Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper’s ‘iMessage to Android’ solution::U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage,
Why would they do that? The point is exclusivity to foster peer pressure to all be on iPhone. Google offered to integrate with iMessage and vice versa, so that consumers would have the best experience regardless of platform, ages ago. Apple declined, and then removed some of Googles office suite apps from their store.
Step 1) use peer pressure to get teens on platform
Step 2) vendor lock-in to keep them as lifetime customers
Step 3) profit
You need the dumb parents to participate. If parents just said “no, you’re getting an android”, this wouldn’t be a problem. Parents are complicit.
What’s the point of asking questions when this community just downvotes? Why even have a forum if it’s only use is to.upvote things that agree with your pre established opinions?
I’m having a brain fart, what movie is this from again? I remember the scene but can’t remember the movie
Your primary contribution to this conversation is to bitch about how no one engages with you? I see users responding to you but then all you are responding back with is editing your comment to say “thanks for answering”? Idk man… maybe it’s your approach to dialogue. Being super dismissive and retaliatory tends to bring downvotes.
I had asked the same question and was downvoted to -10 before I deleted it and reposted it. It’s an issue I’ve been seeing in this community growing for a while now, so yeah I’m gonna bitch when this place starts turning into reddit.
Oh I see. Didn’t realize you’d already deleted it. Anyway, best of luck; I think you bring up valid complaints but idk why the vitriol. This crowd is much less annoying than what’s found in some similar forums. Don’t let the downvotes bother you too much.
It’s an issue I’ve been seeing
in this community growingon the internet for a while now, so yeah I’m gonna bitch when this place starts turning into
There, fixed.
It’s the internet, grow some thicker skin, or figure out how to interface with your fellow netizens differently.
Oh no! You got downvoty wotied!
Now what? We gonna stop posting just because of a little red number? That’s stupid.
Watch this I’m gonna make my own comment go from 3 downvotes to 4
Guess what? It doesn’t matter.
Honestly it’s hard to see how messages don’t fall under the protection of net neutrality.
I mean they do, but that doesn’t mean a message platform can’t platform lock itself.
The ISP isn’t discriminating… that’s net neutrality.
I think you might be a bit confused.
It just feels like users being restricted to not having any incoming or outgoing communication across operating systems is discriminating. The reason Beeper’s previous and current solutions stopped working is because they started blocking it. If Apple had successfully built a protocol that couldn’t be accessed by Android devices then that would be one thing, but they failed to do that and now they’re discriminating against otherwise valid connections.
It’s a competitive advantage. Nothing wrong with that from a business perspective.
Why should Apple build something to work with Android? That would allow people in Apple’s hand to swap. No business reason to do it. Why waste server time servicing a competing platform’s user’s messages?
Then again, there isn’t really a reason why iMessage is a big benefit with RCS, Whatsapp, Messenger, SMS, Signal, etc. exist.
According to the given logic, logic if I reverse engineer Facebook Messenger, I should be able to have my app that talks to FB Messenger users. I would have it until, they block me out. They have a terms of service that likely disallows this usage. They have a right to enforce that.
At the end of the day I could care less about iMessage but can defend Apple’s right to be a walled garden if they want, even if I disagree, etc.
It just feels like users being restricted to not having any incoming or outgoing communication across operating systems is discriminating.
That’s not remotely what’s happening though? I have only ever had android devices, but message people on apple devices all the time. I don’t know or care what colour my sms messages show up on their devices, but they do show up. And maybe they have a bunch of iOS-only secret chat orgies they don’t tell me about, but who cares? I can still talk to them across discord, line, WhatsApp, Instagram, fb messenger, slack, Skype, signal, telegram, irc and God knows how many other different chat apps my friends and I have used at various times. The fact that iMessage is Apple exclusive doesn’t make a difference to anything, they all have a different subset of apps anyway even just the android users so i have to have all those apps installed too, and my iPhone friends have the same.
Ah, you’re right, the reimplementation of some of the old rules was voted to pass in October 2023 so it’s probably still in the works. Damn.
Wow, think about that for a moment. ISPs could be controlling everything we see and don’t see right at this moment. Kind of fucked.
They’re still regulated under Title 1, just not as much. Theres much less of an obligation to set a fair price, for example. More so pointing out we can’t necessarily rely on net neutrality as something that generally protects anyone from anything anymore. It only prevents business from doing specific things that are seen as bad business, the consumer isn’t really in mind
If it accessed the message system directly then it makes sense. They’re was one just before it that ran on Mac mini farms.
Beeper Mini registered your phone number with Apple and connected directly to the iMessage servers. That version was killed after three days of usage. The mac mini farm still works but that’s just through an apple ID email address.
I recall reading somewhere that you could register your number by putting your SIM card in some old iPhone and activating iMessage and your number gets linked to your Apple ID, once that’s done, you could power off the iPhone and put it back in your Android. Although there was some caveat like needing to repeat this process a few months(?) or something otherwise your number would drop off. Not sure if all of this is still valid though.
I have such a love/hate relationship with my senator.
- She basically brought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into existence, which helps TONS of people not get fucked over by banks and stuff
- Simultaneously, she tends to support corporatist stuff a frustrating amount of the time, and (similar to how Feinstein was, but not quite as bad) doesn’t really know what she’s talking about when it comes to tech and the nuances involved
Edit: to be clear, this isn’t me doing a “hail corporate” and saying Apple is categorically in the right here - simply that there are a LOT more technical complexities going on here than the (reductive) statement Warren made seems to indicate
