Beeper Mini - the app that enabled Android users to enter Apple's iMessage walled garden through clever reverse engineering - suddenly stopped functioning yesterday, just three days after its launch This sudden shutdown seems certain to be due to Apple's intervention

While the widely shared Apple PR statement does not directly mention Beeper Mini, it is clear what it is The statement explains, "We have taken steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials to access iMessage"

"These techniques posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for exposing metadata and enabling unsolicited messages, spam, and phishing attacks," the statement continued And while Beeper is still diligently working on workarounds, it seems unlikely that Apple will get bored anytime soon: "We will continue to update them to protect our users

The core criticism, that Beeper Mini "exploits fake credentials," is true iMessage is only exposed to Apple devices, so Beeper Mini works by pretending to be an Apple device The following embedded Snazzy Labs The video neatly explains in more detail how it works, but the bottom line is that the Beeper Mini impersonates a legitimate Apple hardware key

However, the question of whether that would undermine security is less clear: Beeper says that the app is fully encrypted and private, and that only the sender and recipient can read messages sent through it Beeper has even offered to show its source code to third parties to verify this to Apple's satisfaction

Ironically, by integrating directly with Apple, Beeper Mini appears to be actually more secure than other Android workarounds

"If Apple really cares about the privacy and security of their iPhone users, why would they stop a service that allows their users to send encrypted messages to Android users instead of using insecure SMS Will they stop?" asked Eric Migikowski, founder of Beeper, to The Verge

It's a good question, and Apple would argue that it is answering it by belatedly adopting RCS messaging next year A more cynical answer would be that Apple knows that iMessage's platform exclusivity is a great way to retain users and attract new ones

That is especially true for younger users, and as the Wall Street Journal famously found, Android users are a bit more critical of the second-rate texting experience (basic texting, horribly compressed media, horrible green bubbles) available on this platform It is possible that they are critical; Apple has confirmed that Android messages remain green even after the RCS integration is complete

Indeed, the WSJ article dug up a 10-year-old quote from Apple's Craig Federighi, where he said that bringing iMessage to Android would only result in removing "obstacles to iPhone families getting Android phones for their children" He stated

For now, Migikowski seems bullish about the prospects of keeping Beeper going Beeper Cloud and Mini are apps that need to exist," he wrote, responding to a tweet asking if the "endless cat and mouse game" is a credible business model 'We built it We built it We share it widely"

That may not be a point of contention One of the things people look for in a messaging app is reliability, and if sustained outages are part of the experience, it's hard to imagine users continuing to pay $2 a month