"All roads lead to Rome." But this proverb doesn't apply to Beeper because all roads have been cut off.
Beeper Inc. is an American software company that develops the instant messaging applications. Located in Palo Alto, California, the company is best known for having the Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini.
Whereas the former is an all-in-one instant messaging app that supports a variety of chat services and protocols, the latter is an Android app that can send messages through Apple's iMessage instant messaging service.
The app was marketed as a way for Android users to communicate with iOS users through chat bubbles that are blue, the color used by Messages – the built-in text messaging app on iPhones – to show texts sent through iMessage.
Apple has long maintain its closed, non-negotiable attitude, and that the company has long keep iMessage exclusive to Apple devices only.
What this means, no blue checkmark to non-Apple devices, period.
To achieve this kind of vendor lock-in, Apple only allows Messages to communicate with non-Apple devices, or in particular, Android users, through the lesser-featured SMS protocol with texts that are displayed in green chat bubbles.
This approach is making a lot of iPhone users to disfavor Android users during chats, in which many people, especially youngsters, perceive people with green bubbles as people with lower-class status.
Beeper tries to change this with Beeper Mini.
Launched on December 2023, Beeper Mini wants to bring the blue bubble to everyone.
"It’s our beautiful new Android app built specifically to send and receive blue bubble messages to friends with iPhones," the company said in a blog post, announcing the app.
The app essentially reverse-engineered the implementation of the iMessage communication protocol that supports some of iMessage's features, which given it perks, including the blue chat bubbles and end-to-end encryption.
This created a cat-and-mouse game with Apple.
c/o https://t.co/JU8EslGkjw pic.twitter.com/ovbEvahA95
— Beeper (@onbeeper) December 22, 2023
The original version of Beeper Mini only required users to have an Android smartphone and a phone number to message to iMessage users and appear using blue bubbles. But Apple found a way to break that within days.
Beeper’s next attempt to bring Beeper Mini back required logging in with an Apple ID, but again, Apple blocked that approach.
Beeper versus Apple has been the David and Goliath matchup, but Beeper was quickly running out of ideas, and roads.
As the saga continued, its launched one final blow; it's final desperate move to bring the blue bubble to the masses.
And that method was by pairing users' phone with a Mac or an old iPhone.
"We do not have any current plans to respond if this solution is knocked offline," the company said in a blog post.
"With our latest software release, we believe we’ve created something that Apple can tolerate existing. We do not have any current plans to respond if this solution is knocked offline," the company wrote.
But again, Apple quickly issued a fix to thwart this approach.
In response to this, Beeper wrote a blog post that it was done.
"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," wrote Eric Migicovsky, the CEO of Beeper.
The Apple-versus-Beeper saga is not over yet it seems, as Mini was removed from the Play Store. As if that alone is not a huge blow, Apple also started banning Apple users who used Beeper’s apps from using its iMessages on iMacs.
The move may have been taken to disable Beeper’s apps from working properly.
Apple originally said Beeper techniques had "posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks."
However, the move ultimately penalizes its own customers for daring to try a non-Apple solution for accessing iMessage.
Beeper Mini was never a big and popular app to start with, but it has garnered quite a following that its user count is within the hundred-thousand territory. And following Beeper Mini's ban, many of those users complained on public forums, including on Reddit and Discord.
Read: The First 'IMessage' On Android, And How It Struggles To Maintain Its Blue Bubble