Remember I brought you a story about an Android app called Beeper Mini that brought the blue bubble, aka iMessage, experience to Android phones? At the time I said this:
Now while the video does point out that it would be difficult for Apple to kill this, you can bet that Apple will try to find a way to kill this. Be it via changing something in iMessage, or by suing the company out of existence. Apple has demonstrated that the blue bubble/green bubble thing is something that they are perfectly fine with. And anything that threatens that is something that Apple will try to dispatch with extreme prejudice. Thus while it appears that this app is fully functional, it may not stay that way for long.
Well, the news is out that Beeper Mini no longer works. Via TechCrunch:
Beeper, the startup that reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users, is experiencing an outage, the company reported via a post on X on Friday. And Apple is to blame, it seems. Users, including those of us at TechCrunch with access to the app, began seeing error messages when trying to send texts via the newly released Beeper Mini and messages are not going through.
The error message reads: “failed to lookup on server: lookup request timed out” spelled out in red letters.
In a response to a question on Reddit as to whether or not the app was broken, a Beeper team member had earlier replied, “Report a problem from the app, give us a chance to look into it.”
However, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky responded to TechCrunch’s inquiry about Beeper Mini’s status by pointing us to the X post acknowledging the outage, and providing more detail. Asked if possibly Apple found a way to cut off Beeper Mini’s ability to function, he replied, “Yes, all data indicates that.”
Honestly I’m not surprised by this as I fully expected Apple to to find a way to take them out. But I have to admit that this happened pretty quickly. But the real question is will Beeper Mini make a return and start playing cat and mouse with Apple as the company figures out a new way to operate, and Apple then cuts them off again? Or are they down for the count? Your guess is as good as mine.
Let’s see what happens in the coming days. But for now, it seems that once again the only way to get iMessage is with an iPhone.
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This entry was posted on December 9, 2023 at 8:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Apple Appears To Have Taken Out Beeper Mini… So Much For iMessage On Android
Remember I brought you a story about an Android app called Beeper Mini that brought the blue bubble, aka iMessage, experience to Android phones? At the time I said this:
Now while the video does point out that it would be difficult for Apple to kill this, you can bet that Apple will try to find a way to kill this. Be it via changing something in iMessage, or by suing the company out of existence. Apple has demonstrated that the blue bubble/green bubble thing is something that they are perfectly fine with. And anything that threatens that is something that Apple will try to dispatch with extreme prejudice. Thus while it appears that this app is fully functional, it may not stay that way for long.
Well, the news is out that Beeper Mini no longer works. Via TechCrunch:
Beeper, the startup that reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users, is experiencing an outage, the company reported via a post on X on Friday. And Apple is to blame, it seems. Users, including those of us at TechCrunch with access to the app, began seeing error messages when trying to send texts via the newly released Beeper Mini and messages are not going through.
The error message reads: “failed to lookup on server: lookup request timed out” spelled out in red letters.
In a response to a question on Reddit as to whether or not the app was broken, a Beeper team member had earlier replied, “Report a problem from the app, give us a chance to look into it.”
However, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky responded to TechCrunch’s inquiry about Beeper Mini’s status by pointing us to the X post acknowledging the outage, and providing more detail. Asked if possibly Apple found a way to cut off Beeper Mini’s ability to function, he replied, “Yes, all data indicates that.”
Honestly I’m not surprised by this as I fully expected Apple to to find a way to take them out. But I have to admit that this happened pretty quickly. But the real question is will Beeper Mini make a return and start playing cat and mouse with Apple as the company figures out a new way to operate, and Apple then cuts them off again? Or are they down for the count? Your guess is as good as mine.
Let’s see what happens in the coming days. But for now, it seems that once again the only way to get iMessage is with an iPhone.
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This entry was posted on December 9, 2023 at 8:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.