Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

Looks like Nothing is partnering with a US-based third party called Sunbird to build this service. From Sunbird’s site (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sunbirdapp.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sunbirdapp.com</a>):<p>&gt; Will the app be open source?<p>&gt; Some of the messaging community believes that software that is open source is more secure. It is our view that it is not. The more visibility there is into the infrastructure and code, the easier it is to penetrate it. By design, open source software is distributed in nature. There is no central authority to ensure quality and maintenance and by putting that responsibility on Sunbird, development would not be feasible. Open source vulnerabilities typically stem from poorly written code that leave gaps, which attackers can use to carryout malicious activities.<p>Not sure I’d be willing to trust them with my Apple ID credentials.

Is this a US specific thing? Why do people want to have their messages seen in blue bubbles so much? Why not just use another messaging app such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc?

It looks like this is powered by Sunbird: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sunbirdapp.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sunbirdapp.com</a>.<p>Another alternative for iMessage is Beeper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.beeper.com&#x2F;imessage">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.beeper.com&#x2F;imessage</a><p>They both have a waitlist at the moment, but Beeper seems to be opening up to a lot of new people.

Trivial for Apple to shut them out, unfortunately. It would be great to have an easy to use, low friction messaging platform that wasn&#x27;t controlled by FB or the Telcos.<p>I like Signal but haven&#x27;t been able to get my family members on board.<p>Edit: Alternative ongoing discussion I noticed:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38268184">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38268184</a> (3 comments)

As a small business owner who relies on SMS for coordinating repair pickups and drop offs, as well as media transmission, just seeing the blue bubble means I can instantly ascertain whether their hardware is capable of in terms of shared features like location sharing, compatible media sharing, etc. When I see a green bubble, often times I don&#x27;t bother trying to send hi-res photos via SMS and I just go straight to emailing or using another platform like instagram or what have you.

Hopefully the EU (or, in an alternate reality, the US) will eventually force Apple to finally implement RCS messages (or, less likely, open up iMessage).

I would be cautious of using this with an Apple ID that has any purchases or oauth sign ins. Could be a EULA violation. Then suddenly lose access to all data. No recourse. Thanks, Walled In environment!<p>Also I wonder if there is any feature disparity between nothing&#x2F;songbird and iMessage. In my experience, dealing with these bridges is far from perfect. Especially if one or more of them is closed source like imessage. Never know when a change will happen and break your flows

What kind of people still use phone numbers to send messages to people? This is exclusively an American phenomenon; the rest of the world moved away from SMS ages ago. I don&#x27;t think any of my iPhone-using friends or acquaintances even know what iMessage is.

The nothing website claims:<p>&gt; Nothing Chats is built on Sunbird&#x27;s platform and all Chats messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning neither we nor Sunbird can access the messages you&#x27;re sending and receiving.<p>&gt; Nothing is powered by Sunbird, and Sunbird&#x27;s architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey. Messages are not stored on Sunbird&#x27;s servers and are only live on your device – once a message is delivered, it can only be recovered locally from your personal device.<p>From: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;us.nothing.tech&#x2F;pages&#x2F;nothing-chats" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;us.nothing.tech&#x2F;pages&#x2F;nothing-chats</a><p>The Verge claims:<p>&gt; Marques Brownlee has also had a preview of Nothing Chats. He confirmed with Nothing that, similar to how other iMessage-to-Android bridge services have worked before, “...it’s literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere, and that Mac Mini will then do all of the routing for you to make this happen.”<p>From: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;11&#x2F;14&#x2F;23960516&#x2F;nothing-chats-imessage-android-phone" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;11&#x2F;14&#x2F;23960516&#x2F;nothing-chats-i...</a><p>It seems to me like if they are doing the typical thing of using a bridge like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mautrix&#x2F;imessage">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mautrix&#x2F;imessage</a> then that isn&#x27;t really E2EE, the messages are being stored, and could be accessed by Sunbird. I don&#x27;t really see how their claims could be true. Does anyone know? Am I missing something?

Phones just had one job... It&#x27;s pretty funny where we ended up.

AFAICT this is the thing enabling the &quot;blue bubbles&quot;, which the Nothing Phone bundles:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sunbirdapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sunbirdapp.com&#x2F;</a><p>Not to be confused with Mozilla&#x27;s (if anyone remembers that one):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mozilla_Sunbird" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mozilla_Sunbird</a>

Everyone is concerned about providing their Apple credentials but I think you can always create a throwaway Apple ID on a separate e-mail (or move yours off your primary email) so that there&#x27;s nothing sensitive in the account besides the messages themselves?

Do most Android users actually care one way or an another?<p>IMO, it seems like there&#x27;s a small, if vocal, minority of folks with a deeply weird inferiority complex around blue bubbles and most people don&#x27;t care at all. None of my Android using friends seem to give a shit.

9to5Mac.com are reporting that Apple are going to support RCS messaging soon: &gt; Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.<p>I&#x27;m curious what people think the game plan and business dynamics is for this decision?

Really don&#x27;t encourage using an external service to use imessage. Giving your apple credentials and also the dependency on Sim cards to make it stable is just trouble waiting to happen.<p>To this day, the best solution for imessage on Android is BlueBubbles or Airmessage. I use both for redundancy. It does require having my Sim in an iPhone, and having a Mac, for everything to be bulletproof.<p>I don&#x27;t recommend it to people who aren&#x27;t technical, but it&#x27;s helped me with my dating life to have blue messages...

I was just thinking of doing this myself. I&#x27;m hoping Apple doesn&#x27;t shut it down. I recently switched to an iPhone because all of my friends use iMessage (I&#x27;m in the US). I&#x27;m not happy about having to switch, but it&#x27;s how they choose to communicate and it&#x27;s a heck of a lot better than SMS&#x2F;MMS. I&#x27;m planning to buy a used Mac Mini and connect it to some messaging gateway or build my own. Then I can use whatever phone I want (used to be a pinephone user).

as to the rest of you like you have to share your Apple ID with Nothing&#x2F;Sunbird and are like that&#x27;s a disaster waiting to happen not for me, I barely used my Apple ID and actually since their cloud service wasn&#x27;t end to end encrypted and zero knowledge I started disabling my cloud backup and deleting what was in my Apple cloud before I went over to Android. I told people my Tech Tip was not to to use them but use SpiderOak, Very little has changed. Only problem with my advice is like, Write your password down and put one in a secure deposit at the bank because if you forget it they can&#x27;t help you.

Site not loading for me, but probably this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nothing.tech&#x2F;pages&#x2F;nothing-chats" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nothing.tech&#x2F;pages&#x2F;nothing-chats</a>

I like what they are trying to do, but unfortunately it breaks the E2EE (end-to-end-encryption) and their website isn&#x27;t clear about that.

But how so? Encryption? Will it break at every other small change from Apple?

Countdown to Apple sending them a strongly worded cease and desist letter.

Site doesn’t work. But I suspect backend might be a matrix bridge.

Technically and legally this should be possible. Unfortunately there are both ethical and technical reasons to avoid Sunbird. The Sunbird developers are spreading a FUD hit piece against open source software[1], which rubs me very wrong. They also clearly don&#x27;t understand software development best practices.<p>The following statement from Sunbird makes no sense, and only serves to imply that they don&#x27;t practice code review: &quot;There is no central authority to ensure quality and maintenance [of open source contributions] and by putting that responsibility on Sunbird, development would not be feasible.&quot;<p>If they&#x27;re worried that open source contributions will sneak flaws past code review, then they clearly aren&#x27;t ready to review existing closed source contributions either.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;sephr&#x2F;status&#x2F;1648471196680478720" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;sephr&#x2F;status&#x2F;1648471196680478720</a>

you can always use beeper app too and sign into IG, FB, WhatsApp, imessage, signal, telegram in one app

They should also add WhatsApp support

you can do iMessage to Android.

Seems irrelevant. Who cares about the bubble color?