For years, Ben Black’s phone calls plagued his family. This was his only Android device in a family message group with eight of his iPhones. Because of him, videos and photos arrived in low resolution with green text bubbles inside blue bubbles.
But thanks to a new app called Beeper Mini, you can change that.
Black, 25, used the app to create an account on Apple’s iMessage messaging service using her Google Pixel phone number. For the first time, a blue bubble will appear on every message your family exchanges, giving members access to perks like emojis and animations.
Since Beeper Mini was introduced on December 5th, it has quickly become a headache and potential antitrust issue for Apple. It pokes holes in Apple’s messaging system, but critics say it demonstrates how Apple bullies potential competitors.
Apple surprised us when Beeper Mini gave Android devices access to its latest iPhone-only service. Less than a week after the release of Beeper Mini, Apple changed its iMessage system to block the app. It said the app posed security and privacy risks.
Apple’s response started a game of whack-a-mole, Beeper Mini found another way to operate, and Apple found a new way to block apps in response.
The duel raised questions in Washington about whether Apple used its market advantage over iMessage to stifle competition and force consumers to spend more on iPhones than cheaper alternatives.
The Department of Justice is interested in this case. Beepermini met with the department’s antitrust lawyers on Dec. 12, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Eric Migikowski, co-founder of the app’s parent company Beeper, declined to comment on the meeting, but the department is in the midst of a four-year investigation into Apple’s anti-competitive practices.
The Federal Trade Commission said in a blog post Thursday that it will scrutinize “dominant” companies that “use privacy and security as a justification for not allowing interoperability” between services. The company name is not mentioned in the post.
The battle also attracted the attention of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust Law. The committee’s leaders, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to the Justice Department expressing concerns that Apple is erasing competition.
Apple declined to comment on the letter.
The questions from Washington cut to the heart of today’s smartphone competition. Rival smartphone makers credit iMessage with increasing Apple’s U.S. smartphone market share, from 41% in 2018 to more than 50%, according to technology firm Counterpoint Research.
Messaging is a key part of Apple’s strategy to sell more iPhones. Over the years, interactions between iPhones and Android devices have become as basic as texting between flip phones decades ago. Texts between iPhone users appear in blue and can be tapped to give a thumbs up, while texts from Android users appear in green with no simple perks.
Android companies are trying to fight back. Android smartphone maker Nothing is working with an app called Sunbird to bring you iMessage. Google, which developed the Android operating system, has been pressuring Apple to adopt a technology called Rich Communication Services that allows competing smartphones to send high-resolution videos and images between them.
However, their efforts have not yielded much results. Apple announced last month that it would adopt the technology next year. The move means that while Android users will be able to enjoy benefits such as sharing high-resolution videos, they will be stuck in the green bubble of text messages that are stigmatized and associated with less wealth. .
“Everyone is watching to see what Apple will do with Beeper Mini,” said David E., a special adviser to the digital rights advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of a book on interoperability between different technologies. says Cory Doctorow. “We don’t know how worried they are internally, but their reactions can have a huge impact on how messaging works.”
Securing iMessage has been Apple’s strategy for a decade. Apple’s head of software, Craig Federighi, objected to making iMessage work on a competitor’s devices in 2013, according to emails released during Apple’s legal battle with Epic Games. The reason for this is that it “removes the barrier for iPhone families to give their children Android phones.” Manufacturer of Fortnite.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has resisted calls to change his position. He told iPhone owners at a conference last year that the solution to green text messages is to buy an iPhone for a friend or family member.
Beeper brings a different approach to messaging. Migikowski founded the company in 2020 to build a single messaging app that can send texts to multiple services, including WhatsApp and Signal.
Mr. Migicovsky has successfully integrated most messaging services except iMessage. Unlike its competitors, Apple does not offer its web apps, making it difficult to connect to its services. The only way Beeper could integrate his iMessage was to route the messages through his Mac computer to his iPhone. This process delayed messages and made them less secure.
While Beeper was struggling with iMessage, a teenage boy from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, found another solution. James McGill, a 16-year-old computer enthusiast, made it his personal goal to understand how iMessage worked. He used software to decrypt his iMessages and discovered that Apple was using its push notification system (the same system that delivers news alerts) to communicate messages between devices. .
“It wasn’t a genius insight,” said McGill, a senior at Saucon Valley High School. “I was just poking at it for a long time.”
McGill published his findings in June on GitHub, a software platform where programmers share code. Migicovsky saw this post and thought it might help solve his iMessage problem with Beeper. He offered Mr. McGill a job paying $100 an hour, a significant increase from the $11 an hour the high school student was making as a cashier at McDonald’s.
The task was more complex than Migikowski and McGill had anticipated. Migikowski said Apple has changed iMessage about three times since the release of Beeper Mini this month.
Each change by Apple required an adjustment by Beeper. Its latest solution involves routing registration information through an individual’s Mac computer to his Beeper Mini user.
“We would have to figure out a way to request the iPhone serial number to completely block it,” McGill said. “Beeper will still come up with a workaround.”
An Apple spokesperson said the company will continue to update iMessage because it cannot confirm whether Beeper is encrypting messages. “These technologies posed significant risks to our users’ security and privacy, including the potential for metadata leaks and the potential for unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks,” she said in a statement. Stated.
Migikowski disagrees. He said Apple is trying to force Android customers to exchange unencrypted text messages instead of allowing them to send encrypted messages to iPhone customers. He posted Beeper’s software code on the web and encouraged Apple and cybersecurity experts to review it.
Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said it’s natural for Apple to have security concerns, saying a prolonged dispute between the two companies could lead to vulnerabilities that criminals could exploit. warned that this could occur.
“A world in which Apple works with third-party clients in a supported way is a good world,” Green said. “A world where Beeper and Apple try to fight each other in a tit-for-tat arms race is a bad world.”
Mr. Migikowski said he emailed Mr. Cook to end the conflict, but the Apple chief did not respond.
“This was not our intention,” Migikowski said. “We’re trying to make it work within our control for the benefit of the chat world.”