The developers behind Beeper Mini are continuing with their effort to make iMessage for Android function despite Apple's mitigations, and the latest "fix" requires Beeper Mini users to have access to a Mac.
On Reddit, the Beeper Mini team says that the Mac-based fix coming on December 20 stabilizes iMessage for Beeper Cloud and Mini, and it "works well" and "is very reliable."
It is unclear how many Android users have a Mac or have a friend with a Mac to rely on, but the fix requires using a Mac to connect to iMessage on Beeper. According to Beeper Mini's developers, registration data from an actual Mac has to be sent to Apple to use iMessage on Beeper. Beeper has been using its own Mac servers to provide that information to Apple, but that resulted in thousands of Beeper users having the same registration info, which was an "easy target for Apple."
The Beeper update will instead generate unique registration data for each Mac, making it harder for Apple to tell which users are accessing iMessage through an Android device. The Beeper Mini team says that registration data is "only used to indicate that a Mac is available during registration" and that the Mac will not be given access to an account or messages.
If you do not have access to a Mac computer, but have a friend on Beeper with a Mac, you can ask them if you can use their registration data. In our testing, 10-20 iMessage users can safely use the same registration data.
With the fix, Beeper Cloud and Beeper Mini users will once again be able to use iMessage on Android, but only with email addresses and not with phone numbers.
The Beeper Mini team appears to be losing some support with Android users, who do not want to jump through multiple hoops to access iMessage on Android. Multiple people on Reddit have said that they will instead wait for Apple's implementation of RCS for more seamless texting between iPhones and Android devices.
Since launch, the Beeper Mini experience has changed. Initially, Android users were able to register their phone numbers with Beeper Mini, but Apple quickly put a stop to that, and many Beeper Mini users ended up missing text messages. Now Beeper Mini only works with an Apple ID email address, and there have been multiple service interruptions over the past few days. With the requirement to have a Mac added in the mix, it is not surprising that Android users are finding the app to be more hassle than help.
Beeper Mini launched using a reverse engineered version of iMessage, and the app was registering the phone numbers of Android users with fake iMessage credentials using Apple's own servers. Apple made it clear that it views Beeper Mini as a security risk, and that it has no intention of allowing the app to use iMessage in any capacity.
In a statement, Apple said that Beeper Mini "posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks."
Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky said over the weekend that he is aiming to provide a secure service for Android users, and he spoke out against Apple's iMessage monopoly. SMS conversations between iMessage and Android users are not encrypted like iPhone-to-iPhone communications, so Beeper Mini has been able to argue a security angle.
Given the publicity surrounding Beeper Mini, U.S. lawmakers have stepped in to express concern over the situation, but with Apple planning to adopt RCS next year to bring many iMessage features to conversations with Android users, there may not be much of a case for Beeper Mini to use a backdoor to offer iMessage to Android customers.
Encryption for iPhone to Android chats will be missing until Apple is able to work with the GSM Association that developed the RCS protocol to add end-to-end encryption, but Apple will likely make that a priority to stop inquiries into iMessage.
With any investigation into iMessage, Apple will also be able to point out that there are many highly popular cross-platform apps to choose from that offer end-to-end encryption, including Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
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It’s over, Johnny. It’s over.