11mo ago

Sunbird beta to relaunch and rejuvenate iMessage for Android

www.androidheadlines.com Sunbird beta to relaunch and rejuvenate iMessage for Android

With a failed attempt early in 2022, Sunbird beta will relaunch soon with newly added features and better security.

18 comments

I'll never wrap my head around why America cares so much about iMessage.
The literal rest of the world has managed to settle on chat apps that aren't locked into a single vendor.
- That’s easy: unlimited SMS was common on most mobile plans in the US as early as the mid-2000s. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans had no financial incentive to use WhatsApp.
  
  We had unlimited SMS by the time smartphones rolled around in the UK, we still decided not having some weird caste system based on what messaging app you use was the obvious choice.
  In fact I remember my American mates were charged for receiving texts, which I never heard of from any other Europeans, so I'd say there was probably a stronger incentive your side of the pond
- @9point6 @ardi60 Cross-platform, sure, but most are still controlled by single vendors, like the two billion people using WhatsApp (Meta), the 1.3 billion using WeChat, the 930 million using Messenger (Meta again), etc…
- Because Americans are obsessed with iphones, as a status symbol and "American" product and it's a default...no effort required.
  
  I find it funny it's called an American product as its iconic design was made by a Brit, CPU is manufactured in Taiwan and the rest is made and assembled in China
- i assume you're using the metric system too then?
- Most of my family here in Australia use iPhones, and by extension, iMessage. Granted, they also use FB Messenger, Snapchat and all the rest, but mainly iMessage. It's the default and it works for them.
  I can assure you that this is not a thing exclusive to the US.

- You can get iMessage on Android perfectly fine, as long as you can extract a key from an iPhone or a Mac. It's just a chat protocol. There's a bit of fancy pants encryption and signatures going on, but I the end it's nothing special.
  There are practical limitations (Android requiring workarounds to maintain a connection to the Apple notification servers, for one) but with enough reverse engineering, it's quite possible to set up a bit perfect iMessage client that Apple cannot detect. Hell, in theory someone could set up a lightweight VM that runs select versions of the native iMessage app.
  Until Apple starts doing remote hardware attestation (which I believe they still don't), there will be workarounds. When they do switch to remote attestation, many of their own devices will stop working.
  Beeper went wrong because they didn't implement an undistinguishable client. They didn't want to, either, it seems. They got what they wanted, though: news outlets published about their app everywhere, and even the American government now cares about Apple's American chat monopoly.