Beeper is abandoning its mission to bring iMessage to Android after rolling out a series of fixes that Apple shot down one by one last month. Although the company has issued a complicated solutionsays it doesn’t plan to release another if this one is shot down by Apple.
“Every time the Beeper Mini ‘crashes’ or becomes unreliable due to interference from Apple, Beeper’s reliability suffers,” the company wrote in suspension. “It is unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we think is a fantastic product that really should exist, the truth is that we can’t win a game of cat and mouse with the biggest company in the world. With our latest software release, we believe we’ve created something Apple can tolerate. We have no current plan to respond if this solution goes offline.”
When Beeper was released, all users had to do was download an app to bring iMessage to Android. Every time Apple has blocked the service since then, Beeper has had to issue workarounds that get more and more complicated each time. The latest workaround requires users to own or rent a jailbroken iPhone for iMessage to work through Beeper. The new solution comes two days after Beeper announced that users had to have access to a Mac or have a friend on Beeper with a Mac.
For the app to work now, you need to have an old jailbroken iPhone (6/6s/SE1/7/8/X) and a Mac or Linux computer. Next, you need to install a Beeper tool to generate an iMessage registration code, then update the latest Beeper Mini app and enter your code. You must leave iPhone plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi at all times.
If users don’t have an old iPhone and don’t want to buy one, Beeper says they can rent one, and it may even offer its own rental service if there’s enough interest among users.
Apple did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The process is quite complicated and takes a lot away from the initial appeal of Beeper, which was supposed to provide an easy way to bring iMessage to Android. Some users had already abandoned the previous solutions, and this latest one will likely drive many more users away from the service. However, Beeper believes this latest fix is something Apple will “tolerate”. Given Apple’s ongoing efforts to take down Beeper, it’s possible that the tech giant wants to shut down the service once and for all.
“At this stage, Apple’s actions to block Beeper Mini are looking increasingly difficult to defend,” Beeper wrote in its blog post. “The only possible reason they have left is that they might make less money selling iPhones if iMessage was available on Android.”
Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers asked the US Department of Justice to investigate Apple’s “potential anti-competitive treatment” of Beeper, noting that “interoperability and interconnections have long been key drivers of competition and choice of consumers in communications services”. Given the latest developments in the saga, it is unknown if anything will come of this.
Beeper says it has made the software open source for other developers who want to give it away. Even as Beeper wraps up the effort to bring iMessage to Android, the company says it’s “returning focus to our long-term goal of building the best chat app on earth” in the new year.
