Beeper Mini is as soon as once more having connectivity points with its iMessage-compatible Android app. Final night time, the app stopped working for five% of its customers, and the developer stated Apple was “intentionally blocking iMessages from being delivered.”
Beeper Mini informed affected customers that uninstalling and reinstalling the app might act as a workaround till a repair was launched. Whereas points with the Beeper Clous service have been mounted, some Beeper Mini customers report which are nonetheless experiencing connectivity points.
Beeper builders name Apple’s persevering with efforts to dam that app “tremendous annoying,” complaining that Apple is penalizing their very own clients in addition to Android customers searching for encrypted chats. Nonetheless, Apple has made it clear that it’s going to do its greatest to dam Beeper Mini.
We understand how extremely inconvenient that is for you. It is tremendous annoying that Apple is penalizing their very own clients and Android customers who simply need safe and encrypted chats.
We perceive in case you select to uninstall Beeper Mini at the moment. Hope to have you ever again quickly.— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 14, 2023
Beeper Mini initially launched final week and promised to offer Android customers with a full iMessage expertise. The builders reverse-engineered iMessage to develop the app, which registers Android customers’ telephone numbers with Apple’s iMessage servers.
The app did what it promised to, bringing the coveted “blue bubbles” to textual content conversations between iPhone and Android customers, permitting learn receipts, reactions, typing indicators, and different iMessage options to work as they need to. Nonetheless, Apple moved shortly to place a cease to it.
Three days after the Beeper Mini launch, the app ceased working. Apple confirmed that it had shut down the app.
At Apple, we construct our services and products with industry-leading privateness and safety applied sciences designed to offer customers management of their knowledge and maintain private data protected. We took steps to guard our customers by blocking strategies that exploit pretend credentials to be able to acquire entry to iMessage. These strategies posed important dangers to person safety and privateness, together with the potential for metadata publicity and enabling undesirable messages, spam, and phishing assaults. We are going to proceed to make updates sooner or later to guard our customers.Apple
In a weblog submit, Beeper Mini’s growth group criticized Apple for its choice, claiming that iPhone clients have “much less safety and privateness than earlier than” as a result of lack of encrypted messages between iPhone and Android units.
We deeply object to the allegation that Beeper Mini ‘poses important dangers to person safety and privateness’. That is utterly unfaithful. As we defined above, the other is definitely true. Beeper Mini will increase the safety and privateness of each Android and iPhone clients. To show this, we revealed an in depth weblog submit about how the app retains knowledge safe and personal. Beeper Mini is end-to-end encrypted.Beeper Mini
Whereas Beeper builders did discover a approach to get the Android app working once more, the brand new model of the app requires customers to register with an Apple ID, a requirement that was not required with the earlier model of the app, which might register with a telephone quantity the identical approach an iPhone can.
With that change, the brand new model additionally solely helps sending and receiving messages through an e mail deal with, not a telephone quantity, as Apple efficiently blocked the backdoor the app had used to register Android numbers as fake Apple customers.
Whereas Beeper Mini builders will doubtless discover a approach to restore the app to full performance, additionally it is doubtless that Apple will discover a approach to block it as soon as once more.