Beeper Mini is now open-source

This link is to the iMessage bridge that they open sourced 10 (edit: 2) days ago. Has anything changed since then, or is this a duplicate of this?<p>Edit: 700+ comments: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38722246">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38722246</a><p>Edit: correct link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.beeper.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;imessage-and-phone-registration-are">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.beeper.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;imessage-and-phone-registration-ar...</a>

Something worth noting: unless I&#x27;m missing something, this isn&#x27;t Beeper Mini (the Android app) but the iMessage-Matrix bridge Beeper created. However, this is still handy if you have a Mac or jailbroken iPhone (edit: for registration, seems like it&#x27;s not required after the initial setup) as you can self-host it.

I was using regular Beeper to consolidate my chat apps into one, but this mess with Android to iPhone has made everything so unstable that I dropped iMessage from the app. I wish they hadn&#x27;t rocked the boat with Mini, it&#x27;s affecting the users who don&#x27;t try to circumvent Apple&#x27;s lock-in too.

Beeper (before mini) was working with iMessage by relaying messages from VMs, probably one VM for x users.<p>November 15 ( or a bit earlier, but communicated on that date) they switched to new iMessage bridge, where Beeper client directly communicated with Apple servers.<p>Beginning of December they launched Beeper Mini.<p>My theory is: their move to move from VM relay to new bridge caused problems, but VM relay was not sustainable with growth. Maybe Apple started to require re-validation, maybe it was like this to begin with.<p>So eventually they rolled the dice with Beeper Mini and in the end existing Beeper users have to provide a Mac for validation.<p>I think this will be good for Beeper, as I guess slowly they will retire iMessage totally. And focus on the on the other bridges. They are a bit more sustainable now.

Bold move! Can Apple just acquire the Beeper Mini team to stop this move? Or they could acquire them to make an official Android iMessaging app.

Can we get a title fix?

Linus Sebastian (online tech media personality) sums up my thoughts on this perfectly. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EXqivw5YLys&amp;t=149" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EXqivw5YLys&amp;t=149</a>

I got an iPhone 15 Pro Max last month. It&#x27;s great, I dig it. I&#x27;m a case-free dude and there are zero scratches on the screen or titanium, the industrial design is tight and amazing. There&#x27;s finally USB-C, and the camera is great. This was an expensive phone, but it&#x27;s a timeless design and unless something crazy happens, I strongly suspect it&#x27;s actually going to take me into 2030.<p>But I have to tell you. Not a single friend has commented that I&#x27;m now on an iPhone. I asked my elderly mom - yes, I previously got her an iPhone before I did, I&#x27;m a good son - if I had obtained the magic blue bubbles. She was like &quot;oh yes, I thought something had changed.&quot; I am not sexier, thinner or more popular since I suddenly appeared with blue bubbles on iMessage. My own (iPhone-toting) adult daughter didn&#x27;t mention it. IMO, nobody outside of teenagers care.

Apple has done a good job of making it feel exclusive. It’s like the Berghain of message apps. I wish more friends would move to WhatsApp.

16 year old dude reverse engineers iMessages AND writes a better messaging app than google with their 99 attempts over 20 years.

Honestly I just want an Android iMessage app. If this forces Apple&#x27;s hand that would be awesome.

I guess this kind of <i>fully</i> removes the &quot;they&#x27;re making money out of it&quot; argument from the discussion on the moral(?) implications of reverse engineering the iMessage proto.<p>Now it&#x27;s just a matter of: is Apple justified in <i>actively</i> sabotaging interoperability in general?

As a non-North-American, Beeper mini keeps me thinking if the whole point of this feud is about the colour of the bubble surrounding a message. Of, course, I know there is more than that, I mean, there must be... but so far, the debate of whether or or not the common user cares about the cryptographic security of their conversations online does not seem to strike me as the selling point for this type of implementation.

This whole debate seems asinine to me. Erik must know he&#x27;s in the wrong here. The idea that we can force any company to allow third party clients to their service by regulation is an obviously bad idea. Just because Beeper (probably) isn&#x27;t doing something shady with user data doesn&#x27;t mean Apple must be required to trust them.<p>What if I make a 3rd party client that actively records my users&#x27; iMessages and sells them to Facebook? Should Apple be required to support my app too? If not, are they expected to audit and vouch for every third party client? If yes, how is Apple supposed to make any claims about the security of iMessage if I have no control over the client my recipient might be using?<p>The whole interoperable API argument comes from the same place as &quot;encryption where the good guys have keys,&quot; yet somehow demands for interoperability seem to be much more popular on HN. The E2E in E2E encryption stands for end-to-end, which inherently requires trusting both ends. Otherwise you might as well not have encryption.<p>Note that whether or not companies should be required to support third party clients is a different debate than whether or not Apple should be required to support Android, even if the end result happens to be similar in this case. I think most people defending Beeper are interested in the latter and are willing to burn down encryption to get it via the former. As a user, sure I&#x27;d love for my Android friends to use iMessage too. But this is not the way.<p>(To be clear, I don&#x27;t think we should regulate that Apple has to support Android either. If I develop a new OS, would every company be required to build a client for their service for my new OS too? But at least I understand the merits of that debate.)