I've asked this 3 times across the various threads on this, and have yet to get a 100% confirmed "you are right" answer because I don't know the specifics and I haven't come into anybody who has taken the time to research the answer:
When you log in to iMessage and the various underlying protocols/services, you do it with an Apple ID. Is that Apple ID tied in a one-to-many (but you need at least one) fashion of registered, active, non-flaged-stolen, checked-for-legitimacy hardware IDs/serial #s?
If it isn't, why doesn't Apple do this? Don't they have a database of every device they've sold?
Why would their APIs that handle auth accept something that looks a real serial # instead of an actually real validated serial #? Why don't they check "is this device sitting on a shelf un-sold or does it belong to this account, activated"?
It's a good question. On a previous thread, someone here mentioned that it allows for Hackintoshes.
As long as the people using fake serials are a small group of hackers, developers, etc. who are hardcore Apple fans in the first place and merely building things for personal use, I can see Apple intentionally turning a blind eye.
But once that starts getting abused to build a consumer product at scale, it becomes a whole different story.
And I have to imagine it becomes difficult when dealing with old devices, 99% of which have long since been thrown out or recycled, and those serial numbers are ripe for re-use, but there are still people using 10-year-old iPads.
Apple essentially uses a scoring model. The legitimacy of your device is only one part of the score; your Apple ID and its history and standing is another. Those and other factors are calculated into a score, and if you meet the threshold, you can use iMessage.
Think of it as a credit score.
Before the Beeper saga, I haven’t looked into it since Hackintosh users have found that Apple will allow you to use iMessage with clearly spoofed device attributes as long as your Apple ID is in good standing and not brand new.
Why they did is anyone’s guess.
The leading theory has always been that, based on your Apple ID activity, they considered you a valuable customer. They didn’t think it was worth the hassle and potential backlash to block you despite using spoofed device attributes.
But it’s just that, a theory. And nothing is stopping Apple from tweaking its score threshold.
They can also false positive your account, which I’ve personally seen. It’s incredible because the software doesn’t tell you what’s going on. The backend just rejects you.
Not sure if there would be any real benefit in that. Consider the over-abused Macs at university campuses as an example, used by 10s-100s of persons/day, each potentially logging in with their own user ID. Suddenly their ID is tied to a legit HW, if it wasn't the case already. Of course, technically, Apple could ban the IDs or these computers... but why would they?
I don't think that many of these devices allows you to login with your own ID. It is tied to a public account controlled by university IT. Why do you think it is pain to just change anything or add new program needed?
Having hundreds or even tens of thousands of Unix accounts on a single system is not a problem in corporate or institutional environments since macOS integrates with LDAP and Active Directory via Open Directory.
I was able to log in to any of the Macs in the computer rooms on campus at my university using my regular Unix username and password.
UIDs go as high as 2 billion on macOS as well (they're signed 32 bit integers), which should fit even the largest institutions even without aliasing of local UIDs to directory server names.
I would suspect that it's because for older devices without hardware crypto processors/certs it's impossible to distinguish between a real device and a Hackintosh (or Beeper client) that's spoofing a serial number. So while validating against a known list makes things harder, it's still not truly "secure" in the sense that older, yet still supported devices (like the 2015 MBP that I had up until about a year ago) aren't able to prove that they're actually the device, since they don't have a way of signing that proof in a way that Apple can verify.
Microsoft is the company trying the hardest to force users to dial back to Microsoft before using their products, as far as I know. Quite a wide base of users detest the process & loath it. It feels incredibly tacky & I would not recommend Apple lower themselves so.
And it's still nowhere near what you are asking for. What exactly is "validating" a serial number? Are you saying users need to present receipt of purchase? Does the store need to provide proof? Maybe Apple validates by getting access to you bank statements? How are these proof of sales tied to individual specific devices?
This feels like clutching for certainty. Maybe Apple can have such a tight & narrow sales model, can get every cell phone company managing their inventory with vastly tighter inventory control (tracking which specific devices are ss) than anyone has ever done before. Maybe Apple can pull it off.
Should they? Do they want to be subject to various governments asking who bought which device? Do they want to spend the time updating & maintaining these listings? Are they ok pissing off devs hackers & other enthusiasts who get steamrolled by these changes? Apple can form & deploy the Imperial Royal Guard over their products if they really wanted to, I have scant doubts, but the costs of forming that chain of control, cost of maintaining that database, and the liability of owning such rich data about their users in the current legal climate all seem like colossal prices to pay.
Apple devices already phone home when you reimage them - Activation Lock - this already causes some headaches when your MDM doesn’t consider the implications:
I pay for iMessage, I mean. Which is to say, it’s part of the system that users buy. Part of iOS. Etc
edit: I mean hell, i certainly don't pay Apple for hardware. You might argue i do, but i don't actually have access to the hardware - right? It's not like a PC where each component has value to me, that it's documented and hackable, etc. Nono, you buy the suite - everything, when you buy an iPhone. If not for iOS, iPhone is a nearly useless undocumented brick.
Spoofs masquerade using confirmed serial numbers. In the case of Hackintoshes you manually repeat activation until you get a valid serial number; I don't know what Beeper's implementation does.
So Apple can maintain this database but they still have the problem of proving that a serial number attestation, sending all the right information, is from that actual hardware and not a spoof of the hardware.
Without intensely protected cryptography like the T1/T2 enclaves, there is nothing legitimate hardware can send that can't be mimicked once the protocol is reversed. Maintaining a stricter database of unsold and destroyed products can only slow down activation, not stop it.
That means Apple would have to use other means to determine whether an attestation is valid like number of sign-ins, locations, the user trying to sign in, etc. If it enforces any of these, it will lock out and anger more legitimate users than it will block Hackintoshes and Android iMessage clients.
Hopefully that makes sense. Apologies if this is a repeat of previous answers.
Simply refuse to allow the creation of new Apple accounts on older hardware that are iMessage activated. The number of legitimate Apple users that would be affected by this would be in the single digits.
> Spoofs masquerade using confirmed serial numbers.
Most Hackintosh users use a plausible, but non-legitimate serial number. The community has found it immoral to potentially cause issues to random people by using their device’s serial number and that is why they stay away from it and tutorials typically instruct against it.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t actually happen, but I’ve seen only a handful of people who openly admit to it.
> So Apple can maintain this database but they still have the problem of proving that a serial number attestation, sending all the right information, is from that actual hardware and not a spoof of the hardware.
It’s actually quite easy for them to infer due to the simple premise that a physical device can’t be in two places at once, coupled with other behaviors and it’s pretty easy to nail down which device attributes are being exploited for this purpose.
The only hard part would be to determine which is the actual device and which is the fake one, if there’s no activity that predates the spoofing.
All in all it’s a safe assumption that a very low number of devices have their attributes abused for spoofing (easily single digit percentage) and at a certain point Apple might find it more desirable to inconvenience the owners of these “donor devices” by locking things down and having them contact support, than to let the spoofing go on.
I think that point might be nearer than we think. Already Apple seems to have no qualms to ban Apple IDs of legitimate customers who entirely legitimately have bought gift cards and loaded them up on their account, on the simple premise that their algorithm flags accounts that top up more than $1k as suspicious.
Both Apple Store geniuses and Apple Care support personnel can easily establish in a minute or so if you have possession of the actual physical device and take actions accordingly.
> Without intensely protected cryptography like the T1/T2 enclaves, there is nothing legitimate hardware can send that can't be mimicked once the protocol is reversed.
True, without a Secure Enclave, device attestation will never be airtight.
But it might be that Apple might drop iMessage support for older devices, or more likely, between older and newer devices, in due time like they did with FaceTime.
iPhone 5s and newer had them so there aren’t many iPhone left behind if they upgrade the protocol.
Same for iPad Air and Apple Watch Series 1.
2016 was the first time MacBooks were introduced with T1, in a few years that’ll be a decade ago. I could see them upgrade the protocol by then and leave older devices behind.
> Already Apple seems to have no qualms to ban Apple IDs of legitimate customers who entirely legitimately have bought gift cards and loaded them up on their account, on the simple premise that their algorithm flags accounts that top up more than $1k as suspicious
I wonder if that’s an AML thing? Buying apps from a small (15%) developer account using gift cards (paid with cash) could be an efficient way to clean money. I would guess that the number of legitimate customers inconvenienced by a $1k heuristic is fairly small.
Yeah I think it’s an AML thing. These cases have been popping up more often on forums etc. lately (still single digits though) and some of them were able to get themselves unbanned after emailing Tim Cook.
In almost all described cases they claim that they used legitimate gift cards bought or gifted to them in an effort to purchase an Apple device.
I have my doubts about the veracity of some of those stories, but assuming everything is aboveboard and truthfully conveyed, I think $1k might be a bit too sensitive for a company that sells a lot of hardware that’s priced above that.
It might also be more prevalent nowadays because App Store funds and Apple Store funds used to be separate, they merged the balances not too long ago.
> Don't they have a database of every device they've sold?
A database isn't enough. They'd also need a way for that device to attest its identity to Apple, and serial numbers can be relatively easily copied (or sometimes even brute-forced).
This should be possible for newer devices using Apple's own chips, but I believe that at least non-T1/T2 Intel Macs lack any such capability.
> Why don't they check "is this device sitting on a shelf un-sold or does it belong to this account, activated"?
How would they know this? I highly doubt that every retailer in the world reports sold devices' serial numbers to Apple.
iOS devices must be activated to use them. This is indeed stored in a database. AppleCare and third-party repair centers can query activation information using GSX.
You are correct about pre-T1 Intel Macs though. Apple will have a blind spot by design, until support is dropped for old machines.
In other words, Apple wants to control who enters their garden. Not surprised and not sure I disagree. Why is it that Beeper, or anyone else that isn’t Apple gets to decide who uses iMessage?
The question is not why Apple should give access to their messaging system to third parties- they have the full right of doing whatever they want. The question is why the customers don't give Apple and its pathetic excuses the middle finger- and instead praise the wisdom of the company and whine about Android users not buying iPhones. This in the face of a perfectly clear example of Apple making the life of its own customers miserable in order to milk more money from the general populace.
Personally I like Apple not allowing other companies who hacked into their infrastructure to using it without permission.
That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me.
“I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!”
People want iMessage open, or at least available on other platforms. That’s fine. I get it.
This is NOT how you do that. As a customer I would find it weird and disconcerting if Apple said “You found a way in? Congrats! Start setting up camp!”
> That seems incredibly reasonable to me. Beeper’s statements seem almost like parody to me.
>> “I know I broke into your house, but someone else figured out the key. Now I’m here I should be able to rent out your couch! The renters deserve it, you’re discriminating. I’ll give you a cut!”
Beeper's arguments are about the benefit of encryption to phone users, not about who reverse-engineered the iMessage service. The main benefit is giving agency to Android users to send and receive encrypted messages from iMessage users, and the secondary benefit is letting iMessage users send and receive encrypted messages from those Android users. (Why don't both parties use a cross-platform E2EE messaging app? Beeper Mini requires only the Android user to alter their own messaging setup.) Beeper Mini tricks Apple into giving the Android user a private key on the Android user's behalf. In order to achieve this setup, Beeper Mini needs to stand in for the Android user and pretend to have an Apple device (requires a fake serial number - fake credentials - if MuffinFlavored is correct). That's the only fake part.
There are two overarching security issues at play.
1. Apple doesn't reliably distinguish between real and fake devices. That's an important problem but has no impact on iMessage encryption. Apple may have a right to shut out Beeper Mini, but Beeper Mini isn't in the wrong solely for utilizing a bug Apple missed. Otherwise, the acts and applications of reverse-engineering in general would be wrong, and that seems to be the opposite of the hacker spirit to me.
2. Beeper Mini supposedly doesn't give Beeper access to the private key for decrypting iMessage messages. Supposedly. The code isn't free software, so an Android user has to choose between trusting Beeper Mini's code or not using Beeper Mini. If you don't trust Beeper to give only you the encryption key then Beeper is a bad idea. (In that case, you can inspect the source-available iMessage implementation proof of concept called pypush by JJTech0130, or you could install a Signal/Matrix app instead.)
> "The question is why the customers don't give Apple and its pathetic excuses the middle finger- and instead praise the wisdom of the company and whine about Android users not buying iPhones"
Likewise, Android users "whine" about being not let in an use all sorts of logical fallacies to make their case. The solution, which the rest of the Android and iOS using planet has come to, is to simply use another cross platform product. There are plenty of them. Some closed, some open. All have similar features. They integrate into the respective OSs nicely. For instance, WhatsApp and Signal contacts appear in share sheets in-between iMessage contacts in iOS, so sharing things like websites is simple.
No, Messages being the default does not give Apple any advantage, again as demonstrated by the rest of the world. That isn't to say iMessage isn't used at all, but it is very much an also ran in the significant majority of markets.
Everyone uses phones. One phone manufacturer shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other phone manufacturer, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users.
> Android users whine about being not let in an use all sorts of logical fallacies to make their case
While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people.
Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days.
"Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users."
The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently.
> While I'm not an Apple fanboy but I don't think it's Apple's fault that the ecosystem _they_ invested in became useful to them as well as their people.
It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard.
> Argument such as "everyone uses phones..." don't seem very conductive to a fruitful discussion. For an example, similar case can be made for all AI tech (ChatGPT, Gemini etc) as all major tech companies are doing AI development these days.
How so? What similar case?
> "Everyone is doing AI. One AI organisation shouldn't be able to ostracize customers of every other AI organisation, punish them, and deliberately cripple the experience for its users."
How is OpenAI punishing people using alternatives to ChatGPT?
> The above is the same argument from a different perspective and is making a similar case as yours but for ChatGPT and Gemini. I hope that am I able to contrast the similarities sufficiently.
I don't see the example you gave as matching at all, but I look forward to your clarification. I'm not being sarcastic either, I know it sounds like I am.
> It kind of is. They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative, and then othered and ostracized users of non-Apple platforms who tried to use the standard.
Nope. SMS and MMS were still present, and as they were at the time iMessage was introduced, the only global messaging standard. Apple has also commited to bring another standard to the platform in RCS. The notion that iMessage is a standard is wrong. It's an unpublished/private API. To call it a protocol would also be wrong.
You said > "They replaced the standard messaging app with a proprietary alternative"
Nope. SMS and MMS.
> Too little to late.
Thanks. I thought you were here in bad faith, now I know you are.
> In the US it's a de facto standard. People get punished if they use SMS/MMS/RCS.
Good grief! Beeper isn't the answer. A few months ago it was all about how anti-competitive Apple were because no RCS. Now RCS it "too little to late"? Why are you all so damned incapable of using alternatives? This is as self-inflicted "problem".
This is simply incorrect. iMessage is the default for iPhones.
> Thanks. I thought you were here in bad faith, now I know you are.
I'm not here in bad faith at all. Adding RCS support won't do much to fix the division apples has caused between iPhone users and other phone users.
> Good grief! Beeper isn't the answer.
It's definitely a step in the right direction. Forcing Apple to be more open with iMessage is a good thing for consumers.
> A few months ago it was all about how anti-competitive Apple were because no RCS. Now RCS it "too little to late"?
They should have been using RCS from the start and cooperated with and contributed to the standard. Now, yeah it's pretty late and won't fix the problem they have caused.
> Whay are you all so damned incapable of using alternatives? This is as self-inflicted "problem".
Because in the US Apple users insist on using iMessage.
> This is simply incorrect. iMessage is the default for iPhones.
You're an Android user, right? Suffice to say that you are wrong. Messages.app, not iMessage is the default. It is designed to handle SMS, MMS and Apple iMessage service. iMessage exists for Apple-to-Apple messaging and for those iPhone customers that choose not to have a carrier messaging plan. This is not an opinion.
> I'm not here in bad faith at all. Adding RCS support won't do much to fix the division apples has caused between iPhone users and other phone users.
What? That is certainly a take. I can't say anymore for fear of causing offence. In all sincerity and candor - you really do come across as someone with a chip on their shoulder.
> It's definitely a step in the right direction. Forcing Apple to be more open with iMessage is a good thing for consumers.
> They should have been using RCS from the start and cooperated with and contributed to the standard. Now, yeah it's pretty late and won't fix the problem they have caused.
So RCS will "fix" most of the "problems they have caused" here. What's more the main barrier, as ever, has been carrier adoption. Google only really started to push for RCS after miserably failing to deliver a coherent messaging platform strategy and releasing Google Messages in 2019. Whats more, their suposedly "open" E2EE RCS implementation is only available for Pixel and Samsung users. The carrier RCS landscape is a mess globally, with little to no use outside of US carriers, who have either switched to Google (privacy concerns) or have recently (last 5 years) added support for Universal Profile. By the way, the GSMA are a carrier-only body. Neither Google nor Apple were involved in the creation of RCS. Not that it matters as adoption by GSMA members has been, if I'm being generous, laughably slow. Google are involved by virtue of their acquisition of Jibe. Remind me, who is responsible for this problem?
> Because in the US Apple users insist on using iMessage.
Why is that? See above...
Edit: The issue I, and it seems many others have with Beepers approach is the commercialisation of someone else's property. Like it or not, de facto or not, iMessages is a private API. Hacking it for kicks is fine. Commercialising it is not. Bragging about to one one the big tech firms is going to end in tears. The merits of iMessages being open are obvious, but it's seems to be a market in which Apple doesn't want to be in. The service exists for customers of Apple's products and is directly tied to hardware ownership.
There we go. iMessage is the default for Apple phones contacting other phones.
Given that iPhones are a majority in the US, iMessage is the default for most phones in the US.
> What? That is certainly a take.
I don't see how. I think it's perfectly rational. I'm surprsied you disagree so strongly to be hoenst.
> you really do come across as someone with a chip on their shoulder.
*shrug*
I feel the same way about you.
> So RCS will "fix" most of the "problems they have caused" here.
No, it really won't. It certainly won't do anything to fix the silly blue/green bubble divide they caused.
> What's more the main barrier, as ever, has been carrier adoption.
It doesn't really matter if carriers adopt something that the manufacturer of most phoens in the US does not support.
> Google only really started to push for RCS after miserably failing to deliver a coherent messaging platform strategy and releasing Google Messages in 2019.
OK, but that's almost half a decade ago now.
> Whats more, their suposedly "open" E2EE RCS implementation is only available for Pixel and Samsung users.v
Another reason Apple should have been contributing to and working on the RCS standard instead of alienating anyone who didn't want to buy their hardware.
Honestly they should have been investigated for antitrust violations.
> Why is that?
Because iMessage is the default for apple phones and most phones in the US are Apple phones.
> > Messages.app, not iMessage is the default.
> This is semantics and you know it.
I think you are arguing in good faith here, but maybe confused.
iMessage is a system - a protocol and backend for relaying rich messages one to one or one to many.
SMS and MMS are their own systems - following a standard protocol and with backends implemented on a carrier level.
Messages.app is an application on iOS. It is the default (and only available) app for SMS, MMS and iMessage. You can disable iMessage in this app if you choose and it is still a perfectly functional SMS/MMS app.
I'm not confused, I just don't think messages.app being separate from iMessage is relevant. I acknowledge it's technically correct. I was aware messages.app and iMessage are separate things, but I think it's fair to say iMessage is the default preferred communication method.
If one iPhone messages another iPhone they will use iMessage, without having to do anything.
If an iPhone messages an android, it will try iMessage, realize it can't use it, and fall back to SMS.
I think therefore it's fair to say iMessage is the default.
> There we go. iMessage is the default for Apple phones contacting other Apple phones.
TFTFY. To contact other phones, use SMS, MMS. Even better, talk to your iPhone friends and agree to use another service. What is wrong with that? Literally the rest of the world managed it.
> I don't see how. I think it's perfectly rational. I'm surprsied you disagree so strongly to be hoenst.
I disagree because every point you have made has be immature or wrong. Or both. blue/green doesn't exist anywhere in the world, and speaking with friends in the US, is a storm in a teacup. You bringing it up leads me to believe that your likely in your early twenties. Some advice; know-one cares outside your little circle.
> No, it really won't. It certainly won't do anything to fix the silly blue/green bubble divide they caused.
You said it, silly, and nor really big bad Apple's fault. They cannot solve for childish responses from people that should know better.
> It doesn't really matter if carriers adopt something that the manufacturer of most phoens in the US does not support.
It really does, if they want said manufacturer to adope their standard.
> OK, but that's almost half a decade ago now.
And it was going nowhere then. It's still not widley used.
> Another reason Apple should have been contributing to and working on the RCS standard instead of alienating anyone who didn't want to buy their hardware.
So Google restricting access to their proprietary implementation of their RCS service is Apples fault for not contributing to a standard that they were unable at the time to contribute to because they were not members of the standard body drafting the standard behind closed doors. That takes some mental hoop jumping. Are you smelling toast?
> Because iMessage is the default for apple phones and most phones in the US are Apple phones.
If that is genuinely the case, why isn't a problem for the rest of the world? Also, I gave you the answer. Google let Android users down. They bungled messaging on the platform massively.
* Reminder to future me. Don't respond. It's a waste of time. see https://xkcd.com/386/
It really isn't. I find you making this point funny though after accusing me of being here in bad faith.
> TFTFY.
Not really.
> Literally the rest of the world managed it.
Well, Americans are weird. It's why the blue/green bubble divide even exists in the first place. And if Apple users don't get on board it's just the same situation that already exists right now.
> I disagree because every point you have made has be immature or wrong.
Well that's just plain not true. Although the same could easily be said about your arguments. And again this is funny after you claimed I'm here in bad faith, but you're the one throwing out insults and being dismissive.
> blue/green doesn't exist anywhere in the world,
lol what? It's a problem in the US and not in other countries. If you deny that you have to be pretty out of touch. There's a ton of articles written about it.
> You bringing it up leads me to believe that your likely in your early twenties.
Lol you're desperate to try and dismiss my argument any way you can and it's sad to see. You're about 20 years off.
> You said it, silly, and nor really big bad Apple's fault.
Ahh I get it. You're hooked on the Apple Kool-aid. That explains a lot of your responses to be honest.
And yeah, of course it's Apples fault. They're controlling the way it's implemented.
> They cannot solve for childish responses from people that should know better.
This coming from you is quite ironic.
> It really does, if they want said manufacturer to adope their standard.
Again, it makes no difference if the biggest manufacturer won't support it or chooses to bypass it for most of their users.
Please make sure you read the above line before replying.
> And it was going nowhere then. It's still not widley used.
And if Apple had contributed to the standard instead of offering their proprietary service instead, everyone would be better off.
> So Google restricting access to their proprietary implementation of their RCS service is Apples fault for not contributing to a standard that they were unable at the time to contribute to because they were not members of the standard body drafting the standard behind closed doors. That takes some mental hoop jumping. Are you smelling toast?
Good lord the fallacies here lol.
Google restricting access to their proprietary implementation has nothing to do with Apple not being interested in collaborating and working on a common standard.
> If that is genuinely the case, why isn't a problem for the rest of the world?
Why are many of the problems unique to or prevalent in the USA not problems in the rest of the world? Generally there's not a simple answer.
> Reminder to future me. Don't respond. It's a waste of time.
I honestly hope you won't respond against to this message although you seem like someone that's going to need to. Honestly it's discussions like this that make me wish HN had a block function. You've been rude and dismissive from the start.
He isn't arguing against a strawman, i.e. a misrepresented argument, he's saying the issue is not what OP claims and saying the issue is something else.
> Ad Hominem
He isn't using insults in place of an argument, he is including insults with his argument, so it's not an ad hominem.
> False Dilemma
He isn't falsely reducing the choices down to two or a few, he's just asking why Apple's customers don't act a certain way or have a problem with something.
> Hasty Generalization
What is it you think he is incorrectly generalizing to support his overall argument?
> Appeal to Emotion
He might be including emotional language, but he isn't relying on people feeling a particular way to agree with him at all. There is no appeal to emotion.
> One more for free; Begging the Question...
What question do you think he is ignoring/assuming to have been answered in making his claim?
I give Apple a good amount of my personal money every year precisely because Apple works well with Apple, and because when you switch on all the features like Advanced Data Protection and Lockdown Mode their vertical integration across hardware, software and services gives them a strong security story.
I have Signal and WhatsApp for talking to people on other platforms, and I’m personally fine with Apple maintaining strong control over iMessage and introducing things like Contact Key Verification [1] to further enhance security within that closed system (things like Signal have alternatives to this, too!). That is to say: there’s plenty of competition in cross-platform messaging already, this is good, many of those alternatives have hundreds of millions of users. We’re really not at the point where we need regulators to step in and force Apple to open up iMessage!
You are obviously free to spend your dollars as you wish, but don’t conflate the lack of interoperability with Android as “making the life of its own customers miserable”, it’s really the opposite: everything Apple works well with Apple and that’s a real upgrade for me and likely others over the piecemeal, fragmented, and harder to secure ecosystem that is Android.
Your opinions likely do vary to my own and that’s why it’s good there are options and competition.
Arguably, messaging life is somewhat miserable due to the existence of various closed systems that force people to install and use multiple messengers concurrently (outside of the US) or fall back to SMS (US).
I, as a mostly happy Apple customer, would lose absolutely nothing and in fact gain quite a lot of convenience if Apple were to allow an Android iMessage client.
Sure, running servers isn't free, nor is spam moderation and servicing law enforcement data access requests, but I'm convinced that if they actually wanted to do this, they'd find an agreement that works for every stakeholder financially in no time. This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line.
> "This really is exclusively about Apple's bottom line."
I'm unconvinced. Like I said further up the thread, the evidence to the contrary of the 'misery' of using other apps is abundant, especially given the standing of iMessage on the global scale.
> why the customers don't give Apple and its pathetic excuses the middle finger- and instead praise the wisdom of the company and whine about Android users not buying iPhones.
I don't think most users do either of these things. Most people don't care - they either find a common messaging platform, or their socioeconomic or cultural relationships lead to compatibility anyway.
Not defending Apple but this question makes no sense. They created iMessage and they own the services that provide it. Why would they not get to decide who can use their service the same as any other company with a TOS and any brick and mortar store who can refuse service. I don’t understand the logic around this that people feel they are owed access to shit they dont own or operate. I’m all for open protocols and would like to see that here, but Apple doesn’t owe you anything and they don’t become one of the biggest companies in the world by shooting themselves in the foot. It’s the only way they would do this, just look at their track record and set your expectations accordingly. Apple won’t do anything that would remotely hinder sales even a small amount. iPhone sales are dropping because it’s the same shit every year, they won’t be giving open access to iMessage and hurt those numbers now more than ever.
“I figured out how to stream HBO Max without a subscription! What do you mean I can’t give other people free access? That’s my right!”
I agree. It’s weird. This isn’t about if/how iMessage should be available on other platforms. It’s about if Beeper should be able to sell/give access to an Apple service by fiat against Apple’s will.
I have a thousand reasons to hate apple. But I totally disagree with the MO Beeper adopted.
They pretty much announced in public that they were going to follow this model of breaking the ToS for every major IM service because they managed to get it working with iMessage.
I pointed it out on the HN post about Beeper's blog post on the topic that this will only be harmful in the end, specially for those that self-host Matrix bridges.
iMessage is just about the only form of communication that I’ve NEVER received any spam through. I get spam SMS all the time and spam calls all the time. I get spam emails 24/7, and even spam DMs on any social media platform that has DMs.
There is no iMessage spam. Apple has it tightly controlled and locked down. I can kinda see why Apple wants to preserve their ecosystem.
But also, there are so many other options in this space. Signal, WhatsApp, etc. Apple is even finally adding RCS support. I don’t understand why so many people want iMessage on other platforms? It’s not that different.
I get iMessage spam all the time, Apple even has a report spam feature so it’s clearly an issue. I guess you’re just lucky but it definitely exists. I got four just in the last day even.
It is conclusively trivial to automate the iMessage client using accessibility APIs and in fact this has been done many times before to great effect by numerous developers to implement everything from auto responders to bridges for iMessage from other systems... including by Beeper for prior versions of their product!
And like, hell: you mention "social media platforms", but they also have been known to put in lots of effort at times to break alternative clients... Meta, in particular, sometimes goes to lengths sufficiently annoying that a ton of real users using browser extensions on Instagram/Facebook get caught in the cross-fire.
If you want to send spam over iMessage, the thing preventing that is categorically--and, frankly, obviously to anyone who is willing to question Apple's PR spin--not (and never was) the inability to use it from a device running Android or anything about the inscrutability of its protocol being documented and re-implemented by others.
It does have spam, there's nothing preventing scammers to buy boxes of old half broken phones and turning them into relays and that's exactly what they are doing.
>But it's definitely orders of magnitude below SMS/calls.
SMS and call spam are big annoyances but can also be dealt with. On my Android, the Google messaging app is really good at stopping them.
I doubt that Apple doesn't have the tech competency or the money to either build, license or acquire a really good spam filter. Heck, they can acquire every single spam filter company and start-up in the world and their money pile would barely dip.
The Messages app supports filtering extensions. I use a free one called Bouncer where I configured some regular expressions to auto-junk things, but there are far more sophisticated extensions available.
I agree, Apple has no interest in fighting spam from users onboarded by Beeper. That’s likely the biggest issue with this and more generally opening iMessage to wider audience.
This isn't a technical problem. Nobody really uses iMessage enough in the EU, but in the USA where people seem to shun use of third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp, the solution would be to deem Apple a "gatekeeper" under legislation equivalent to the Digital Markets Act and force interoperability via regulation given Apple's market dominance.
The regulatory process has worked with side-loading, and EU citizens will be better off as a result once the functionality is made available, in the same way as not needing to buy a pointless proprietary cable.
It’s not that it’s active shunning, things just evolved here into two systems (RCS and iMessage) and a lowest common denominator (SMS) they both fall back to automatically.
So there is VERY little friction. You can message anyone easily without downloading anything, though the experience varies.
So the idea of downloading an additional app for certain people is kind of odd.
If you live somewhere everyone uses WeChat, you download that once when you setup your phone and you’re done. If everyone uses a mix then you’re used to swapping between apps.
A lot of Americans aren’t, historically it hasn’t been needed by a lot of people who only communicate with other Americans.
It's bizarre though; despite the apparent lack of friction I don't know anyone who uses RCS or SMS (and frankly I'm unimpressed by its design - why involve carriers at all? Your mobile network should be dumb and provide you with a simple, neutral, fast and unmetered TCP/IP connection. RCS also launched without E2E encryption. Frankly the whole protocol seems like garbage to me and nobody in the UK cares about it, there are countless messaging apps to choose from that architected this properly, that are unrelated to your mobile carrier).
I’ve always had an iPhone, so I can’t speak to RCS with a lot of authority.
I assume the path was like iMessage. People used the default messaging app which used SMS. One day it got an upgrade and just started using RCS if the other person was providing a better experience.
It wasn’t an active choice to switch to it, just the power of defaults. I guarantee you that no normal person knows what RCS is by name. At most they would know that sending messages to iPhones is somehow “different“ and it doesn’t work as well (SMS fallback).
Also sort of makes me wonder if the “open iMessage” stuff will all be sort of a tempest in a teapot within a year or so. Once iPhones get RCS I wonder if people will care that much outside of ideological reasons.
Almost 80 million users of whatsapp in the US (330m pop) vs 120 million users in all of Europe (746m pop) kind of undermines that line of reasoning? If anything, the US uses whatsapp way more than Europe.
If we were looking at true third party messaging platforms that aren't owned by trillion dollar mega corps that can push their products onto every phone, then... maybe? The US barely uses Telegram compared to Europe, and signal's website sees about as much use from the US as it does from only Germany. But if the argument is about the US using iMessage more because they don't use other messaging platforms, then no, the numbers do not bear that out at all.
I might be living in a massive bubble, but WhatsApp is the canonical successor of SMS in Europe, while the few WhatsApp users that I've met in the US almost all use it to stay in touch with friends or family abroad.
As I understand it different regions of Europe use different messaging apps, but none use SMS, though the UK uses it more. As far as I know Telegram is particularly popular in Eastern Europe.
Why are you so certain of that? Where I am their popularity has been declining over the years but a lot of people are still used to sending them (they have been very cheap/free here since the mid 2000s at least). WhatsApp isn't that huge here either (FB Messenger is though).
When you log in to iMessage and the various underlying protocols/services, you do it with an Apple ID. Is that Apple ID tied in a one-to-many (but you need at least one) fashion of registered, active, non-flaged-stolen, checked-for-legitimacy hardware IDs/serial #s?
If it isn't, why doesn't Apple do this? Don't they have a database of every device they've sold?
Why would their APIs that handle auth accept something that looks a real serial # instead of an actually real validated serial #? Why don't they check "is this device sitting on a shelf un-sold or does it belong to this account, activated"?