iMessage

As of Sunday, 60% of Beeper users weren’t able to send or receive iMessage, and the company’s upcoming Android solution is to “have access to a Mac computer, or have a friend on Beeper with a Mac.” 

Beeper Mini managed to pull off the impossible in bringing a proper iMessage app to Android, but Apple shut it down in a matter of days. Now, members of the US government are calling for an investigation into Apple’s shutdown of Beeper Mini, which sets the stage for much bigger conversations.

Over the past several weeks, iMessage for Android has been a big topic of discussion and, for many, it comes back to why Android users seem to want iMessage so much. Personally, I don’t. iMessage for Android just happens to, somehow, be the path of least resistance when it comes to using a decent messaging app with people.

iMessage for Android was once just a pipedream but has since become a reality thanks to a bunch of different workarounds. However, Apple has now made it abundantly clear that it does not want iMessage on Android, killing Beeper Mini, the first really good implementation of the idea.

On Friday afternoon, Beeper Mini on Android stopped working and Apple confirmed today that it “took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.” 

After just a few days, Beeper Mini, the most impressive iMessage client on Android to date, has seemingly stopped working, and the app has now taken the step to deregister Android phone numbers on behalf of its users.

Beeper Mini launched on Tuesday with the promise of bringing secure iMessage to Android, and indeed it worked wonderfully. However, less than a week later, the app seems to be broken.

The idea of an iMessage app for Android has been a dream for years, but with Apple now adopting RCS, it also feels like something we’ll never see happen. But the folks over at Beeper have been working on a wild new app that brings iMessage to Android and, after trying it out, this feels like what we’ve all been waiting for.

iMessage for Android. Even in this new reality where Apple intends to adopt RCS, it’s still something that people want because, after all, iMessage is very popular. And while Apple will probably never do it, the folks at Beeper are launching a new app, “Beeper Mini,” which brings iMessage support to Android that closely mimics the experience on iPhone, and does so in a way that’s “native.”

Sunbird, the pretty sketchy iMessage app for Android, has been exposed as having major privacy concerns, and has now opted to shut down the app for the time being.

Sunbird has been promising iMessage support on Android for about a year now, but the company has always seemed rather sketchy. Now, as Nothing Chats, built on Sunbird, has launched, the privacy nightmare is coming true – not only is the app not end-to-end encrypted as promised, but image files from other users are pretty easy to access in plain text.

iMessage for Android is a dream for many, but Nothing is trying to make it a reality with the Nothing Phone (2) and “Nothing Chats.”

The European Commission is currently investigating whether iMessage should fall under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and therefore be subject to interoperability rules. Google and local carriers have sent a letter to regulators in Europe arguing that iMessage should be considered a “core” service.

Beeper funnels all of your favorite messaging services – including Google Messages and iMessage – into one place, allowing you to communicate with anyone and mediate notifications from different apps. This guide will show you how to add iMessage and Google Messages to Beeper.

RCS is available to every Android user at this point, but that hasn’t ended the messaging headaches that come from iMessage and the lack of RCS on iPhone. But now, the third-party app Beeper can support both Google Messages RCS and Apple iMessage on both Android and iPhone, all within the same app.

The “green bubble” stigma is a very real thing and, partially, for good reason. When someone with an Android phone joins a group chat with iMessage users, it strips away a lot of useful features, but Apple is somewhat improving that in iOS 17.

A few weeks ago, at MWC 2023, I had an opportunity to sit down with Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Platforms and Ecosystems at Google, to talk about RCS messaging. While there was not a lot into the future of what Google is planning with Google Messages and RCS as a protocol, I did get a good look into how RCS came to be and how Google sees it.

iMessage is a powerful messaging platform for iPhone users that changed the game for messaging, but over the years, it has also served as a lock-in tactic and even developed a prejudice between Android and iPhone users. In an interview this week, Apple’s Craig Federighi said that iMessage for Android would have been a “throwaway” effort that would have “held [Apple] back in innovating.”