Apple’s new headache: an application has threatened its monopoly on iMessage

For years, Ben Black’s phone upset his family. It was the only device Android in a family messaging group with eight iPhones. Thanks to him, videos and photos came in low resolution, and there were green text bubbles between blue bubbles.

But a new app called Mini beep It gave him the chance to change the situation.

Black, 25, used the app to create an account for Apple’s messaging service, iMessages, with your Google Pixel phone number. For the first time, every message exchanged by the family had a blue bubble and members could use benefits such as emojis and animations.

Since it was introduced on December 5th, the Beeper Mini has grown rapidly Heachache and in a potential antitrust problem for Apple. He blew a hole in Apple’s messaging system, while critics say he demonstrated how Apple intimidates its potential competitors.

To Apple it took him by surprise that Beeper Mini would allow Android devices to access its modern, iPhone-exclusive service. Less than a week after the release of Beeper Mini, Apple blocked the app by modifying its iMessage system. It said the app creates a security and privacy risk.

Apple’s reaction sparked a game of Whac-a-Mole, with the discovery of the Beeper Mini alternative ways of operating and Apple find new ways to crash the app in response.

The duel raised questions in Washington whether Apple has used its dominant position in the market of iMessage to block competition and force consumers to spend more on iPhones than lower-priced alternatives.

The Department of Justice took an interest in the case. Beeper Mini met with the department’s antitrust lawyers on Dec. 12, two people familiar with the meeting said. Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of the app’s parent company, Beeper, declined to comment on the meeting, but the department is in the midst of an investigation four years of anticompetitive behavior by Apple.

The Federal Trade Commission posted on its blog Thursday that it plans to examine the companies “dominant” that “use privacy and security as a justification to prevent interoperability” between services. The post did not name any companies.

The battle also drew the attention of the Senate antitrust subcommittee. The committee’s leaders — Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Mike Lee, R-Utah — wrote a letter to the Justice Department expressing concern that Apple it was eliminating the competition.

Apple declined to comment on the letter.

Clean competition?

The questions coming from Washington get to the heart of today’s smartphone competition. Rival smartphone makers credit iMessage with helping Apple expand smartphone market share in the United States to more than 50% of smartphones sold, up from 41% in 2018, according to Counterpoint Research, a technology company.

Messaging has been a key part of Apple’s strategy to sell more iPhones. For years it has made swapping between iPhone and Android devices as simple as it is simple messages between decades-old cell phones. Messages between iPhone users appear in blue and can be tapped to give a thumbs up, but messages with Android users appear in green and have no benefits.

Android companies have tried counter. An Android smartphone maker, Nothing, has partnered with an app called Sunbird to offer iMessage. Google, maker of the Android operating system, has been pressuring Apple to adopt a technology called Rich Communication Services, which would allow high-resolution videos and images to be sent between competing smartphones.

But their efforts did not have great results. Last month, Apple said it would adopt the technology next year. This means that Android users will be able to enjoy benefits like higher resolution video sharing, but they’ll have to make do green text message bubbleswho have been stigmatized and associated with lower wealth.

“Everyone is watching Apple’s response to the Beeper Mini,” says Cory Doctorow, special counsel at the digital rights advocacy group. Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of a book on interoperability between different technologies. “We can’t know how concerned they are internally, but their response could have a huge impact on how messaging works.”

Protecting iMessages has been Apple’s strategy for a decade. In 2013, Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief, objected to iMessage working on competing devices because “It would remove a barrier for families with iPhones give your kids Android phones,” according to emails released during the litigation between the company and Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO has resisted calls to change his position. Last year, at a conference, he told an iPhone owner that the solution to green texting was buy iPhone for friends and family.

An alternative to Cook’s idea

Beeper contributed to different approach to messaging. Mr. Migicovsky created the company in 2020 to create a single messaging app that could send messages across multiple services, including WhatsApp and Signal.

Migicovsky managed to integrate most of the messaging services, except iMessage. Unlike its competitors, Apple didn’t offer a web app, making it difficult to connect to its service. The only way Beeper could integrate iMessage was to route messages through Mac computers and then to an iPhone. The process delayed messages and made them less secure.

While Beeper struggled with iMessage, a teenager in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania found a workaround. James Gill, a sixteen-year-old computer enthusiast, decided to find out how iMessage worked. Used a computer program to decrypt his iMessages and discovered that Apple was using its push notification system – the same one that sends news alerts – to send messages between devices.

“It wasn’t a great idea,” said Gill, a student at Saucon Valley High School. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

In June, Gill published his findings on GitHub, a software platform where programmers share code. When Mr. Migicovsky saw the post, he thought he could help Beeper solve his iMessage problem. He offered Mr. Gill a job earning $100 an hour, a large increase from the $11 an hour he earned as a cashier at McDonald’s. The job was more complicated than Mr Gill thought.

The job was more complicated than Migicovsky and Gill expected. Since the launch of Beeper Mini this month, Apple has changed iMessage about three times, according to Migicovsky.

Every change on Apple’s part required an adjustment on Beeper’s part. Their latest solution is to send registration information to Beeper Mini users via their personal Mac computers.

“To block it completely, they will have to find a way require an iPhone serial number” Mr Gill said. “Beeper will continue to find a solution.”

An Apple spokesperson said it will continue to update iMessage because it can’t verify that Beeper keeps its messages encrypted. “These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the risk of metadata exposure and triggering spam messages, spam and phishing attacks“he said in a statement.

Migicovsky disagrees. Instead of allowing Android customers to send encrypted messages to iPhone customers, he said, Apple is trying to do that forcing them to exchange unencrypted text messages. Migicovsky posted Beeper’s software code online and encouraged Apple and cybersecurity experts to examine it.

Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said Apple has some legitimate security problems warned that a prolonged fight could occur between the two companies vulnerabilities that criminals could exploit.

“A world where Apple works with third-party customers in a compatible way is a good thing,” Green said. “A world where Beeper and Apple try to fight each other in an arms race blow for blow is a bad thing.

In an attempt to end the standoff, Migicovsky said he sent an email to Cook, but the Apple boss did not respond.

“This was not our intention,” Migicovsky said. “We’re trying to make it work, under our control, for the good of the chat world.”