We’ve created an updated version of Beeper Mini that fixes an issue that caused messages not to be sent or received. We even added in a few new feature improvements: chats now open at the last unread message, and we polished the video player a bit!
How long do you think it’ll be back for this time? I’d consider trying it again after I finish a very important life event soon. Right now I can’t afford to have messages going to a black box though.
Why not use regular text or email? Is it just about green vs blue bubbles? I’ve never understood why anyone thinks this is important.
I guess you aren’t living in the US either.
The iPhone is extremely popular over there, especially amongst teens the market share is over 80%. Also, because of cheap SMS and MMS people actually continued to use SMS while e.g. most of the EU quickly switched to internet messengers.
At the same internet messengers started to appear, Apple released iMessage which is a internet messenger with an SMS/MMS fallback for chatting with non-iMessage devices. This experience is worse for many reasons, notably the terrible 500KB media size limit makes videos unwatchable.
Additionally, MMS group chats are a thing in the US. This means a single non-iMessage device in a group makes the experience worse for everyone.
This lead to most people using their pre-installed messaging app, which is a worse experience on Android (SMS) than on Apple (actually modern messenger). It’s not an issue in other countries because people are accustomed to instantly installing WhatsApp on their new device.
Edit: As a teen, I didn’t even know MMS could do groups because ten years ago it would’ve been prohibitively expensive anyway.
Important to note that all of this is intentional by Apple. They intentionally degrade the experience when a non-Apple device is involved.
Which is why they broke this product last time, and why they’ll break it again.
Android (SMS) than on Apple (actually modern messenger)
This hasn’t been true for years. Android has had full RCS support built into the default Messages app (and all major Android manufacturer third party apps also support it). RCS includes every major feature iMessage feature that differentiated it from SMS, but Apple refuses to implement it on iOS because that removes their iMessage monopoly.
This experience is worse for many reasons, notably the terrible 500KB media size limit makes videos unwatchable.
I am trying to figure out why I want videos in my chat. Just link it. It is weird that media size if limited by carrier, not mms itself. So that is a pain, where the range (again depending on carrier) is say 3 megabytes to 500KB. Artificial limitations and inconsistency is annoying.
In any case I have Apple and Android, I have family with a mix of both as well, and I do not get all the whining. Messages work, group chats work, images work. so Meh. No big deal. Even with family in Africa, the UK, and the US.
IDC about the colors, but being able to respond to individual messages within a conversation, being able to edit, and seeing which images a friend responded to is a nice to have. Android does all this stuff too, but until this Beeper app, neither phone OS played nice with the other. So that’s why it’s nice to have over regular SMS. As for regular email for an ongoing group conversation between friends? What is this, 1999? :P Email is not a good format for instant messaging like text messages are.
Hmm ok. Yeah I’m used to IRC for group chats and I thought there were some hipster counterparts like Matrix that I hadn’t tried. I didn’t realize iMessage wasn’t just SMS with blue bubbles. I still don’t understand what it has vs the bazillion other chat apps out there but I guess it’s a Steve Jobs thing. Thanks.
Only one thing is abundantly clear: you don’t want your communications in the clutches of Big Tech.
This US problem with iMessage always sounds so bizarre to me
I don’t see why it’s bizarre. Apple worked hard on getting their devices into people’s hands and created an ecosystem to keep people buying their devices again in the future.
Besides, it’s no different from any other countries dependancy on other messaging applications, like WhatsApp!
WhatsApp is universally available, not locked down by the dominating platform’s own proprietor.
True.
But the point is the lock-in is similar from a social perspective, just hardened even further by tying the messaging platform to specific hardware.
“Hey let’s use XYZ instead of iMessage” and “hey let’s use XYZ instead of WhatsApp” will be met with the same typical resistance to any sort of change. But in the case of iMessage, there’s added elitism and othering due to Apple’s using iMessage as a lock-in to their hardware.
I think the big difference in the US is that iMessage was leagues ahead of SMS well before there were any good, popular 3rd party mobile messaging apps. iPhones also dominated here, and still do, largely due to that early market dominance.
No but a large portion of the world uses WhatsApp. Personally, since it became a Meta application I want to move away from it. Doing so though is not easily done without mass adoption. You’re highly dependent on your other contacts.
I was hoping RCS will be the next best thing. But I won’t be holding my breath.
The fact that people chose an app mostly locked to a platform or something that encourages you to just use that specific platform by placing restrictions on the other platform. They could’ve used something like Whatsapp but no. They chose imessage. No other country has this problem.
The ultimate power move for Apple would be to require an iCloud+ subscription to use this service.
Yay?
