Was it too good to be true? Beeper, the startup that reverse-engineered iMessage to convey blue bubble texts to Android customers, is experiencing an outage, the corporate reported via a post on X on Friday. And Apple is responsible, it appears. Customers, together with these of us at TechCrunch with entry to the app, started seeing error messages when making an attempt to ship texts by way of the newly launched Beeper Mini and messages aren’t going by.
The error message reads: “failed to lookup on server: lookup request timed out” spelled out in pink letters.
Picture Credit: screenshot of Beeper Mini error
In a response to a query on Reddit as as to if or not the app was damaged, a Beeper group member had earlier replied, “Report a problem from the app, give us a chance to look into it.”
Nonetheless, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky responded to TechCrunch’s inquiry about Beeper Mini’s standing by pointing us to the X post acknowledging the outage, and offering extra element. Requested if presumably Apple discovered a option to lower off Beeper Mini’s capacity to operate, he replied, “Yes, all data indicates that.”
We don’t know what this implies for the way forward for Beeper Mini’s efforts, except Beeper’s engineers are capable of work round the issue by some means.
Migicovsky, who beforehand based the smartwatch Pebble, has argued that Beeper Mini wasn’t simply helpful for Android customers who needed to lastly be part of their iMessage associates’ group chats, however that it elevated safety for iPhone customers, too.
In an interview forward of Beeper Mini’s launch, the founder defined that inexperienced bubble texts have been unencrypted.
“That means that anytime you text your Android friends, anyone can read the message. Apple can read the message. Your phone carrier can read the message. Google… literally, it’s just like a postcard. Anyone can read it. So Beeper Mini actually increases the security of iPhones,” he had advised TechCrunch.
Apple, then again, sees iMessage as one of many key instruments for locking in customers to its ecosystem, which is why it gained’t launch an iMessage app for Android. Whereas there was some hope that EU laws would pressure it to make iMessage extra interoperable, information this week signifies that iMessage will get a reprieve from those rules as a result of the service will not be standard sufficient with enterprise customers. Which means Apple has no cause to not attempt to shut down Beeper Mini, if it might.
Migicovsky is none too happy with that flip of occasions.
“I would be very interested to hear why they think that making security worse for iPhone users makes sense,” he mentioned.
“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? 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?,” he requested.
Based in 2020, Beeper’s group had initially been working on a multi-platform messaging aggregator, which was renamed Beeper Cloud this week as Beeper Mini went to launch. The latter makes use of new technology that permits Android customers to textual content iMessage customers as in the event that they have been additionally texting from an iPhone for simply $1.99 monthly. Which means blue bubbles within the group chat, not inexperienced ones. As a result of the startup was not utilizing a intermediary — like a Mac server relaying messages, as different iMessage-to-Android apps make use of — it will basically seem to Apple’s servers that Beeper Mini’s messages have been coming from a tool that runs iMessage natively. It’s unclear, then, how Apple was capable of lower off Beeper Mini’s entry.
What this implies for Beeper Mini’s future is unsure.
“We’ll evaluate options,” Migicovsky mentioned.
