Beeper (not mini) is already a company - it's an app that aggregates the various other networks friends and family insist on using. WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Instagram, etc.

Been using it a while now, pretty good.

This was a proof of concept to expand that app, it's not the entire company

What's the pricing model? I would think that many people would not be potential customers because the vast majority of their networks are on a single platform (whatsapp or messages), or because they don't really care if messages live in 2 different places. I could imagine paying a one-time fee for something like this, but I assume the ongoing upkeep required would not work with such a model.

I would agree if they hadn't completely redone their website to remove every reference to Beeper Cloud. They really made it look like a deprecated product, not a good alternative that won't get blocked.

Oh wow aye, admittedly I've had no reason to go to their main site recently (and in hindsight should have before responding). They really went all in on marketing this eh

There's always a possibility of me being wrong! It does look like a bit of a pivot doesn't it.. Good point, well made.

I think I'll go double check I can still log in to my chat apps directly just in case haha

I mean, even if they go all in with Beeper Mini, they plan on adding all the services supported in Beeper Cloud in it.

Even without iMessages, a fully local application like this would be a great product. The fact that it relied on their servers put me off of using Beeper cloud

If that's where they're going with it that's awesome, I've not been able to find that plan but I've also not looked that hard. Sweet

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38531759

> Our long term vision is to build a universal chat app (https://blog.beeper.com/p/were-building-the-best-chat-app-on). Over the next few months, we will be adding support for SMS/RCS, WhatsApp, Signal and 12 other chat networks into Beeper Mini. At that point, we’ll drop the `Mini` postfix. We’re also rebuilding our Beeper Desktop and iOS apps to support our new ‘client-side bridge’ architecture that preserves full end-to-end encryption. We’re also renaming our first gen apps to ‘Beeper Cloud’ to more clearly differentiate them from Beeper Mini.

Beeper is doing a lot more than just an iMessage proxy.

Technically it's not a proxy. As every device (apparently) connects directly to Apple's servers.

Beeper Mini talks directly to Apple servers from your device.

Beeper the company also has Beeper (Cloud) which bridges a whole lot of chat apps via Matrix to their other client app, including iMessage via a Mac relay.

The entire company is not based on Beeper Mini.

I used to think like this before I saw companies like Instagram and Tiktok thrive in the app store, which they absolutely cannot control. It is often worth a shot.

Relying on the App Store to distribute your app is more than a little different than building an extension to iMessages. Apple and Google want you to use their app stores in this way. Apple does not want you to bridge iMessages to other platforms.

True, but I think this sentence buries the key point:

“Apple and Google want you to use their app stores in this way.”

…they want you to use their app stores, their way, because they retain 100% control of what you can and cannot do.

Yep, agree++.

It’s impossible to avoid relying on other people’s platforms. (Unless you want approximately zero customers, I guess) I wish these monopolistic corps didn’t have such an iron grip, but I’m not demanding creators single handedly remove every dependency on them. There is no ethical consumption (or production) in late stage capitalism.

this - basically a backdoor trick/hack