Beeper Mini is back but lame, and its creators are taking it out on Apple
They have been very intense days for the world of messaging, with Beeper, a platform founded by the former creator of Pebble and which was launched at the beginning of 2023 as an effective and consistent turning point in terms of interoperability among messaging services, has launched its definitive app that brings iMessage on Android.
We are talking about Beeper Mini, the app that was created to allow Android users to use iMessage as if they had a iPhone. All without giving up on end-to-end encryption and keeping your Apple ID safe, i.e. without feeding it to third-party servers (as Nothing Chats wanted to do).
Its success was meteoric, with more than 100,000 downloads in 24 hours on the Play Store. The app jumped right in top 20 on the Play Store and, according to its creators, saw the most successful launch in the history of Android apps. All too good to be truegiven that after 72 the blocked by Apple.
Essentially Apple updated iMessage to block those who logged in to the service, via their phone number, from a non-iOS device. In other words, Beeper Mini has stopped working. Apple said, a The Verge and not to Beeper, for having made this choice for preserve safety of users.
The news of the last few hours is that Beeper Mini is back in working order. But the app, at least for now, had to renounce to one of its most interesting features, namely the possibility of accessing iMessage from Android via your personal phone number, and not via your Apple ID. So, Beeper Mini works but only by accessing the your Apple ID.
This means that accessing your account will have to be done via a server. But Beeper assures that the encryption end-to-end is active, as are all credentials save only locally on the device of users who use the app.
To prove this, Beeper has also made the code available on GitHub, so that even the most skeptical will be able to explore it and check that everything is as promised.
In addition to this, Beeper reported that Beeper Mini is now free. And it will be at least until the messaging service via telephone number is restored.
Eric Migicovsky and Brad Murray, the founders of Beeper, also spent a few words on comment on Apple’s choice. According to them, Apple has made a further step back with the latest iMessage update aimed at blocking Beeper Mini. Given that currently those who want to use iMessage from their iPhone to Android users will necessarily have to use the SMSa protocol obsolete and unsafe.
Precluding the possibility of using Beeper Mini would therefore mean force iOS and Android users from communicating via an insecure medium. It’s true, everyone can use third-party platforms or buy an iPhone.
But why take away a choice? In short, what seemed like an affair limited to the functioning of smartphone apps it is instead becoming a question of principle, the same one that has been leading Google against Apple for some time. Who do you think is right?
