From Beeper’s blog:
We—of course—expected a response. What we didn’t expect was 1984-esque doublespeak. The statement is complete FUD. Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure. That is a fact.Make no mistake, the changes Apple made on Friday were designed to protect the lock-in effect of iMessage. The end result is that iPhone customers have less security and privacy than before.
Before Beeper Mini, Messages app (the default chat app on iPhone) forced all iPhone customers to send unencrypted, unsecure green bubble SMS messages to Android friends, family and colleagues. Even worse, when iPhone customers added an Android phone number to an existing iMessage secure encrypted group chat, the Messages app would by default switch the entire group chat to using unencrypted, unsecure SMS. This immediately made communication between iPhone customers in the group chat less secure.
I’m very interested to see how this develop. I love Apple products, but some of their policies are just plan evil, and trying to lock-in users via iMessage is terrible. I hope Beeper push them to a war they lose as soon as policymakers stop them for anticompetitive behavior. We as Apple users deserve the best experience, and being able to have encrypted messaging with Android users would be great.
Also, considering that Apple will soon include the new messaging protocol, I don’t see why they try to get into this war. It’s bad publicity, it won’t give them more $$$ and ultimately, users will benefit from open messaging protocols and more secure communications.
On this one, 100% rooting with Beeper.