It’s a tale as old as time. A song as old as rhyme. People have this weird obsession of blue and green bubbles as if it’s a beauty and a beast. Now, I’ll give it to Beeper for actually making something that truly worked. But, yesterday, they decided to hang it up for good as the final rose petal dropped.
Beeper down for the count
Earlier in the day, Beeper brought forth a suggestion that users find a jailbroken iPhone to relay messages for users. This is very reminiscent of an approach the app developer used when they started testing this feature out towards the beginning of its journey. This was made after the day before it suggested people use a Mac for message relay.
But, what seemed like a couple of hours later, Beeper decided to quit fighting Apple. It announced that instead of trying to beat the system, it’ll focus on its “long-term goal of building the best chat app on earth.”
Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. It’s unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a cat-and-mouse game with the largest company on earth.”
Beeper announcement
Beeper has also made their iMessage bridge open-source. This makes it easy for anyone to inspect the code, tweak it, or use it how they see fit. Honestly, it’s good to see someone take an effort like this on the chin.
But why?
But, it still begs the question. Why go through all of this? Beeper believes it has the moral high ground. Because of this whole saga, the US government is now looking into Apple iMessage. That’s fine and all, but I still this is much ado about nothing.
I have talked to a few people about the issue. I may have been oversimplifying this as “just getting a blue bubble.” There are legitimate reasons why people want to get access to iMessage. There is the security. You can actually send full sized attachments. You get read receipts. But these are also things that would come with RCS in a few months.
Now, I get people may not want to wait that long. Then I point to the myriad of apps that exist for both iOS and Android. Also, if this is something Beeper wanted to do, why not just make that app instead of breaking into iMessage.
In short, I still believe that this was all about blue bubbles and not about democratizing iMessage.
Source: The Verge
