> but it’s an incredibly shitty move on a personal level.

Shitty to whom, on a personal level? Tim Cook? People really aren't kidding when they say HN is the orange Macrumors, huh?

> at the direct expense and risk of a non-profit community built around it.

I don't know where you learned the definition, but iMessage is not a non-profit product. It's not even an open one.

Clearly he means that it's shitty for people who relied on the exploit, but without monetizing it. When Beeper started monetizing it, obviously Apple had to close it, and hobbyists suffered.

As someone that knows people that use Matrix bridges, I feel confident that 99% of those people would blame Apple and not Beeper. Either the exploit is bad and Apple would have shut it down regardless, or it's benign and Apple is trying to secure their manifest destiny. The monetization aspect of it feels completely tangential when there is no sanctioned "free" route anyways.

I think it's a bit naïve to suggest that Apple weren't coming after the Hackintosh exploits for their own unrelated reasons to be honest, and they absolutely knew what they were.

Those exploits have existed for 10-15 years, they are as old as the hackintosh community.

There is a difference between commercial exploitation and hobbyist usage - just like with legacy emulation vs pirating. And no, apple really hasn’t come down despite knowing it exists, and probably wouldn’t have without beeper.

> they are as old as the hackintosh community.

Serial spoofing is, but Apple cracks down on that too: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/t9p5ff/psa_usin...

It's really not fair to say that the scene was "just fine" up until Beeper went commercial. In those 10-15 years, there were a lot of changes intended to segregate Hackintoshes from Macintoshes.

> There is a difference between commercial exploitation and hobbyist usage

What damages would Apple claim? That people didn't buy iPhones to use their insular and potentially-illegal messaging service? That they abused the same resources that millions of unknowing users exploit for free daily?

It's Apple's call to pull the cord whenever they want, but it's also entirely their decision to keep iMessage a walled garden. It's impossible for you to redirect the vitriol towards Beeper when the only thing they did "wrong" was sell a solution to an Apple-designed problem.

> What damages would Apple claim?

They don't need to claim any damages, this is not a legal question, they can just close the loopholes.

> the only thing they did "wrong" was sell a solution to an Apple-designed problem.

No, the issue is not that they are "solving an Apple-designed problem" (whatever that problem may be), it's that they did it by leeching off of Apple's infrastructure.

Beeper's solution didn't overhelp themselves to Apple's infrastructure, though. They used iMessage like a legitimate user would, and then charged customers for the automation. If that's leeching, then thousands of iOS and Mac users around the world are also leeching off Apple's service too.

I won't contest that it's Apple's decision how to present iMessage. The idea that Beeper killed iMessage spoofing is a hysterical assertion though, when people will readily admit that it was Apple's double-standard keeping it alive in the first place.