It Looks Like Beeper Has Given Up On iMessage Integration For Good

This requires some explanation. So here we go.

You might recall the folks over at Beeper. These were the guys who were trying to get iMessage on Android. And their story went like this:

They popped up in early December of last year claiming to have a way to get iMessage working on Android devices.
Everything was fine until Apple took them out a few days later.
Beeper then announced that they had a fix, and then rolled it out. But it turned out that it required a Mac. But then they moved to jailbroken iPhones when the platform was taken out by Apple again.
During that time Apple attracted unwanted attention from politicians over their attempts to stop Beeper. This allowed Beeper to make themselves look like the good guy, when in reality they were not the good guy. But at the same time saying that Beeper was getting sick of the cat and mouse and announced that they wouldn’t be investing time and effort in keeping their iMessage service working.

So with that out of the way, let’s catch you up to today. Or at least the last couple of weeks. Let’s start with this Tweet:

Apple banned some Beeper user Mac computers, New York Times investigated, Apple unbanned.

The saga continues! Even after we've shifted our energy from iMessage back to our core Beeper product (15 network universal chat app), Apple cannot seem to get enough!

Here's the TLDR: pic.twitter.com/pMln2xK6Kf
— Beeper (@onbeeper) January 26, 2024

Now you need to click on the Tweet to get the full details, but here’s the TL:DR.

So what was happening was that Beeper users who were using their own Macs to make the iMessage on Android service work were getting their Macs banned from using iMessage. And it’s interesting that only after The New York Times got involved did those computers get unbanned. I guess that Apple didn’t need the negative media attention. But clearly Beeper is done with this and they have disabled the ability for users to start new iMessage connections from Beeper Cloud. Though there’s nothing stopping them from allowing that again in the future. Thus it looks like Beeper is dead. At least for now.

The thing is that I have said this before and I will say it again. Android users deserve way better than this. But having said that, if Android users really want to get access to iMessage, then they should buy iPhones. Full stop. What Beeper is doing is simply creating a security issue for Apple that they are rightly closing. Because iMessage is not an open standard. It’s Apple’s standard. And they get to decide who does, and more importantly who doesn’t get to use it.

This entry was posted on January 31, 2024 at 9:10 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.

The IT Nerd