security, saying it was not able to verify that messages sent through unauthorized means were able to maintain the end-to-end encryption iMessage offers.
Beeper, however, claims it was able to offer the same level of encryption as iMessage uses, but did not put its app through a third-party security audit prior to its launch, which would have strengthened its argument.
As of its most recent update on Sunday, the startup posted that work continues on the outage and it hopes to “have good news to share soon.”
Beeper Mini, then, became an app that focused solely on bringing iMessage to Android for $1.99/month, with the intention of expanding its capabilities over time.
The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
If this sparks an interoperability discussion (and actions) in the USA, it'll be ironic for Apple who might escape interoperability in the EU.
Did Beeper clear its usage of the iMessage platform with Apple? Sign a contract? Get an SLA agreement with Apple in writing?
I was under the impression that they found essentially a back door/work around to latch into the iMessage platform… in that case this is no different than Cisco patching some routers or MS fixing a security hole. If anything I’d be more annoyed that Apple didn’t patch it quicker.
I’d love to be able to use iMessage with my android friends, but Beeper’s methods seemed sketchy as hell.
It was an exploit that mimicked the device as apple hardware, but it wasent sketchy. Everything was still e2ee, with beeper having no access to any data.
It was the exact opposite of what the Nothing "middleman" did that was actually sketchy.
I've only heard this particular stance from iPhone users.
Apple has done a stellar job propagandizing their brand as the "Good guys... just looking out for their customer's best interests, is all".
No evidence for this take whatsoever; it's just naked, gullible brand loyalty.
Kind of an amazing phenomenon, if it weren't so sad.
I’ve got both. iOS for work, android for personal use. I’m in DevSecOps and therefore tend to see everything from this sort of mindset. Apple didn’t make a deal with them, they don’t have an open standard. It’s proprietary, it’s locked down. Why would any company with that sort of a product allow another company to interface with their offerings without paying for it? Even if it’s nice and secure, this will add load to the iMessage servers that people aren’t paying Apple for. It could introduce errors/issues they never tested for because they have a closed ecosystem and only have to test with their own devices, a known quantity. It could even increase potential attack vectors.
If you offered wifi to your friends via a guest network and then someone figured out how to connect their whole neighborhood to it, would you be fine with that?
What's the choice? Apple isn't going to license it for all the tea in China.
Why should our government care about this? I've been on android for over a decade now, I have 0 interest in this imessage bullshit and I don't understand why our government representatives care
What benefits are there to expanding this system? Why should they waste resources spending time on this?
Also this community would rather just downvote than actually have a discussion. Engage with me instead of downvoting me this time, stop downvoting things you disagree with, this isn't reddit. I'm contributing to the conversation and you have an opportunity to explain the reasons behind this
Edit: thank you to all the people who took the time to answer my question
To make the phone and messaging market more competitive. It may not affect you but it does affect most android users.
Also maybe she has an android, idk
Messaging interoperability between the two major mobile platforms greatly affects communication for those of us who have friends and family on the other platform. Cross-platform messaging allows us to communicate no matter which platform the friend or family member happened to buy. Blocking this feature is anti-competitive and detrimental to communication.
The entire purpose of government is to help make society better for all of its members. Some government representatives may decide that 'better for society' would be to allow the corporation to maximize profit even if it harms the consumer. This particular politician believes that society would benefit from this interoperability and that the company may be overstepping anti-competitive monopoly boundaries by blocking it.
Whether you agree with the idea or not, and whether it affects you personally or not is immaterial. It affects society at large and the government is supposed to represent members of its society.
It's nice that you either don't use SMS or all of your family/friends are on Android, or you simply don't have family/friends, but for the rest of us, we would like to send pictures to our grandma without her complaining that it's pixelated and tiny because she has an iPhone. It has been frustrating for years, but now that a solution has been realized, it seems anti-competitive that one of the vendors is now trying to block the fix. Regardless, even if this fix remains blocked, we do have hope that iOS will get RCS in the near future.
It’s not a messaging thing it’s an anti-trust thing. And for all the times I agree with Warren, I think she’s wrong here.
Instead they should force any phone manufacturer to integrate matrix in the SMS app, that would really benefit the user most…
Who the hell uses iMessage? Do some people really only have friends with apple phones?
iPhones have the largest share of the US smartphone market. iMessage is the default messaging app on every iPhone, and cannot be changed. Ergo, iMessage is one of the top 5 largest messaging apps in the US. I believe it's number 3 or 4 behind FB Messenger, WhatsApp, and FaceTime (also an Apple product).
This is largely a North American problem. More than 50% of phones are iPhone, and the de facto texting for iPhone users is iMessage. While WhatsApp is the default IM for most of the rest of the world, it's iMessage in North America.
I'm so annoyed by people dismissing a standard protocol for sending messages builtin to phones and the networks they run on as unnecessary. We should have choice, but why in the fuck should we not have the most basic fucking infrastructure already in place that works with every device and without needing a new account/ app and needing to wrangle people we know into using the that app? I truly don't get why people seem against a fucking standard just because they found a workaround for not having one
Over 50% in the US. And under 30 it's something insane like 75%
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In the US, iMessage is really popular.
Yes. Most of my family / peers have iPhones. So iMessage is the standard for them. We use signal for the rest.
I'd assume some people use it when it's available and just use regular texts or something like Signal for non apple contacts.
I'd be really surprised if anyone only uses it and just never talks to anyone with an android...
Like RCS, iMessage falls back to SMS / MMS (aka “green bubbles”) if iMessage isn’t available.
People still talk cross-platform, but people dislike the drop in media quality / functionality when they get kicked to the old protocol.
Yawn.
Apple is a private company what business does the gov have here?
The US is not a libertarian society. Private businesses play within the guardrails set by the people and their elected representatives.
Ever heard of anti-trust?
Companies and Corporations are a creation of the government. The government creates the rules and legal structures that makes their existence possible. Without the government to create corporations there would only be individuals doing business. The individual would be personally responsible for any harm the business may cause.
Corporations take that responsibility away from the owners. But it doesn't disappear. In effect, the behavior of corporations are now the responsibility of the government. Much like the actions of a child are the responsibility of the parent.
So to answer your question, the government as all the business of regulating Apple, and making sure they do the right thing.
Sovereignty over territory Apple chose to conduct business in.
