Beeper, the messaging platform that has fought hard to bring Apple’s iMessage to Android phones, seems to have released a final update for its service. After multiple attempts at making iMessage work on Android devices reliably, with workarounds that involved users accessing a Mac, Beeper has said its efforts to bring the popular messaging service on Android are “unsustainable.” The company announced its future plans hours after it said it had found a stable solution for iMessages to work on Android for Beeper Mini and Cloud users.
It its blog post published late Thursday, Beeper said it did not have any plans to revive its efforts if its latest iMessage fix was thwarted by Apple. “Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit,” the company said in its blog. “It’s unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we believe is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a cat-and-mouse game with the largest company on earth.”
Beeper said that it expected Apple to tolerate its latest software release and that the iMessage connection software behind Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud was being made open source. “Anyone who wants can use it or continue development,” Beeper said. The company will now focus on its long-term goal of building “the best chat app on Earth.”
In the blog, Beeper also responded to Apple’s claims that its app posed “significant risks to user security and privacy.” In its detailed rebuttal, the company said that Beeper Mini was not a malicious app and was secure, contrary to claims made by the iPhone maker.
Beeper’s latest update came soon after the company said that phone number registration on the Beeper Mini app was back, which would allow Android phone numbers to show up in blue colour in iMessage. Beeper users, however, would need to access an old jailbroken iPhone, a Mac computer, or find a friend with a Mac.
Beeper left detailed instructions to get iMessage working reliably on Android in a separate blog post announcing the jailbroken iPhone fix for phone number registration. For Beeper Mini users on mobile devices, an old jailbroken iPhone (6/6s/SE1/7/8/X) would do the trick.
Earlier this week, Beeper released an iMessage fix on Android devices that would require users to access a Mac computer for the service to work reliably. A Mac registration would allow Android users to send blue bubble text messages on iMessage. Users must have continued access to a Mac computer, however, for the messaging service to work.
While Beeper has been working on various fixes and workarounds to get iMessage to work on Android devices, Apple has continued to block the service citing privacy and security concerns. In a statement to The Verge, Apple said that the company had taken steps to block Beeper Mini’s access to iMessage as it exploited “fake credentials.” The company said that it took steps to protect its users as Beeper’s techniques “posed significant risks to user security and privacy.”
