Beeper reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
The push to bring iMessage to Android users today adds a new contender. A startup called Beeper, which had been working on a multi-platform messaging

Beeper reverse-engineered iMessage to bring blue bubble texts to Android users::The push to bring iMessage to Android users today adds a new contender. A startup called Beeper, which had been working on a multi-platform messaging

  • twix@infosec.pubEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    They do have to run servers in order to keep the service alive. If you want to run this stuff yourself on your own server that’s possible using PyPush. The reason they have to run those servers for you is to keep the notification service alive.

    • LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Can you cite your sources? You appear to have confused Beeper Mini with Beeper…

      1. Mini only needs optional push servers to run.
      2. There’s no Beeper Mini source code
      3. You have to log in to Beeper Mini exclusively using a Google account
      • twix@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, sorry, I got confused. Beeper mini does need servers to keep the notification service alive. And thus not crazy to ask for 2$ a month. Beeper cloud could indeed do without servers I guess, but I don’t know anything about that. I was just keeping up with the development of pypush (the python poc) and reverse engineering progress.

        I don’t understand your point of “you have to log in with a google account”. I understood that was a requirement to check subscription status (and as such limit fraudulent apk’s).

        But that seems to be a different story than “opensourcing this would mean a competitor could do it for free”.

        You can already do this for free with pypush. And if you want to use something else then python you could build something based on it with any language as pypush is completely open source.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          Your Google account is required because it uses GCM for notifications on the phone. The Mini servers act as a middleman between GCM and ANP (Apples background notification protocol).

          They talk about this in the docs, they didn’t think it was realistic to try to reproduce ANP on Android, besides Android already has a service.