Beeper has been in the news for all the right and wrong reasons lately.Beeper Mini launched earlier this monthto much fanfare, with the company reverse-engineering iMessage to bring blue bubbles to Android. Within about 72 hours of its launch, though,Apple jumped into actionand confirmed it took steps, causing Beeper Mini to stop working. Two days after that,Beeper Mini returned online, albeit with a massive downgrade in functionality. The cat-and-mouse game between the two companies continues, as Beeper Mini is experiencing an outage again.
A few hours ago, many Android users reported that iMessages sent by friends or family were not being delivered to their Beeper Mini and Beeper Cloud inbox. The company quickly acknowledged the outage and confirmed that Apple seems to be deliberately blocking iMessage deliveries to about 5% of Beeper Mini users.
Beeper says uninstalling and reinstalling the app will fix the issue. It also encourages affected users to reach out to its support as they apparently can easily fix the issue.
Apple has already made it clear that it will continue taking steps to prevent unauthorized access to iMessage. And that means these Beeper outages will only get much more frequent in the coming days. And possibly, it is only a matter of time before Apple figures out a way to block Beeper entirely off iMessage, killing Beeper Mini for good.
When it went live in the first week of December, Beeper Mini offered the best iMessage experience on Android. You signed in with your Google account and synced your phone number to register it with iMessage. You could then start chatting with your iPhone friends without them knowing you are still on an Android.
Beeper’s foundation is based on reverse-engineering iMessage and bringing it to Android. While such solutions have existed for a few years, the company’s solution was arguably the most sophisticated and polished. The media attention with which the company launched Beeper Mini likely brought it to Apple’s attention. And it is now paying its price, though Beeper’s cofounder Eric Migicovky seems prepared to take on Apple, as hebelieves Beeper Cloud and Mini are apps that need to exist.
