It isn’t anti-freedom and pro-proprietary to have a view on what you think the law says and what you think Apple’s right to respond is.
The original kid who reversed: Great hacking, I think we can all applaud. This is a for-profit (VC funded?) company charging users by piggy backing off of servers they don’t own or pay for (and using apple binary blobs?).
If they used the protocol they reverse engineered on their own servers that’d be completely different. But that wouldn’t be profitable for them.
> charging users by piggy backing off of servers they don’t own or pay for
Apple is free to charge for them. In fact, I think it would be the best outcome and a mitigation to the upcoming spam onslaught now that the protocol has been documented.
> But that wouldn’t be profitable for them.
Is it a problem to profit off creating a tool that some other manufacturer intentionally doesn't want to create (since Apple is more than capable of building an Android iMessage client)? Isn't that the whole point of a competitive market?
But I don’t think anyone disagrees that Apple is (currently) free _not_ to charge for them.
> Is it a problem to profit off creating a tool that some other manufacturer intentionally doesn't want to create
I’d say ethically no - not a problem - up _until_ the point where they are actively, continuously using resources of that manufacturer. Legally? If you or your customers have agreed to a TOS then that’s probably bad either way.
Nobody would care about (or be interested in) beeper if they were running their own servers.
It currently doesn't because Beeper Mini users are able to get access without paying. This should change, if anything just to make the upcoming onslaught of spam unprofitable.
A walled down proprietary messaging platform is so common as to be unremarkable. Google has probably 5 in the works right now. Meta has a few, and there’s dozens of others to choose from.
It was really cool news when they reverse engineered the API. It was less cool when they sold paid access to this unofficial API. Beeper is barely pro-consumer because again, they’re charging for something open sourced by a 16yo kid which has no official support.
The green bubble blue bubble story is really tired. Yea it’s real, but it’s not a technical problem it’s a social problem. Haven’t we learned that you can’t out-hacker a social problem?
> The green bubble blue bubble story is really tired. Yea it’s real, but it’s not a technical problem it’s a social problem.
It's both. For example, Apple degrades the experience for "green bubbles" even though it doesn't need to. That's not, strictly speaking, a social problem.
Yea, i actually disagree with that. Generally i'm in favor of Beeper Mini if can be used by people who already pay Apple (like i want my Android tablet to have my iPhone iMessage or w/e), but odd to me that they're charging monthly for a service they don't host.
Put a tiny flat rate on the app for the work that they crated and call it a day.
Beeper is trying to build a business based on unauthorized use of another company's servers. Apple customer's pay the Apple premium for their phones and get iMessage at no charge for the life of the device. Beeper charges its customers for a service that is paid for by Apple. How is that ok?
>> "only a few can use"
There are about 1.5 billion iPhone users in the world.
As far as proprietary services, the world is full of them. Google, Meta, X, Instagram, .... Apple built a service to provide advanced messaging services to their many customers. It comes with the phone. Should Apple be required to freely give iPhone cameras to people who don't buy their phone? How about the Touch ID module?
There are plenty of cross platform messaging apps available on iOS. The only thing that could be considered anti-competitive is the inability to change the default messaging app on iOS. Apple has fixed this for some of the other built-in apps, but not messaging yet. I would agree that that should be fixed. However, Beeper is not offering an alternative messaging platform, they are selling access to Apple's platform.
Hackers do things because they can. Apple is entitled to gatekeep their own technology until it is regulated as a utility. To me the anti-hacker spirit is a company thinking just because they did something they subjectively think is good that Apple is then obligated to keep it running.
In what world is Apple obligated to keep a service running which allows unauthorized security related behavior? Such a hole in a service is usually called a security vulnerability and is patched away asap.
If through magic they were able to make a replacement that didn't utilize Apple's servers/resources (e.g. Point-2-Point), I think you'd find the attitude different.
The inherent problem right now is that they want to create a commercial product using another company's servers/APIs without that company's permission, ultimately leaving Apple picking up the bill (inc. additional support ticket volume, like when iMessage gets locked on a given AppleId).
Is iMessage part of Apple's moat? Absolutely. Is it good for consumers for iMessage to have a hardware lock? No. But even if that is true, this seems like something regulators should be involved in solving.
Plus there is nothing anti-proprietary or pro-freedom that Beeper Mini is doing.
People tasted the fruit in Apple's garden noticed that it tasted really good. So good in fact that it made them go "Is this walled garden actually that much of a bad thing? Because man, I do love eating this fruit."
Them taking the fight with Apple should be applauded. A walled down proprietary message platform only a few can use is stupid to fight in favor of.