It is a simple app, and is yet another of literally thousands of chat apps. The single compelling reason why it would be in a position of charging fees is purely because it backdoored into Apple services (which Apple of course bears the burden of), using Apple device identifiers to access it. The value they were trying to convert to cash was Apple's.
I didn't realize making an app like beeper was so simple, can you recommend your favorite alternative? The other 3rd party apps I've tried to use for FB tend to have lots of problems (eg missing/delayed notifications, rendering issues).
But... It wasn't simple. No other app has been able to create the bridge they created. We all saw their initial trending HW post and the impressive technical breakdown.
If it were simple many others would have done this by now.
>If it were simple many others would have done this by now.
Would they? Not only was it obviously going to get crushed by Apple (this isn't some 20/20 hindsight -- when they first announced this I stated exactly what they were doing and exactly the reasons why it would be easily squashed), it's actually completely illegal!. Like if Apple were so inclined they could actually demand legal action of the criminal kind. Apple has been incredibly soft-handed about this whole thing.
Incredibly early user of beeper here. I actually didn't use it for iMessage at all. The Matrix Bridge system they used (bridge slack, discord, sms, etc) to allow all of my communications into a single app had real complexity. My biggest concern was the front end -- the simpler part of the app -- wasn't very good. The back end had complexity if you ignore the iMessage bridge.
Then why on earth did they do this? If this is really unambiguously and completely illegal they are just going to get eviscerated and bled dry. And they would have known that. They aren't dumb.
