by If you send a text from one iPhone to another iPhone, that text is blue most of the time. If you send a text from an iPhone to an Android phone, that text will be green.
On the surface, it might not seem like much, but behind those colorful messages is a years-long battle between Apple and a group of app developers working on ways to break down the blue/green divide.
The first text message was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by software developer Neil Papworth to Richard Jarvis of Vodaphone, a British Telecom company. Jarvis was at his office holiday party at the time, so the message was simply “Merry Christmas”.
That holiday greeting was SMS, also known as the short message service. SMS was a common technology agreed upon by phone companies and software developers: this was how texting was done.
“SMS has basically been the protocol by which text messages are sent for over a decade at this point,” says Chance Miller, 9to5Mac Editor-in-Chief.
About ten years later, the Multimedia Messaging Service emerged, known as MMS. Now, texts could be longer, and users could send pictures and videos via text.
Then, in 2011, the texting paradigm shifted again when Apple introduced its proprietary texting app, iMessage.
“Apple basically hit iMessage as a modern take on SMS,” says Miller.
iMessage offered more than simple messaging. “Read receipts” indicate whether a recipient has opened a text message. Typed indicators indicated that someone is texting back to the user. iMessage users could send and receive higher quality pictures and videos. Later, iMessage would add the ability to “reply” to texts, adding another dimension to text communication.
iMessage texts also got a fresh coat of paint: outgoing texts now looked blue. Texting on an Android phone from your iPhone reverts to older SMS technology, which means no read receipts, no typed indicators, and no high-quality picture and video messages. Instead of blue texts, there were green texts out for Android users.
“There’s a stigma attached to green bubbles,” says Miller.
Beyond the social implications of green or blue bubbles, there are also privacy concerns. Blue texts – iMessages – are encrypted. That is not the case with SMS messages.
“The SMS standard has no encryption built in,” says Miller. “Your messages are at risk if your carrier can see what you’re saying [or] someone coming in and vouching for Apple or a carrier and they have to hand over that information.”
In recent years, a cottage industry of developers has sprung up, all working on ways to bring the “blue bubble” to Android communications. Earlier this year, Nothing Chats — an app made by Android smartphone manufacturer Nothing — purported to bring iMessage to Android. But Miller says the company used its own Mac computers to act as an intermediary between its users and the Apple devices they were texting on, raising security concerns.
“What you’re basically doing is giving your Apple ID and password to this company, which was basically logging in for you to a Mac in a server farm somewhere,” says Miller. “So you have no idea what they’re doing with your Apple ID and password and there’s no way it’s going to be a secure way to do it.”
Nothing voluntarily pulled the app from the Google app store shortly after launch over those privacy issues. In a statement on its website, Nothing apologized and says it is working to “fix some bugs.”
Earlier this month, another developer called Beeper launched an app called Beeper Mini.
“Android users can download this app, and it turns their messages from a green bubble into a blue bubble,” says Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky.
Unlike Nothing Chats, Beeper Mini does not use a server farm of Apple computers. Instead, Migicovsky says they reversed iMessage.
“We looked at how iPhones connect to iMessage, and reproduced the same technique on Android,” Micicovsky tells ABC Audio.
“They’ve found a way to spoof it and make it look like you’re an actual Apple device, even though you’re an Android signing in through Beeper,” says Miller.
Migicovsky says 100,000 people downloaded Beeper Mini in the days after it launched on December 5. Those who did had access to the world of iMessage, complete with most of its features – including encryption.
“We were getting messages from all over the world about people who could finally join the group chat with their family,” says Migicovsky, adding, “we heard about people who were more successful because they had They have a blue bubble against a green bubble.”
But those blue bubble communications didn’t last.
On December 8, Beeper Mini users began reporting that their messages were not going through, leaving communication limited to the older SMS standard. Amid the confusion, Apple weighed in, saying it made “permissions to protect our users.”
“Three days after we launched, Apple tried to block Beeper Mini,” says Migicovsky.
Apple’s statement did not mention Beeper by name, but it went on to say that it “blocks techniques that use fake credentials to access iMessage,” and that those techniques pose “significant risks to security and for user privacy” — including leaving users open to “unsolicited messages, spam and phishing attacks.”
Migicovsky says that’s not true.
“Beeper Mini has definitely made communication between iPhone users and Android users more secure. They turned it from a green bubble to a blue bubble,” he says. “The opposite effect was caused by the actions taken by Apple. They communicated between iPhones and Androids without encryption — it wasn’t that secure.”
Miller says that if Beeper Mini is exploiting a flaw in iMessage, Apple is right to be concerned about privacy.
“Apple’s statement — it holds up in some ways,” says Miller. “Even if Beeper is doing him good, somebody else could come in and find that reverse-engineered protocol, and exploit it for things like spam, phishing attacks, spam and all that. “
Migicovsky, for his part, says Beeper Mini is safe.
“We’ve proven time and time again that we’re good stewards you can trust, and we’ve only built a secure and useful application,” he says.
Beeper Mini is now up and running, with a few changes. Android users can still message iPhones with blue texts, but they need an Apple ID to do it. Earlier iterations only required a phone number to access iMessage.
“We’re still working on a full fix — fingers crossed,” says Migicovsky.
As pressure grew on Apple to make iMessage more accessible — SMS texting was replaced by a new standard: the Rich Communications Service, or RCS.
“RCS, in many ways, does what iMessage does with read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality pictures and videos — but it’s a standardized platform,” says Miller.
Most major Android developers have adopted the RCS standard, which means that Android-to-Android texting now comes with many iMessage-style features, such as read receipts and encryption. Last month Apple announced that it would support RCS starting in 2024, which means iPhone to Android text chats could get those features in the new year. But Miller says that while RCS may be ready to solve some of the technical problems associated with texting, one thing will remain the same.
“Apple said RCS messages will still be green bubbles,” says Miller.
Hear more on Perspective, from ABC Audio:
iMessage on Android? Inside the battle for green and blue texts appeared first on abcnews.go.com
