Beeper Mini’s iMessage integration is on the fritz

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 experiences that sending/receiving is just not working in Beeper Mini.”

Engadget contacted Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky by e mail to ask whether or not the outage may have been triggered on Apple’s finish, and he recommended it’s attainable. “We had overwhelming curiosity and pleasure in Beeper Mini this week!” Migicovsky wrote to Engadget. “As I tweeted, Beeper Mini is experiencing an outage — sending and receiving is just not working proper now.”

“If it is Apple, then I believe the largest query is — if Apple actually cares concerning the privateness and safety of their very own iPhone customers, why would they attempt to kill a service that permits iPhones to ship encrypted chats to Android customers?” the founder and former Pebble CEO wrote to Engadget. “With their announcement of RCS assist, it is clear that Apple is aware of they’ve a gaping gap right here. Beeper Mini is right here in the present day and works nice. Why power iPhone customers again to sending unencrypted SMS once they chat with mates on Android?”

Beeper’s artful answer — surprisingly — appeared to work effectively. The app robotically scans for messages from iMessage customers and modifications them to blue bubbles, apparently routing them by 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 Richard Lai earlier this week as a “scale-up.” The unique (pre-mini) Beeper relied on a Mac mini server farm to relay chats by Apple’s system. Whether or not Beeper Mini goes the way in which 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.