Do you have to pay a monthly fee of $10 just to chat with friends who use Apple’s iMessage on your computer? This may sound a little crazy, but a new app called Beeper is trying to make this impossible possible. It intends to solve the ultimate pain point problem faced by multi-device users by using a unified interface to integrate all the dozens of separate chat applications on your phone.
How many social circles can 15-in-1 accommodate?
The core logic of Beeper is extremely simple and direct, which is to stuff the conversations 16personalities Chinese from 15 platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack, and Facebook Messenger that are commonly used on your mobile phone into one application. You no longer need to switch back and forth between a dozen icons to reply to a message.
The team led by Eric Migicovsky, the founder of the former smart watch company Pebble, created this application. When he officially announced the launch on social media, it had already accumulated a lot of attention. For many digital enthusiasts and multi-device users, the idea itself is very attractive.
Its previous name was not Beeper, but its current goal is clear and precise, which is to become a unified hub in the chat field. To get this convenience, you have to pay a monthly subscription fee of $10. The result of using this currency is that within a search box, you can browse past news of all services.
Apple iMessage has become the biggest attraction
Among all the integrated services, the one that causes the most headaches and the most excitement for others is undoubtedly Apple's iMessage. This blue bubble only exists between Apple series devices. Many people stick to the iPhone because it is difficult to let go of it.
Beeper claims that it has the ability to make iMessage run on Android, Windows and Linux systems. This can be regarded as a certain degree of temptation for those who want to switch to an Android phone but are afraid of losing their presence in iMessage group chats.
Presumably, Apple officials will never allow such behavior. Beeper itself admits that it uses some technical tricks to achieve this function. The twists and turns and uncertainty revealed are precisely what makes this app particularly eye-catching.
Always-on Mac becomes key
If you want to use Beeper to connect to iMessage, the most ideal situation is that you have a Mac computer that never shuts down . You have to install an official Beeper application on the Mac so that it can act as a bridge to help you forward messages.
This principle is somewhat similar to the methods used by some jailbreak plug-ins and remote control software in the past. As long as you have an online Mac at home or in the office, in theory, your Android phone anywhere in the world can perform Blue Bubble sending and receiving operations.
But this solution is not low for many people. After all, not everyone has the conditions to turn on a Mac computer 24 hours a day. This also leads to another plan of Beeper that sounds even more crazy.
You can use a jailbroken phone instead without a Mac
If you don’t even own a Mac, Beeper has prepared a jaw-dropping plan. They will directly send you a specially processed jailbroken iPhone, and use this iPhone to act as the bridge for forwarding. It is this iPhone that serves as the bridge for you to forward!
What was revealed was that Eric Migicovsky said in a follow-up tweet that he had 50 old iPhone 4S piled on his desk ready for recycling. These phones will be loaded with specific software and become part of the cloud server.
The reason for this is that as long as you pay the $10 per month, Beeper will use these hardware behind the scenes to help you handle the sending and receiving of iMessages. Among software applications, this kind of hardware-level solution is extremely rare and full of geeky color.
Open source protocols and future imagination
Beeper's technical foundation is built on the Matrix open source communication protocol. Eric compared the relationship between Beeper and Matrix to the relationship between Gmail and the email protocol. Although the core client is not open source, the bridge code connecting various services is public.
This shows that the developer community can work together to maintain these connection channels, so that applications can always support continuously updated third-party services. In the short term, Beeper solves the problem of using multiple apps to chat at the same time.
From a long-term perspective, Eric's ambition does not stop there. He hopes that in the future, everyone will be able to directly use Beeper's own unique chat network to communicate with friends, just like using another completely independent platform, rather than simply using it as an intermediary for transmitting large amounts of information, just like it serves as a message transfer relay.
Full list of invitation-only and support
Although Eric personally claims that he has been using Beeper as his main chat tool for two years, this service is still very new to the public. So far, it is not open for registration. You have to go to the official website to fill out the form and wait for the invitation.
What everyone is most concerned about is undoubtedly which applications it supports. The complete list of supported applications is based on official information. This list covers WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Skype, Facebook Messenger, IRC, and even traditional text messages, and of course the most special iMessage.
For ordinary users, the biggest threshold may not be the monthly fee of 10 US dollars, but how to understand and accept the complicated mechanism of forwarding through jailbroken mobile phones. Would you try such a complex solution because of a unified chat interface? You are welcome to leave a message in the comment area and share your views. If you feel that this article is helpful to you, don’t forget to like it and share it with your friends who are also troubled by multiple chat software.
