People that are old enough can remember applications like Pidgin, Gaim or similar, I do not remember anyone attempting and wining to sue the developers. The user will create an account so IMO if I have an Apple account (I own an old Apple laptop) then WTF would Apple care I send the bytes from a differrent application.
I am curious what a judge or legislators will decide on this, can a company force you to use their client to connect to their service? Then Google can force us to use Google approved and signed apps to access youtube and google apps, even if they can't block alternatives they can bully the alternatives with the justice system.
It would be also interesting to know if using this app instead of the fallback it is actually using maybe less resources and it would be a benefit for the world for Apple to open the protocol.
I am all against monopolies, I loved pidgin (and just saw that actually it still exists!), but the beeper-mini case was quite weird.
> The user will create an account so IMO if I have an Apple account (I own an old Apple laptop) then WTF would Apple care I send the bytes from a differrent application.
Actually, the initial version of beeper mini did not require an apple ID. And actually this was one feature they seemed to advertised a lot. Only the phone number was used: "No Apple ID is required" [1].
I guess the idea was that they could provide an upgrade to the current, unencrypted communication between iMessage and android (that does not require an apple id either). But I guess the issue here, was that people who used it did not necessarily have an apple ID, and thus not consented to apple's ToS, which as I understand makes it different than pidgin etc. And they actually say that this is a problem they are trying to fix:
"Phone number registration is not working yet. All users must now sign in with an AppleID. Messages will be sent and received via your email address rather than phone number. We’re currently working on a fix for this." [2]
Unless I misunderstand something, beeper mini stopped working because apple somehow disabled this "feature".
I mean I do not have any invested interest in this, I do not own an iphone and even if I did all people I know use other chatting apps, I do not own apple stocks or anything, I am all for piracy and whatnot, but I would not consider blocking access to their service when there is no ToS agreement "anti-competitive behaviour".
Maybe Apple should be able to block people that are not registered Apple users, but as I said I have an Apple account, I own a very old Apple laptop, so if I send a mesage from my PC or I remote enter in the laptop and send the message from there is the same resources used from Apple servers.
From what I understand the problem is Apple refusing to make iOS and Android users communicate smoothly, they downgrade group chats so bad that Android users are bullied and not invited into groups. I am sure those well paid Apple engineers can solve the issue if they care about the customers , at least the ones that maybe have Apple laptops but an Android phone, or an iOS phone but they want to mesage from their Apple laptop running Linux.
I am curious what a judge or legislators will decide on this, can a company force you to use their client to connect to their service? Then Google can force us to use Google approved and signed apps to access youtube and google apps, even if they can't block alternatives they can bully the alternatives with the justice system.
It would be also interesting to know if using this app instead of the fallback it is actually using maybe less resources and it would be a benefit for the world for Apple to open the protocol.