Beeper Mini, an easy-to-use Android iMessage solution, seems to have been a fleeting dream or just too wonderful to be true. Less than a week after its release, on Friday, users could no longer send or receive blue bubble messages due to technical difficulties with the program. As the day went on, the issues worsened, and the Beeper subreddit saw a backlog of reports. As of Friday afternoon, a handful of employees at The Verge were unable to use Beeper Mini to activate their Android phone numbers. This is a definite sign that Apple has closed any loopholes that may have previously allowed the app to function.
A thorough effort was made to reverse engineer Apple’s messaging protocol to create Beeper Mini. It was successfully executed by a sixteen-year-old high school student, and for a while, everything went according to plan. The new app, which costs $2 a month to use, was inspired by that attempt. This is what my coworker Jake wrote a few days ago:
The programmers were able to set up a phone number for iMessage, transmit messages straight to Apple’s servers, and have messages returned to your phone within the app itself. Deconstructing Apple’s message system from the ground up was a challenging procedure. The Beeper team had to determine how to retrieve the communications from the cloud, where to deliver them, and what format they should take. According to Migicovsky, determining whether the connected device is a legitimate Apple product—basically Apple’s system-wide padlock—was the most difficult aspect of the process.
Snazzy Labs’ Quinn Nelson has also produced a great video that goes over the technical intricacies. The developers and users of Beeper had the assumption, or perhaps the hope, that blocking the Android app would be such a bother for Apple that it wouldn’t be worth it. It seemed to be simpler than anyone had anticipated.
The business had hoped to develop Beeper Mini into an all-in-one messaging app that would eventually wrap both SMS and RCS, but this throws a major wrench in their plans.
When contacted for comment, Eric Migicovsky, the CEO of Beeper, did not dispute that Apple has effectively stopped Beeper Mini. “If Apple is involved, then the most important question is, in my opinion, why would Apple discontinue a service that allows its customers to send encrypted messages to Android users instead of using unsafe SMS if Apple genuinely cares about the security and privacy of its own iPhone users? It’s evident from Apple’s announcement of RCS support that they are aware of this serious weakness. Today, Beeper Mini arrived and functions flawlessly. Why do iPhone users transmit unencrypted SMS messages during friend chats on Android again?
Prior attempts to get iMessage to function on Android, such as Beeper’s initial app, required intricate setups involving distant Mac computers that were connected to the user’s Apple ID. Carl Pei, one of the co-founders of OnePlus, launched Nothing, a firm that recently attempted to integrate iMessage with its newest phone. However, security and privacy issues swiftly disrupted that idea. The most impressive attempt to date was the Beeper Mini, which interacted with Apple’s servers. However, if the business is unable to circumvent Apple’s ban, it will only last a short while.
