Welp, it looks like Apple has already killed Beeper Mini. This happened significantly faster than I (certainly Eric and the Beeper team) ever expected. It was communicated to me that it would be rather difficult for Apple to shut this down and this has proven to be, well, not true. The Beeper team last week told me that if Apple were to block their current workaround, they'd still have a few other tricks up their sleeve, but if this blocking by Apple was intentional (and that appears to be the case) it'll happen again. And no business/service can be based on a cat-and-mouse game. It's a bummer it happened and I was hoping Beeper Mini would last long enough to indicate to Apple that it should exist officially on Android for the betterment of their own users' experience, but that appears to not be the case and that's a shame.
Great job being quick on commenting here. I was about to come and say something as this video was one of the ways I learned about Beeper Mini. RIP Beeper Mini. You were barely here long enough to be missed, but the idea you made will live on. Hopefully they can keep working on reverse engineering iMessage more and find a way to actually get it working for good. Or, you know, if Apple could release an Official app, that would be great.
I've been wondering the same thing for years. It's a wonder it took this long, but that proprietary blob was likely hard to crack. Kudos to JJTech for the pypush R&D. What a maverick. We should pitch in and buy him something, like an Asahi t-shirt or a collector corn man action figure or something fun.
Thanks, brother! Pretty cool POC indeed. I do hope they’ll open-source the rest of the app here soon just like their desktop bridge so that we can 100% make sure everything’s kosher. Until then, I’m reservedly cautious.
This reminds me of when Rubinstein reverse-engineered iTunes so Android could sync directly with iTunes. Of course, Apple changed a few little things to break Android from using it.
Yeah. This kind of makes it seem like Apple will likely at some point break this. Even with all these explanations of how Apple can’t “fix this without breaking iMessage”, that hasn’t stopped Apple from “fixing” things in the past that in reality break things that were the result of reverse engineering. EDIT: I told y’all so
@@MysteryMii I think one thing that might have changed since then is the risk of prosecution relating to Antitrust/Competition Laws. During the initial coverage of Sunbird (before alarming security concerns were raised), one of the main reasons why they suspected Apple would not take action to block the service related to the increased ammunition regulators might have if Apple saught to actively block a third-party competitor from integrating their services. This is contrast with Apple's usual excuses up until now, which usually revolved around reasons they themselves had not implemented a more competition-friendly version of iMessage. The EU's Digital Markets Act already targets the interoperability of iMessage, and with Apple announcing they will appeal this, they will not be wanting to add more firepower to the EU's case against them.
@@trimonmusic Even then, Apple probably could get away with it because they’re charging for the app. They could argue that charging for access to what is otherwise a free service that has no other direct monetization via fees or ads could be against their terms of service or something. If it the app was completely free, then it might be shaky ground, but the fact that the app charges a monthly subscription to access what is otherwise a free service might end up being what unravels this entire ordeal.
@@MysteryMiiIMO, the EU will not see iMessage as a "free" service. Solely due to it being exclusively on a single platform. You are technically paying for it by being on Apple's platform.
@@albertxion513 But then that brings up a different slippery slope. If it’s interoperable, then how can Apple justify the costs to keep the service up and running for non-Apple users? They can’t just start charging users for the ability to use iMessage, nor would they want to start putting ads in the service. It kinda makes you think if the EU really thought that part out. But to get back to my point, yes there’s always a hidden cost to “free” services, but I was more or less talking about what is effectively reselling access to a service without permission, which to my understanding, is against the terms of service of a lot of things. As I said, this could have been something that could potentially be avoided if they had simply made the app completely free.
As a non american, it's weird and kind of fascinating to see how much of a deal this is. It's like a social experiment on social exclusion on a national level.
Apple fans (especially Americans) tend to have an "us vs. them" attitude towards Android users. When I see that I'm texting with a green bubble person, I almost subconsciously think of them as a lower social class than me and my iPhone-owning friends. Even though many Android phones are now technically superior to iPhones, this idea of 'Apple is just better' still persists. I think the reason why this is a mostly American phenomenon is because the U.S. is such a large country with so few land borders. It's somewhat rare for Americans to travel internationally, and they generally communicate with others who are within their borders, so iMessage or standard SMS texting are good enough for them. Whereas in other countries (especially within Europe), it's more common to meet foreigners from various nations living in each other's cities, and to communicate across boarders in general. Since international calling and texting can be quite expensive, it makes sense that these people would prefer to use a messaging app like WhatsApp that is internationally supported and free of charge.
It's honestly so stupid. Total resistance to downloading another app for chats from US-Based Apple Users. Apple also makes deregistering iMessage to actually make the Android move incredibly difficult. Once in deregistering it took about an hour while sometimes it may take 2 full days, and even then, it drips messages through where some people can send/receive messages whereas some can't. It's a mess.
@@InventorZahranDude you just said "Apple fans" excluding yourself have a us vs them behavior when you literally admitted to doing the same thing to android people you speak to. Who are you to talk self identified hypocrite??? 😂
@@elindensteinIts fair game, competition and restrictions against other companies products should be fair game. I dont understand how you people believe Android is so perfect when all Google wants is your data to sell it to other companies. You android people are honestly so blind.
This is a nice compromise to at least alleviate the green/blue bubbles debate. It seems secure and it uses Apple’s own signing services. Not 100% bulletproof but better than Nothing Chats
No. No, it is not. _The_ way to alleviate the bubble problem is to not acknowledge the colour in the first place. Peak consumerist classism should be returned with equally dizzying ignorance. The blue bubble lot aren't real people. Do not acknowledge them as such. If your employment's boss is like this, then you don't have a boss, the company isn't real, and you're wasting your time working at a place that doesn't exist. I mean this. If there is anything to wipe off the face of our world and not acknowledge as existing, it's people who think they're better because their bubbles are blue. *Eliminate it* and apps like this wouldn't be necessary. Apple is the cause of this problem, in spite of other advancements iMessage afforded long ago because they're using the platform as an incentive to invoke classism and make users feel unnecessarily special for spending gobs of money on stale innovation being used to keep them under the yoke of their slavery. *_Do not accept this._*
The dumbest part of the nothing collaboration app is that the open source version of that solution is very secure... They just had to choose the shittiest version on the market. This is a cleaner solution though, only your phone and apple. I wouldn't want to use the 2$/m all in one app, but someone else is bound to port the proof of concept to a stand-alone option.
The bubbles debate seems to be an exclusively American issue, I don't know anyone who uses iMessage in Ireland or Europe. It's WhatsApp all the way, even for a lot of business contacts
Well to be fair it’s not just about the bubbles being green, it’s the fact that interacting with people who have green bubbles is worse because it lacks a ton of features, by design of course
You don’t seem to understand Apple has completely destroyed what sms is supposed to be for their blue bubble. It’s not just a color it’s way more malicious than that.
@@porkstamina In what way? It's an app that combines 2 messaging protocols and so there's a UI element to tell the user which protocol has been used. You can get a green bubble messaging an iPhone. Anything above that is a social thing and nothing do with Apple
This is nuts, and I'm so glad you get to make this exclusive. I mean look at that demo @ 3:31! You are no doubt the most savvy+opinionated+genuine creator in this space and I always appreciate it SO much when you share your thoughts here or elsewhere
The one thing I will say about their fear of losing customers if they supported cross platform. Obviously we’ll never know, and it could have turned out really well, but as someone who went to high school in the US in the iPhone age, the iMessage bullying into getting iPhones was real. Freshman year, probably 3/12 people in my friend group had androids. By senior year it was down to one, and now even he has switched. The biggest inconvenience with androids by far is messaging, especially the group chat thing. 87% of U.S. teens have iPhones, so obviously something’s working. I am genuinely glad to see RCS and breakthroughs like this being made though, because it makes things better for everyone except the 3 trillion dollar company
I am the one friend still on Android. I communicate either using snapchat or whatsapp usually. Losing a lot of hope that Apple will have functional messaging with Android.
I personally think AirMessage is the MOST secure way of using iMessage on an android device. The relay literally lives on your own Mac and nothing is out of your control. The only downside to using AirMessage is that when you message someone with an iPhone, it doesn't show up with your phone number but instead uses your email address that is registered with your Apple account. Beeper Mini seems to solve that issue. My only real question/need/request is that I be able to use Beeper Mini ONLY for people that use an iPhone. I like the way Google Messages works and looks and do NOT want to swap messaging apps. Plus, at least half of the people I text have Android and use Google Messages. Losing RCS just so I can finally see when someone is typing or has read my message or sending full quality photos is a NO GO for me.
@@chrisdsandersit doesn't take over for your messaging app. It just is iMessage stand alone. So any messages you get that aren't iMessage still go to your default text app. At least for the time being.
I love it! I've been a life long iOS user, but the competition in the android space has made me want to switch. Losing iMessage has been the biggest factor since my entire family uses apple devices. This is huge. Thanks for sharing! I love your content. Keep it up.
Part of the issue here stateside is theres just no good alternatives to the iPhone. I'm not really a Pixel or Samsung fan. I was always more of an LG/HTC/early OnePlus fan. We really need Vivo/Oppo and Redmi etc here. Just not enough good choices.
you can still text with people that have ios phones its just not imessage? are people really so self entitled and brainwashed by brands now they cant imagine texting without apple reactions or some shit?
Snazzy you are seriously the best tech content creator I know. Its crazy the amount of research and things you do off camera to educate your self and to educate us. Great videos dude! :-)
I've been saying for years that Apple could make SO MUCH money if they just made an iMessage app for Android and charged a small monthly fee for it. I'm disappointed that they haven't done so yet, but I'm happy that someone else has. Thanks for sharing!
@@KhanhDinh291exactly, the pressure on US teenagers seems immense. Then once they're in why not get airpods or a watch etc and before you know it you've given a company over a thousand dollars for no real reason other than texting
I feel like a couple of things might happen after this. The first is that Apple finds a way to patch this. The second is at Apple finally decides to give in and make an iMessage app for android. While the second scenario is highly unlikely so was the idea of being able to send iMessages on android phones and look where we’re at now. This might be more of a possibility if Apple can’t find a way to patch the beeper mini app. Great video.
It’ll be too difficult for Apple to patch this, did you watch the video? I doubt Apple were prepared for this. They’ll ignore it for a while, maybe try their luck in court but eventually they’ll release an iMessage app for android.
First rule in tech, if ain't broke, don't fix it. Rebuilding their entire authentication services from scratch and then rolling it out to billions of devices is a fruitless endevour and no company would be willing to go that far except if they were already considering a rewrite. It's just not worth it.
This literally came out the same day I switched from my iphone to a Z Fold 5. I was getting a lot of heat (playful banter) from my family and how everyone else has iphones with blue bubbles. Now I don't need to compromise anything. Perfection! Now we just need something for a seemless Facetime experience.
"Apple has no way of knowing if you own the computer or not. At least not currently." I think they could have the device send some kind of attestation of the serial number from a device's secure enclave. They could also force it to use that same secure enclave to generate and store the private key, sending the public key along with that attestation. This would mean that you'd need an apple device with a secure enclave to use iMessage. I think backwards compatibility prohibits them from doing that now (can't block old versions of iOS from registering on iMessage, right?), but there could a path to making this not work going forward, I think, if they wanted.
To do that they would have to drop Apple ID support from all devices without secureenclave, and so far there're too many of them still used by many people
Great video, well explained. It's a crazy reflection on society that such malice and manipulative intent from the richest company isn't simply given the middle finger by everyone. Or maybe a reflection on a selection the consumer/users 🤷♂️🤦♂️
As a European on Signal, watching Americans jump through all these hoops over bubble colors is hilarious. I frequently forget sms exists until I get a 2FA text like "oh yeah right". The funniest thing about US Android users refusing to switch to data based messengers but pining for iMessage is that iMessage is exactly that. I truly don't get it, but you do you!
I use signal here in the US on my iPhone…and I actually use (the original) beeper app to let me use iMessage on my pc if need be. All of this is a very nice bit of tech, but in terms of usefulness, I’m a bit skeptical. But I’m sure the hipsters will love it.
Amazing video and great explaning. These videos remind me why I love watching this channel. Bringing up cool tech and explain the details on why this method is more secure in a way an average tech who is not a developer can understand.
Wow! This app is a game changer! I was using Blue Bubble which is really good too... But not needing to host anything on a Mac is awesome! I like that it supports edit/unsend as well. 👍🏼
I'm surprised no one ever mentions blue bubbles tbh. Sure the initial setup is a bit more involved but it's smooth sailing from there. It's been around for years too.
Whatsapp is absolutely not better than imessage or RCS by simple virtue of it being owned by Facebook (on top of some other reasons). It’s nice seeing people finding ways to unify messaging like this (even if Apple has probably already sent a cease and desist notice in the mail). Hopefully Apple’s implementation of RCS is good enough so we don’t need workarounds like this. (I’m also just an iPhone user who’s really excited to uninstall WhatsApp, if you havent guessed that already)
As much as facebook is a terrible company when it comes to data and privacy, whatsapp is actually end to end encrypted and also apple is isn't exempt from trying to make more money off of their already paying customers through shady means
@@RagingBadnot like it will stop Apple from sending that letter They’ll rely on the company not wanting to pay for legal fees and/or the time to go through court
"nooo dont whatsapp! facebook LE BAD!" says while literally using a google products, cmon now Signal, Telegram and others still exist and every single one (including Whatsapp) is better than imessage by simple virtue of being available everywhere
@@RagingBad doesnt have to be illegal. A big company like Apple can simply use the legal system to wear out small businesses and individuals on matters like this. That said, I’m no lawyer but the fact that they’re charging a subscription fee for it may be what ends up killing them
Honestly as dumb as it all is, I appreciate the whole controversy over the blue versus green bubble thing, because if I ever lost a friend over it, that's not a friend I'd want in the first place. And now that google intercepts those annoying "liked [insert entire liked message here]" messages and replaces it with the appropriate reaction, I never even think about this anymore.
The funny thing is Google trolls iPhone users with the "liked [insert entire liked message here]" by sending that message back to them when an Android user reacts to an iPhone message
@Snazzy are you going go revisit the statement about “how hard it would be for Apple to turn this off”? As a software guy and long time subscriber I didn’t understand your seeming certainty there. I think you got caught up in the cool factor and were parroting Beeper more than you realized. There were/are several other ways to knock off beeper none of the new fans ever mentioned, I don’t know which Apple used. You are smart enough to have seen them try those. That is what is surprising. Wishing you only well. Still a subscriber and fan.
Was gonna post exactly this. The pypush repo code even specifically refers to the sample data in it as something that could lead to rate limiting or being blocked.
Good thing I'm not 13 and need to care about blue vs green bubbles. If someone thinks less of you because of your chosen phone platform, that's a good sign to stop talking to them.
@@snazzyI suppose I am lucky in that my contacts all use third party messaging apps, so the pointless tribalism is moot. But glad that this app exists for people who need it.
I switched completely to Android for phone use about a year ago. I still run Apple stuff at work for a main workstation and oncall laptop (for now) but I can honestly say that iMessage is the ONLY reason I didn't make the switch much sooner.
Android needs to work on getting this app integrated into the native sms app so that we can finally rid the world of green bubbles. It’s 2023. It’s well past time that we all message on the same standard.
They're not "Implementing the old dated version" of RCS, they're implementing the standard. Google are the ones with the non-standard implementation. It's totally understandable to not want to hand Google a monopoly over RCS messaging and I'm actually glad that someone is making a stand against yet another thing that google are trying to farm data off. E2E or not, usage data is what 's valuable and boi could they get a lot by having a monopoly on RCS
You’re not wrong, but it *is* rather old and dated and the Google enhancements (while proprietary and bad as I stated in the video) have in some ways become the norm with many carriers (T-Mobile and ATT in USA) globally choosing to adopt Google’s flavor as the default. So while not a “standard,” it’s becoming “standardized.” For whatever it’s worth, I agree Apple choosing to work with the GMSA is a good thing (and I said this in the video) rather than accepting Google’s fake-RCS (which isn’t much different from iMessage, frankly) as the de facto.
@@snazzyYou do realise that, in Europe, the "standardised implementation crafted by Google" would actually never fly, right? I mean, the DSMA alone would prevent that. And I'm not even getting started about the numerous other pieces of legislation that would, at the very least, throw some huge hurdles in its way... GSM has been the standard for mobile communications on this continent from the early 90s, and the GSMA is what governs that. So I'd rather see their version, which _is_ completely open, implemented, than _any other specific company's_ version, however dated it may be. MMS and particularly SMS are at the very least a decade and a half older to begin with, and they have stood the test of time right up until Apple came along with iMessage and Android needed something similar... The first iteration of the RCS standard dates from 2008; SMS dates from 1991. Just saying.
Using it now, works surprisingly well. I may finally drop AirMessage. Right now, I have an AirMessage server running on a trash can Mac Pro, tucked away running headless by my switch. And an iPhone SE1 with iOS 12, using a dummy SIM card with my phone number, in order to activate iMessage. Then the AirMessage app on my android devices. The things I do to get blue bubbles...
You’re not a freaking nerd?? Dude, you’re the biggest nerd on UA-cam ok? But you’re a beautiful and magnificent nerd who explains complex shit to me like I’m 5 years old, and because of that I tremendously appreciate you and absolutely adore your channel. Super fascinating stuff here once again. Nice work.
Apple will start requiring Apple hardware tied to an Apple ID in order to use iMessage. They could even use the hardware of the secure enclaves so it can’t be spoofed or duplicated.
Considering the scrutiny and interoperability demands of the EU, this would be asking for a massive antitrust payout. This is a clean room implementation of the iMessage standard. There's nothing they can do that wouldn't damage Apple more than Beepr bringing iMessage to Android, which, believe it or not, most android users don't care about
@@dyscotopiasomething being clean room means that apple cannot sue them. Doesn’t mean Apple have to go along with it. Other companies making profit on the back of apple‘s cloud infrastructure is not protected under anything.
You didn't understand his explanation. Apple already requires hardware tied to the ID, but it can't require hardware to be tied to a single ID. Because a computer can obviously have multiple users. And that's just for regular people level. Developers have plenty of other reasons to reuse the same device for tons of different things. So none of your suggestions actually lock out the users from this functionality any differently than how it already is. However it is probably true that apple would want to stop this because these are users that use their service for free (and the app makes money off it) while not spending anything at apple. No app store no apple pay no hardware. But it's not very different from grabbing a second hand mac mini and doing the old solution for this just pushing between your mac and your phone without paying anything to anyone.
@@HNedelapple can sue them, but they won't. A lawsuit like this would bring a lot of attention to beeper, beeper grows, makes money off the subscription, funds the lawsuit even more with that money and inevitably ends with apple releasing rcs anyways.
This is genius... I don't understand why Apple hasn't just made a killing off of this and make their own Android app that you can subscribe to for iMessage.
The power of Python is amazing. As someone who mostly writes C, I've always thought of this as a project but it seemed impossibly complex. Glad to see someone actually did it! Makes me want to learn more Python now lol
HELP: I downloaded the app to test it and it worked, however upon unlinking my account with imessage and deleting the app I can no longer receive any texts from iphone users
@snazzy I gave it a try and it says my number is not registered with iMessage. I think I just need to give it time. The people I didn't text with beeper can still text me, it's only the ones I texted with beeper that are still registering me as an iMessage user and therefore don't get through to me. Thank you for the swift response!
This is great to see. When I used to use Lenovo thinkpads, I used clover to generate Mac mini information and run macOS VMs on my home server with python script text message relays to my windows laptop. Worked in a home baked way. I even hosted a couple for friends. Now I use apple silicon so I lost the software use cases. But this is so cool!
@@l3gacyb3ta21Yup! pypush will remain open source. All we need is a Linux server application for the constant APN and we'd be able to iMessage without apple hardware or a MacOS vm for no monthly subscription
Apple operates as a business. They don’t have to do anything as long as they’re making loads of money off blue vs green bubbles as pointless as they sound.
@@Random_dud31 I think it’s laughable that Google is doing this RCS smear campaign with a bunch of fanboyism to follow as if they aren’t pushing their own flavor of the spec. Apple is certainly now hopping on the RCS train because of legal pressure, of course - but I think it’s annoying that everyone is saying they are doing so “with the catch” and the catch being complying with the as-is open spec. Google, Apple, Samsung, etc, are all businesses fighting for dollars at the end of the day. Even Linux companies that champion “open source” need to pay their maintainers.
@@Random_dud31Are they though? They offer iMessage as a free service with no monetization of any kind. They might take issue with Bleeper charging money to access a service that is otherwise free to use.
Regarding Eric’s claim about reverse engineering protections for interop. That doesn’t necessarily protect you for working around on authentication to access services run on someone else’s infrastructure that cost them money and they are providing for their customers. That is, if you bought your own client and server and run them yourself at your own cost, you can reverse engineer to get something running between them for interop. But that’s not the same as the right to fake authentication, to gain access to someone else’s servers, they are running at their cost for their paying customers and you’re not providing them monetization to support that (i.e. by buying an Apple device). Apple will be in their rights to block this. There’s precedent to this legal aspect
When Beeper first started, that's what it was. I paid one time for a lifetime subscription. But then they went to a free model for newer users. Now they're back to charging new users, but I don't know if they'll bring the lifetime subscription model back.
The best part of this for me is that i can use imessage on my iPad again. The only apple device i have right now it an iPad and im not planning on going to iPhone. I'm so glad someone finally figured it out.
As an Apple Fanboy, I recoil in disgust at the idea of Droids breaking into our gated community and disguising themselves by the blue bubble. How am I to properly look down on people for their choice of lesser phones without this clear indicator?!
Thanks for showcasing this. I took the plug and tested it out with a native iMessage user, the experience was good for both of us. I'll have to feel out if its worth the subscription cost, I could see subscribing once it's a unified platform. But, I would also like to see what Apple's RCS implementation ends up looking like and if that's viable for what I'd like to see. Thanks again for going over this in depth.
A company who is old fashioned in the sense that they primarily make money from selling physical products with a significant margin. The other services are paid for by user targeted advertising, or venture capital with a hope to recoup money in the future from user tracking. Carriers made money by charging for SMS and MMS per message. iMessage killed that - Apple got AT&T to agree to unlimited data on iPhone, then shipped iMessage which only uses data. Suddenly the carrier doesn't get SMS or MMS money anymore. And Apple pays to run iMessage (servers etc) out of their profits from hardware sales. Sure recently they're selling services eg Apple TV+, Music, Arcade etc but these have their own costs associated.@@kodikodi6752Even email isn't free, someone has to pay for the server, somehow.
Yup, Just tried from here in Hyderabad, India. Downloaded beeper on my Mi Phone and my S23 Ultra. This guy needs to be given an award for letting us know that. But the problem is the subscriptions aren't being synced with devices with same google account. I don't know if its some kind of regional market-place restriction.
With RCS support finally coming to iOS will that change the desire to use things like this? It feels like these solutions are finally showing up right when the EU pressured Apple into actually supporting a standard that should have been there a few years ago.
Maybe change the degree of it, but a big part of it is the social pressures that come from I believe 80% of US teenagers having iPhones. RCS is much better than SMS, but it’s still not going to have all the iMessage features
Great video! Thanks for sharing. From a product standpoint it is interesting to see that iMessage on Android is considered enough of a problem for this amount of effort to be put into solving it. I feel this is a very very US problem.
Excellent video. Well explained, especially how Beeper reverse engineered iMessage. I've been using it since yesterday. So far, it seems to work well with a few bugs. I can't change my profile icon. I also get an error message when I try to message a few friends who have iPhones. I applaud Beeper for finding what might be a legal way to bridge the gap between Android and iPhones that Apple intentionally made and refuses to fully fix. I get that RCS is coming to iPhone, but the contrast ratio of the green bubbles is harder to read. I got a taste of it myself with the Beeper app as previous SMS conversations are the same green shade. It literally takes me twice as long to read them due to poor contrast ratio.
@@sadatnafis2032 disagree, Telegram has better UI, more customizability, and generally feels faster. Signal is also excellent and completely open-source so more privacy friendly
As an Android I just started using it. I've already decided that I'm going to pay $2 a month. Pitching in $2 to say "**** you" to Apple is a great use of the spare change, plus it helps keep up dev costs of stopping Apple patching attempts.
They've been allowing it for years through apps like Airmessage and Bluebubbles. Beeper, Sunbird, and Nothing also offer iMessage compatibility to android users. Apple is getting their pants sued off in Europe currently for anti-trust issues. If they touch these companies they only compound their own legal problems.
@@burnzy3210 Not really. Apple doesn't do anything to block/prevent others from using messaging apps such as Signal or WhatsApp. They've just made their own app built-in and somewhat decent to the point where people don't bother installing other apps.
Seriously Snazzy what did you do before UA-cam. your detailed knowledge about tech is impressive. Unless you ave a coworker that has a degree in computer sciences
$2 is very reasonable for someone who values the blue bubble but wants to give android a try, it also solves some of the issues with someone switching from iOS to android, now they can get full blue bubbles.
The question is: Why is this even necessary? Why should I care whether I get a blue or green message? Do they change the meaning of text messages? Seems like a waste of time to me. What is the benefit?
The color of the text bubbles have become more of a symbolic summarization of the struggle but doesn’t really explain the key functional differences. Mostly media messaging and encryption are much improved over MMS.
sorry, i skimmed through this but to be clear does this require me to use Beeper for all SMS on Android, or does it only handle incoming iMessage conversations?
Only imessage. I installed it and it scanned my message history and imported all the ones sent by iphones (not many in my case, imessage isn't popular in this country). I believe they're working on SMS/RCS support.
I have cushions that where born and currently live in Israel. They all have iPhones, none of them use imessage. In fact they all say it's insupior to what'sapp
Welp, it looks like Apple has already killed Beeper Mini. This happened significantly faster than I (certainly Eric and the Beeper team) ever expected. It was communicated to me that it would be rather difficult for Apple to shut this down and this has proven to be, well, not true. The Beeper team last week told me that if Apple were to block their current workaround, they'd still have a few other tricks up their sleeve, but if this blocking by Apple was intentional (and that appears to be the case) it'll happen again. And no business/service can be based on a cat-and-mouse game. It's a bummer it happened and I was hoping Beeper Mini would last long enough to indicate to Apple that it should exist officially on Android for the betterment of their own users' experience, but that appears to not be the case and that's a shame.
Dang, RIP.
Didn't even watch the video yet as it still was in my YT "watch later" playlist. Now watching of course lol 😅
Great job being quick on commenting here. I was about to come and say something as this video was one of the ways I learned about Beeper Mini. RIP Beeper Mini. You were barely here long enough to be missed, but the idea you made will live on. Hopefully they can keep working on reverse engineering iMessage more and find a way to actually get it working for good. Or, you know, if Apple could release an Official app, that would be great.
Maybe the problem is that they made the code open source?
Maybe next time we keep our secrets 😂
@@lmaheubeeper mini was close source
@@lmaheu Yup…handed Apple the cheat sheet on how to shut it down. Usually you want to protect the recipe for your special sauce
Interesting! I always wondered how hard it would be to reverse engineer how iMessage works, cool someone actually did it
I've been wondering the same thing for years. It's a wonder it took this long, but that proprietary blob was likely hard to crack. Kudos to JJTech for the pypush R&D. What a maverick. We should pitch in and buy him something, like an Asahi t-shirt or a collector corn man action figure or something fun.
Doesn't the Big Apple own the data type? wont they just get a S&D?
@@ewkerman4185 yes, but he also explains in the video why this is unlikely (e.g. hackintosh examples). Time will tell though. :)
@@tresfwho tf says those stupid things are a good reward for his job? Just gave him MONEY
They are using a fixed device ID. If I were Apple and one machine looked like it was logging on thousands of times I’d block it as a security issue.
Top-notch video, bud. Nice to see what the guts of an app like this (likely) look like!
Thanks, brother! Pretty cool POC indeed. I do hope they’ll open-source the rest of the app here soon just like their desktop bridge so that we can 100% make sure everything’s kosher. Until then, I’m reservedly cautious.
Too bad Apple already shut this app down.
This reminds me of when Rubinstein reverse-engineered iTunes so Android could sync directly with iTunes. Of course, Apple changed a few little things to break Android from using it.
Yeah. This kind of makes it seem like Apple will likely at some point break this. Even with all these explanations of how Apple can’t “fix this without breaking iMessage”, that hasn’t stopped Apple from “fixing” things in the past that in reality break things that were the result of reverse engineering.
EDIT: I told y’all so
@@MysteryMii I think one thing that might have changed since then is the risk of prosecution relating to Antitrust/Competition Laws.
During the initial coverage of Sunbird (before alarming security concerns were raised), one of the main reasons why they suspected Apple would not take action to block the service related to the increased ammunition regulators might have if Apple saught to actively block a third-party competitor from integrating their services. This is contrast with Apple's usual excuses up until now, which usually revolved around reasons they themselves had not implemented a more competition-friendly version of iMessage.
The EU's Digital Markets Act already targets the interoperability of iMessage, and with Apple announcing they will appeal this, they will not be wanting to add more firepower to the EU's case against them.
@@trimonmusic Even then, Apple probably could get away with it because they’re charging for the app. They could argue that charging for access to what is otherwise a free service that has no other direct monetization via fees or ads could be against their terms of service or something. If it the app was completely free, then it might be shaky ground, but the fact that the app charges a monthly subscription to access what is otherwise a free service might end up being what unravels this entire ordeal.
@@MysteryMiiIMO, the EU will not see iMessage as a "free" service. Solely due to it being exclusively on a single platform. You are technically paying for it by being on Apple's platform.
@@albertxion513 But then that brings up a different slippery slope. If it’s interoperable, then how can Apple justify the costs to keep the service up and running for non-Apple users? They can’t just start charging users for the ability to use iMessage, nor would they want to start putting ads in the service. It kinda makes you think if the EU really thought that part out. But to get back to my point, yes there’s always a hidden cost to “free” services, but I was more or less talking about what is effectively reselling access to a service without permission, which to my understanding, is against the terms of service of a lot of things. As I said, this could have been something that could potentially be avoided if they had simply made the app completely free.
As a non american, it's weird and kind of fascinating to see how much of a deal this is. It's like a social experiment on social exclusion on a national level.
Apple fans (especially Americans) tend to have an "us vs. them" attitude towards Android users. When I see that I'm texting with a green bubble person, I almost subconsciously think of them as a lower social class than me and my iPhone-owning friends. Even though many Android phones are now technically superior to iPhones, this idea of 'Apple is just better' still persists.
I think the reason why this is a mostly American phenomenon is because the U.S. is such a large country with so few land borders. It's somewhat rare for Americans to travel internationally, and they generally communicate with others who are within their borders, so iMessage or standard SMS texting are good enough for them. Whereas in other countries (especially within Europe), it's more common to meet foreigners from various nations living in each other's cities, and to communicate across boarders in general. Since international calling and texting can be quite expensive, it makes sense that these people would prefer to use a messaging app like WhatsApp that is internationally supported and free of charge.
It's honestly so stupid. Total resistance to downloading another app for chats from US-Based Apple Users. Apple also makes deregistering iMessage to actually make the Android move incredibly difficult. Once in deregistering it took about an hour while sometimes it may take 2 full days, and even then, it drips messages through where some people can send/receive messages whereas some can't. It's a mess.
@@InventorZahranDude you just said "Apple fans" excluding yourself have a us vs them behavior when you literally admitted to doing the same thing to android people you speak to. Who are you to talk self identified hypocrite??? 😂
@@elindensteinIts fair game, competition and restrictions against other companies products should be fair game. I dont understand how you people believe Android is so perfect when all Google wants is your data to sell it to other companies. You android people are honestly so blind.
@@hankagura5355 I’m on an iPhone literally right now. I just think the Android experience is much better, particularly stock Android on a Pixel phone.
This is a nice compromise to at least alleviate the green/blue bubbles debate. It seems secure and it uses Apple’s own signing services. Not 100% bulletproof but better than Nothing Chats
No. No, it is not. _The_ way to alleviate the bubble problem is to not acknowledge the colour in the first place. Peak consumerist classism should be returned with equally dizzying ignorance. The blue bubble lot aren't real people. Do not acknowledge them as such. If your employment's boss is like this, then you don't have a boss, the company isn't real, and you're wasting your time working at a place that doesn't exist.
I mean this. If there is anything to wipe off the face of our world and not acknowledge as existing, it's people who think they're better because their bubbles are blue. *Eliminate it* and apps like this wouldn't be necessary. Apple is the cause of this problem, in spite of other advancements iMessage afforded long ago because they're using the platform as an incentive to invoke classism and make users feel unnecessarily special for spending gobs of money on stale innovation being used to keep them under the yoke of their slavery. *_Do not accept this._*
The dumbest part of the nothing collaboration app is that the open source version of that solution is very secure... They just had to choose the shittiest version on the market.
This is a cleaner solution though, only your phone and apple. I wouldn't want to use the 2$/m all in one app, but someone else is bound to port the proof of concept to a stand-alone option.
Genuinely want to know who the hell is worried about that still. Genuinely asking. Because no one I know cares. Not ONE person.
@@lowwastehighmelaninif no one cares then why these apps exist Einstein?
The bubbles debate seems to be an exclusively American issue, I don't know anyone who uses iMessage in Ireland or Europe. It's WhatsApp all the way, even for a lot of business contacts
Using it now - It works fantastic, once they port over RCS & other chat apps, I will 100% switch fully!
Very cool indeed.
Beeper supports rcs already
@@eddieevangelista6014I think they mean when Apple does
@@eddieevangelista6014 yes but not on the new beeper only on beeper cloud
@@eddieevangelista6014Not Beeper. Beeper Mini.
Enormously pleased this wasn’t sponsored. Fascinating video. Well done all around.
This is hilarious, how Apple managed to get entire businesses rise and fall because they decided to tint their messages blue and green.
Well to be fair it’s not just about the bubbles being green, it’s the fact that interacting with people who have green bubbles is worse because it lacks a ton of features, by design of course
@@F-aberApple.will support RCS by next year aka most of those features.
@@F-aberMalicious interface design at its best
You don’t seem to understand Apple has completely destroyed what sms is supposed to be for their blue bubble. It’s not just a color it’s way more malicious than that.
@@porkstamina In what way? It's an app that combines 2 messaging protocols and so there's a UI element to tell the user which protocol has been used. You can get a green bubble messaging an iPhone. Anything above that is a social thing and nothing do with Apple
This is nuts, and I'm so glad you get to make this exclusive. I mean look at that demo @ 3:31!
You are no doubt the most savvy+opinionated+genuine creator in this space and I always appreciate it SO much when you share your thoughts here or elsewhere
Heavy +1 on this!
Agreed!!! Quinn’s always thought provoking, informative, entertaining and high quality. He’s the king for me (sorry, MKBHD).
If the most savvy guy cannot cd into a directory on the first try, you know you've got a problem. Good thing the content is top notch.
@@Delvis343 Quinn needs a bigger team behind him so he can be more consistently uploading tbh
@@vterpkolol the keyboard on this laptop is weird. Went for the tab to autocomplete but accidentally turned on caps lock and hit return lol
This is cool. Feels like Hackintosh days.
I miss that era.
@@asumaran miss the jailbreak days too 🤧
@@mikivli I remember my first hackintosh on a Dell Optiplex GX280 back in 2010. Those were the days.
The one thing I will say about their fear of losing customers if they supported cross platform. Obviously we’ll never know, and it could have turned out really well, but as someone who went to high school in the US in the iPhone age, the iMessage bullying into getting iPhones was real. Freshman year, probably 3/12 people in my friend group had androids. By senior year it was down to one, and now even he has switched. The biggest inconvenience with androids by far is messaging, especially the group chat thing. 87% of U.S. teens have iPhones, so obviously something’s working. I am genuinely glad to see RCS and breakthroughs like this being made though, because it makes things better for everyone except the 3 trillion dollar company
I am the one friend still on Android. I communicate either using snapchat or whatsapp usually. Losing a lot of hope that Apple will have functional messaging with Android.
Bro ur not gonna believe this
This is honestly amazing and probably the most secure way of using iMessage on an android device. I’m just wondering how long this service will stick.
I personally think AirMessage is the MOST secure way of using iMessage on an android device. The relay literally lives on your own Mac and nothing is out of your control. The only downside to using AirMessage is that when you message someone with an iPhone, it doesn't show up with your phone number but instead uses your email address that is registered with your Apple account. Beeper Mini seems to solve that issue. My only real question/need/request is that I be able to use Beeper Mini ONLY for people that use an iPhone. I like the way Google Messages works and looks and do NOT want to swap messaging apps. Plus, at least half of the people I text have Android and use Google Messages. Losing RCS just so I can finally see when someone is typing or has read my message or sending full quality photos is a NO GO for me.
@@chrisdsandersI don't think Beeper deactivates RCS
@@xEqualsRandom I'm not saying that it deactivates RCS, I'm saying the RCS is not included within Beeper Mini
@@chrisdsandersit doesn't take over for your messaging app. It just is iMessage stand alone. So any messages you get that aren't iMessage still go to your default text app. At least for the time being.
@@xEqualsRandomthey do. He said it in the video. You have to use both Beeper Mini and your default messaging app separately to have RCS.
If I were Apple and I saw this, the first thing I did would be to try and hire JJTech. That kid is going places
If they don't, someone else will. I'd say that his career prospects just got exponentially better.
fr. he figured out an on-device way to do something people have been trying for years. brilliant.
I still don't know anyone that actually uses imessage, but it is rather interesting to see people break through it.
I love it! I've been a life long iOS user, but the competition in the android space has made me want to switch. Losing iMessage has been the biggest factor since my entire family uses apple devices. This is huge. Thanks for sharing! I love your content. Keep it up.
Part of the issue here stateside is theres just no good alternatives to the iPhone. I'm not really a Pixel or Samsung fan. I was always more of an LG/HTC/early OnePlus fan. We really need Vivo/Oppo and Redmi etc here. Just not enough good choices.
you can still text with people that have ios phones its just not imessage? are people really so self entitled and brainwashed by brands now they cant imagine texting without apple reactions or some shit?
@@blorglordiMessage is very popular in us
@@nothingtoseeheremovealong...I'm curious, what do you think Vivo and Redmi offers that Samsung and Google don't? Fast charging?
@@nothingtoseeheremovealong...I would instantly buy that Oppo foldable if I could have iMessage reliably on it
Snazzy you are seriously the best tech content creator I know. Its crazy the amount of research and things you do off camera to educate your self and to educate us. Great videos dude! :-)
I've been saying for years that Apple could make SO MUCH money if they just made an iMessage app for Android and charged a small monthly fee for it. I'm disappointed that they haven't done so yet, but I'm happy that someone else has. Thanks for sharing!
It's not really just about the money, it's about control.
Why get "a small fee" when they can bully kids into spending hundreds of dollars for iPhones
@@KhanhDinh291exactly, the pressure on US teenagers seems immense. Then once they're in why not get airpods or a watch etc and before you know it you've given a company over a thousand dollars for no real reason other than texting
I feel like a couple of things might happen after this. The first is that Apple finds a way to patch this. The second is at Apple finally decides to give in and make an iMessage app for android. While the second scenario is highly unlikely so was the idea of being able to send iMessages on android phones and look where we’re at now. This might be more of a possibility if Apple can’t find a way to patch the beeper mini app. Great video.
It’ll be too difficult for Apple to patch this, did you watch the video? I doubt Apple were prepared for this. They’ll ignore it for a while, maybe try their luck in court but eventually they’ll release an iMessage app for android.
Yeah most likely an app and make a subscription for it
First rule in tech, if ain't broke, don't fix it.
Rebuilding their entire authentication services from scratch and then rolling it out to billions of devices is a fruitless endevour and no company would be willing to go that far except if they were already considering a rewrite. It's just not worth it.
@@VisionCrafted1772 agreed, I think Apple these days became less stuck in their ways and more open to change
I don’t care about the color. I care about the trash quality of photos and videos when I send or receive them from Android.
This literally came out the same day I switched from my iphone to a Z Fold 5. I was getting a lot of heat (playful banter) from my family and how everyone else has iphones with blue bubbles. Now I don't need to compromise anything. Perfection!
Now we just need something for a seemless Facetime experience.
Good timing! Haha
Google Duo it's better than FaceTime. Try it out
I did the exact same iPhone to fold 5 and absolutely love it !
Apple Patched the loophole today.
bruh 💀
I'm using it and it's awesome so far. Stoked. My friends are like 'did you get an iphone?!' haha
"Apple has no way of knowing if you own the computer or not. At least not currently."
I think they could have the device send some kind of attestation of the serial number from a device's secure enclave. They could also force it to use that same secure enclave to generate and store the private key, sending the public key along with that attestation. This would mean that you'd need an apple device with a secure enclave to use iMessage. I think backwards compatibility prohibits them from doing that now (can't block old versions of iOS from registering on iMessage, right?), but there could a path to making this not work going forward, I think, if they wanted.
To do that they would have to drop Apple ID support from all devices without secureenclave, and so far there're too many of them still used by many people
@@Anon-y4w TBH secure enclave support goes pretty far back right IIRC, at least 6 years?
Great video, well explained.
It's a crazy reflection on society that such malice and manipulative intent from the richest company isn't simply given the middle finger by everyone. Or maybe a reflection on a selection the consumer/users 🤷♂️🤦♂️
As a European on Signal, watching Americans jump through all these hoops over bubble colors is hilarious. I frequently forget sms exists until I get a 2FA text like "oh yeah right". The funniest thing about US Android users refusing to switch to data based messengers but pining for iMessage is that iMessage is exactly that. I truly don't get it, but you do you!
im confused why ppl use signal or sms. i just use telegram/discord
we all just use whatsapp outside the US
also, sms is usually for old people. most people in the us do use 3rd party apps like telegram, discord, whatsapp, snapchat
I use signal here in the US on my iPhone…and I actually use (the original) beeper app to let me use iMessage on my pc if need be. All of this is a very nice bit of tech, but in terms of usefulness, I’m a bit skeptical. But I’m sure the hipsters will love it.
It’s not just bubbles. When your whole network of friends/family uses FaceTime, it makes it incredibly difficult to switch to android.
Wow I did not know that Eric made beeper. I loved the Pebble OG and almost worked for them in Palo Alto, thanks for including that Quinn!
Amazing video and great explaning. These videos remind me why I love watching this channel. Bringing up cool tech and explain the details on why this method is more secure in a way an average tech who is not a developer can understand.
This is nuts. I've not had an android in years but I almost want to get one to try this now!
You should switch... Android doesn't force you into doing things the way Apple does.
Wow! This app is a game changer! I was using Blue Bubble which is really good too... But not needing to host anything on a Mac is awesome! I like that it supports edit/unsend as well. 👍🏼
I'm surprised no one ever mentions blue bubbles tbh. Sure the initial setup is a bit more involved but it's smooth sailing from there. It's been around for years too.
@@Kashim_o yeah, is really good as long as my Mac mini stays online 👍🏼
Whatsapp is absolutely not better than imessage or RCS by simple virtue of it being owned by Facebook (on top of some other reasons). It’s nice seeing people finding ways to unify messaging like this (even if Apple has probably already sent a cease and desist notice in the mail). Hopefully Apple’s implementation of RCS is good enough so we don’t need workarounds like this. (I’m also just an iPhone user who’s really excited to uninstall WhatsApp, if you havent guessed that already)
As much as facebook is a terrible company when it comes to data and privacy, whatsapp is actually end to end encrypted and also apple is isn't exempt from trying to make more money off of their already paying customers through shady means
Reverse engineering isn't illegal when used to create compatibility
@@RagingBadnot like it will stop Apple from sending that letter
They’ll rely on the company not wanting to pay for legal fees and/or the time to go through court
"nooo dont whatsapp! facebook LE BAD!" says while literally using a google products, cmon now
Signal, Telegram and others still exist and every single one (including Whatsapp) is better than imessage by simple virtue of being available everywhere
@@RagingBad doesnt have to be illegal. A big company like Apple can simply use the legal system to wear out small businesses and individuals on matters like this. That said, I’m no lawyer but the fact that they’re charging a subscription fee for it may be what ends up killing them
Honestly as dumb as it all is, I appreciate the whole controversy over the blue versus green bubble thing, because if I ever lost a friend over it, that's not a friend I'd want in the first place. And now that google intercepts those annoying "liked [insert entire liked message here]" messages and replaces it with the appropriate reaction, I never even think about this anymore.
The funny thing is Google trolls iPhone users with the "liked [insert entire liked message here]" by sending that message back to them when an Android user reacts to an iPhone message
@@sigh-cosis That was definitely a selling point when I first switched, lol.
@Snazzy are you going go revisit the statement about “how hard it would be for Apple to turn this off”?
As a software guy and long time subscriber I didn’t understand your seeming certainty there. I think you got caught up in the cool factor and were parroting Beeper more than you realized.
There were/are several other ways to knock off beeper none of the new fans ever mentioned, I don’t know which Apple used. You are smart enough to have seen them try those. That is what is surprising.
Wishing you only well. Still a subscriber and fan.
Was gonna post exactly this. The pypush repo code even specifically refers to the sample data in it as something that could lead to rate limiting or being blocked.
Lol this didn’t age well, that was really quick from Apple and they didn’t even send updates to users
Great video dude. Let’s see how long this lasts!
Subscription... and the app has already lost me
Excellent video! Thank you for taking the time to explain everything in detail. Appreciate all your hard work on this!
Good thing I'm not 13 and need to care about blue vs green bubbles. If someone thinks less of you because of your chosen phone platform, that's a good sign to stop talking to them.
I mean, it’s not really about the color-it’s about the feature set and security, but you do you.
@@snazzyI suppose I am lucky in that my contacts all use third party messaging apps, so the pointless tribalism is moot. But glad that this app exists for people who need it.
I switched completely to Android for phone use about a year ago. I still run Apple stuff at work for a main workstation and oncall laptop (for now) but I can honestly say that iMessage is the ONLY reason I didn't make the switch much sooner.
This aged poorly.
Android needs to work on getting this app integrated into the native sms app so that we can finally rid the world of green bubbles. It’s 2023. It’s well past time that we all message on the same standard.
They're not "Implementing the old dated version" of RCS, they're implementing the standard. Google are the ones with the non-standard implementation. It's totally understandable to not want to hand Google a monopoly over RCS messaging and I'm actually glad that someone is making a stand against yet another thing that google are trying to farm data off. E2E or not, usage data is what 's valuable and boi could they get a lot by having a monopoly on RCS
I don’t like any of these corporations but it isn’t like apple doesn’t have a monopoly on a lot of things lol
You’re not wrong, but it *is* rather old and dated and the Google enhancements (while proprietary and bad as I stated in the video) have in some ways become the norm with many carriers (T-Mobile and ATT in USA) globally choosing to adopt Google’s flavor as the default. So while not a “standard,” it’s becoming “standardized.” For whatever it’s worth, I agree Apple choosing to work with the GMSA is a good thing (and I said this in the video) rather than accepting Google’s fake-RCS (which isn’t much different from iMessage, frankly) as the de facto.
@@snazzyYou do realise that, in Europe, the "standardised implementation crafted by Google" would actually never fly, right? I mean, the DSMA alone would prevent that. And I'm not even getting started about the numerous other pieces of legislation that would, at the very least, throw some huge hurdles in its way... GSM has been the standard for mobile communications on this continent from the early 90s, and the GSMA is what governs that. So I'd rather see their version, which _is_ completely open, implemented, than _any other specific company's_ version, however dated it may be. MMS and particularly SMS are at the very least a decade and a half older to begin with, and they have stood the test of time right up until Apple came along with iMessage and Android needed something similar... The first iteration of the RCS standard dates from 2008; SMS dates from 1991. Just saying.
@slashtiger1 You do realize we don’t disagree, right?
@@snazzy Of course I do!
Using it now, works surprisingly well. I may finally drop AirMessage. Right now, I have an AirMessage server running on a trash can Mac Pro, tucked away running headless by my switch. And an iPhone SE1 with iOS 12, using a dummy SIM card with my phone number, in order to activate iMessage. Then the AirMessage app on my android devices. The things I do to get blue bubbles...
You’re not a freaking nerd?? Dude, you’re the biggest nerd on UA-cam ok? But you’re a beautiful and magnificent nerd who explains complex shit to me like I’m 5 years old, and because of that I tremendously appreciate you and absolutely adore your channel. Super fascinating stuff here once again. Nice work.
I've been using this all day! It works amazing!
Apple will start requiring Apple hardware tied to an Apple ID in order to use iMessage. They could even use the hardware of the secure enclaves so it can’t be spoofed or duplicated.
Considering the scrutiny and interoperability demands of the EU, this would be asking for a massive antitrust payout. This is a clean room implementation of the iMessage standard. There's nothing they can do that wouldn't damage Apple more than Beepr bringing iMessage to Android, which, believe it or not, most android users don't care about
@@dyscotopiasomething being clean room means that apple cannot sue them. Doesn’t mean Apple have to go along with it. Other companies making profit on the back of apple‘s cloud infrastructure is not protected under anything.
@@dyscotopiaExcept North American users.
You didn't understand his explanation. Apple already requires hardware tied to the ID, but it can't require hardware to be tied to a single ID. Because a computer can obviously have multiple users. And that's just for regular people level. Developers have plenty of other reasons to reuse the same device for tons of different things.
So none of your suggestions actually lock out the users from this functionality any differently than how it already is.
However it is probably true that apple would want to stop this because these are users that use their service for free (and the app makes money off it) while not spending anything at apple. No app store no apple pay no hardware. But it's not very different from grabbing a second hand mac mini and doing the old solution for this just pushing between your mac and your phone without paying anything to anyone.
@@HNedelapple can sue them, but they won't. A lawsuit like this would bring a lot of attention to beeper, beeper grows, makes money off the subscription, funds the lawsuit even more with that money and inevitably ends with apple releasing rcs anyways.
This is genius... I don't understand why Apple hasn't just made a killing off of this and make their own Android app that you can subscribe to for iMessage.
The power of Python is amazing. As someone who mostly writes C, I've always thought of this as a project but it seemed impossibly complex. Glad to see someone actually did it! Makes me want to learn more Python now lol
what about this makes use of python over any other scripting language? seems mostly like smart architecture
This doesn't really have anything to do with Python, you could pull of the same things in C if you wanted.
@@rebane2001 yeah lol i think scripting is a little less intuitive in C and C++ but besides that yeah
The language does not matter whatsoever.
HELP: I downloaded the app to test it and it worked, however upon unlinking my account with imessage and deleting the app I can no longer receive any texts from iphone users
You can un-enroll directly with Apple. selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/
@snazzy I gave it a try and it says my number is not registered with iMessage. I think I just need to give it time. The people I didn't text with beeper can still text me, it's only the ones I texted with beeper that are still registering me as an iMessage user and therefore don't get through to me. Thank you for the swift response!
Thanks man...this is exactly the kind of video I needed. Something to explain the tech behind the tech to a person like me. Great job!
This is great to see. When I used to use Lenovo thinkpads, I used clover to generate Mac mini information and run macOS VMs on my home server with python script text message relays to my windows laptop. Worked in a home baked way. I even hosted a couple for friends. Now I use apple silicon so I lost the software use cases. But this is so cool!
"I don't care if Whatsapp is better." That got me lol. This is a great app and idea. I'm intrigued. But also a wonderful video!
Thanks for the scoop! I can finally spin down the macos VM with airmessage after trying Beeper on both android phone and tablet. It works wonderfully!
Super cool. Props for the scoop & the explanation!
just installed it, this is next level. Thanks Quinn and Beeper!!
This video didn't age well
This is the video you've been waiting for. Hopefully it grows!
I cant wait for this to be added to an actual FOSS Application like BlueBubbles
oh totally! They said they will open source it :>
@@l3gacyb3ta21Yup! pypush will remain open source. All we need is a Linux server application for the constant APN and we'd be able to iMessage without apple hardware or a MacOS vm for no monthly subscription
it's unclear to me, why would you like iMessage on Android ?
Isn't all the feature handle by all messaging app like Signal or whatsapp ?
Amazing to see people doing the work that Apple should've done themselves.
And doing a great job!
Apple operates as a business. They don’t have to do anything as long as they’re making loads of money off blue vs green bubbles as pointless as they sound.
@@gulla04not only that. They are actively benefiting from it. It would be stupid to fight against from apples perspective
@@Random_dud31 I think it’s laughable that Google is doing this RCS smear campaign with a bunch of fanboyism to follow as if they aren’t pushing their own flavor of the spec.
Apple is certainly now hopping on the RCS train because of legal pressure, of course - but I think it’s annoying that everyone is saying they are doing so “with the catch” and the catch being complying with the as-is open spec.
Google, Apple, Samsung, etc, are all businesses fighting for dollars at the end of the day. Even Linux companies that champion “open source” need to pay their maintainers.
@@Random_dud31Are they though? They offer iMessage as a free service with no monetization of any kind. They might take issue with Bleeper charging money to access a service that is otherwise free to use.
Regarding Eric’s claim about reverse engineering protections for interop. That doesn’t necessarily protect you for working around on authentication to access services run on someone else’s infrastructure that cost them money and they are providing for their customers. That is, if you bought your own client and server and run them yourself at your own cost, you can reverse engineer to get something running between them for interop. But that’s not the same as the right to fake authentication, to gain access to someone else’s servers, they are running at their cost for their paying customers and you’re not providing them monetization to support that (i.e. by buying an Apple device). Apple will be in their rights to block this. There’s precedent to this legal aspect
Not working at all for me unfortunately. I can't get past the first screen. I get an error: Google sign in error.null
I don't get the hype about IMessages. Why does anyone use it? (I live in germany)
Absolutely nobody outside US uses iMessage
Absolute no one inside the us uses WhatsApp.
@@druxpack8531 well thats a lie i know plenty of people that use it in the usa along with several comments on this very video that say they do
The old iphones do not even support Beeper's features! I love it!
i really don't like that all app seem to be montly payment now i wish apps and games would also have lifetime payment options like in the past
When Beeper first started, that's what it was. I paid one time for a lifetime subscription. But then they went to a free model for newer users. Now they're back to charging new users, but I don't know if they'll bring the lifetime subscription model back.
The best part of this for me is that i can use imessage on my iPad again. The only apple device i have right now it an iPad and im not planning on going to iPhone. I'm so glad someone finally figured it out.
As an Apple Fanboy, I recoil in disgust at the idea of Droids breaking into our gated community and disguising themselves by the blue bubble.
How am I to properly look down on people for their choice of lesser phones without this clear indicator?!
Thanks for showcasing this.
I took the plug and tested it out with a native iMessage user, the experience was good for both of us.
I'll have to feel out if its worth the subscription cost, I could see subscribing once it's a unified platform. But, I would also like to see what Apple's RCS implementation ends up looking like and if that's viable for what I'd like to see.
Thanks again for going over this in depth.
Why can't we just agree to use watsapp
Because it’s owned by Facebook.
@@snazzy whoah you're telling me big companies own messaging apps? who owns imessage?
@@kodikodi6752Not Facebook.
Signal, preferably. imessage->whatsapp is just one billion dollar company to another.
A company who is old fashioned in the sense that they primarily make money from selling physical products with a significant margin. The other services are paid for by user targeted advertising, or venture capital with a hope to recoup money in the future from user tracking. Carriers made money by charging for SMS and MMS per message. iMessage killed that - Apple got AT&T to agree to unlimited data on iPhone, then shipped iMessage which only uses data. Suddenly the carrier doesn't get SMS or MMS money anymore. And Apple pays to run iMessage (servers etc) out of their profits from hardware sales. Sure recently they're selling services eg Apple TV+, Music, Arcade etc but these have their own costs associated.@@kodikodi6752Even email isn't free, someone has to pay for the server, somehow.
Yup, Just tried from here in Hyderabad, India. Downloaded beeper on my Mi Phone and my S23 Ultra. This guy needs to be given an award for letting us know that. But the problem is the subscriptions aren't being synced with devices with same google account. I don't know if its some kind of regional market-place restriction.
Interesting, but you don't really need iMessage in India, right?
With RCS support finally coming to iOS will that change the desire to use things like this? It feels like these solutions are finally showing up right when the EU pressured Apple into actually supporting a standard that should have been there a few years ago.
Maybe change the degree of it, but a big part of it is the social pressures that come from I believe 80% of US teenagers having iPhones. RCS is much better than SMS, but it’s still not going to have all the iMessage features
Great video! Thanks for sharing. From a product standpoint it is interesting to see that iMessage on Android is considered enough of a problem for this amount of effort to be put into solving it. I feel this is a very very US problem.
Congratulations Beeper, I was working on this exact thing.
You beat me..
One of my favorite videos this year from you Q!
This video aged like milk left in the sun.
Excellent video. Well explained, especially how Beeper reverse engineered iMessage. I've been using it since yesterday. So far, it seems to work well with a few bugs. I can't change my profile icon. I also get an error message when I try to message a few friends who have iPhones.
I applaud Beeper for finding what might be a legal way to bridge the gap between Android and iPhones that Apple intentionally made and refuses to fully fix. I get that RCS is coming to iPhone, but the contrast ratio of the green bubbles is harder to read. I got a taste of it myself with the Beeper app as previous SMS conversations are the same green shade. It literally takes me twice as long to read them due to poor contrast ratio.
The contrast ratio for iPhone green bubbles can be fixed with the high contrast option
@@xEqualsRandom 99.9% of iPhone users don't know this. It shouldn't be necessary anyway.
As en Europen I will never understand this..
no one...
iPhone users here hate having to use anything other than the stock messaging app to send media or text messages. Huge iMessage culture
As a European, try making a group of 10 people switch from Whatsapp to Signal
@@spht9ng I don't think I've ever used a stock messaging app..
I love that snazzy is using a systems 76 machine
Insane Android users go through all this so iOS users don’t have to download any one of the countless good messaging apps
L Android and iOS moment
I can see why iOS users prefer using imessage, the experience of using imessage is better than any other messaging app.
@@sadatnafis2032 disagree, Telegram has better UI, more customizability, and generally feels faster.
Signal is also excellent and completely open-source so more privacy friendly
@@sadatnafis2032not true by far
How is iMessage is better? The only “better” feature is that it works out of the box.
You have to use the time dimension. The fact is sms doesn’t need to be instant. Not even close. You can leverage over 2 seconds of compute time.
As an Android I just started using it. I've already decided that I'm going to pay $2 a month. Pitching in $2 to say "**** you" to Apple is a great use of the spare change, plus it helps keep up dev costs of stopping Apple patching attempts.
and... its gone!
It's gone!
Very interesting - I heard about this earlier this week but didn't understand how it could occur. Appreciate the detail as always!
Super cool! I really do wonder how long Apple will allow this to stay operating. Anybody start a betting pool yet?
They've been allowing it for years through apps like Airmessage and Bluebubbles. Beeper, Sunbird, and Nothing also offer iMessage compatibility to android users. Apple is getting their pants sued off in Europe currently for anti-trust issues. If they touch these companies they only compound their own legal problems.
Great system design breakdown Snazzy!
According to the rest of the world, they don't use imessage and what app is the popular choice.
No thanks. Meta spies on me enough as is.
@@snazzy many other options exist, you don't have to pay to buy into apple's cult of imessage
If you’re American, you literally do. Nobody uses other apps and nobody will since iOS has such a stronghold on the market.
@@snazzy So you admit Apple has a monopoly then.
@@burnzy3210 Not really. Apple doesn't do anything to block/prevent others from using messaging apps such as Signal or WhatsApp. They've just made their own app built-in and somewhat decent to the point where people don't bother installing other apps.
Seriously Snazzy what did you do before UA-cam. your detailed knowledge about tech is impressive. Unless you ave a coworker that has a degree in computer sciences
You lost me at 0:53 💸
It’s $2. Less than $25 a YEAR
Why not just buy an old iphone (even the iphone 5 can still send an imessage) if you really wanted imessage?
This didn't age well...
Good to see you excited man!
sorry to say this but Apple already plugged the hole that Beeper was exploiting to step into iMessage☹
Well Quinn, i AM a frickin nerd and i absolutely LOVED the deep dive up on the history, the technology, and how it all works!
This video didn't age well.
Spoofing device credentials with valid IDs is still a loophole, which is what this seems to be. It can suddenly be ended.
$2 is very reasonable for someone who values the blue bubble but wants to give android a try, it also solves some of the issues with someone switching from iOS to android, now they can get full blue bubbles.
Literally paying _by the month_ to join a cult instead of using a ground up multi-platform messaging app
@@burnzy3210 The court of public opinion always has an iron grip... At least with Beeper mini, I can use Android to the fullest
The question is: Why is this even necessary? Why should I care whether I get a blue or green message? Do they change the meaning of text messages? Seems like a waste of time to me. What is the benefit?
E2EE, high resolution media, tapback and typing indicator support, editing, voice memos, everything MMS can’t do.
The color of the text bubbles have become more of a symbolic summarization of the struggle but doesn’t really explain the key functional differences. Mostly media messaging and encryption are much improved over MMS.
Apple already patched it by Friday 08 December 2023. 🤣
sorry, i skimmed through this but to be clear does this require me to use Beeper for all SMS on Android, or does it only handle incoming iMessage conversations?
Only imessage. I installed it and it scanned my message history and imported all the ones sent by iphones (not many in my case, imessage isn't popular in this country).
I believe they're working on SMS/RCS support.
Everywhere else in the world: We've got whatsapp
WhatsApp is probably one of the best chat apps ever existed
I have cushions that where born and currently live in Israel. They all have iPhones, none of them use imessage. In fact they all say it's insupior to what'sapp
Who wants to entrust their messages to Facebook?
@TimpossibleOne alot of people out side of the US. BTW I mainly used messenger so there's that.
Also why do we need this when you can get Signal on both Android and iOS and get all iMessage features for free?