Finally. Microsoft incorporates iOS into phone link.

[Aaron44126]

Another cool thing I noticed with Beeper.

Inbound SMS messages with 2FA codes (i.e. that you get when logging into a bank web site) are automatically identified and it copies the code to your clipboard, so you can just paste it into the web site without having to go through any additional steps.  Slick.

[kojack]

On 4/4/2023 at 6:31 PM, ryan said:

 

 

If I was rich I'd send you a million bucks, you sir are a great person, I wish my parents cared for me

They do.  Maybe have a weird way of showing it.  I thank you for the compliments. We (mrskojack and myself) try our best to give our two sons the best life.  Our other son is 25 and is working on his new business.  He's set up and we only have to provide emotional support to him! 

 

On 4/4/2023 at 8:57 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Another cool thing I noticed with Beeper.

Inbound SMS messages with 2FA codes (i.e. that you get when logging into a bank web site) are automatically identified and it copies the code to your clipboard, so you can just paste it into the web site without having to go through any additional steps.  Slick.

Just like real imessage. Cool. 

[ryan]

I don't know if I'd switch anything to apple but hey you never know. I had a 9th gen ipad and I loved that thing because of its performance and battery life. but now I have a duet 5 and the battery life is better but yeah the performance is meh. it's almost like you can count on apple giving you a great experience no matter what you buy from them whereas windows/android/chrome is hit or miss and to get an equal or better experience you really have alot of homework and research to do

[Sandy Bridge]

On 3/22/2023 at 7:21 AM, Aaron44126 said:

There seems to be a lot of effort going into this and I have no idea how these guys are making any money, if they aren't charging for the app...

This Beeper sounds pretty interesting.  I miss the days of AIM, texting on a phone just doesn't capture the magic of multi-hour AIM chats with friends at odd hours.  There's GChat and Facebook Chat, but then you're involved with the big advertising enterprises, and for the latter with the never-ending hamster wheel of social media that will likely pull you in.  AIM was more or less perfect.

 

Beeper could be the next-best thing to AIM.

 

So I looked into this because I'm always suspicious of services that look like they're too good to be true.  And they say they have a team of 20, which usually doesn't come free.  One of Beeper's co-founders is the founder of Pebble (the smart watch company), and after that (and a gap year) became a partner at YCombinator, which according to LinkedIn is a position he still has.  So, he's probably minted.  The other co-founder has a long software career at a variety of places and probably doesn't need short-term income either.  Not sure who all else is working there, but it looks like it is likely a situation of, "a bunch of us have been in the industry 15+ years and want to build our dream application, and one of the co-founders is minted and can float those who actually need income in the short term."

 

Which is better than the alternative of, "they're selling your messages to the highest bidder."  They'll still need to figure out if that eventual Premium option is actually going to cover expenses over the long haul though.

 

OpenCore Legacy also looks interesting.  I also have a 2010 Mac Mini that is currently on Sierra (or is it High Sierra?), and did not know it could be updated past High Sierra.  Even if I don't enlist it for Beeper duty, that is good to know about.  For the "broken USB 1.1 support", does that mean you can't plug in 1.1 devices directly?  Apple lists all of its ports as being USB 2.0 ports, rather than 1.1; at first I had thought it meant USB 1.1 ports didn't work but there aren't any.  Not a big deal though, I accidentally bought a USB 2.0 hub a couple years ago when I thought I was buying a USB 3.0 hub so that's an easy work-around.

[Aaron44126]

5 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

For the "broken USB 1.1 support", does that mean you can't plug in 1.1 devices directly?  Apple lists all of its ports as being USB 2.0 ports, rather than 1.1; at first I had thought it meant USB 1.1 ports didn't work but there aren't any.  Not a big deal though, I accidentally bought a USB 2.0 hub a couple years ago when I thought I was buying a USB 3.0 hub so that's an easy work-around.

Yes. Apparently, it switches which controller your device gets plugged into internally based on what you connect. So, if you plug a USB1 device in directly, it will go to the USB 1.1 controller which will not work. Going through a USB2 hub is a “hack” to force it to go through the system’s USB 2 controller.

 

I have since connected my Discord and Facebook Messenger accounts to Beeper and those are working fine as well. Having everything in one spot is nice. And I saw on GitHub that they are working on a Google Voice bridge; I use Google Voice as a secondary phone number so it would be nice to have those SMS messages in there too.

[Aaron44126]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/26/23699102/microsoft-phone-link-imessage-ios-iphone-support-available-now

 

It looks like Microsoft is rolling this out to the "general public" with the full rollout to be completed by mid-May.

 

Meanwhile ...  I'm still quite satisfied with Beeper, and I can report that it also works just as good on Linux, which I have recently switched over to on my "personal" laptop.

[kojack]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/26/23699102/microsoft-phone-link-imessage-ios-iphone-support-available-now

 

It looks like Microsoft is rolling this out to the "general public" with the full rollout to be completed by mid-May.

 

Meanwhile ...  I'm still quite satisfied with Beeper, and I can report that it also works just as good on Linux, which I have recently switched over to on my "personal" laptop.

I noticed that today as well.  I finally got unison working decently on my pc's now. I should have beeper up and running soon as I just landed a position with a prominent tech website. I will contact beeper and see if they will push my acceptance up so I can use it right now, and tell the readership about it. I will be using phone link to try as well as soon as I get the update. 

[kojack]

I have the option for the iPhone on Microsoft phone link now, but my phone and PC both hang at connecting via Bluetooth.  Anyone have any options to get this to push past this part?

[kojack]

Got it figured out. Had to forget the devices in Bluetooth settings.  It works great now. 

[ryan]

nice, how did you get it to work? Im trying to link my s21 ultra to windows 11 and no dice just texts. shouldnt i be able to make calls also.

 

one last thing, how do I get dex working wirelessly?

[kojack]

1 hour ago, ryan said:

nice, how did you get it to work? Im trying to link my s21 ultra to windows 11 and no dice just texts. shouldnt i be able to make calls also.

 

one last thing, how do I get dex working wirelessly?

I am not sure on DEX. But for phone link, remove your computer and phone from each other's Bluetooth, turn off both Bluetooth adapters for a min, turn both back on then pair via the phone link app. Worked for me on both systems. 

[kojack]

Been using Phone Link constantly since I have connected it. It works awesome. As I mentioned before, I don't care about transferring files, photos etc as I am full Microsoft on my mobile devices anyways. But, being about to message from my PC's is a great time saver, and it works awesome. My phone is on charge in my office, and my notebook, which I am typing on right now is in our family room and I can message using my phone from here. Wonderful!

[Aaron44126]

Err.  Here's a new thing.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/16/apple-to-adopt-rcs-messaging-standard/

After years of prodding, Apple is adopting RCS "later next year" (sounds like an iOS 18 feature) which will improve the messaging experience between Apple and Android devices.

[kojack]

On 11/16/2023 at 2:51 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Err.  Here's a new thing.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/11/16/apple-to-adopt-rcs-messaging-standard/

After years of prodding, Apple is adopting RCS "later next year" (sounds like an iOS 18 feature) which will improve the messaging experience between Apple and Android devices.

I am wondering if Microsoft will work with this now (or some other company) and create a messaging platform for windows. I am close to jumping ship on MS, but we will see how much trouble I am going to have to get my account unlocked next month. And then the wife's. I think her secondary contact is her now lost rogers email as well.  I will have to fix hers after I get mine back up and running. 

[Aaron44126]

iMessage has apparently been reverse-engineered.  Beeper has taken advantage of this and created a new "Beeper Mini" app for Android, which allows for iMessage access and end-to-end encryption without a Mac intermediary server.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/beeper-mini-on-android-claims-to-have-reverse-engineered-imessage-compatibility/

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

[kojack]

3 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

iMessage has apparently be reverse-engineered.  Beeper has taken advantage of this and created a new "Beeper Mini" app for Android, which allows for iMessage access and end-to-end encryption without a Mac intermediary server.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/beeper-mini-on-android-claims-to-have-reverse-engineered-imessage-compatibility/

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

I will be trying out beeper mini on Christmas morning when we open our pixels.  Reports to follow. 

[kojack]

18 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

iMessage has apparently been reverse-engineered.  Beeper has taken advantage of this and created a new "Beeper Mini" app for Android, which allows for iMessage access and end-to-end encryption without a Mac intermediary server.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/beeper-mini-on-android-claims-to-have-reverse-engineered-imessage-compatibility/

https://blog.beeper.com/p/how-beeper-mini-works

Go watch snazzy labs take on this.  It's awesome. iMessage was reverse engineered by a high school student.  Apple...Kings of security! ha ha ha. 

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, kojack said:

Go watch snazzy labs take on this.  It's awesome. iMessage was reverse engineered by a high school student.  Apple...Kings of security! ha ha ha. 

 

Honestly I'm surprised that this wasn't done sooner.

 

Clearly you can run iMessage on non-Apple hardware.  (I ran it in a macOS VM on a Dell Precision M6700 for years.)  The protocol isn't that complicated.  The "trick" is just getting through the initial steps of registering a device with Apple to get encryption keys and such, and it looks like that is what this high school student figured out.

 

Apple could try to update things server-side to close this loophole, but if the Beeper implementation is good, Apple won't be able to do that without also breaking iMessage support on older devices.  (You can still use iMessage on like iOS 9 and older devices.  They've been good about keeping their cloud stuff working even after they end OS support for old hardware.)

[saturnotaku]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Apple could try to update things server-side to close this loophole, but if the Beeper implementation is good, Apple won't be able to do that without also breaking iMessage support on older devices.  (You can still use iMessage on like iOS 9 and older devices.  They've been good about keeping their cloud stuff working even after they end OS support for old hardware.)

 

Again, watch the Snazzy Labs video on this topic. It's likely far more complicated for Apple to try and plug this loophole as it would almost certainly have implications for their enterprise customers. And if there's one group of people you don't want to piss off, it's them.

 

[Aaron44126]

I watched the video.  There are some spots where I think that Apple could step in to cause trouble.

 

First off, the "pypush" demo included an Apple serial number in the config, and if Beeper Mini is similarly using one serial number for all of its sessions, I don't see why Apple wouldn't just block it.  It is a clear terms of service violation.  I don't think they'd start blocking "serial numbers hosting a large number of Apple accounts" as they could be used by enterprise customers as you say, but if they are able to find a serial number of a pool of serial numbers being specifically used by Beeper, then that's another story.  ...Beeper could get around this by generating unique serial numbers for every user, and adding some mechanism to have you generate a new one if something is not working with the one that you have.  There are well-known ways to generate serials; I messed with this when I was doing my macOS VM setup to get it happy with iMessage.

 

The other is their notifications bridge.  Beeper runs its own connection to the Apple Push Notifications service in its cloud, and when a notification comes in, it triggers the phone app to wake up and connect to an Apple server to see what the message is.  The behavior of a notification going to one device immediately triggering a connection to come in from a different device is not normal behavior for an Apple device, and if Apple were able to key in on this behavior, that's another thing they could use as the starting point for a block.  (Also, they could pay attention to whatever IP range Beeper's notification bridge is running out of... which they could find easily enough by just running their own Beeper Mini instances and seeing where the connections come from.)  The app does have an option to turn off push notifications and that would remove this "vulnerability".

 

Also.  iMessage spam is starting to become more of a thing (I'm starting to get these once or twice a month myself), so I wouldn't be surprised to find Apple cracking down on how iMessage authentication works and trying harder to lock it down to specific (verified) devices in any case.

[kojack]

I think now that Beeper has figured everything out, Apple cannot close the doors permanently.  I think it will be a temporary thing, and then it will be figured out in short order.  Props to a high school student figuring out how to make imessage work on android though.  

[Aaron44126]

Let the cat-and-mouse begin …

It is blocked.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app

[kojack]

11 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Let the cat-and-mouse begin …

It is blocked.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app

Hope that can be resolved.  I may go to log into my legacy beeper request and just use that.  Send an invite to the wifey for hers then too.  I trust beeper much more than Carl Pei/sunbird.  He's a shady ****. I remember OnePlus back in the first couple of versions taking peoples credit card info on their site, and those customers being ripped off thousands of dollars.  I don't trust him as far as I can throw him.  

[Aaron44126]

Beeper Mini is back ... sort of.

You can sign in and send messages with an Apple ID (email address), but not with a phone number.

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-mini-is-back

 

I have mixed thoughts on their claim that they have made messaging "more secure" by releasing Beeper Mini.  Obviously, offering end-to-end encryption between Android and iPhone users is "more secure" messaging, but by open sourcing the connection code (also the right call, I think), they have opened the door up to spammers, phishers, and other nefarious actors to more easily access the iMessage platform.  You could also see Beeper Mini "copycat" apps spring up that use the same code to interact with iMessage but don't have the same degree of care for security and privacy that Beeper is claiming to have.  I'm surprised that Beeper does not address this at all in their post along with their claims of security.  They talk about how their app is secure, but despite repeatedly pointing out how their iMessage connection code is open source, they don't give any thought to the idea that it could be misused by others.

 

Anyway, because of this risk, I fully expect Apple to continue to expend effort getting this blocked, and I will be surprised if they are not at least partly successful by the end of the week.

[kojack]

On 12/11/2023 at 2:54 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Beeper Mini is back ... sort of.

You can sign in and send messages with an Apple ID (email address), but not with a phone number.

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-mini-is-back

 

I have mixed thoughts on their claim that they have made messaging "more secure" by releasing Beeper Mini.  Obviously, offering end-to-end encryption between Android and iPhone users is "more secure" messaging, but by open sourcing the connection code (also the right call, I think), they have opened the door up to spammers, phishers, and other nefarious actors to more easily access the iMessage platform.  You could also see Beeper Mini "copycat" apps spring up that use the same code to interact with iMessage but don't have the same degree of care for security and privacy that Beeper is claiming to have.  I'm surprised that Beeper does not address this at all in their post along with their claims of security.  They talk about how their app is secure, but despite repeatedly pointing out how their iMessage connection code is open source, they don't give any thought to the idea that it could be misused by others.

 

Anyway, because of this risk, I fully expect Apple to continue to expend effort getting this blocked, and I will be surprised if they are not at least partly successful by the end of the week.

I get spam messages on my imessage now, so I don't think Beeper is going to change anything in that regard.  I am thinking I may just sign up using the mini farm side of beepr and have reliable connection. You did this correct?