See also geohot taking some other PS3 exploits that were already published and combining them into a piracy kit that caused Sony to come down on them and patch the exploits, ruining it for the rest of the homebrew community.

There’s a reason homebrew people try to keep it low-key, it doesn’t take many assholes to ruin it for everyone. Let alone turning it into an app on their own platform lmao.

A decent number of other hobbies also involve some collective good-behavior and self-control lest the hammer come down for everyone. Doesn’t take many assholes doing donuts on quads before you’ll find motor access to that area removed or prohibited, etc. Drones also ruined in like 5 years what r/c airplanes had been safely doing for decades. Etc

Hackintosh is already on a death march.

Sooner or later Apple will remove support for all x86 OSX versions.

Its life can be extended a bit by hackers who try to backport the software from ARM to x86.

But you can't sustain the entire Apple ecosystem by volunteer work alone.

Why spend resources trying to kill it when we all know it will die ln its own in a few years?

I know people gotta make a buck though. Sucks.

Would you not be mad at the guy bragging that he’s a member of the Resistance? They are not the Oppressor with the capital O, but they are at least an asshole.

is cutting off everyone's motorized-vehicle access to the beach a good thing? no, but, if you get a few idiots who aren't mature enough to avoid doing donuts and tearing things up in public areas, then that's exactly what's going to happen. it is a predictable outcome regardless of whether it's good for the public or not.

again, the point of the comment is that many hobbies ride in "questionable" areas, or are legal but generally in a position of public trust and self-regulation/self-control, and if people misbehave then the trust and privilege will be taken away. it's not really all that complicated, I've literally watched this happen numerous times across various hobbies.

I watched a county remove motor-vehicle access to a national forest because ATVs didn't stop doing donuts and tearing things up. First it was a couple years of the fire trails having bulldozers take a bite out of them so that ATVs couldn't navigate the forest, after people started going around they just flat-out passed an ordinance that banned all non-license-plated vehicles from the forests.

At this point I think the beeper guy probably is welcoming this, he's trying to make a point or political statement, and the hackintosh and opencore communities are kinda in the crossfire. At the end of the day those communities have a lot more to lose than beeper can ever gain - apple is not going to allow third-parties to exploit old binaries and generated serial-numbers to mass-register non-apple devices into imessage at scale, but, they sure as hell can make hackintosh impossible in the process.

if you're interested in those communities, that's how this guy looks - he is the "hacker" who packaged up an existing exploit into a nice neat package and is marketing it to script kiddies at scale, and ruining the hobby for a bunch of people who have enjoyed it for a decade on the down-low. first off that's kind of a douchy thing to do, independent of whether it's legal. nobody likes the guy who says "well ACTUALLY..." when you ask him to stop tearing up the forest and bringing the county down on your heads. secondly it's absolutely putting them at danger of anti-circumvention provisions (and courting that case seems to be the point) and also serves as an enabling factor for actually-illegal activity at scale, like spam and malware.

like yes, you do bear responsibility when you package up an exploit and market it to the general public.

This raises the question: is that a space worth inhabiting? Are hackintosh or homebrew PlayStation games worth it, compared to more open platforms where you are not breaking ToS?

Answers, of course, differ! But the question is worth asking.

Nowadays smartphones are so much more capable and so much more accessible to kids, plus you can even get literal handheld PCs like the Steam Deck, so homebrew is a lot less worthwhile in my opinion (except for just the sake of hacking, since consoles at least tended to have very interesting security/DRM arrangements).

As I am sure we all understood, OP meant on their Android.

I have a TV from 95 am I not allowed to watch Netflix? It runs on my phone.

Yes the limitations are different but you know them beforehand you just go and say it’s unfair I can’t have everything just the way I want it.

You don’t like iMessage - we have plenty of alternatives.

If you told people in 1995 that operating system vendors and service providers would arbitrarily block certain apps to lock you into their ecosystem people wouldn't have believed you.

Whether that was ever fully policy at Microsoft, people sure believed it was.

1995 was also around the time MS was pursing its embrace-extend-extinguish strategy to the internet with internet explorer.

Really? Wasn’t that somewhat common back then?

Correct. iMessage is an Apple service. If you want to make use of Apple services you should probably use Apple products. \_O_/

IE had the majority of the market share on the most popular desktop platform (Windows). Neither Messages nor the iPhone are in that position. Phones are pretty evenly split between Apple and Google in the US (and it's more lopsided in favor of Google elsewhere). Again, by virtue of having competition and having that competition easily accessible there's no monopoly.

There's just a bunch of butthurt Google fanbois who are lamenting the color of… well the color of someone else's text messages on that other person's device. All received messages have a grey background.

Does that change my point about the difference in those examples?

As an Android user, in theory I shouldn't care about iMessage. However, because of the way that iMessage creates schisms, miscommunications, lost communications, broken texting experiences and more between my Android friends and my iPhone friends, I have to. I would like the texting features of these phones to interoperate so we can all text together in peace.

I wrote up a scenario (user story?) that I think helps to explain the problems I think should be solved that seem to fly over so many people's heads, especially when they advocate for over-the-top messaging apps like Whatsapp to solve the problem (particularly in the US context): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38578101

Apple using instant messaging, where no meaningful innovation happened for decades to build their moat is pathetic and disgusting.

The social graph lock in problem is well documented and well understood. If most people use a certain solution (in this case texting, and particularly in regions where its dominant such as the US) then attempts to make a replacement solution whose success depends on mass adoption has an exponentially more difficult time in achieving adoption, because there's no incentive for users early on (because the social graph isnt there).

At least in the US, texting has a ton of "gravity" compared to other forms of messaging because it is built in to every phone and entirely free with your phone plan, so every user knows they can reach every other person they meet via texting.

New platforms gain critical mass more due to circumstance and luck than anything else. Or, such as the case with TikTok, via deep pockets and relentless advertising.

i don't actually think it is. i don't know _anyone_ who uses just a single messaging app (and thereby a single protocol-level social graph). i have some mental map in my head: "if i want to reach friend A, i do it on Signal. friend B: Discord. friend C: SMS/tel/PSTN. friend D: Matrix". i think this is a pretty common experience these days: i'd hazard that my mix of 4 apps is on the _small_ side.

i admire Beeper, JMP.chat, and other groups trying to improve messaging via better abstractions. i think it'd be cool if they could maintain iMessage support, i also think it's not critical to their success. the pain points caused by that graph problem you point to is 1) maintaining that mental map and 2) coordinating large group chats. i don't see that the client-side/Beeper-style solution to this is notably worse if they support only 29 protocols instead of 30: for as long as my peers are reachable by more than one messaging app, the odds of bridging between them isn't radically different.

Nitpicking but I was saying that the general social graph lock in problem (also referred to as chicken/egg) is well documented.

> i don't actually think it is. i don't know _anyone_ who uses just a single messaging app (and thereby a single protocol-level social graph). i have some mental map in my head: "if i want to reach friend A, i do it on Signal. friend B: Discord. friend C: SMS/tel/PSTN. friend D: Matrix". i think this is a pretty common experience these days: i'd hazard that my mix of 4 apps is on the _small_ side.

Hi! Nice to meet you! I use only one messaging app for all of my friends! It's called texting. As far as I know, all of my friends do the same, with the only exception being a few Internet-only friends where we use Discord.

The "mental map" that you are describing is exactly what I want to avoid. I am thankful that I have not had to make one yet, and when people tell me to use over-the-top chat apps like Whatsapp, I can see that the map must be made.

Just because this is the norm, doesn't mean I'm going to do it, especially since we don't do it now. As much as the interoperability problem between RCS and iMessage is an incredibly annoying problem, I would take a single unified messaging experience over some crazy fragmented one with a zillion apps any day.

> 2) coordinating large group chats. > for as long as my peers are reachable by more than one messaging app, the odds of bridging between them isn't radically different.

A little confused by this, because Beeper and other unifying clients cannot in fact make groups which have participants on multiple platforms at all.

You said you need 4 messaging apps right now to communicate with everyone you communicate with. How many of those users also have all 4 of those messaging apps? Obviously it's not all of them, or you'd just use one messaging app. The fact that you need four implies that for a given selection of contacts, there is a chance that it is impossible to create that group chat, because there is no shared platform they are all on. Then you factor in that in some scenarios you need your contacts to include additional contacts, and perhaps your 4 messaging apps needs to grow to make it happen. And of course if you already made the group and you need to just add one more person then you might have to scrap and remake the group somewhere else. But then that group that already has some messages in it still exists, and people will keep texting it! Now you've split your group chats!

On top of this, I want to note that the mental map you have built is also prone to becoming stale. If one of your friends is on Signal and Whatsapp but prefers Whatsapp, but then uninstalls Whatsapp and forgets to tell you, then you very well may send a message to that person and have it never arrive. Of course they might bail out of both Whatsapp and Signal, and just go back to SMS. Now none of your messages will land- you didn't even think they were interested in SMS.

Sure, if they are a close friend its likely they'll let you know. Most people have 1-5 close friends. But most people also have far more contacts in their contact book, and some of those people they might only message a few times a year. That's not a mental map that can be maintained, or if it can, I don't want to.

i admire the resolve. on the other hand i think that rules out iMessage playing much role in that long-term, right? like, they're just never going to play nicely with others, it's not easy for the broader developer base to integrate with much less improve, and so on. so you're back to SMS, and the baseline SMS experience now is pretty limiting and stalled (much as SMTP stalled): a big part of why people leave for app-based messengers is for features like voice memos, video-chat, multi-device (e.g. PC) support, better multimedia support, etc. to say "SMS forever" i think is to say "i'm okay never having these features" -- which is a fine decision but important to note.

> A little confused by this, because Beeper and other unifying clients cannot in fact make groups which have participants on multiple platforms at all.

i'm pointing to where i understand the landscape to be headed. for channel-based chat systems like Discord, irc, Matrix, XMPP/jabber, Slack, it's common enough to find channels which are bridged across 2 or more of those protocols. my experience with ephemeral group chats is that if i want to plan a large enough event i just end up starting multiple group chats, and the unimportant details are chaotic but the important ones like where/when we're meeting i make sure find their way into both chats. there's a possible future where i start two group chats and my client bridges messages between them in the same way those channel-based systems bridge.

Well Apple is implementing RCS, so that's good. But look, I don't really think the blue bubble stuff stems from not being able to put stickers on the conversation. It definitely doesn't come from not being able to emoji-react ("tapback" as Apple calls it) because that still works on SMS, but the SMS participant receives a text message describing the tapback. In Google Messages and other modern clients, that gets interpreted by the phone and turned back into an emoji reaction [1].

I don't think the blue bubble hate comes from people not being able to do inline replies. I don't think it comes from the inability to edit your messages when in an SMS conversation.

The source of the blue bubble hate comes from group chat splitting. When you have an iMessage group chat and you hit Add to add a new user, but that user is not an iMessage user, you are shown a prompt that says "Create a New Group? Contacts not using iMesage can only be added to a new MMS group with the same members. Contacts using email address handles will use a phone number instead."

You are given two options: "Cancel" and "New Group".

If you choose New Group, you'll now have two groups. If you do nothing else, no one knows a new group was created, since no messages were received. If you send a message, its still entirely possible for the other group members to message either or both group chats. Chaos ensues.

It's not clear that Apple is actually going to fix this with RCS. Seems most likely they will not, that group chat splitting will still occur, just replacing SMS with RCS.

> i'm pointing to where i understand the landscape to be headed. for channel-based chat systems like Discord, irc, Matrix, XMPP/jabber, Slack, it's common enough to find channels which are bridged across 2 or more of those protocols.

Bridging is hacky, and involves not showing contact information for each user. You (of course), can't start a DM with such a user, and I'd assume things like @ mentions are ambiguous or nonfunctional.

Sure it _can_ be done, but it is kind of a terrible experience. Even Matrix and IRC have the same problem, and that's one I've actively experienced from both sides (IRC and Matrix).

> my experience with ephemeral group chats is that if i want to plan a large enough event i just end up starting multiple group chats, and the unimportant details are chaotic but the important ones like where/when we're meeting i make sure find their way into both chats.

I commend you, because you take a lot more effort than most humans to make sure things end up on both ends. In my experience, with the humans I have to deal with, its about a 5-10% of the time this happens, and usually its by sending a screenshot of the other group chat with half of the first line of the next message showing more important details that they decided "weren't relevant" or just didnt fit on the phone screen.

Also it should be obvious but some kinds of planning are simply not possible or require people to perform special courier roles to complete. Things like planning for what weekend everyone's free or what elements of a potluck everyone's going to bring are pretty tedious to manage between 2 group chats.

Furthermore, in my experience events that need planning aren't given dedicated ephemeral group chats, instead they are simply planned on whatever group chats they already have. People don't tend to put a lot of thought into making sure people are included, especially if the group chat is large. Some of the family group chats I'm in are 12-14 people. Not all of those people are coming to the potluck. They still use it, and honestly I think that's better than having to juggle every combination of every participant and keep track of whos in each one.

[1] Side note here, after Google started interpreting the (fairly annoying) iPhone tapback SMS messages as tapbacks, Apple introduced a similar feature to interpret tapback SMS messages --- but only for iPhone sent tapbacks. So the scenario is a group chat with 2 iPhone users in it-- the tapbacks show as SMS to the receiving iPhone, but it gets turned back into a tapback emoji reaction. This only works for iPhone style tapback SMS messages. The slightly different format that Google Messages sends is... ignored...

Pretty much the most smug Apple way they could possibly implement that feature... but now the Pixel in the chat works in all cases and the iPhone only works in half the cases, so it actually only hurts Apple users' experiences

Figuring it out is much more fun than just using something else!

Make money, don't make money, cash is unrelated to the definition.

I thought it was about owning anyone's machine to the full extent. Did this change during the past 30 years?

For what?

I own a Mac an iPhone and an iPad but iMessage and FaceTime are entirely useless to me because no one I communicate with on a regular basis uses Apple devices. Same thing with various iCloud sharing features. Not using the family sharing offers is entirely uneconomical as well.

So what happens is that I gravitate to other ecosystems. I use WhatsApp. I upload all my photos to Google Photos. I mirror my iCloud Drive to Google Drive to share and collaborate with people on various things.

I have enabled Apple’s advanced data protection for end to end encryption but it’s entirely farcical as my stuff is all over the place anyway.

Almost everything Apple does in terms of software and services is useless to me. They are not locking me in. They are locking me out.

I’m paying for their excellent hardware, the m-series CPUs in particular, but I’m using my “spare” Pixel phone more often because the software suits me better.

I appreciate a lot of things that Apple does but it’s only a question of time until some other ARM based hardware catches up enough for me to stop overpaying Apple for software I can’t use anyway.

Apple's problem is that they are selling less to me than they could and risk losing me as a hardware customer as well.

Now, I totally get their strategy. It's a bet that net net they are locking more people in than they are locking out. It's hard to tell whether or not this is paying off for them. Not even Apple can know the counterfactuals.

The ball is in the court of Google et al. to make messaging and video chats less frustrating.

iCloud Photos is E2EE if you turn on iCloud’s “Advanced Data Protection”. That migrates the vast majority of your iCloud data into E2EE storage.

What Beeper set out to do was to solve the opposite problem, people who don't have Apple devices, but want to use iMessage.

And the poster above did have an Apple device, and wanted to use iMessage, but didn't seem to realise that iMessage works on Macs too.

The issue is that I as an Apple user want to be able to use iMessage to communicate with Android users.

You're entitled to use or not use iMessage per your preference. You are not entitled to use of iMessage on a platform of your choosing. Where do we stop this? Is Apple then required to create iMessage clients for Windows Phone as well? Perhaps a Blackberry client too? Maybe a website?

If you want to share an iMessage account and all the rest of the ecosystem benefits Apple provides, then get an iPhone. That's how you do that. And you can still absolutely talk to Android users once you have an iPhone, because the iPhone provides the essential middle-agent between iMessage and SMS that enables you to do that. Apple has done this forever and has designed Messages to degrade gracefully: you are not barred from texting anyone who doesn't have an iPhone, instead your message is converted to SMS completely seamlessly and sent from your phone even if you actually sent it from a Mac or iPad.

The endless moaning and whining from people not in their ecosystem about iMessage is so, so fucking tired at this point: from the accusations of platform lockout to the bitching about the fact that SMS messages are green instead of blue, on and on. If you guys are SO HARD UP for that iMessage goodness then just pony up for an iPhone, holy shit. Or at the very least, go bitch up Google's tree so they'll develop a decent messaging client that won't be abandonware within 6 months.

"I own a Mac an iPhone and an iPad but iMessage and FaceTime are entirely useless to me because no one I communicate with on a regular basis uses Apple devices"

and

"The issue is that I as an Apple user want to be able to use iMessage to communicate with Android users."

To sum it up for you as succinctly as I can: I am an Apple customer expressing unhappiness about some aspects of the product and the product strategy.

Welcome! Pixel is all you need.

I use a Mac but an Android phone. Android because I require the ability to install apps from arbitrary sources, including piracy. Mac because modern Windows is so contemptuous towards its users, and desktop Linux falls apart unless you know the intricacies of its internals.

Anyway, transferring files between the two was a pain in the butt that eventually grew so immense I reverse engineered Google's Nearby Share and made this: https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop

Though yes, I'm not North American so iMessage is just a non-issue to me. I don't know anyone who uses it. No one uses SMS for actual messaging between people, everyone's SMS inbox is 99% OTP codes and various other automatic notifications. Literally everyone who I communicate with is reachable through Telegram.

No one "requires" access to theft.

Unless my eyes are just completely missing it, I didn't see anywhere that they said or implied that they weren't using macOS or iOS on their Apple devices.

People often say they are happy to pay a premium for Apple because of the software. So, for someone who doesn't use the unique features of a particular OS+apps bundle maybe they could use another ... which reminded me of the lawsuits that resulted in Microsoft [partners?] having to refund the OS portion of the sale price for those who chose not to use Windows.

It was a leap, but not a huge one IMO.

I know a lot of people who have MacBooks of various types who use Chrome as their browser (and only access their mail through the Gmail web interface), MS Office, etc, rarely using a single one of the Apple bundled apps (save perhaps the very basic ones, like Preview)...and yet, they would never give them up for a Windows computer, because so much of the OS is very fundamentally different to interact with.

Better use matrix which is an open protocol.

My wife won't use Signal because it includes a crypto wallet and crypto transactions are taxable.

Matrix/Element would be my preferred option, but it causes so many security or encryption related issues that it has scared off everyone I tried using it with. Nobody knows what to do with the incessant popups demanding to "verify" something or other. Nobody (including myself) knows why older messages often can't be decrypted.

Telegram is less secure than WhatsApp.

Threema is not free, which makes it difficult for me to ask people to install it. It's not open source either.

iMessage is Apple only.

So what's left besides WhatsApp?

I think the crypto wallet is lame, and am disappointed the Signal folks decided to integrate something like that, but it's entirely opt-in. If she doesn't want to worry about being taxed on crypto transactions, she can simply not use that part of the app. I actually forgot for a second it was there until you brought it up, and I'm a daily Signal user.

I think her concerns are overblown, but it shows how incompatible taxable transactions are with a privacy focused app. The two things should be kept well apart.

[Edit] Politically, it kind of defeats the purpose as well. You want to be able to argue that you have a right to privacy when it comes to personal communication. You don't want to be in a position of having to defend the privacy of trading securities.

Separately, you've either misunderstood her position, or it's poorly thought out, and/or ideologically based.

What path would tax authorities use to ask Signal users (and only Signal users) if they've used cryptocurrency?

Tax law. In the UK, every single payment in cryptocurrencies, however small, is a taxable disposal that you have to include in your tax return if your total proceeds or gains from all investments are above a certain threshold.

I'm not ideologically opposed to cryptocurrencies and neither is my wife. She's just allergic to anything that could potentially raise tax questions.

Edit: On second thought, I don't own a business, so I guess nobody is going to look into my tax fillings with the same suspicion since they do not expect me to be doing anything funny with my accounting.

Doing it correctly is non-trivial. You have to submit a so called computation for each individual disposal, which can easily run into several pages.

The algorithm for working out the cost of a disposal is actually a pretty interesting test case for learning a new programming language or paradigm. Try implementing UK share identification rules in SQL for instance :)

I see it as the result of hacking spirit running the development, not the product team. Currently it can’t compete.

People who contact me over SMS get an immediate phone call from me in response.

When I noticed that there is 2 dollar subscription required to use this app, then all my blame from Apple went to these developers.

You can't really expect to do business with other company's service's without asking permission or cooperating. Especially, if the required interfaces are not exactly public.

Maybe this App had hope as free version, but not as business. What they were thinking.

iMessage is like Discord. It is messaging service tied to specific backend, and also devices in this case.

What if I reverse-engineer Discord, make a commercial application which uses their non-public backend (not with webview) and never tell anything for Discord? Should the "phone" argument hold in this case?

Discord is not the best example, because it 'allows' third-party level clients on some level, but above should not be the case.

It's different, because the only texting app on the iPhone automatically prefers iMessage. Did you make a group with 2 iPhone friends and now you're adding a non-iPhone? Congratulations you now have two group chats. No way to merge it, and you have to manually tell everyone not to use the first one. But they will anyway, and the conversation splits.

Usually people know the consequences of their actions. If they don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or any other "currently" popular social platform, there is always risk that you isolate yourself from the part of group which prefers the former.

Is that one person important enough that other group members ditch the other groups?

Here comes the reason why Meta, Discord or any other social platform with enough user base is highly valuable. Social pressure keeps users on their platforms.

Apple is doing the same with iMessage in hopes of pushing device sales. But it is still messaging service. It does not forbid you using regular cellural standards.

The question is that are the set defaults same as known decision? Not for everyone, but I don't think that conversation splitting is good enough argument here to reason why making business in this case would be good decision.

Yes! But it's a social problem created by an intentional product choice that makes their own users have a worse experience in service of retaining their walled garden at the expense of your customers relationships on a service that they are embracing and extending for their own ends...

And they could fix it too. There is zero reason to leave that original iMessage chat around from a technical perspective. They can even put a big scary banner at the end of the iMessage history saying Hey this is not encrypted anymore! watch out!

> Usually people know the consequences of their actions. If they don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or any other "currently" popular social platform, there is always risk that you isolate yourself from the part of group which prefers the former.

Yes, choosing not to use the three Meta apps you listed is your own damn fault. You're isolated because of your own poor choices. Just give up and feed the beast instead of, you know, trusting the phone/OS manufacturer you purchased your premium phone from and the carrier that you pay for your phone service.

> But it is still messaging service. It does not forbid you using regular cellural standards.

This is the part that's not actually true, because you cannot make an MMS group with only iMessage participants. You cannot opt out of iMessage on 1x1 conversations either.

Using or not using iMessage isn't actually a choice, it's an automatic "upgrade"

I'm not even sure it's possible to disable iMessage entirely. EDIT: This exists actually

EDIT 2: "Messages app automatically chooses the type of group message to send based on settings, network connection, and carrier plan." https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202724

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

It would be proper if iMessage would be the only messaging service phone users can use and installation and usage of the others are restricted.

But anyway, my whole comment is about making commercial messenger with the expense of other product (aka. backend services of Apple) without permission, cooperation or anything else. There aren't official public APIs for iMessage other than for Business use.

„We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.”

I believe that if you want to see hackers as only kids doing „fun stuff” at their desk at night making their (metaphorical and not) parents angry then either you are missing the bigger picture, or capitalism has gotten their ideological claws on the hacker culture and turned it into an obedient bunch of techbros that wouldn’t even dream of making the information free, as it wants to be.

Can you even imagine the reaction if the uBlock Origin folks attempted to make the case that Youtube updating their site to prevent ad blockers from working was some sort of nefarious violation of "the hacker spirit"?