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Apple

Beeper's CEO Wants To Sue Apple for Blocking Its iMessage Bridge Hack (appleinsider.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the not-over-yet dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Eric Migicovsky insists his Beeper Mini will continue despite Apple's best efforts to prevent it bringing iMessage blue speech bubbles to Android. Beeper Mini is, or is continually trying to be, a way to get iMessage without buying an iPhone -- although users might have to get access to a Mac. Since the start of December 2023, Beeper has launched a service to do this, then Apple blocked it, then Beeper tried another way.

According to The Information, this cycle is going to continue, too, as Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky maintains that his company will persist -- and could take legal action, too. "We're investigating legal ramifications for Apple, definitely," said Migicovsky. "Around antitrust, around competition, around how they've made the experience worse for iPhone users with this change. They've degraded the performance of iMessage for iPhone users," he continued, "all in search of crushing a competitor."
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Beeper's CEO Wants To Sue Apple for Blocking Its iMessage Bridge Hack More

Beeper's CEO Wants To Sue Apple for Blocking Its iMessage Bridge Hack

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  • In all of the digital space, there really needs to be government intervention to guarantee that artificial blocks to interoperability should be illegal. There is a term for it.... adversarial interoperability. But the thing is, if this were in place and couple with protections that hardware and software MUST be considered separate for all devices, technology would advance WAY faster, and competition would be much stronger if this were enforced by law. Anti competitive and anti consumer practices like artifi

    • Re:Interoperability should be enforced (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Thursday December 21, 2023 @12:16PM (#64096339) Homepage

      But, like, why? It's not that people on Apple devices can't be reached any other way, or that there aren't a plethora of other ways to contact them, or even that you can't contact them through the specific app (Messages) that's at the centre of this. Messages is perfectly interoperable with Android devices, and will even have some of the features that Message-to-Message users enjoy once RCS is implemented. It's obviously not the full set of features, but that's not a huge deal.

      Interoperability already exists. I'm not sure why Apple should guarantee the full feature set to an outside third party that is using dubious methods to fake looking like a person with an iPhone.

      And I already get enough SMS spam, I don't also want iMessage spam on top of that. At least right now Apple can take a junk message report and maybe shut down the Apple ID associated with it, but opening it up to non-Apple devices brings up a completely different set of issues that Apple would then have to police. By having a slightly more restricted system, their moderation burden is much lower.

      • Because this goes way deeper than just one service on one platform from one company. And the way things are done now, it hinders and slows technological progress. In addition, enforcing interoperability would give us all a much better level of interoperability WITHOUT enabling any company to become a monopoly and even if one company did create a product or service good enough that even, despite the above protections, somehow would up being a defacto monopoly in their chosen space... if they then used that m

        • You are dead wrong. You think enforcing interoperability by law would increase innovation? That is so laughable, I am not sure it is sarcasm or not. IF it is, sorry. But for the sake of arguing. What happens when you want to turn on a feature, that others dont write? Apple would have to wait for Android to enable the same feature, to turn it on? On what versions of Android? Oh, and should we include Tizen? Blackberry OS? Windows Phone OS? Linux on the desktop? No.

          The real reason anyone at all bitches ab

          • Please read deeper, my statement is not restricted to imessage and bubbles and is much more broad, but still to tackle your Apple fanboyism, let me state that you really don't get it. Apple is not secure for you, they are secure for them. Take for instance the case a few years back with the suspected terrorist when California was trying to get Apple to give them access to the phone. It is ridiculous because apple should not even be ABLE to give up your security to any government entity. If devices and proto

            • To broaden it back up again, let look at a similar marketing miracle that happened during hurricane Katrina with Tesla. Tesla remotely enabled extended driving range as a "favor" to help people get out of the path of hurricane Katrina and turned into a marketing win.

              Neat trick. Katrina in 2005 and Tesla first model year release in 2008. Extended driving range AND time travel! What a marketing miracle!

            • It is great that you want to question the idea of a company having the ability to give up your personal security, but you lose credibility when you also advocate for the government to force Apple into making iMessage universally available to non-iPhone users.

              You should already know by now, unless you have been living under a rock, that any enforcement action proposed by the government is also going to include interoperability requirements that allow various three-letter government agencies blanket access to

        • I'm not sure what innovation you think is being lost in this very specific instance. There are more chat clients than ever, and I would say that Telegram and Signal are actually doing plenty of innovation to bring people into the platform, and in the case of Telegram, to make it worth paying for a subscription.

      • I sometimes wonder why we have as many messaging systems as we do. All the IM systems have a bonus over SMS in that they require registration and it's a lot easier to control the message flow.

        I assume Apple's primary concern is the 'walled garden' - to make Apple shiny and desirable enough you're ready to pay their ridiculous premium for access... but I do get the moderation/filtering angle too.

        I'd love to see a single system pop up where you could use key pairs for encrypted messages and identification.

      • But, like, why? It's not that people on Apple devices can't be reached any other way, or that there aren't a plethora of other ways to contact them, or even that you can't contact them through the specific app (Messages) that's at the centre of this. Messages is perfectly interoperable with Android devices, and will even have some of the features that Message-to-Message users enjoy once RCS is implemented. It's obviously not the full set of features, but that's not a huge deal.

        Interoperability already exists. I'm not sure why Apple should guarantee the full feature set to an outside third party that is using dubious methods to fake looking like a person with an iPhone.

        And I already get enough SMS spam, I don't also want iMessage spam on top of that. At least right now Apple can take a junk message report and maybe shut down the Apple ID associated with it, but opening it up to non-Apple devices brings up a completely different set of issues that Apple would then have to police. By having a slightly more restricted system, their moderation burden is much lower.

        Exactly This!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        Because if competitors made it so on Android anytime you received a text message from an iPhone user they made it a poop-emoji brown color Apple would freak out and demand special treatment. "Oh but you can reach us, we just identify non android devices differently'.

        It's one of those things that it's fine as long as it suits the a particular parties interest, but if someone else does the exact same thing they'd flip out.

        • Oh you are one of those people.

          They would do it too! isn't a argument. It's something a kid says to his parents when they get in trouble. Billies parents would let him do it!

          There is no strong monopoly argument for iMessage. This is just a silly argument that some kids bully other kids for the color of bubbles. Well, kids will always find something to bully you about, get over it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

            Oh you are one of those people.

            And you're the exact kind of people I was talking about. The kind of person that says it's not big deal, get over it, move on, as long as its in your favor, if it wasn't, we know how your type behaves too.

            They would do it too isn't the argument, the implication is as standard both sides consider it unacceptable unless it's in their favor, so that means clearly the overall problem exists.

            Just like violence, there are people out there that are okay with it as long as they're the ones hitting other people, but

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        but opening it up to non-Apple devices brings up a completely different set of issues that Apple would then have to police

        Just because someone made a non-Apple device work doesn't mean you Don't still need an Apple ID.

        I think it should be perfectly fine that Apple requires you to have an Apple ID, and they can even require you to have a piece of Apple Hardware to authorize your ID to use their service.

        What they should Not be allowed to do is Enforce an arbitrary Policy that you must use specific Apple hardw

      • SMS is interoperable.

        Nobody *needs* the cutesy stuff that iMessage adds.

        And why do we see on the same day one post that this Beeper thing will persist, and another that it's giving up?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      I personally think that there is a back and forth that needs to happen. You're competitive for a while, but then everyone starts talking and you find new ways to do things that your competitors came up with, resulting in everyone having a better product. In some products, everyone goes their separate ways and new ideas come along and the cycle repeats. The last part may not happen, take the fact that ISA became a standard after in the early days of the PC, many companies had their own hard drive connector.

  • Unfortunately (Score:3, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday December 21, 2023 @11:46AM (#64096237)

    Apple is under no obligation to let other people do anything with their proprietary messaging system. ... At least in the USA. I do wonder if things will be different if the EU DMA is determined to apply to iMessage at some point since that requires interoperability.

    • While they don't have to guarantee interpretability, it can be illegal to deliberately break it under certain circumstances. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble doing exactly that during the 90s, not once but repeatedly. The Apple camp really hated Microsoft over this, but now that the tables have turned, suddenly they think it's the right thing to do.

      I remember saying for a long ass time back then, here on slashdot even (much older account than this) that if Apple ever took the dominant position on anythin

      • Except the main distinction you seem to ignore is that MS went out of their way to interfere with companies that had nothing to do with their technology. For example, their efforts to pollute Java. In this case, Apple is blocking another company that is trying to break into Apple protocols. If Apple went after Telegram or WhatsApp you might have a point.

        • No actually, I'm not. Microsoft did a lot more than with Java. For example they made a lot of their business applications deliberately incompatible with competing OSes, and vice versa, such as DR-DOS, Novell, etc.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 )

        Apple hasn't broken any interoperability though. You can still text them or use Telegram or whatever. They're not siloed off and unreachable, it's just that SMS/MMS messages:

        - show up with green bubbles
        - have degraded media quality
        - lack some realtime feedback cues

        But I text (and Telegram/Whatsapp/FB Messenger) with Android people all the time. There's no (lack of) interoperability argument to be made here.

        • Re: Unfortunately (Score:4, Informative)

          by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday December 21, 2023 @12:26PM (#64096369)

          The problem is you have to rely on them to install other applications. It would be one thing if iMessage was downloaded separately, but it isn't. This is what you call a tying arrangement. Microsoft got in trouble with this over Internet explorer. Normally not a problem, except as you stated, they designed it to degrade the experience for competitors. Specifically, competitors aren't allowed to use rcs or sms, only iMessage can. That's a pretty clear cut case of an antitrust violation.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by KlomDark ( 6370 )
            Modded TROLL?? Wow, the applesauce people are certainly triggered by your comment, you must have spoken the truth to get them this upset!

          • Interoperability and tying seem like different problems with different solutions. If what we're talking about is how interoperable an iPhone and an Android phone are, I think there's no question: they communicate just fine, with very few obstacles, and the central point of contention is LARGELY aesthetic.

            If what you're talking about is whether or not Messages is being illegally tied to the platform and degrades the experience for competitors (which I don't think it does, IMO--Telegram does exactly what I wa

            • You'd think but remember, iMessage replaces SMS for Apple users. Apple could easily improve that situation in multiple ways. Example: Allow third party apps to replace the default SMS client, which themselves could reroute to other users of the same application like imessage already does. Or even allow third party developers to support RCS. That's a pretty clear cut case of both tying AND interoperability in an antitrust case. The thing that's particularly damning for Apple here is Tim Cook's "buy your gran

              • If everyone just followed the a single standard for messaging then tying wouldn't even matter. Use any client you want and it will "talk" with any other client just fine. We kind of have this because most applications will use sms if that's the only common protocol. It sounds like RCS will take that over and we will all be better off.

                It still probably won't give people a certain color bubble and kids will still use that little detail to screw with each other like the monsters quite a few of them are. It's w

                • I still personally prefer SMS over these services anyways, mainly because I loathe read receipts and notifications to the other party when you're typing. Those are two "features" I never asked for and most of these apps don't allow you to turn off.

                  E2EE is nice but I'd rather do without if it means avoiding that crap. That, and when I want to have a confidential conversation, I never do it over text, even with E2EE.

        • Exactly! Apple has provided an interface for customers of other devices to talk to apple device users. This is like publishing a API that has slightly less features than your paid product. If someone found a way to access your paid APIs without paying you would sue them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by njvack ( 646524 )

        Apple runs the iMessage service as an internal network at no cost to Apple users. Why should another business get to sell access to that network?

        Was this a neat technical hack? Hell yes! Do I think Apple should make an Android client for iMessage? I mean... I guess, sure? But the idea that Apple needs to allow third parties access to iMessage is daft.

        Don't get me wrong: I think Apple well and truly abuses their power around the iOS App Store, and that they need regulation there to rein them in. But putting

        • Apple runs the iMessage service as an internal network at no cost to Apple users. Why should another business get to sell access to that network?

          Whether it's free is notwithstanding when it comes to antitrust concerns. Remember, Microsoft gave away Internet explorer for free, even to apple users. But this wasn't the problem, the problem was the tying arrangement.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Migicovsky is being dumb here. I don't think he has any intention to actually take Apple to court; Beeper would get trounced. Maybe he can focus some additional regulatory scrutiny on Apple? But I think he's just grabbing the microphone to be loud and get some press before Beeper fades the obscurity of another multi-protocol chat app

          Basically this. He's just another loudmouth trying to get his 15 minutes of fame. And chances are, he's probably sold a bunch of Beeper stock so he's trying to pump up the stock

      • Yes, if Apple is seen as s dominant player, then antitrust laws can apply if Apple tries to keep out competitors with certain actions.

      • While they don't have to guarantee interpretability, it can be illegal to deliberately break it under certain circumstances. Microsoft got into a lot of trouble doing exactly that during the 90s, not once but repeatedly.

        The "under certain circumstances" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The circumstances were: a) having complete market dominance, b) breaking 3rd party systems using your market dominance, and c) they didn't directly get in trouble for it because the entire anti-trust case covered far more than just these actions and they were a minor contributor overall to their case.

        In any case it's not remotely the same thing as what is going on right here. Apple is under no obligation to let anyone play in *their* w

        • Actually Microsoft did it in both directions, many times, as I already mentioned.

          But your understanding of how antitrust law works is wanting. Market dominance, or even a monopoly, isn't required to run afoul of any of it. It's about restraint of trade.

          The most relevant legal theory here is a tying arrangement, in addition to the fact that Apple, purely as a matter of policy particularly in its app store, does not allow competitors to function as the default sms app, nor do they allow other apps to support

          • Yes they did it in both directions, but only got in trouble for doing it in one direction. Also I didn't say you need to have market dominance, or a monopoly. You didn't read my post. I said Microsoft had it. All you need for antitrust is to monopolize a market (a legally ill-defined verb, not the noun people associate with it).

            Your tying argument is finally getting to something close, except, it remains their product and their services are tied to it. That is one of the reasons Apple keeps winning these ca

    • I might be wrong about this but in this case it's not a matter of Apple being obligated to provide interoperability - its a matter of Apples anticompetitive behavior that violates longstanding US law.

      • The issue with that is locking down your own system against an unwanted 3rd party application is not actually being anti-competitive. It remains *their* system. Anti-competitive would be locking down a previously open system, which this never was as evident of the hackery that Beeper needed to go through to get it working. Apple has plenty of antitrust problems (especially around payment systems, and the way they have run the app store in the past), but this is not one of them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          "Oh, woe is me! those big meanies at apple won't take my word for it that my quickie app is just as secure as their engineering and let its output run free on their network. Almost as bad as that bank that won't give me cash on my homemade ATM card!"

          [eyeroll]

  • Blue Speech Bubbles (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday December 21, 2023 @11:47AM (#64096243) Homepage
    As far as I can tell, nobody I communicate with has a problem with my non-Blue bubbles, and if they did, I doubt they'd be worth communicating with. Is this a hack solution in search of a problem?

    • to me non-blue bubbles mean "ok, they may or may not get the message based on my signal, their signal, etc". and "don't send pictures w/o resizing somehow first"

      Of course, I'm rural and will float between SOS only levels of signal and one little tiny bar if I'm not on my wireless. Things get better mostly about a mile or so from the house in any direction.... if I changed providers that could change (there is a Verizon tower near by, a coworker that lives 2 miles away uses it for his home internet,

    • I never expected the green part about green with envy to be literally true. Anyone who cares about the color of text bubbles or thinks that anything about a person can be derived from the color of their text bubbles is a plonker. I find the efforts to thwart Apple quite humors and appreciate it if for no other reason than the spirit of the effort, but at the same time I have to wonder how much time is being wasted with all of this.

    • As far as I can tell, nobody I communicate with has a problem with my non-Blue bubbles, and if they did, I doubt they'd be worth communicating with. Is this a hack solution in search of a problem?

      Congrats, you communicate with a few well mannered people. Or at least well mannered to your face. The reality is most many people aren't like that, heck some people you communicate with may just not let on that they aren't like that.

      Also clearly you don't understand the limitations of the system if you think this is solely a problem of bubble colours. Some people send more than text via messaging systems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        Hmm, in which case the color of the bubble denotes useful information, so why are we trying to subvert it?

      • The whole images look like shit on SMS has to be either the carrier or the android phone. I get SMS messages from android users in group chats all the time that are as perfectly high res as any I get on signal or telegram. I've sent test sms messages to my android device and they look just as good as they do on my iPhone. So what am I doing right that the whole United States can't?

  • "how they've made the experience worse for iPhone users with this change. They've degraded the performance of iMessage for iPhone users," he continued, "all in search of crushing a competitor."

    My small corner supermarket does the same, it categorically refuses to let Walmart put their wares on its shelves, thereby ruining my shopping performance, forcing me to go to 2 shops, all in search of crushing Walmart.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HBI ( 10338492 )

      Just an attempt to share the misery of Android by Google. Microsoft used to do this all the time too, funding SCO and such.

      This Beeper dude can't possibly make money the way he is marketing this thing. He sounds just like Darl McBride, for those who remember.

      • I'ts very different from SCO. SCO was falsely claiming to own software that it did not own, and demanding payments from everyone. In this case Beeper wants to interoperate with other devices.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HBI ( 10338492 )

          Actually Beeper is trying to hack some other company's interface and wrap the flag around itself like it's authorized to do so. It's not. You can try passing some laws to rein in Apple, but what Beeper is doing is as doomed as what SCO was trying to do. That is the similarity.

  • Tiny company that uses vulnerabilities in an API to sell their non-essential product vs. the lawyers for one of the most valuable companies in the world... yeah that's going to go great for Beeper. Interoperability is great but Beeper isn't doing anything unique, nor is Apple. There are close to a dozen apps out there that allow text and media asset communications between people and devices - encrypted and otherwise. If Apple doesn't want to open up their ecosystem to this that's on them. This blue bubble
    • Haven't we seen this scenario before with Apple? Didn't Palm complain that after they used an exploit to trick iTunes into authenticating Palm devices as iPods that Apple patched the hole? I believe that Palm did it by faking Apple's USB Vendor ID that identifies the manufacturer. Apple closed it by enacting other validations. Palm then tried to complain to the USB Forum that Apple was abusing the rules. The forum reprimanded Palm that using another vendors code was clearly against the rules.
  • That's some impressive Cojones.

  • You either purchased proprietary hardware/software or you didn't. Proprietary hardware/software that you did not purchase owes you nothing.

  • I feel like first off? Screw you, Apple, for wasting time, effort and money on such nonsense. But that said? The developer trying to bridge iMessaging to Android has no legal leg to stand on to file a lawsuit to force them to allow what he's doing.

    So often in I.T., as in other things in life? Just because you legally CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.

    We see a lot of "cat and mouse" games that go on and on this way, because stubborn dev wants to offer a service that big corp. prefers not to o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Screw you, Apple, for wasting time, effort and money on such nonsense.

      I disagree here, mainly because the same method the app used could also be used to setup a spam operation targeting imessage users. If they hadn't been closed it down other not as upstanding people would have figured out how Beeper was doing this and copied it. This is honestly Apple closing a exploit in the imessage system.

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