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iMessage is getting a major makeover that makes it among the two messaging apps most prepared to withstand the coming advent of quantum computing, largely at parity with Signal or arguably incrementally more hardened.

On Wednesday, Apple said messages sent through iMessage will now be protected by two forms of end-to-end encryption (E2EE), whereas before, it had only one. The encryption being added, known as PQ3, is an implementation of a new algorithm called Kyber that, unlike the algorithms iMessage has used until now, can’t be broken with quantum computing. Apple isn’t replacing the older quantum-vulnerable algorithm with PQ3—it's augmenting it. That means, for the encryption to be broken, an attacker will have to crack both.

Making E2EE future safe

The iMessage changes come five months after the Signal Foundation, maker of the Signal Protocol that encrypts messages sent by more than a billion people, updated the open standard so that it, too, is ready for post-quantum computing (PQC). Just like Apple, Signal added Kyber to X3DH, the algorithm it was using previously. Together, they’re known as PQXDH.

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Apple's iMessage service is not a "gatekeeper" prone to unfair business practices and will thus not be required under the Fair Markets Act to open up to messages, files, and video calls from other services, the European Commission announced earlier today.

Apple was one of many companies, including Google, Amazon, Alphabet (Google's parent company), Meta, and Microsoft to have its "gatekeeper" status investigated by the European Union. The iMessage service did meet the definition of a "core platform," serving at least 45 million EU users monthly and being controlled by a firm with at least 75 billion euros in market capitalization. But after "a thorough assessment of all arguments" during a five-month investigation, the Commission found that iMessage and Microsoft's Bing search, Edge browser, and ad platform "do not qualify as gatekeeper services." The unlikelihood of EU demands on iMessage was apparent in early December when Bloomberg reported that the service didn't have enough sway with business users to demand more regulation.

Had the Commission ruled otherwise, Apple would have had until August to open its service. It would have been interesting to see how the company would have complied, given that it provides end-to-end encryption and registers senders based on information from their registered Apple devices.

Enlarge / The dream of everybody having blue bubbles, and epic photos of perfectly digestible meals, as proffered by Beeper. (credit: Beeper)

A friend of mine had been using Beeper's iMessage-for-Android app, Beeper Mini to keep up on group chats where she was the only Android user. It worked great until last Friday, when it didn't work at all.

What stung her wasn't the return to being the Android interloper in the chats again. It wasn't the resulting lower-quality images, loss of encryption, and strange "Emphasized your message" reaction texts. It was losing messages during the outage and never being entirely certain they had been sent or received. There was a gathering on Saturday, and she had to double-check with a couple people about the details after showing up inadvertently early at the wrong spot.

That kind of grievance is why, after Apple on Wednesday appeared to have blocked what Beeper described as "~5% of Beeper Mini users" from accessing iMessages, both co-founder Eric Migicovksy and the app told users they understood if people wanted out. The app had already suspended its plans to charge customers $1.99 per month, following the first major outage. But this was something more about "how ridiculously annoying this uncertainty is for our users," Migicovsky posted.

Enlarge / Beeper Mini's promises of "Blue bubbles" on Android have been halted, at least temporarily, by Apple's countermeasures. (credit: Beeper)

Beeper Mini, the Android app born from a reverse-engineering of Apple's iMessage service, is purportedly working again as of Monday afternoon after a launch last week that drew more than 100,000 users, followed by a weekend outage forced by Apple.

An update to Beeper Mini in the Google Play Store restores the ability to send and receive text messages through iMessage, the encrypted service typically restricted to Apple devices. "It’s working exactly as it did before Friday," Beeper's co-founders write in a blog post. This is partially true; using Beeper Mini, for the moment, requires signing in with an Apple ID, rather than the phone-number-only method available at Beeper Mini's launch. Beeper's blog post says the developers are working on "a fix" for this.

Beeper Cloud, the desktop multi-chat client that utilizes similar methods for iMessage service, had been working since Sunday.

Enlarge / A Pixel 3, messaging a savvy iPhone owner, one with the kinds of concerns Beeper hopes to resolve for its customers. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

In the past week, I have sent an iMessage to one friend from a command-line Python app and to another from a Pixel 3 Android phone.

Sending an iMessage without an Apple device isn't entirely new, but this way of doing it is. I didn't hand over my Apple credentials or log in with my Apple ID on a Mac server on some far-away rack. I put my primary SIM card in the Pixel, I installed Beeper Mini, and it sent a text message to register my number with Apple. I never gave Beeper Mini my Apple ID.

From then on, my iPhone-toting friends who sent messages to my Pixel 3 saw them as other-iPhone blue, not noticeably distracting green. We could all access the typing, delivered/read receipts, emoji reactions, and most other iPhone-to-iPhone message features. Even if I had no active Apple devices, it seems, I could have chosen to meet Apple users where they were and gain end-to-end encryption by doing so.

Enlarge (credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Apple is shocking the world today by adopting the RCS messaging standard for iMessage. When iMessage users are talking to people off the service, iMessage will soon be able to fall back to the RCS carrier messaging standard instead of SMS, which comes with the advantages of read receipts, higher-quality media sending, and typing indicators. Your chats with your green bubble friends will be slightly less awful.

Apple sent several media outlets a statement:

Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.

iMessage is currently besieged on all sides by various parties. Google has been waging a "get the message" campaign against Apple for the past year or two, imploring the company to adopt RCS. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked on stage if the company would make messaging with Android better, and he responded, "I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point" and told the audience member to "just buy your mom an iPhone" if he wanted easier communication with his mother. Regulators in the European Union have yet to decide the fate of iMessage, but if it meets the qualifications for being a big tech "Gatekeeper," the iMessage protocol will be forced to open up in the EU. The Wall Street Journal ran an article last year subtitled "Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble," detailing the bullying that Android users were subject to due to SMS fallback dragging down the capabilities of iMessage group chats (87 percent of US teenagers have iPhones).

Enlarge / The Nothing Phone 2 all lit up. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Can an Android OEM really just hack its way into Apple's iMessage? That is the hard-to-believe plan from upstart phone manufacturer "Nothing," which says the new "Nothing Chats" will allow users to use "iMessage on Android" complete with a blue bubble sent to all their iPhone friends.

Nothing Chat will be powered by Sunbird, an app developer that has claimed to be able to send iMessage chats for about a year now, with no public launch. According to a Washington Post article with quotes from the CEOs of Nothing and Sunbird, Nothing will "start" rolling out "an early version" of Nothing Chats with iMessage compatibility on Friday. The only catch, supposedly, is that you'll need a Nothing Phone 2.

Is this for real or a publicity stunt? Apple is on record saying that iMessage on Android would only serve to weaken Apple, and it doesn't want to do that. Surely, any Android OEM offering "iMessage" support would immediately have the project shut down by Apple.

Enlarge (credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Google is hoping regulators will bail it out of the messaging mess it has created for itself after years of dysfunctional product reboots. The Financial Times reports that Google and a few cell carriers are asking the European Union to designate Apple's iMessage as a "core" service that would require it to be interoperable under the new "Digital Markets Act." The EU's Digital Markets Act targets Big Tech "gatekeepers" with various interoperability, fairness, and privacy demands, and while iMessage didn't make the initial cut of services announced in September, Apple's messenger is under a "market investigation" to determine if it should qualify.

So far, various services from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft have been hit with "gatekeeper" status because the EU says they "provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services." The list targets OSes and app stores, ad platforms, browsers, social networks, instant messaging, search, and video sites, and notably leaves out web mail and cloud storage services.

The criteria for gatekeeper services all revolve around business usage. The services the EU wants to include would have more than 45 million monthly active EU users and more than 10,000 yearly active businesses in the EU, a business turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros, or a market cap of 75 billion euros, with the caveat that these are just guidelines and the EU is open to arguments in both directions. When the initial list was announced in September, the EU said that iMessage met the thresholds for regulation, but it was left off the list while it listened to Apple's arguments that it should not qualify.