Beeper Mini, the chat app that reverse-engineered Apple’s iMessage for Android, is having issues. 9to5Google reported Friday your entire Beeper platform is seemingly damaged proper now, resulting in the plain hypothesis that Apple has stomped on the bootleg iMessage workaround. Beeper posted on X that it’s “investigating reports that sending/receiving is not working in Beeper Mini.”
Engadget contacted Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky by e mail to ask whether or not the outage might have been triggered on Apple’s finish, and he prompt it’s potential.
“If it’s Apple, then I think the biggest question is — if Apple truly cares about the privacy and security of their own iPhone users, why would they try to kill a service that enables iPhones to send encrypted chats to Android users?” the founder and former Pebble CEO wrote to Engadget. “With their announcement of RCS support, it’s clear that Apple knows they have a gaping hole here. Beeper Mini is here today and works great. Why force iPhone users back to sending unencrypted SMS when they chat with friends on Android?”
Investigating reviews that sending/receiving just isn’t working in Beeper Mini 🔎
— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 8, 2023
Beeper’s artful resolution — surprisingly — appeared to work effectively. The app mechanically scans for messages from iMessage customers and adjustments them to blue bubbles, apparently routing them by means of Apple’s servers. The wizardry is the product of a 16-year-old highschool scholar, who reverse-engineered it by jailbreaking iPhones and digging into them to learn the way iOS handles iMessages. It even included end-to-end encryption between iPhones and Android telephones.
Migicovsky described the service to Engadget’s Lawrence Bonk earlier this week as a “scale-up.” The unique (pre-mini) Beeper relied on a Mac mini server farm to relay chats by means of Apple’s system. Whether or not Beeper Mini goes the best way of the dodo (or the Sunbird), we’ll have to attend and see.
Replace, December 8, 2023, 4:59 PM ET: This story has been up to date to incorporate a remark Migicovsky made to Engadget.