A number of days in the past, the cellular app Beeper Mini went back into operation after an try by Apple to shut down its service that brings iMessage’s blue bubble texts to Android customers. Now, Apple is once more concentrating on Beeper’s customers, the corporate claims in a post on X, by “deliberately blocking iMessages from being delivered to ~5% of Beeper Mini users.” However this time round, Beeper says it has a repair for the issue: merely uninstall and reinstall the app.
It additionally famous it’s engaged on a broader repair for this challenge nevertheless it’s not prepared as of but.
Beeper Cloud customers had been additionally impacted, the corporate’s publish stated, referring to its authentic messaging app aggregator, however stated these customers might contact Beeper Assist for a repair as effectively.
Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky tells us that Beeper Cloud is now mounted and Beeper Mini can also be “almost fixed.”
The startup has engaged in a heated battle of whack-a-mole with Apple since launching its iMessage-on-Android answer simply final week. Utilizing new expertise that reverse-engineered the iMessage protocol, Beeper launched an app that allowed Android customers to speak with iPhone customers as in the event that they had been additionally on iMessage’s platform. This included registering their very own cellphone quantity from their Android cellphone with iMessage.
However though Beeper believed Apple wouldn’t be capable to shut its service down, as Beeper Mini customers communicated straight with Apple’s servers, simply as iPhones do, Apple quickly reacted on Friday to place an finish to Beeper Mini’s operation. The startup didn’t hand over although. This week, it rolled out a fix that when once more allowed Android customers to ship iMessages, however this time solely by authenticating with their Apple ID.
Apple’s transfer to close down Beeper’s new app caught the eye of legislators, as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called out the tech giant for shutting down the app, including that, “Big Tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors. Chatting between different platforms should be easy and secure.”
Whereas Beeper claims its service is end-to-end encrypted, simply as iMessage is, Apple urged that its strategies posed a safety danger for its customers. This necessitated it “taking steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage,” Apple stated in an announcement shared with the press.
Beeper then challenged Apple to agree on a third-party safety audit of its service to allay the tech big’s fears.
Based by Pebble smartwatch founder, Eric Migicovsky, the startup initially was engaged on a multi-service messaging app aggregator, however launched Beeper Mini to leverage the brand new expertise targeted particularly on bringing iMessage to Android customers for $1.99 monthly. Because of Apple’s meddling, resulting in Beeper Mini’s instability, the startup made its new app free for Android customers in the meanwhile.
