(San Francisco) For years, Ben Black’s phone bothered his family. It was the only Android device in a family email group that included eight iPhones. Because of it, videos and photos came in low resolution, and there were green text bubbles among blue bubbles.
But a new app called Beeper Mini allowed him to change all that.
Mr Black, 25, used the app to create an account for Apple’s messaging service, iMessage, with his Google Pixel phone number. For the first time, all messages exchanged by the family were accompanied by a blue bubble, and members could use features such as emojis and animations.
Since its introduction on December 5, Beeper Mini has quickly become a headache and potential antitrust problem for Apple. The app made a dent in Apple’s messaging system, while critics say it demonstrated how Apple bullies potential competitors.
Apple was taken by surprise when Beeper Mini has allowed Android devices to access its modern, iPhone-only service. Less than a week after the launch of Beeper Mini, Apple blocked the application by modifying its iMessage system. She explained that the app posed a security and privacy risk.
Apple’s reaction triggered a real tit-for-tat game: Beeper Mini found other ways to work, and Apple found new ways to block the app in response.
The duel has raised questions in Washington, which wonders whether Apple has used its dominant position in the iMessage market to block competition and force consumers to spend more on their iPhones than on other, less expensive products. .
The Department of Justice became interested in the case. Beeper Mini met with the Department’s antitrust lawyers on Dec. 12, two people with knowledge of the meeting said. Eric Migicovsky, co-founder of the app’s parent company, Beeper, declined to comment on the meeting, but the ministry is in the middle of a four-year investigation into Apple’s anticompetitive behavior.
The Federal Trade Commission said in a blog post Thursday that it will closely examine “dominant” players who “use privacy and security as justifications to prevent interoperability” between services. The article does not name any companies.
The battle also attracted the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee. The commission’s leadership — Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — wrote a letter to the Justice Department expressing concerns about Apple stifling competition .
Apple declined to comment on this letter.
PHOTO BEEPER MINI, PROVIDED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
App screenshot Beeper Mini
The questions coming from Washington go to the heart of today’s smartphone competition. Rival manufacturers credit iMessage with helping Apple expand its U.S. market share to more than 50% of smartphones sold, up from 41% in 2018, according to Counterpoint Research, a technology firm.
Protecting iMessage is a decade-old strategy at Apple. In 2013, Apple software chief Craig Federighi opposed making iMessage usable on competitors’ devices because it would “remove a barrier for iPhone-using families giving their kids Android phones “, according to emails published during the lawsuit between the company and Epic Games, creator of Fortnite.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has resisted calls to change this position. At a conference last year, he told an iPhone owner that the solution to green texting was to buy iPhones for friends and family members.
Beeper brought a different approach to messaging. Mr Migicovsky started the company in 2020 to develop a unique messaging app capable of sending texts across multiple services, including WhatsApp and Signal.
Mr. Migicovsky has successfully integrated most messaging services except iMessage. Unlike its counterparts, Apple did not offer a web application, which made it difficult to connect with its service. The only way Beeper could integrate iMessage was to route messages through Mac computers and then to an iPhone. This process delayed messages and made them less secure.
While Beeper struggled with iMessage, a teen from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, found another solution. James Gill, a 16-year-old computer enthusiast, made it his personal goal to understand how iMessage works. He used software to decrypt his iMessages and determined that Apple was using its push notification system – the same one that delivers news alerts – to pass messages between devices.
“It wasn’t a genius idea,” said Mr. Gill, a student at Saucon Valley High School. “I just looked into it for a long time. »
In June, Mr. Gill published his findings on GitHub, a software platform where programmers share their code. When Mr. Migicovsky saw the message, he thought he could help Beeper with his iMessage problem. He offered Mr. Gill a job paying $100 an hour, which was a considerable increase from the $11 an hour the young man was earning as a cashier at McDonald’s.
The work turned out to be more complex than MM. Migicovsky and Gill did not foresee this. Since the release of Beeper Mini This month, Apple has changed iMessage about three times, Migicovsky says.
Every change Apple made required an adjustment on Beeper’s part. Its latest solution is to route registration information to users of Beeper Mini through their personal Mac computer.
“To block it completely, we’ll have to find a way to require a serial number from the iPhone,” Mr. Gill said. Beeper will always find a workaround. »
An Apple spokeswoman said the company would continue to update iMessage because it could not verify that Beeper kept its messages encrypted. “These techniques pose significant risks to user security and privacy, including the risk of metadata exposure and the potential for spam, spam, and phishing attacks,” she said. declared in a press release.
This article was first published in the New York Times.