davemark,
@davemark@mastodon.social avatar

🤔
Been thinking about Beeper Mini and blue/green bubbles:

  • If I was an investor, I'd be worried about someone else copying this (solution is open source, yes?)

  • And then I'd worry about Apple. This is a bet that Apple will not come after them with deep legal pockets.

  • Or that Apple will flip a secret switch (or whatever) to break the connection.

General opinion is that that last is impossible, but I would not bet against Apple here.

Opinions?

mikenoe,
@mikenoe@mastodon.social avatar

@davemark even if Apple doesn't flip a secret switch, I can see it frequently breaking as apple changes their service. This isn't a documented, versioned public API. Reverse engineered solutions are often fragile.

davemark,
@davemark@mastodon.social avatar

@mikenoe 💯

drahardja,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@davemark I think Apple flipping a secret switch (ie changing the requirements on the iMessage protocol) is very difficult, because I bet there are not an insignificant number of Apple devices connected to iMessage that run very old OS versions that are never updated. Changing the protocol means dropping all devices from the network not running some recent OS version, because the iMessage client is part of the OS and can’t be updated separately.

davemark,
@davemark@mastodon.social avatar

@drahardja I hear that. Just can’t imagine Apple won’t find some path here to shut this down, or break it.

drahardja,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@davemark An IP range block might be effective, forcing Beeper Mini to play cat and mouse with VPNs or proxies that degrade their customers’ availability

shadowfacts,
@shadowfacts@social.shadowfacts.net avatar

@drahardja @davemark how would an IP block work? my understanding of the new version is that all communication with apple takes place from the user's device

drahardja,
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

@shadowfacts @davemark True. They can IP block the push notification proxy that Beeper Mini runs, which will prevent clients from getting timely message notifications.

As for the clients themselves, it’s super hard to block them.

Chancerubbage,
@Chancerubbage@mastodon.social avatar

@davemark they will probably not draw any attention to it, because blue bubbles and lock in nonsense aside; there are deeper security implications. It is open source- any one could pick this up and make a bigger deal of it- a VC lacking morals. And it possibly ties into a deeper level authentication system that can’t be changed without breaking things. It is more than merely my bubbles now blue, and end to end encrypted. Some platform specific garbage will still not cross the streams gently.

bynkii,
@bynkii@mastodon.social avatar

@davemark I’m more worried about their security implementation

TheSilentDawn,
@TheSilentDawn@mastodon.social avatar

@davemark In the long run, I don’t know how much of a technical problem this is instead of a reputational one. Could Apple do something to break this? Probably? But do they want to get into a cat and mouse game with a small indie developer? I don’t know that scrutiny would be worth locking it the small handful of people who would do this.

davemark,
@davemark@mastodon.social avatar

@TheSilentDawn My gut is that Apple is furiously looking at this from all angles, taking this very seriously. The blue bubble advantage is critical to keeping people in the walled garden. Can't imagine this will stand.

My 2 cents, I give it months, not years. Maybe even less.

TheSilentDawn,
@TheSilentDawn@mastodon.social avatar

@davemark I don’t know. I don’t doubt they hate it, but they also apparently just skated by the interoperability requirements in the EU. Actively working to undermine something like this would be a bad look. Maybe they wait and hope it blows over but that would be a heck of a gamble.

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