
PieMessage: iMessage on Android - mikeflynn
https://github.com/bboyairwreck/piemessage
======
camhenlin
Cool! Very nice project. I wrote some similar iMessage related clients here:

[https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient](https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessageclient)
\- this is a terminal based one that works over ssh

[https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient](https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageWebClient)
\- this is a web based client that I used to do iMessages on a windows phone
for quite a while

And I have some more iMessage related projects on my GitHub as well. Hopefully
these projects give you or others some more ideas for iMessage related stuff

~~~
superdaniel
I'm guessing the imessageclient project doesn't work on El Capitan yet? How
does your iMessageModule[0] get around it?

[0]
[https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule](https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageModule)

~~~
camhenlin
I had someone tell me that they were able to get it working on El Capitan by
disabling some security settings, but I've resorted to running services
([https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot](https://github.com/CamHenlin/iMessageBot)
specifically) on a VM with a genuine Apple device SN running Yosemite, and
that works very nicely.

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finnn
Lots of .class files, the author should check out .gitignore files and avoid
committing binary files.

~~~
cgsmith
Perhaps open a ticket or PR to address this?

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Gaelan
Just out of curiosity, why has nobody reverse-engineered iMessage to create an
open-source client? I presume it is quite hard (the seems like an obvious
thing to attempt, iMessage has been available on the Mac where things like
disassembly should be pretty easy for years); where does this challenge come
from?

~~~
zachlatta
IIRC, Apple issues unique keys to every iOS/OS X device they produce. This key
is used to subscribe to APNS (which iMessage uses for data transfer).

Without the key, you can't do much of anything.

~~~
rahimnathwani
It appears you can generate a key, and that Apple doesn't check whether the
key corresponds to a piece of hardware they've sold:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2wohwn/getting_imessage_working_on_10102_generating/)

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Analemma_
You should probably brace yourself for a C&D and/or DMCA takedown request from
Apple, regardless of the actual legality of what you're doing. They won't like
this.

~~~
mdorazio
Yes, I remember having seen something very similar before several years ago
that was promptly forced to shut down by Apple. I believe this was it:

[http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-
now-a...](http://techland.time.com/2013/09/24/an-imessage-app-is-now-
available-for-android-but-theres-a-catch/)

~~~
landr0id
piemessage proxies through your own Mac though -- not some sketchy server in
China. I'd imagine Apple shut down the one you linked to protect their users.

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quaz3l
I've always wanted to implement this process (sending to mac, and through
imessage) into the core sms sending service of android. Have the service check
the number, if it is on imessage use that, otherwise do sms. Would this be
feasible? Ignoring the reliability of the system.

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bboyairwreck
Hey guys! Eric, developer of PieMessage here. Happy to answer any questions
you gifts have :)

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wmichelin
How well does this work?

~~~
collias
Doesn't look like it works very well. It requires a device running OSX to
proxy the iMessage stuff through, and apparently the OSX client itself is
unreliable.

~~~
toxik
I wouldn't call the OS X Messages app unreliable -- it does what it says on
the box. That said, I'm not sure it's a good fit for the method used in this
project.

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malka
would be interesting if there was no need for an OSX device.

~~~
discordance
Or perhaps it could be a cloud service where a VM running OSX is spun up per
user to route messages?

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suchitpuri
There are so many players in the market for chat, the only goo reason for
someone using imessage on android will be to chat with people on iphone's and
mac.

~~~
treve
In fact, this is probably the only reason, but a pretty significant one.

~~~
soylentcola
It's the reason my friends and I all use Hangouts. Basically there are plenty
of IM/chat options but Hangouts is the default app on about half of our phones
(those who use Android). The ones who use iOS can still install Hangouts and
we can all use it in our Gmail browser tabs at work.

It could've easily gone the other way. I definitely favor Android in daily use
but if there was an official iMessage client for Android I'd have been fine
installing that and letting the iOS users run their default.

But since Apple never did open that up we default to Hangouts. We could run
some other app instead but at least this way some of us don't need to install
"yet another IM client".

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herman5
This is great - I switched from iOS to Android last week, and my biggest
annoyance was the lack of iMessage

~~~
skrowl
I've heard the same from a lot of buddies that have upgraded to Android in the
last few years. What is it about iMessage that you miss?

For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of
cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If so,
why?

Worst case of course, all of your iMessage contacts can be contacted over
plain old SMS (Via Messenger, Hangouts, or any of the hundreds of Android SMS
clients).

Now that the era of Apple being "cool" is officially over and we'll see more
and more people moving to Android, I think the appeal of the iMessage "hey you
can talk to anyone you want as long as they're on an iPhone or a Mac!" walled
garden will collapse.

~~~
jonknee
> For group messaging, are all of your friends still using iMessage instead of
> cross platform things like Telegram, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Discord, etc? If
> so, why?

It's not surprising that people use what comes on their phone and computer by
default.

