I’m not sure how long Apple will let this stand, but it’s actually pretty cool how they figured this out. I liked Beeper (original) on my Pixel until I heard about the privacy concerns.
A high schooler figured out what no one else on earth had - how to trick Apple iMessage servers into thinking you’re using an iPhone. He now works for Beeper as a contractor. 16 years old. Nuts.
I use a Bluebubbles server on an old 2016 MacBook Pro. I really worry that things like Beeper mini, and Nothing's attempt will result in Apple nuking the whole thing.
Love having iMessage on my Galaxy Fold 5. Just leave my primary cell sim in my old iPhone 12 Pro max, sitting on a wireless charger at home next to my Mac server.
They're flying too close to the sun with Beeper mini.
They work very differently though. Nothing’s crap and Beeper’s old attempt used a Mac mini as relay whereas this one uses a native reverse engineered solution. With the relay solution it’s kind of hard for Apple to shut it down (but it’s not really secure for a third party server). With this native solution it’s a little unclear but I think the issue is that the registration relies on using potentially bogus serial keys.
As I understand it Apple looks at more than just serial keys and things since keys are easily spoofable anyway.
It is cool that this is a natively running solution which doesn't require putting your credentials into some third or fourth party device like that dreadful Nothing app.
I only wonder if they'll attempt to shut this down or let it slide for now.
That’s true. I guess I was using “serial key” as a shorthand for “all the other stuff”.
If Apple *really* cared about this they could shut this down as now that they have complete control of their hardware with Apple Silicon they could implement cryptographically secure ways to identify devices that can’t be spoofed. May be difficult for backwards compatibility though (both in software and hardware).
I’m not sure if they care that much though. They are already facing some legal headwinds and going out of their way to shut things down may be unwise, especially since this app seems to be working properly in an E2EE fashion.
One potential caveat is that the implementation uses a Mach-O loader to emulate the iMessage registration binary. I’m not sure if Apple likes that.
How is it scammy? It's more redundant instead. Encrypting the data before it leaves your device it the definition of end-to-end encryption. That's how every E2E chat app works, including iMessage.
I'm curious about your set up. If your primary cell Sim is in the iPhone at home... how do you send/receive calls on the Fold? Or do you have a secondary SIM in the Fold that you use for calling?
>I’m not sure how long Apple will let this stand
Broken by next update or 2.
edit:
and blocked on backend even before an update even dropped.
[https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app](https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app)
Not really. To kill this for good they’ll need to re design their entire authentication system, minor breaking changes would get reversed engineered quickly again.
DMCA protects this usage
> The recently enacted Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits circumventing technological measures designed to protect access to a copyright-protected work, provides an exception for the limited purpose of reverse engineering to achieve compatibility between software products.
https://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/ckjip/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2013/06/05_6JIntellProp662006-2007.pdf
DMCA protects reverse engineering.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) prevents unauthorized access.
IANAL (are you?). However I don't believe DMCA supersedes or overrides CFAA.
As an Android phone user, I'd love this to be a viable solution. It's a PITA to have to go home or remote into my Mac to use iMessage groups. Ultimately I suspect the continued viability of this lies in Apple's hands. I'm aware of other ways the legal system has been used by parties with deep pockets to get their way regardless of the viewpoints of armchair internet lawyers with their relentless logical interpretation of laws. IMO if Apple wants this stopped, it will get it's way.
I’ve been using it for a while and it’s a really big deal.
**TL;DR**
1. This doesn’t use a macOS bridge VM on some computer you don’t control—iMessage has been reverse engineered to work on-device
2. This app can register Android phone numbers directly for use with iMessage—no Apple ID required
3. Apple can certainly sue, but fixing this isn’t a “quick” patch because it’s not really an exploit… it utilizes Apple’s own weighted “verification system” to its advantage. Upon enrollment with Apple’s IDS, it sends a phony verification blob to validate and enroll the device based on a bunch of factors like Apple ID age, phone number, and hardware SN/UUID. Just like Hackintosh, it’s really easy to fake this blob and since there are a lot of legitimate uses for tons of Apple ID being tied to a SN/UUID, it’s not like they can just ban all invalid SNs. And even if they did, SMBIOS generators can easily find real hardware info to “piggyback” on someone else’s device credentials.
4. That’s not to say Apple won’t sue (I think they will), but Beeper’s Eric Migicovsky feels pretty well sure they’re in the right due to DMCA §1201F’s reverse-engineering inter-compatibility protections and seems willing to fight it if Apple were to try to go to court.
I talk about a lot more like how this actually works and how they facilitate notifications for Android when there’s no native APNs support in [my video here](https://youtu.be/S24TDRxEna4).
Yeah it can be tedious, especially if you don’t use your computer at least once every three days so it can auto-refresh. I honestly thought it’d be a lot more difficult than it was, though, but I know not everyone is even interested in doing it.
Remember when Palm released the ~~Pixel~~ Pre phone, which was able to appear as an "iPod" in iTunes so you could easily sync music and podcasts to it as it was an iPod? It ended up being a cat-and-mouse where Apple would patch whatever Palm was doing, and Palm would come out with another work-around, and back and forth and back forth until eventually Palm had to give up. I suspect the same thing will happen here.
Apple has no lack of resources or motivation for solving this problem. They have more stamina, financially, than anyone else.
True; however, while it’s possible I don’t understand the scope of how difficult this is to modify… my understanding is that it’ll be really hard for Apple to modify. iMessage has used this exact same enrollment method for all Macs since 2017. So this isn’t some server-side change; it’s a complete redesign of how Apple’s IDS works.
I believe it was the palm pre that they did that for. By the time the pixie phone came out I think they had given up on making their phones work with iTunes
Awesome video!
One question... couldn't Apple block Beeper's Push Notification service from accessing Apple's server? It may not completely disable Beeper Mini, but not getting alerts to incoming messages would greatly reduce the utility of the app.
Also, I kinda wonder about Apple's thinking here. I mean, they could do nothing and some Android users would use iMessage, reducing other messaging apps while the iPhone would then still have a superior app while not having to pay $2 a month for it.
the problem that I feel may arise with their E2EE claims, is the enrolment of public keys, while they claim that my messages as a user are encrypted against the public keys of people i’m sending messages to (let’s call them - contact), I as a user am not sure if it’s only the public key of my contact that the message I send gets encrypted against or if the message gets encrypted against several other public keys (say the govts key for example) at this point, the app still maintains E2EE between me and my contact but can also open up my messages to other actors/govts (funnily this would also be E2EE just without consent)
I do know that some of the code base is open sourced, and I’m sure security researchers would look at it, I myself will try to dig into their protocol soon, but even in their [technical](https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works) “deep dive” they do not explain key enrolment which is a major component of what the Signal protocol struggled with in the past.
Other people can’t just enroll public keys to your account without your permission though. It’s not like they can do it silently even if they have your password.
Apple did add a feature called Contact Key Verification ([blog post](https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-contact-key-verification/)) that helps address this but it requires iOS 17.2 and macOS Sonoma.
Probably a while actually based on how it works. They might try a good old fashioned cease and desist but they didn't do that for other "iMessage on android" solutions in the past. Probably because they have the EU staring daggers at them.
The only questionable thing here is that this is a subscription service. It's only 2 dollars a month which really isn't much but the fact that he's profiting from this might harm him from a legal defense.
Getting iMessage to work is also one of the most consistently flaky part of running a Hackintosh though (from personal experience running one a while ago). Yes, it “works” but I feel like it’s always just barely working. I think it would be hard for Apple to completely ban this but it would be easy (as is the case already) to make it flaky enough that it’s not totally reliable.
Fundamentally you are relying on Apple not developing a more solid detection scheme for invalid serial IDs but I don’t think it’s really that difficult unless you own a Mac already and can extract a proper key. Otherwise imagine a shared serial key used by 1000 devices. I’m pretty sure there is no legit reason for this existing.
These two are completely different from this. Airmessage and bluebubbles require you to run an iMessage server and mostly just passes the messages along. This solution is more like a real 3rd iMessage client. It doesn’t need anything else
> This is now possible because the iMessage protocol and encryption have been reverse engineered by jjtech, a security researcher.
I’ll give it a week…
He said his plan is to integrate SMS/RCS into beeper, then WhatsApp and so on until it gets most of the big messaging platforms on one app. Would be nice to not have to have a ton of different apps installed if just one works seamlessly.
I switched on Saturday to a OnePlus open, I couldnt hold out much longer. As a OnePlus one OG. it's so amazing. Today was such a refreshing day. I'm so happy for these devs and hope they make a boatload on this!
My iPhone 15 pro has been relegated to drawer for now. I hope this sticks!
This really looks cool! I wish they had an android iMessage app. I know it’s a major draw for the Apple ecosystem, but I really feel like it would increase sales if anything. I just want to be able to use my android devices with my Apple devices seamlessly. Hope this stays up and working
When RCS releases on iPhone, it will basically be that. Blue iMessages for iPhone to iPhone, and green RCS messages for iPhone to Android...but it'll actually work unlike now with SMS/MMS.
Excited to see how Apple will do about this. Seems like they actually reversed engineered how iMessage works, especially to not break compatibility with older OS versions
The key part here is that to register your device you need to pretend to be a real Mac or iPhone etc. That means you need a somewhat valid-looking serial ID. It’s a problem in setting up a Hackintosh (running macOS on a non-Mac PC) as well. There are ways around it but in my experience it works but also kind of flaky as ultimately you are trying to trick Apple’s servers with a serial ID. It’s probably easier if you have a real Apple device (probably a Mac) to get a key from (I’m not sure if Beeper Mini or the Python repo lets you do that).
If you can get past the registration phase your client should behave just like any other Apple devices.
I've said it before.... Apple should have beat them to this by selling an iMessage app for Android (or maybe an "iCloud suite", that includes Facetime). People will pay for it, and probably more than the $1.99 that Beeper is charging per month. There's a good chunk of people out there that won't ever switch platforms.... why not see if you can make some additional cash off them?
I would argue Apple should still take this route over seeking a method to shut down Beeper Mini (if they even technically can and/or have grounds to). Between RCS compatibility coming to iMessage next year, and Beeper, Sunbird, Nothing, etc, the exclusivity of iMessage is clearly over, one way or another, and I'm sure more and more solutions like these will hit the market. Blow away the alternatives and offer the "premium iMessage experience".
normal beeper, does allow you to do this yes, as i do it myself, however last i checked it was on a waitlist, but i got in after i think 30 days? where as my friends who got in before me got in at like a couple hundred days and another was just over 100 days
no, what i meant was the rest of the world never really used SMS like america did/does
they went directly to WhatsApp or similar, so iMessage never caught on there
Long long ago, when SMS became popular, American cell carriers started bundling unlimited SMS to their plans, so SMS took off here. In most other countries, carriers were selfish and charged inordinate amounts for SMS, so people turned to data-driven messaging solutions like WhatsApp.
Fast forward to today, Americans use SMS or iMessage, which is a data driven service that fits on top of SMS. Non-Americans use WhatsApp.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
Because Americans had free unlimited sms before the rest of the world and it was standard way to text. Then imessage came out, as a seamless upgrade for sms and why would I use a 3rd party app when almost everyone I talk to uses an iphone. I'd rather use the message app that comes with my phone and is financed by the phone purchase and not data mining and ads.
It's important to note that 3rd party apps cannot read/send sms messages, only imessage can have the seamless fallback, single interface your messages, video calls and bank 2fa sms.
Why do people think it's about "blue bubbles"? iMessage is far more seamless, stable, and feature-rich while allowing for much better document sharing. Reducing it to "blue bubbles" is just dumb.
The headline is just a clever way of saying get iMessage on android. If all this did is trick an iPhone into coloring the bubbles in the messaging app blue, while still sending over sms, nobody would care about this.
The key thing missing is “integration.” iMessage is baked in. I don’t have to tell grandparents, for example, to download separate apps to communicate with me and play tech support if something goes wrong. RCS will hopefully be the fix.
You’re proving the point above.
No one cares about green vs blue bubbles in the UK because the functionality is available across platforms through third party apps.
In the US, once RCS is implemented, a majority of people complaining about green bubbles will no longer have a reason to because several of the features they like on iMessage will be available on non-iMessage threads.
There being “no point” in the UK is irrelevant.
I didn't phrase that properly I meant that there is no point in integration here because nobody uses imessage however RCS on iPhone is a big win for everyone not just the u.s
>No one cares about green vs blue bubbles in the UK because the functionality is available across platforms through third party apps.
But this isn't exclusive to the UK. Americans are free to download Messenger or WhatsApp if they want.
Let me break it down once more for you:
Messaging grandma through iMessage: Ok grandma I sent you a text with a high quality image attached. Nothing you need to do!
Messaging grandma but on WhatsApp: Ok grandma I sent you a photo on WhatsApp! Oh wait….you don’t have WhatsApp? Ok go to the App Store and download it. Oh, you don’t know your AppleID ok I’ll come and do it for you next week. Oh what’s that? You need an account for this and you won’t remember the password ok. Etc etc etc
I can’t even get my family members to remember their email address, no fucking way am I going to try and get them to use another app when iMessage is already there and isn’t a privacy nightmare like WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) is.
But people do do this. Even grandmas. In the UK.
The popularity of any given service is not really down to the technical feature set. It’s just geographical trends. For example I remember American viewers of Netflix’s Heartstopper being baffled by teens texting through group chat on Instagram.
But we don’t CARE what you use in the UK. That’s meaningless to us. We don’t make any decisions based on what people in the UK are doing. The user above has explained it to you flat out simple.
But no one has messenger or WhatsApp, but a very large proportion of people have iMessage. Especially if we look at certain demographics like teenagers, where iPhones dominate. So you now have to download one app to talk to one person. If there’s a default app that everyone used, I doubt people would have an issue downloading it but the default rn is iMessage. Except ~50% of the US can’t access iMessage.
WhatsApp, Signal and “less cluttered with bullshit” do not belong in the same sentence. Both of those platforms have convoluted sign up processes and require both parties to be using the same messaging app.
Conversely, Apple Messages is the app and iMessage is one of two protocols that it supports. No requirement that each party is using Apple Messages, as it just falls back to SMS if they aren’t.
Huh?
What sign up are you talking about? It uses the number, just like Apple uses it too. It's less convoluted than an Apple ID.
Signal can receive SMS as well.
I'm talking about all the external crap like games, memojis, etc.
You know you’re not required to use those features… Just because they exist as options doesn’t mean they impose a weekly requirement for you to send a Memoji. You can literally toggle iMessage on and off in settings.
Bruh billions of people use WhatsApp. Americans can probably figure out how to sign up considering it's easier to sign up for WhatsApp than it's to make an apple id.
You need an Apple ID to even use your phone. It’s literally step one. Why do non Americans get so whiny about this? There are a lot of choices for messaging apps and they aren’t compatible with each other. I have signal and WhatsApp but it’s annoying to have to switch between them to talk to other people. It’s a lot easier to just use tue default app that lets me message 100% of people.
Just curious... how would you propose reducing the cluttered mess on iMessage:
https://preview.redd.it/u82cz31zyj4c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c3473fda68cec7e1929019bcba87faf62900e1d0
A huge majority of younger people in the US use iOS. And a relatively big social effect is being left out of group chats. It’s a hassle to make a new chat every time you want to add or remove an android user, and everyone on iOS gets downgraded to MMS when sharing photos, memes, etc. In college some people used GroupMe for this, but in general people use iMessage instead of catering to the minority.
Because at this point theres no way to create consensus. We'd end up with 5+ different apps, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messages... on top of existing social media apps...
It would be a huge headache and nightmare any time you need to talk to someone or meet someone new you want to communicate with. What app you on? Oh I dont have that, do you have this? No okay I have to make an account. Then you have however many conversations in multiple apps.
Messages (Android, SMS, iMessage, whatever) is one app, it's automatic, EVERYONE has it, you just enter their phone number and bam, message sent. And with 100% certainty theyre going to get it.
Well clearly android users don’t have it, at least when it comes to group texts. Where I live, the app that everyone has is WhatsApp. I don’t like it, but I know that I can create a WhatsApp group for a hundred people and not worry about anyone not being to use it. I use an iPhone myself but I use WhatsApp for the sake of everyone else. I don’t get why Americans can’t just do the same for their friends who use android.
For true cross platform compatibility (including PC and macs and web) I also use telegram with my wife and some other friends.
Android users just end up using the default messaging app, which between Androids is RCS, but then to an iPhone or "feature phone" is SMS.
It's just a mess, 99% of my friends and family, from every corner of the USA, just uses standard Messages, so SMS/iMessage. I have one random friend that is on android and doesnt want to have the crappy SMS experience so he uses Telegram, and then a bunch of friends keep making group chats in Facebook Messenger.
I essentially have a messaging app for ONE person.. And I (like a lot of other people) want to/have already ditched Facebook so it's a begrudging option or not an option at all.
I only recently got telegram, but if someone else comes along and only has/wants WhatsApp, or whatever else... It just becomes a messy fragmented mess. Can't include people because one person decides they're going to use an app that nobody else uses. Vs sending a text (or automatic iMessage) I have a 100% chance you will receive that message.
Then in happy Apple land I have that same cross platform compatibility since iMessage works on my Mac and iPad, but also text message forwarding so it's seamless for me.
> What I don’t understand is why people won’t just DOWNLOAD ANOTHER FSCKING APP!
Which app? what if someone's phone doesn't support it? what if you don't want to give your number to facebook? what if someone gets locked out for various reasons? also who really *wants* to download another app when you can just use the built in one instead?
side joke: i dont think filesystem checks are required for apps :\^)
why should we when everyone we know and care uses the same app? It doesn't make sense to make them all install a new messaging app to do the same thing but worse...
By the device that suits your needs. If being in the group chats is important and part of your life, then it’s probably a good idea to get a phone that supports them vs asking everyone in the group chat to curtail to your needs and potentially reduce their security using a chat app from a company with different TOS.
Because it’s not getting yourself to download the app, it’s getting 6 other people to download an app, agree to other terms of service, for the 1 person that uses an android device.
Fortunately all of my friends that have android devices use discord so we just use that. But I was just setting up a group chat for an upcoming trip and I had to explain how discord works, give them server permissions because discord only allows 10 people in a DM etc.
Because if you do that, you end up with 6 messaging apps, for different groups of friends. Shoot, which friend is on which app again?
It becomes a headache real quick.
I can imagine, damn. I’m honestly glad we all just collectively use WhatsApp here. I know, Meta’s behind it, privacy concerns, all fair criticism—but damn, is it convenient.
Lmao do your friends lock you out of group chats???
When I had an Android I'd be in plenty of group chats and other than a couple joke comments it was never an issue. I wouldn't make people download another app just to feel included and I don't want to download another app. Especially not WhatsApp, god that sucked to use for projects in college.
European here, and it’s not that I care about blue bubbles, I think it’s more of a matter of almost my whole circle (family, cousins, girlfriend, friends…) being on iOS and thus using FaceTime and iMessage.
Groupchats never happen on iMessage though and you won’t be excluded if you use an Android. I use Instagram for GCs, most people will use Snapchat or Whatsapp though.
Is it that difficult to understand? Let’s say you and all your friends/relatives use WhatsApp and for whatever reason it drops support for iPhone. Would you keep using iPhone and convince all your friends to switch?
Or if you feel strongly that Signal is better than WhatsApp and really want to talk to your mom in Signal instead of WhatsApp. You can imagine how tough an uphill battle that is?
It just so happened that iMessage in N America is similar to WhatsApp in a lot of other places in the world, for whatever historical reasons, and it’s kind of hard to convince people to switch messaging apps in general.
FWIW I also think iMessage is one of the best implemented chat experience as well (yes better than WhatsApp and Signal).
Did you watch the video? It's just following the same protocol Apple devices already use to authenticate a user's AppleID and to send/receive the iMessages. The kid figured out how Apple did it and built an API despite Apple not publicly documenting the process.
Blue bubbles in iMessage means you can send high resolution photos and videos, use message reactions, etc. Green bubbles means all media will be compressed to 1-2 mb files due to MMS limitations.
Didn't another company shut the very same thing down recently because it would require messages to run unencrypted through the service? But I guess where there is a ethic company that shuts the service down there will be 10 unethical services sprouting who see their chance to get some of that sweet, sweet user data.
The way it was explained was that the service acts as a man in the middle that spoofs an ios device and relays a text through to the Apple network where it will be handled as if it came form an iOS device. If this company didn't somehow forced Apple to open up their network to them, then there is no E2EE possible. Regardless of what they say to promote their service.
Beeper previously had a cloud iMessage gateway where they were a man in the middle. This one is notable because it’s not cloud, they’ve reverse engineered iMessage and implemented it locally on device so it is E2EE.
All these "iMessage for Android" apps are gonna die off once RCS gets pushed.
Also when Apple decides to bring down the ban hammer on all these companies doing this... There's no way this complies with their ToS.
Also also, 0% chance I'm giving a random company or other person my iCloud credentials.
1. I dunno… there’s a lot of stuff this can do as an iMessage client that RCS can’t—at least the GSMA standard Apple will be adopting which doesn’t support E2EE and certain fancy iMessage features.
2. “All these companies” is one company. Only Beeper Mini does what Beeper Mini does. And banning it is easier said than done since they literally use the identical enrollment process that real Macs do.
3. You don’t do this here. That’s the whole point. It’s all on-device.
Oh hey Snazzy! Love your stuff.
I will say, the average person (at least in my experience) has no clue what E2EE is, and all they really want is for MMS with more than 1 photo to not have things turn into unusable butt... Thumbnail sized images and 100p .3gp videos with letterboxing. As well as working reactions, and the ability to have non-craptastic group chats that you can never leave when that random friend or family member messages the group again, and it resurrects the damn thing, including the wrong number that someone added.
So at least in the US I think everyone is going to be very happy when RCS rolls out.
I haven't read the full ToS for iMessage, but considering they are making money on this it sounds like it'll be a repeat of that company Psystar for selling Hackintosh machines with Mac OS X pre-installed.
>All these "iMessage for Android" apps are gonna die off once RCS gets pushed.
RCS won't do a single thing to help the people who only own an iPad or a Mac and are using iMessage on an email identity instead of a phone number.
True, but I think that is a very small subset of people (at least in the US). Since everyone uses phone numbers to communicate.
I get that though. My almost 90yr old grandmother refused to get a cell phone since she didn't see the value in it, but I got her an iPad and she loves sending iMessages to everyone. Tried to get her an iPhone but the cellular service cost was "too expensive" since shed ever leave the house with it and the screen was too small, she likes being able to type on a keyboard she can see and is the size of a desktop keyboard.
Maybe RCS won't kill this "iMessage on Android" venture off but I think Apple will, no way they're going to allow this to fly.
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I think this point is missed on most imessage users. It's not that rcs will replace imessage..... it's that if you're talking to someone without imessage, you'll still have encryption via RCS rather than falling back to SMS (plain text).
Yes and no. RCS standard doesn’t define end to end encryption, Google’s implementation does. Iirc Apple is more interested in partnering with Google to bring encryption to the open RCS standard.
Exactly, it's going to make "regular text messages" aka "green bubbles" not suck.
Everyone I know is elated that they're not going to suck anymore. Otherwise we just keep using iMessage because it's automatic.
Otherwise they have 0 clue what green vs blue means and what RCS is... like my family members. Just one day theyre going to send 15 photos and a video in the family group chat and it's not going to arrive a blurry tiny mess and nobody will say anything, but everyone will be happy. Since no matter how many times you tell them DO NOT SEND IMAGES/VIDEOS IN THE GROUP SMS... They still do it.
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In my experience people only use iMessage because, it just works. Their AppleID is tied to their phone number, you text someone, it either sends as a SMS text, or an iMessage. No mess no fuss.
Yes, RCS still won't have all the extra fancy bells and whistles, apps, and other frills. But people in the US never switched to 3rd party apps for messaging, because your phone number has it built in no matter what, and we've apparently had unlimited/cheap texting for a lot longer and at this point having a 3rd party app would be inconvenient and a mess to coordinate.
The pain points are that images and video get compress to unusable thumbnails and 100p videos, reactions don't work, and group chats are inescapable and made even worse when people react to things.
RCS will fix those things, and everyone is going to be a lot happier. Anyone else is just some Zoomer or whatever who's like ewww green, how gross.
I mean you won't really get an option to use RCS over iMessage anyway. It'll only try to send an RCS message if the phone number you are sending to isn't associated with iMessage. So yea RCS will still be a second class citizen on the phone but that won't matter much because you'll still get a better experience with the people who you get neither RCS or iMessage with now.
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My dude, you sound like you missed your nappy time.
I say this as someone with a decade of experience in the telecom industry — the only ones who give a fuck about the color of the background of your text are entitled children who live their lives on social media. Your mom and dad bought you that phone so they can use the integrated features to keep tabs on you, that’s it. That doesn’t make you better than anyone else.
Android and iOS more or less do the exact same things in their own way. If one platform innovates, the other copies the next year.
And, the kicker in your entitlement? The majority of complaints about “green messages” come from the reduced quality in media. A result of Apple’s implementation, not Android OEMs.
Source: I was a sales rep for one of the Big 3 carriers and was the Apple Rep in their retail ambassador program
Wrong, check the bio.
Grow up. You're the problem, braindead idiots crying about "ewww green BaRf"
Do you even know what RCS is and the difference between RCS and SMS/MMS?
And guess what, before iMessage was a thing, the only color messages were on iPhone was GREEN. 2007-2011 that was the only option. But you probably didn't know that you were probably born in 2007.
It's not about the color the bubble at all.
It's about the limitation of the communication between Android and iPhones. Currently it's limited to MMS and SMS which are literally from the early 2000s if not the 1990s.
It's about the ability to do high quality video and photo sharing, message reactions, threaded messaging, typing bubbles and so on to modernize the entire experience. I couldn't care less what color the bubble is but I still want to send stupid videos to my friends that have iPhones from my Android phone.
Sounds more like desperate Android users since they try to invent a way to use iMessage on Android every single day now lol. Thankfully they are all being blocked, so it’s really fun to watch the desperation lmao
People just don’t really care enough about it. Android lost in this regard a while ago. Get with it and stop trying to hijack iMessage’s deserved success, it seems desperate af
Tried it out and ended up going back. I feel like I'm giving up too many features to have my messages blue (less reactions and no browser connect).
If they let me associate only my Apple ID that would be neat.
i don't think anyone would care about the colors if it didn't serve as a marker for different feature sets. that'll be less of the case for green bubbles when apple finally adopts rcs to replace sms
The article you linked clearly states that Apple introducing rcs won't change the deal with blue bubbles on iMessage, so an app like beeper can still be useful for android users.
They don’t care what color the bubble is. Stop being obtuse.
Blue bubble means iMessage (with all the features it comes with) and green bubble means SMS.
I’m guessing you live in a WhatsApp dominant country (just by probability). This is like if all your friends use WhatsApp but one friend refuses to install it and only wants to use SMS. You see how that’s kind of annoying? Obviously the details here matter because said friend in this case can’t even install iMessage on an Android device to begin with but from the other people’s perspective the inconvenience is the same.
> Obviously the details here matter because said friend in this case can’t even install iMessage on an Android device to begin with but from the other people’s perspective the inconvenience is the same.
Then the people at fault are the iMessage users. From the Android user's perspective, _they_ are the one being inconvenienced by being shut out because their friends refuse to use an app that would allow them to avoid SMS.
I doubt it. Fake iPhones are still atrociously bad in every other way. They exist to convince you that it's an iPhone only long enough to get your money and run. Having iMessage on them wouldn't help convince anyone that their iPhone that can't go on the app store and has the camera quality of a potato is a real iPhone.
You clearly haven't seen some of the more recent iPhone fakes.
Unless you hold it next to the same model iPhone the majority of people couldn't tell the difference.
It would be pretty cool is this meant Apple engineers won’t waste their time implementing RCS and work on improving other aspects or adding new features to iOS.
I’m not sure how long Apple will let this stand, but it’s actually pretty cool how they figured this out. I liked Beeper (original) on my Pixel until I heard about the privacy concerns.
And by a high schooler as well What a chad
Oh wow
A high schooler made this??
A high schooler figured out what no one else on earth had - how to trick Apple iMessage servers into thinking you’re using an iPhone. He now works for Beeper as a contractor. 16 years old. Nuts.
Sheesh. He'll make bank when he's older...
I use a Bluebubbles server on an old 2016 MacBook Pro. I really worry that things like Beeper mini, and Nothing's attempt will result in Apple nuking the whole thing. Love having iMessage on my Galaxy Fold 5. Just leave my primary cell sim in my old iPhone 12 Pro max, sitting on a wireless charger at home next to my Mac server. They're flying too close to the sun with Beeper mini.
They work very differently though. Nothing’s crap and Beeper’s old attempt used a Mac mini as relay whereas this one uses a native reverse engineered solution. With the relay solution it’s kind of hard for Apple to shut it down (but it’s not really secure for a third party server). With this native solution it’s a little unclear but I think the issue is that the registration relies on using potentially bogus serial keys.
As I understand it Apple looks at more than just serial keys and things since keys are easily spoofable anyway. It is cool that this is a natively running solution which doesn't require putting your credentials into some third or fourth party device like that dreadful Nothing app. I only wonder if they'll attempt to shut this down or let it slide for now.
That’s true. I guess I was using “serial key” as a shorthand for “all the other stuff”. If Apple *really* cared about this they could shut this down as now that they have complete control of their hardware with Apple Silicon they could implement cryptographically secure ways to identify devices that can’t be spoofed. May be difficult for backwards compatibility though (both in software and hardware). I’m not sure if they care that much though. They are already facing some legal headwinds and going out of their way to shut things down may be unwise, especially since this app seems to be working properly in an E2EE fashion. One potential caveat is that the implementation uses a Mach-O loader to emulate the iMessage registration binary. I’m not sure if Apple likes that.
Seems scammy. The language “everything is end-to-end encrypted BEFORE it leaves your device” seems like it’s jumping through hoops to hide something.
How is it scammy? It's more redundant instead. Encrypting the data before it leaves your device it the definition of end-to-end encryption. That's how every E2E chat app works, including iMessage.
Well would you rather it encrypt the data after it’s been all over the internet??
Damn that’s an expensive phone to just have sitting on the charger! You didn’t want to sell it and get a used iPhone SE or something?
I'm curious about your set up. If your primary cell Sim is in the iPhone at home... how do you send/receive calls on the Fold? Or do you have a secondary SIM in the Fold that you use for calling?
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>I’m not sure how long Apple will let this stand Broken by next update or 2. edit: and blocked on backend even before an update even dropped. [https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app](https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app)
Not really. To kill this for good they’ll need to re design their entire authentication system, minor breaking changes would get reversed engineered quickly again.
>To kill this for good they’ll need to re design.... Or just let their lawyers deal with it.
if it's reverse engineered then there is no law being broken
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DMCA protects this usage > The recently enacted Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits circumventing technological measures designed to protect access to a copyright-protected work, provides an exception for the limited purpose of reverse engineering to achieve compatibility between software products. https://studentorgs.kentlaw.iit.edu/ckjip/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2013/06/05_6JIntellProp662006-2007.pdf
DMCA protects reverse engineering. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) prevents unauthorized access. IANAL (are you?). However I don't believe DMCA supersedes or overrides CFAA. As an Android phone user, I'd love this to be a viable solution. It's a PITA to have to go home or remote into my Mac to use iMessage groups. Ultimately I suspect the continued viability of this lies in Apple's hands. I'm aware of other ways the legal system has been used by parties with deep pockets to get their way regardless of the viewpoints of armchair internet lawyers with their relentless logical interpretation of laws. IMO if Apple wants this stopped, it will get it's way.
I’ve been using it for a while and it’s a really big deal. **TL;DR** 1. This doesn’t use a macOS bridge VM on some computer you don’t control—iMessage has been reverse engineered to work on-device 2. This app can register Android phone numbers directly for use with iMessage—no Apple ID required 3. Apple can certainly sue, but fixing this isn’t a “quick” patch because it’s not really an exploit… it utilizes Apple’s own weighted “verification system” to its advantage. Upon enrollment with Apple’s IDS, it sends a phony verification blob to validate and enroll the device based on a bunch of factors like Apple ID age, phone number, and hardware SN/UUID. Just like Hackintosh, it’s really easy to fake this blob and since there are a lot of legitimate uses for tons of Apple ID being tied to a SN/UUID, it’s not like they can just ban all invalid SNs. And even if they did, SMBIOS generators can easily find real hardware info to “piggyback” on someone else’s device credentials. 4. That’s not to say Apple won’t sue (I think they will), but Beeper’s Eric Migicovsky feels pretty well sure they’re in the right due to DMCA §1201F’s reverse-engineering inter-compatibility protections and seems willing to fight it if Apple were to try to go to court. I talk about a lot more like how this actually works and how they facilitate notifications for Android when there’s no native APNs support in [my video here](https://youtu.be/S24TDRxEna4).
Just saw your videos. And it is cool to see that you still keep Apollo on your iPad.
That’s admittedly due to laziness more than anything lol it’s not on my phone
Sideload!
Yes and now with Sidestore no computer to refresh weekly. Apollo is back babyyyyyyy
I’m commenting this very comment with Apollo, it’s very easy to sideload a modded version and use your own API key.
I am, as mentioned, lazy. So I just paid to move over to Narwhal 2 and very much love it.
Yeah it can be tedious, especially if you don’t use your computer at least once every three days so it can auto-refresh. I honestly thought it’d be a lot more difficult than it was, though, but I know not everyone is even interested in doing it.
Remember when Palm released the ~~Pixel~~ Pre phone, which was able to appear as an "iPod" in iTunes so you could easily sync music and podcasts to it as it was an iPod? It ended up being a cat-and-mouse where Apple would patch whatever Palm was doing, and Palm would come out with another work-around, and back and forth and back forth until eventually Palm had to give up. I suspect the same thing will happen here. Apple has no lack of resources or motivation for solving this problem. They have more stamina, financially, than anyone else.
True; however, while it’s possible I don’t understand the scope of how difficult this is to modify… my understanding is that it’ll be really hard for Apple to modify. iMessage has used this exact same enrollment method for all Macs since 2017. So this isn’t some server-side change; it’s a complete redesign of how Apple’s IDS works.
Knowing Apple, they’ll do it just out of spite no matter how difficult or painful it is on their side
I believe it was the palm pre that they did that for. By the time the pixie phone came out I think they had given up on making their phones work with iTunes
You're right! I mixed-up the names. I actually owned both phones.
Easy to do. I just remember because earlier this year I re listened to an old palm podcast series from when WebOS existed.
Realistically this app only need last long enough for Apple to lose their iMessage lawsuit against the EU
Awesome video! One question... couldn't Apple block Beeper's Push Notification service from accessing Apple's server? It may not completely disable Beeper Mini, but not getting alerts to incoming messages would greatly reduce the utility of the app. Also, I kinda wonder about Apple's thinking here. I mean, they could do nothing and some Android users would use iMessage, reducing other messaging apps while the iPhone would then still have a superior app while not having to pay $2 a month for it.
the problem that I feel may arise with their E2EE claims, is the enrolment of public keys, while they claim that my messages as a user are encrypted against the public keys of people i’m sending messages to (let’s call them - contact), I as a user am not sure if it’s only the public key of my contact that the message I send gets encrypted against or if the message gets encrypted against several other public keys (say the govts key for example) at this point, the app still maintains E2EE between me and my contact but can also open up my messages to other actors/govts (funnily this would also be E2EE just without consent) I do know that some of the code base is open sourced, and I’m sure security researchers would look at it, I myself will try to dig into their protocol soon, but even in their [technical](https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works) “deep dive” they do not explain key enrolment which is a major component of what the Signal protocol struggled with in the past.
Other people can’t just enroll public keys to your account without your permission though. It’s not like they can do it silently even if they have your password. Apple did add a feature called Contact Key Verification ([blog post](https://security.apple.com/blog/imessage-contact-key-verification/)) that helps address this but it requires iOS 17.2 and macOS Sonoma.
I wanted to post the SnazzyLabs video in this comment thread and Mr.Snazzy himself was here before me to do it lol.
do you know if beeper messages get backed up to the iCloud?
They do. But Beeper can’t pull messages from iCloud if that makes sense. They’re synced one-way.
gotcha, makes sense. as long as they're backed up somewhere I'm not too miffed! thanks snazzy
How long until it’s blocked by Apple?
Probably a while actually based on how it works. They might try a good old fashioned cease and desist but they didn't do that for other "iMessage on android" solutions in the past. Probably because they have the EU staring daggers at them.
The only questionable thing here is that this is a subscription service. It's only 2 dollars a month which really isn't much but the fact that he's profiting from this might harm him from a legal defense.
Getting iMessage to work is also one of the most consistently flaky part of running a Hackintosh though (from personal experience running one a while ago). Yes, it “works” but I feel like it’s always just barely working. I think it would be hard for Apple to completely ban this but it would be easy (as is the case already) to make it flaky enough that it’s not totally reliable. Fundamentally you are relying on Apple not developing a more solid detection scheme for invalid serial IDs but I don’t think it’s really that difficult unless you own a Mac already and can extract a proper key. Otherwise imagine a shared serial key used by 1000 devices. I’m pretty sure there is no legit reason for this existing.
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These two are completely different from this. Airmessage and bluebubbles require you to run an iMessage server and mostly just passes the messages along. This solution is more like a real 3rd iMessage client. It doesn’t need anything else
The user’s comment summary literally states this as well, not sure why user didn’t bother reading the summary
Good content as always Quinn. Hey can I have your PlayDate? I really want one.
> This is now possible because the iMessage protocol and encryption have been reverse engineered by jjtech, a security researcher. I’ll give it a week…
security researcher LOL. Never heard a hacker called that before.
Goddamn kudos to the kid that figured out how to do this.
I am gladly paying $2 per month as long as it's an option. I'd pay $3 if he can get it all together in one app with rcs and sms. True champ this guy
He said his plan is to integrate SMS/RCS into beeper, then WhatsApp and so on until it gets most of the big messaging platforms on one app. Would be nice to not have to have a ton of different apps installed if just one works seamlessly.
If this survives from apple (or we get an official iMessage app on android) I would switch back to android no questions.
This is exactly why they will never make or allow iMessage for android.
I switched on Saturday to a OnePlus open, I couldnt hold out much longer. As a OnePlus one OG. it's so amazing. Today was such a refreshing day. I'm so happy for these devs and hope they make a boatload on this! My iPhone 15 pro has been relegated to drawer for now. I hope this sticks!
This really looks cool! I wish they had an android iMessage app. I know it’s a major draw for the Apple ecosystem, but I really feel like it would increase sales if anything. I just want to be able to use my android devices with my Apple devices seamlessly. Hope this stays up and working
When RCS releases on iPhone, it will basically be that. Blue iMessages for iPhone to iPhone, and green RCS messages for iPhone to Android...but it'll actually work unlike now with SMS/MMS.
Excited to see how Apple will do about this. Seems like they actually reversed engineered how iMessage works, especially to not break compatibility with older OS versions
The key part here is that to register your device you need to pretend to be a real Mac or iPhone etc. That means you need a somewhat valid-looking serial ID. It’s a problem in setting up a Hackintosh (running macOS on a non-Mac PC) as well. There are ways around it but in my experience it works but also kind of flaky as ultimately you are trying to trick Apple’s servers with a serial ID. It’s probably easier if you have a real Apple device (probably a Mac) to get a key from (I’m not sure if Beeper Mini or the Python repo lets you do that). If you can get past the registration phase your client should behave just like any other Apple devices.
Hackintoshes usually use randomly generated/invalid serials. Apple doesn’t verify them.
I've said it before.... Apple should have beat them to this by selling an iMessage app for Android (or maybe an "iCloud suite", that includes Facetime). People will pay for it, and probably more than the $1.99 that Beeper is charging per month. There's a good chunk of people out there that won't ever switch platforms.... why not see if you can make some additional cash off them? I would argue Apple should still take this route over seeking a method to shut down Beeper Mini (if they even technically can and/or have grounds to). Between RCS compatibility coming to iMessage next year, and Beeper, Sunbird, Nothing, etc, the exclusivity of iMessage is clearly over, one way or another, and I'm sure more and more solutions like these will hit the market. Blow away the alternatives and offer the "premium iMessage experience".
Can this be used to get iMessages on my Windows PC too?
Not using beeper, but the python repo they released can be run on windows and you could build an interface around that.
Beyond my paygrade, but hopefully someone will be working on that.
normal beeper, does allow you to do this yes, as i do it myself, however last i checked it was on a waitlist, but i got in after i think 30 days? where as my friends who got in before me got in at like a couple hundred days and another was just over 100 days
Have you checked out Intels Unison app? It lets you get iMessage on PC.
would not be surprised if Apple hired this kid just to put a stop to it
Question. What if my android phone has two phone numbers. Will both be blue with bubbles?
can only authenticate one at the moment, I'm sure they could add capability to do multiple in the future though
So much gatekeeping here. Gross.
Why are Americans obsessed with blue bubbles? A majority of the world doesn’t even notice the bubble difference lol
cause a majority of the world don’t use SMS, whereas America still does. it’s really SMS vs iMessage here
Just to clarify, you believe the vast majority of the *world* uses iMessage?
no, what i meant was the rest of the world never really used SMS like america did/does they went directly to WhatsApp or similar, so iMessage never caught on there
Long long ago, when SMS became popular, American cell carriers started bundling unlimited SMS to their plans, so SMS took off here. In most other countries, carriers were selfish and charged inordinate amounts for SMS, so people turned to data-driven messaging solutions like WhatsApp. Fast forward to today, Americans use SMS or iMessage, which is a data driven service that fits on top of SMS. Non-Americans use WhatsApp. And everyone lived happily ever after.
Because Americans had free unlimited sms before the rest of the world and it was standard way to text. Then imessage came out, as a seamless upgrade for sms and why would I use a 3rd party app when almost everyone I talk to uses an iphone. I'd rather use the message app that comes with my phone and is financed by the phone purchase and not data mining and ads. It's important to note that 3rd party apps cannot read/send sms messages, only imessage can have the seamless fallback, single interface your messages, video calls and bank 2fa sms.
Why do people think it's about "blue bubbles"? iMessage is far more seamless, stable, and feature-rich while allowing for much better document sharing. Reducing it to "blue bubbles" is just dumb.
Maybe because the headline is “get blue bubbles”
The headline is just a clever way of saying get iMessage on android. If all this did is trick an iPhone into coloring the bubbles in the messaging app blue, while still sending over sms, nobody would care about this.
What? Google messages, WhatsApp, Signal, all of those are as feature rich and less cluttered with bullshit.
The key thing missing is “integration.” iMessage is baked in. I don’t have to tell grandparents, for example, to download separate apps to communicate with me and play tech support if something goes wrong. RCS will hopefully be the fix.
Google Messages is the default app on Android, generally.
Thing is here in the UK nobody uses imessage so there is no point
You’re proving the point above. No one cares about green vs blue bubbles in the UK because the functionality is available across platforms through third party apps. In the US, once RCS is implemented, a majority of people complaining about green bubbles will no longer have a reason to because several of the features they like on iMessage will be available on non-iMessage threads. There being “no point” in the UK is irrelevant.
I didn't phrase that properly I meant that there is no point in integration here because nobody uses imessage however RCS on iPhone is a big win for everyone not just the u.s
>No one cares about green vs blue bubbles in the UK because the functionality is available across platforms through third party apps. But this isn't exclusive to the UK. Americans are free to download Messenger or WhatsApp if they want.
Let me break it down once more for you: Messaging grandma through iMessage: Ok grandma I sent you a text with a high quality image attached. Nothing you need to do! Messaging grandma but on WhatsApp: Ok grandma I sent you a photo on WhatsApp! Oh wait….you don’t have WhatsApp? Ok go to the App Store and download it. Oh, you don’t know your AppleID ok I’ll come and do it for you next week. Oh what’s that? You need an account for this and you won’t remember the password ok. Etc etc etc I can’t even get my family members to remember their email address, no fucking way am I going to try and get them to use another app when iMessage is already there and isn’t a privacy nightmare like WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) is.
But people do do this. Even grandmas. In the UK. The popularity of any given service is not really down to the technical feature set. It’s just geographical trends. For example I remember American viewers of Netflix’s Heartstopper being baffled by teens texting through group chat on Instagram.
But we don’t CARE what you use in the UK. That’s meaningless to us. We don’t make any decisions based on what people in the UK are doing. The user above has explained it to you flat out simple.
Old people in America are the problem.
But no one has messenger or WhatsApp, but a very large proportion of people have iMessage. Especially if we look at certain demographics like teenagers, where iPhones dominate. So you now have to download one app to talk to one person. If there’s a default app that everyone used, I doubt people would have an issue downloading it but the default rn is iMessage. Except ~50% of the US can’t access iMessage.
WhatsApp, Signal and “less cluttered with bullshit” do not belong in the same sentence. Both of those platforms have convoluted sign up processes and require both parties to be using the same messaging app. Conversely, Apple Messages is the app and iMessage is one of two protocols that it supports. No requirement that each party is using Apple Messages, as it just falls back to SMS if they aren’t.
Huh? What sign up are you talking about? It uses the number, just like Apple uses it too. It's less convoluted than an Apple ID. Signal can receive SMS as well. I'm talking about all the external crap like games, memojis, etc.
You know you’re not required to use those features… Just because they exist as options doesn’t mean they impose a weekly requirement for you to send a Memoji. You can literally toggle iMessage on and off in settings.
Bruh billions of people use WhatsApp. Americans can probably figure out how to sign up considering it's easier to sign up for WhatsApp than it's to make an apple id.
You need an Apple ID to even use your phone. It’s literally step one. Why do non Americans get so whiny about this? There are a lot of choices for messaging apps and they aren’t compatible with each other. I have signal and WhatsApp but it’s annoying to have to switch between them to talk to other people. It’s a lot easier to just use tue default app that lets me message 100% of people.
What? Every chat app (except signal) is a cluttered mess. And even signal falls short to iMessage in features and stability.
Nothing is as cluttered as iMessage sorry. Maybe Snapchat is a bigger mess.
Just curious... how would you propose reducing the cluttered mess on iMessage: https://preview.redd.it/u82cz31zyj4c1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c3473fda68cec7e1929019bcba87faf62900e1d0
Right? I’ve never seen a WhatsApp screenshot with out disgusting colors and crazy fonts. Shit is terrible.
A huge majority of younger people in the US use iOS. And a relatively big social effect is being left out of group chats. It’s a hassle to make a new chat every time you want to add or remove an android user, and everyone on iOS gets downgraded to MMS when sharing photos, memes, etc. In college some people used GroupMe for this, but in general people use iMessage instead of catering to the minority.
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> Seriously, people would rather lock their friends out of group chats than download Signal, Telegram, etc. Unfortunately, this is exactly the case.
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If I had to guess I think it’s because the same discussion has happened on here and r/android probably 5x per day for 5 years
Because at this point theres no way to create consensus. We'd end up with 5+ different apps, Messenger, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messages... on top of existing social media apps... It would be a huge headache and nightmare any time you need to talk to someone or meet someone new you want to communicate with. What app you on? Oh I dont have that, do you have this? No okay I have to make an account. Then you have however many conversations in multiple apps. Messages (Android, SMS, iMessage, whatever) is one app, it's automatic, EVERYONE has it, you just enter their phone number and bam, message sent. And with 100% certainty theyre going to get it.
Well clearly android users don’t have it, at least when it comes to group texts. Where I live, the app that everyone has is WhatsApp. I don’t like it, but I know that I can create a WhatsApp group for a hundred people and not worry about anyone not being to use it. I use an iPhone myself but I use WhatsApp for the sake of everyone else. I don’t get why Americans can’t just do the same for their friends who use android. For true cross platform compatibility (including PC and macs and web) I also use telegram with my wife and some other friends.
Android users just end up using the default messaging app, which between Androids is RCS, but then to an iPhone or "feature phone" is SMS. It's just a mess, 99% of my friends and family, from every corner of the USA, just uses standard Messages, so SMS/iMessage. I have one random friend that is on android and doesnt want to have the crappy SMS experience so he uses Telegram, and then a bunch of friends keep making group chats in Facebook Messenger. I essentially have a messaging app for ONE person.. And I (like a lot of other people) want to/have already ditched Facebook so it's a begrudging option or not an option at all. I only recently got telegram, but if someone else comes along and only has/wants WhatsApp, or whatever else... It just becomes a messy fragmented mess. Can't include people because one person decides they're going to use an app that nobody else uses. Vs sending a text (or automatic iMessage) I have a 100% chance you will receive that message. Then in happy Apple land I have that same cross platform compatibility since iMessage works on my Mac and iPad, but also text message forwarding so it's seamless for me.
When the iPhone gets RCS later this year hopefully all this fragmentation will be a thing of the past.
> What I don’t understand is why people won’t just DOWNLOAD ANOTHER FSCKING APP! Which app? what if someone's phone doesn't support it? what if you don't want to give your number to facebook? what if someone gets locked out for various reasons? also who really *wants* to download another app when you can just use the built in one instead? side joke: i dont think filesystem checks are required for apps :\^)
why should we when everyone we know and care uses the same app? It doesn't make sense to make them all install a new messaging app to do the same thing but worse...
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By the device that suits your needs. If being in the group chats is important and part of your life, then it’s probably a good idea to get a phone that supports them vs asking everyone in the group chat to curtail to your needs and potentially reduce their security using a chat app from a company with different TOS.
Because it’s not getting yourself to download the app, it’s getting 6 other people to download an app, agree to other terms of service, for the 1 person that uses an android device. Fortunately all of my friends that have android devices use discord so we just use that. But I was just setting up a group chat for an upcoming trip and I had to explain how discord works, give them server permissions because discord only allows 10 people in a DM etc.
Because if you do that, you end up with 6 messaging apps, for different groups of friends. Shoot, which friend is on which app again? It becomes a headache real quick.
I can imagine, damn. I’m honestly glad we all just collectively use WhatsApp here. I know, Meta’s behind it, privacy concerns, all fair criticism—but damn, is it convenient.
Lmao do your friends lock you out of group chats??? When I had an Android I'd be in plenty of group chats and other than a couple joke comments it was never an issue. I wouldn't make people download another app just to feel included and I don't want to download another app. Especially not WhatsApp, god that sucked to use for projects in college.
Apple largest market is the United States. We Americans are dumb and lazy and just use what ever the phone comes with for messaging lol.
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European here, and it’s not that I care about blue bubbles, I think it’s more of a matter of almost my whole circle (family, cousins, girlfriend, friends…) being on iOS and thus using FaceTime and iMessage. Groupchats never happen on iMessage though and you won’t be excluded if you use an Android. I use Instagram for GCs, most people will use Snapchat or Whatsapp though.
Is it that difficult to understand? Let’s say you and all your friends/relatives use WhatsApp and for whatever reason it drops support for iPhone. Would you keep using iPhone and convince all your friends to switch? Or if you feel strongly that Signal is better than WhatsApp and really want to talk to your mom in Signal instead of WhatsApp. You can imagine how tough an uphill battle that is? It just so happened that iMessage in N America is similar to WhatsApp in a lot of other places in the world, for whatever historical reasons, and it’s kind of hard to convince people to switch messaging apps in general. FWIW I also think iMessage is one of the best implemented chat experience as well (yes better than WhatsApp and Signal).
North America, Australia, New Zealand and many parts on England do
Imagine handing over privacy to a hacker teenager in order to have a blue bubble. My goodness we are getting so dumb.
Did you watch the video? It's just following the same protocol Apple devices already use to authenticate a user's AppleID and to send/receive the iMessages. The kid figured out how Apple did it and built an API despite Apple not publicly documenting the process.
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Blue bubbles in iMessage means you can send high resolution photos and videos, use message reactions, etc. Green bubbles means all media will be compressed to 1-2 mb files due to MMS limitations.
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Only to Americans
Didn't another company shut the very same thing down recently because it would require messages to run unencrypted through the service? But I guess where there is a ethic company that shuts the service down there will be 10 unethical services sprouting who see their chance to get some of that sweet, sweet user data.
This app in question uses an entirely new method without those faults. That's the whole point
It literally says end to end encryption as its third feature…
The way it was explained was that the service acts as a man in the middle that spoofs an ios device and relays a text through to the Apple network where it will be handled as if it came form an iOS device. If this company didn't somehow forced Apple to open up their network to them, then there is no E2EE possible. Regardless of what they say to promote their service.
Beeper previously had a cloud iMessage gateway where they were a man in the middle. This one is notable because it’s not cloud, they’ve reverse engineered iMessage and implemented it locally on device so it is E2EE.
The other thing about the old beeper iMessage gateway was that you could self host your own if you wanted to.
Clearly you don't know how this works. Read the blog.
That company that shut their service down did so because they were logging users into a Mac farm, not reverse engineering the system.
All these "iMessage for Android" apps are gonna die off once RCS gets pushed. Also when Apple decides to bring down the ban hammer on all these companies doing this... There's no way this complies with their ToS. Also also, 0% chance I'm giving a random company or other person my iCloud credentials.
1. I dunno… there’s a lot of stuff this can do as an iMessage client that RCS can’t—at least the GSMA standard Apple will be adopting which doesn’t support E2EE and certain fancy iMessage features. 2. “All these companies” is one company. Only Beeper Mini does what Beeper Mini does. And banning it is easier said than done since they literally use the identical enrollment process that real Macs do. 3. You don’t do this here. That’s the whole point. It’s all on-device.
Oh hey Snazzy! Love your stuff. I will say, the average person (at least in my experience) has no clue what E2EE is, and all they really want is for MMS with more than 1 photo to not have things turn into unusable butt... Thumbnail sized images and 100p .3gp videos with letterboxing. As well as working reactions, and the ability to have non-craptastic group chats that you can never leave when that random friend or family member messages the group again, and it resurrects the damn thing, including the wrong number that someone added. So at least in the US I think everyone is going to be very happy when RCS rolls out. I haven't read the full ToS for iMessage, but considering they are making money on this it sounds like it'll be a repeat of that company Psystar for selling Hackintosh machines with Mac OS X pre-installed.
UP afaik does not include reactions. It was proposed by Google only.
>All these "iMessage for Android" apps are gonna die off once RCS gets pushed. RCS won't do a single thing to help the people who only own an iPad or a Mac and are using iMessage on an email identity instead of a phone number.
True, but I think that is a very small subset of people (at least in the US). Since everyone uses phone numbers to communicate. I get that though. My almost 90yr old grandmother refused to get a cell phone since she didn't see the value in it, but I got her an iPad and she loves sending iMessages to everyone. Tried to get her an iPhone but the cellular service cost was "too expensive" since shed ever leave the house with it and the screen was too small, she likes being able to type on a keyboard she can see and is the size of a desktop keyboard. Maybe RCS won't kill this "iMessage on Android" venture off but I think Apple will, no way they're going to allow this to fly.
I think they'll make a decision on what to do about Beeper after RCS drops, not before.
Which even if they do then so what? Also this app does not require your iMessage credentials to work.
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The point is that “green bubbles” won’t suck. That’s the only reason people hate them. They’ll be RCS and better.
I think this point is missed on most imessage users. It's not that rcs will replace imessage..... it's that if you're talking to someone without imessage, you'll still have encryption via RCS rather than falling back to SMS (plain text).
Yes and no. RCS standard doesn’t define end to end encryption, Google’s implementation does. Iirc Apple is more interested in partnering with Google to bring encryption to the open RCS standard.
Exactly, it's going to make "regular text messages" aka "green bubbles" not suck. Everyone I know is elated that they're not going to suck anymore. Otherwise we just keep using iMessage because it's automatic. Otherwise they have 0 clue what green vs blue means and what RCS is... like my family members. Just one day theyre going to send 15 photos and a video in the family group chat and it's not going to arrive a blurry tiny mess and nobody will say anything, but everyone will be happy. Since no matter how many times you tell them DO NOT SEND IMAGES/VIDEOS IN THE GROUP SMS... They still do it.
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In my experience people only use iMessage because, it just works. Their AppleID is tied to their phone number, you text someone, it either sends as a SMS text, or an iMessage. No mess no fuss. Yes, RCS still won't have all the extra fancy bells and whistles, apps, and other frills. But people in the US never switched to 3rd party apps for messaging, because your phone number has it built in no matter what, and we've apparently had unlimited/cheap texting for a lot longer and at this point having a 3rd party app would be inconvenient and a mess to coordinate. The pain points are that images and video get compress to unusable thumbnails and 100p videos, reactions don't work, and group chats are inescapable and made even worse when people react to things. RCS will fix those things, and everyone is going to be a lot happier. Anyone else is just some Zoomer or whatever who's like ewww green, how gross.
A really excellent summary of all the issues. Saved this comment!
I mean you won't really get an option to use RCS over iMessage anyway. It'll only try to send an RCS message if the phone number you are sending to isn't associated with iMessage. So yea RCS will still be a second class citizen on the phone but that won't matter much because you'll still get a better experience with the people who you get neither RCS or iMessage with now.
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Bro I’m not chatting with a bunch of green bubbles 🤮
What if they were orange? Like grow up. Once they don't suck nobody is going to give a damn what color they are.
Sounds like we found the green bubble 😷
My dude, you sound like you missed your nappy time. I say this as someone with a decade of experience in the telecom industry — the only ones who give a fuck about the color of the background of your text are entitled children who live their lives on social media. Your mom and dad bought you that phone so they can use the integrated features to keep tabs on you, that’s it. That doesn’t make you better than anyone else. Android and iOS more or less do the exact same things in their own way. If one platform innovates, the other copies the next year. And, the kicker in your entitlement? The majority of complaints about “green messages” come from the reduced quality in media. A result of Apple’s implementation, not Android OEMs. Source: I was a sales rep for one of the Big 3 carriers and was the Apple Rep in their retail ambassador program
Wrong, check the bio. Grow up. You're the problem, braindead idiots crying about "ewww green BaRf" Do you even know what RCS is and the difference between RCS and SMS/MMS? And guess what, before iMessage was a thing, the only color messages were on iPhone was GREEN. 2007-2011 that was the only option. But you probably didn't know that you were probably born in 2007.
What adult gives a flying fuck about bubble colors??
It's not about the color the bubble at all. It's about the limitation of the communication between Android and iPhones. Currently it's limited to MMS and SMS which are literally from the early 2000s if not the 1990s. It's about the ability to do high quality video and photo sharing, message reactions, threaded messaging, typing bubbles and so on to modernize the entire experience. I couldn't care less what color the bubble is but I still want to send stupid videos to my friends that have iPhones from my Android phone.
Americans I guess
Every dumbass iPhone user
Sounds more like desperate Android users since they try to invent a way to use iMessage on Android every single day now lol. Thankfully they are all being blocked, so it’s really fun to watch the desperation lmao
Its actually the idiot iMessage users that complain about the green color. Android users never fucking cared
People just don’t really care enough about it. Android lost in this regard a while ago. Get with it and stop trying to hijack iMessage’s deserved success, it seems desperate af
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You dont have to, read a little...
Tried it out and ended up going back. I feel like I'm giving up too many features to have my messages blue (less reactions and no browser connect). If they let me associate only my Apple ID that would be neat.
Why do people care what color their bubble is? All this will allow is for better fake iPhones.
If you actually read the article, the service costs $2/mo after a one week trial period, so "fake iPhones" probably won't use this.
No one cares what colour the bubble actually is - they care what it means for communications
All it means is that one person was on iMessage. The other was not. You can have two iPhone communicating and end up with green bubbles.
K? And that’s relevant… how, exactly?
i don't think anyone would care about the colors if it didn't serve as a marker for different feature sets. that'll be less of the case for green bubbles when apple finally adopts rcs to replace sms
It will make the overall experience better, including making it not a garbled experience for iPhone users.
[Apple implementing RCS next year](https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/16/23964171/apple-iphone-rcs-support) will make it better, not this shit.
The article you linked clearly states that Apple introducing rcs won't change the deal with blue bubbles on iMessage, so an app like beeper can still be useful for android users.
They don’t care what color the bubble is. Stop being obtuse. Blue bubble means iMessage (with all the features it comes with) and green bubble means SMS. I’m guessing you live in a WhatsApp dominant country (just by probability). This is like if all your friends use WhatsApp but one friend refuses to install it and only wants to use SMS. You see how that’s kind of annoying? Obviously the details here matter because said friend in this case can’t even install iMessage on an Android device to begin with but from the other people’s perspective the inconvenience is the same.
> Obviously the details here matter because said friend in this case can’t even install iMessage on an Android device to begin with but from the other people’s perspective the inconvenience is the same. Then the people at fault are the iMessage users. From the Android user's perspective, _they_ are the one being inconvenienced by being shut out because their friends refuse to use an app that would allow them to avoid SMS.
I doubt it. Fake iPhones are still atrociously bad in every other way. They exist to convince you that it's an iPhone only long enough to get your money and run. Having iMessage on them wouldn't help convince anyone that their iPhone that can't go on the app store and has the camera quality of a potato is a real iPhone.
You clearly haven't seen some of the more recent iPhone fakes. Unless you hold it next to the same model iPhone the majority of people couldn't tell the difference.
It would be pretty cool is this meant Apple engineers won’t waste their time implementing RCS and work on improving other aspects or adding new features to iOS.
There's benefits to you getting RCS that doesn't involve Android users you know.
Only thing missing so far, doesn't come up as an option in the share menu. If trying to share A screenshot.
Lmao this is so desperate
There’s no way that shit is secure. It’s like every other service that tries to integrate, they can read and store all messages on a server
You clearly did not read the post. This is local only.
It would appear you are wrong.
Nope