> I doubt many people would pay for one.
Enough people paid for one. Enough to make Apple scared and use engineer time to ban/block people anyway.
Do we know that and that it wasn’t e.g. a massive influx of messages coming from a single hardware ID triggering an anti-spam system.
Since we're not Apple, we don't know. But if we take their word [0] for it.
> We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage.
> We will continue to make updates in the future to protect our users.
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/08/apple-cuts-off-beeper-mini...
Apple doesn’t sell apps they sell hardware and services. There’s no incentive for them to provide a free iMessage app for android, and I doubt many people would pay for one.