iMessage on Beeper appears to be gone for good.
  • Beeper says that it received and verified reports of 30 users of Beeper Cloud or Mini that had their Macs banned from using iMessage by Apple.
  • Apple Support says the Macs were banned from accessing iMessage due to “spam.”
  • Beeper has disabled new iMessage connections to Beeper Cloud, and it’s unclear when or if functionality might return.
  • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
    187·
    10 months ago

    It has been so insanely self destructive for Beeper to continue trying to implement this.

    It reminds me of Palm and WebOS trying to piggyback off iTunes in the 2010s. It doesn’t help your users, it doesn’t help your company, it doesn’t help your platform and introduces so much liability to everyone. I sometimes wonder if Jon Rubinstein trying to push WebOS/iTunes integration was just a last ditch effort to sink the project.

    • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
      132·
      10 months ago

      Wild to me that you don’t see it as self-destructive of Apple to pull this BS as they stare down anti-trust action from multiple major world governments.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
        52·
        10 months ago

        Signal recently said they predict $50m cost per year. Do you think Apple runs their servers for free? I’d be mad if someone highjacked my servers without my permission.

        • guyinachair@lemmy.world
          9·
          10 months ago

          1. I’d pay for the service if I could

          2. Apple implementing RCS involves using their own servers too, which they’ve claimed they’d add anyway.

          3. Why do people feel the need to defend a 400B corporations pockets? Over a small companies desire to unify messaging for everyone. Across multiple apps even. What’s app, RCS, imessage, signal, fb messenger, twitter PMs, discord and more being added. Bro there’s even indeed PMs there.

      • Pohl@lemmy.world
        53·
        10 months ago

        Platform exclusive software isn’t my favorite thing in the world but it seems unavoidable. Nobody is out here calling for legal action against Nintendo for not selling a pc copy of Mario. It’s the same thing. Why does iMessage exclusivity make people so angry?

        • TheLordlessBard@lemmy.world
          91·
          10 months ago

          One is a video game and the other is a company creating barriers to communication in an attempt to sell more devices. Not really equivalent imo

          • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
            51·
            10 months ago

            Are they really creating barriers?

            You can still send an MMS to someone with an iPhone, and vice-versa. SMS and RCS is also supported.

            If anyone is creating barriers to communication, Googles proprietary E2E layer on top of RCS is creating incompatibility much more restrictive than whether someone’s text is blue or green.

            • ericjmorey@programming.dev
              5·
              10 months ago

              I’d say both Apple and Google are creating barriers. A common form of communication, sending a picture or video, is a degraded experience due to Apple.

              I’ve been able to convert several people to use signal because of that limitation.

              • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
                2·
                10 months ago

                IMessage App without iMessage Service functions exactly the same as MMS functioned on pre-iPhone devices. There isn’t any “degraded experience” unless you consider a different coloured bubble, and no E2E encryption to be degraded experience.

                • ericjmorey@programming.dev
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  exactly the same as MMS functioned on pre-iPhone devices.

                  We don’t live in the past. Apple’s decisions degraded the experience compared to what was already common outside of iMessage and non-iMessage intercommunication.

                  • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
                    2·
                    10 months ago

                    Th iMessage app does support RCS, which is the current bleeding edge, it just doesn’t support E2E encryption.

                    The thing is, unless it can vouch for the security of the keys, any product that doesn’t control the entire stack End-to-End doesn’t really support true E2E.

                    This is one of the drawbacks/benefits of the Fediverse. Since it is not possible to encrypt ActivityPub messages and still have them accessible, Mastodon doesn’t not offer any sort of guarantees of privacy.

                    As certain political individuals are finding out, Xitter’s claims and insinuations of privacy and discretion are only as secure as a legal subpoena. WhatsApp and Meta’s platforms have the same weekness. Apple’s architecture of iMessage (protocol) was designed so that (unless you backup to iCloud), your messages are truely E2E.

                    I don’t know enough about Googles implementation of E2E RCS to know how encrypted it is, I assume that if you are running a Pixel, and your recipient also has a Pixel, it should be fine, as long as you haven’t rooted your phone.

            • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
              2·
              10 months ago

              After years of abandoning dozens of messaging apps and extinguishing XMPP, Google takes the most obscure and abandoned protocol to create a proprietary app to now blame Apple for being not interoperable?

          • steakmeout@lemmy.worldEnglish
            52·
            10 months ago

            iPhones can still use SMS, Macs and iPads can use other messaging apps. There’s no barrier here, there is proprietary service and yes that sucks.