> But why is it Apple's responsibility to accept a non-legit/unknown serial #?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s Apple’s responsibility to accept fake serial numbers.
The serial number is an implementation detail and not the core issue, which is Apple’s intentional degradation of the non-iMessage experience, and their stance against interoperability.
If this was all about security, they could accept something other than an Apple serial #, and provide a UX that makes it clear the user is interacting with a non-Apple user. This would address most spam/abuse issues.
But we know that this is about lock-in and not security.
> I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s Apple’s responsibility to accept fake serial numbers.
Can we confirm if that's what is happening here or not? How else is Beeper Mini able to work given Apple's requirement "iMessage auth + read/write requires valid_serial_number"?
The “How Beeper Mini Works” post from a few days ago doesn’t mention the serial number, so I don’t know.
But whether this is happening or not is immaterial to the broader philosophical issues being raised.
For sake of argument, let’s say they’re faking a serial number to make the app work. How does that change the impact of Apple’s anti-interoperability stance?
Again, if the real issue is security, nothing stops Apple from providing a secure alternative. And again, this takes us back to: this isn’t about security.
It’s not, and they don’t. This is a cat and mouse game. Apple is free to block these and people are free to keep trying to get around it. Everyone should be acting in good faith
They (Apple) don't accept requests without a valid serial #, but Beeper Mini is working (for users without iDevices), so there's some kind of exploit, no?
