Summary
- Beeper has found a new solution to stabilize its iMessage experience on Android, but it requires users to have access to a Mac to use its registration data.
- The update allows Beeper users to share their Mac's unique registration data with others, ensuring that people without Macs aren't entirely left out.
- While this solution is seen as a temporary fix, it raises concerns about the limited availability of Macs, potentially hindering Beeper's overall success.
In retrospect, Beeper Mini’s promise was too good to be true. For a few blissful days, the service brought iMessage to Android, all without relying on any shady Mac server farms or an Apple ID (like the ill-fated technology Nothing Chats relied on). Apple quickly managed to find a way to lock out Beeper Mini users, and the company has been struggling to come up with a solution ever since. After multiple attempts, Beeper now thinks it has found a solution — albeit one with a big caveat.
As Beeper announced on Reddit, it has a new solution to stabilize the experience on both Beeper Cloud and Mini. Beeper Cloud is the older messaging app that originally relied on a different method to get iMessage to Android, but has since switched to Beeper Mini's solution, thus now facing the same problems.
The big downside is that the new workaround relies on you or a friend with Beeper having access to a Mac.
Beeper explains that to make iMessage work on Android, it needs to use registration data from a real Mac, which is essentially a way to identify that an iMessage user is genuine. In the past, the company used its own Mac server farm to provide this registration data. Given that this means that thousands of Beeper users share the same ID, it’s easy for Apple to target these users.
To circumvent this, Beeper is asking its users to use the registration data from a Mac of their own or from one of their friends who are also using Beeper. That's why Beeper is rolling out an update to the Mac version of Beeper Cloud, making your Mac’s unique registration data available for Beeper on other devices. This data needs to be renewed periodically, with Beeper mentioning a vague time frame of once per week or once per month, so you need to turn on the Mac in question periodically. For those who only have Beeper Mini, there will also be a setup flow that hasn’t been disclosed further just yet.
In the process, no personal data is said to be shared: “Registration data is used only to indicate that a Mac is available during registration. The Mac in no way is given any access to your account, or your messages.” This stands in contrast to other solutions like the one Nothing relied on, which forced users to log in with their Apple ID to use a remote server farm as a relay for messages, with security implications like a shared password and poor encryption causing a lot of concern.
Beeper says that even if you don’t have a Mac, you can ask a friend using Beeper to share their registration data with you. The company claims that in its testing, it’s safe to share the registration with up to 10 to 20 iMessage users without experiencing issues.
Another downside to the update is that it re-enables chatting on iMessage with your Apple ID if you don’t have an iPhone, so keep this in mind when you update.
The new solution is a lot less seamless
To combat potential privacy concerns around this solution, Beeper vowed to open source its iMessage bridge and the Mac code in charge of creating the registration data. We don’t know what implications this will have on Beeper’s targeted monetization strategy, with the company planning to charge $2 per month once everything is back in working order.
For Beeper, this switch to a Mac-based solution is a step back. The original promise of Beeper Mini was that you could just use iMessage on Android with no Apple ID or hardware required. The switch to this personally-owned Mac solution brings a lot more pitfalls with it. Not everyone has a Mac, and there are likely even fewer people who are willing to share their Mac data with other users, severely limiting the potential scope of Beeper. Beeper presents it as a stopgap solution and hopes to find a more inclusive alternative and compares the new system to Beeper Cloud referrals of the past.
It’s also unclear what long-term implications this new strategy has. If Apple were to end up blocking registration data from a personally-owned and used Mac, it’s not clear if this would break further features on the machine. A problem like that is neglectable on a server farm that’s meant to be used for Beeper, but a whole other issue on a personal Mac. When asked about this possibility on Reddit, Beeper evaded the question and said that “We can’t speak to Apple’s reasoning and tactics regarding us.”
Apple and Beeper's iMessage tussle gets loud enough for US lawmakers to hear
The US Capitol has asked the DOJ to investigate Apple for potential antitrust violationsWith this presented as a stopgap solution, the game of cat and mouse between Apple and Beeper continues. It remains to be seen which of the two will be successful. For what it's worth, Beeper managed to gain support in politics, with the US Capitol asking the DOJ to investigate Apple for alleged antitrust violations surrounding iMessage.
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