Beeper Mini, the app designed to bring iMessage functionality to Android users, has been on a tumultuous journey over the past weekend. After facing a shutdown by Apple, citing security concerns, the app is now back in operation, leaving users curious about the turn of events.
Founded by Eric Migicovsky, the former Pebble smartwatch founder, Beeper initially aimed to aggregate all of a user’s chat apps into a single interface. However, the discovery of technology enabling the reverse engineering of the iMessage protocol led to the creation of Beeper Mini.
Priced at $1.99 per month, the app aimed to provide Android users with iMessage features, including support for high-quality photos and videos, tapback reactions, typing indicators, and read receipts. The app quickly became popular, reaching the top 20 in the Play Store’s charts and reaching 100,000 downloads in only 48 hours.
The success of Beeper Mini was short-lived, as Apple swiftly took action, claiming the app posed significant risks to user security and privacy. Apple’s concerns included potential metadata exposure and the facilitation of unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks. The Cupertino giant stated that it couldn’t verify Beeper’s claims of end-to-end encryption and took steps to block the app.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized Apple’s intervention, emphasizing the need for easy and secure cross-platform communication. On Monday, Beeper announced that it had updated the Beeper Mini app to resolve the issue causing messages not to be sent or received. However, the details of this fix remain undisclosed, with the security of Beeper Mini allegedly unchanged.
Despite the app’s return, there is a temporary limitation: phone number registration isn’t functioning, requiring users to sign in with an Apple ID. To ease the situation, Beeper Mini is currently offered for free, with subscriptions set to resume when stability is achieved.
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