There’s a problem with Beeper Mini, a chat app that was reverse engineered from Apple’s iMessage for Android. 9to5Google report On Friday, the entire Beeper platform now appears to be broken, leading to obvious speculation that Apple may have overstepped the pirated iMessage workaround.buzzer sound Posted X says, “We are investigating reports that transmission and reception are not working with Beeper Mini.”
Engadget reached out to Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky via email to ask if the outage could have been caused by Apple, and he suggested that was the case. “There was overwhelming interest and excitement for Beeper Mini this week!” Migikowski wrote on Engadget. “As I tweeted, the Beeper Mini is experiencing a failure. Transmission and reception are currently not working.”
“If it’s Apple, the biggest question is, if Apple really cared about the privacy and security of its iPhone users, why would it eliminate a service that allows iPhones to send encrypted chats to Android users? I think the question is, are they going to do that?” the founder and former CEO of Pebble wrote on Engadget. “With the announcement of RCS support, it’s clear that Apple realizes there’s a big hole here. Beeper Mini is here today and works very well. iPhone users chat with friends on Android Why should I be forced to send unencrypted SMS when I want to do so?”
We’re investigating reports of Beeper Mini not transmitting and receiving 🔎
— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 8, 2023
Beeper’s clever solution seems to have worked surprisingly well. The app appears to automatically scan messages from iMessage users, turn them into blue bubbles, and route them through Apple’s servers. This magic was created by her 16-year-old high school student who reverse-engineered her by jailbreaking her iPhone, scrutinizing it, and learning how iOS handles her iMessages. It also included end-to-end encryption between the iPhone and her Android phone.
Migikowski described the service to Engadget’s Richard Lai earlier this week as a “scale up.” The original (pre-mini) Beeper relied on a Mac mini server farm to relay chats through Apple’s systems. We’ll have to wait and see if Beeper Mini follows the same path as dodo (or Sunbird).
Updated December 8, 2023 at 4:59 PM ET: This article has been updated to include comments Migicovsky made to Engadget.