In recent weeks there has been a David and Goliath battle going on between a company called Beeper and the all-powerful Apple. Beeper has been finding new and increasingly complicated ways to bring Apple’s iMessage to Android, with the Cupertino company playing whack-a-mole with each new attempt. According to a post on its blog, Beeper’s latest attempt will be its final one, with the company returning to its original purpose of developing ‘the best chat app on earth’.
The Latest Method
The Beeper Mini app’s latest method of accessing iMessages has gone as far as requiring users to own or rent a jailbroken iPhone alongside owning a Mac or Linux PC. After going through the process of getting their iMessage registration code, they’ll need to leave the iPhone charging and hooked up to WiFi to access Apple’s iMessage.
It’s a little convoluted, and considering the likelihood of Apple closing this latest loophole, could prove rather expensive for the short time its working. It’s all a long way from just downloading Beeper Mini to your Android handset and connecting to iMessage.
Beeper has stated that depending on the level of interest, it might start loaning out jailbroken iPhones in 2024 for a ‘few dollars a month’. Frankly, with all the complications, surely it’s just easier to buy an iPhone so you can access iMessage without needing a Mac or Linux PC, if you need it so badly.
A Losing Battle With Apple
Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. It’s unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a cat-and-mouse game with the largest company on earth.
Source: Beeper Blog
One of the reasons that Beeper wanted to bring iMessage to Android was to do away with the seemingly US-only discrimination between green and blue chat bubbles when texting via SMS, with non-iPhone users often pilloried for their choice of handset. Beeper Cloud, as the original app is called, already offers compatibility with the following messaging services:
- Android SMS
- Telegram
- Signal
- Facebook Messenger
- Instagram DM
- IRC
- Twitter/X DM
- Slack
- Discord
- Google Chat
- Matrix Chat
Beeper’ Mini’s iMessage bridge has now been “100% outsourced” according to the company blog, which means prospective developers can dig around in the code to their heart’s content.
Why Isn’t Apple Playing Ball?
As you can imagine, Beeper claims that Apple is the chief culprit thanks to its (successful) attempts to keep its iMessage messaging platform purely for iPhone users, because ‘they might make less money selling iPhones if iMessage were available on Android’. I feel that Apple could obviously choose to share its messaging app with other platforms, but as it’s a unique selling point of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac products, I can also understand why it has chosen not to do so.
Beeper says that its latest (and last) attempt is something they they believe ‘Apple can tolerate existing’, but that’s something we’ll no doubt see Cupertino’s answer to in the coming days.
Is Apple Right?
Is it the ‘right’ thing to do? That depends on which side of the fence you are on. Apple might say that they are defending their brand and customers while Android users could say that it’s simply a ploy to discriminate against them, to force them into buying an iPhone. It’s surprising that Apple’s behaviour with iMessage, given all the antitrust suits levelled against Google, isn’t under more scrutiny from the US government.
What do you think about this last attempt by Beeper to bring iMessaging to Android users?
