How is imessage so hard to reverse engineer that its easier to send someone a jailbroken iphone to use? Surely the protocol can't even change much since many users are stuck on old versions as its part of the OS.

I seem to recall that registering for iMessage requires sending the ID (or a signature maybe?) of real Apple hardware. So you could reverse the API but unless someone has hardware that they don't plan on using iMessage on it won't help much.

How old are these iPhones cause that's the oddest part of that setup I've heard.

iPhone 4.[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959

Thanks for that! It's kind of funny to me, but also kind of cool. I guess you just have to be sure to charge the iPhone every now and then.

I think the idea is you leave it plugged in at home.