A 16-year-old high school student has delved into the workings of Apple's widely used iMessage, triggering a chain of events that led to a legal showdown with the US government.
iMessage, an in-house messaging app from Apple, boasts over a billion users worldwide and comes pre-installed on Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad.
James Gill, driven by curiosity, set on a mission to unravel the inner workings of iMessage, aiming to understand the development intricacies behind certain features.
However, this exploration resulted in the teenager reverse-engineering iMessage, drawing the attention of Apple and, ultimately, leading to a lawsuit filed by the US government.
The tech giant now faces allegations of stifling competition.
"I sort of just wanted to poke at how certain features worked," James Gill told ABC Net. "As a teenager, I have a large amount of time to throw at things."
Despite the widespread popularity of iMessage, attempts by third-party apps to make the messaging platform available for Android phones have proven challenging.
iMessage has always made texting on iPhones smoother than on Androids using SMS.
Sharing photos and videos with Androids results in lower quality, and important features like reading receipts and typing indicators are missing.
James Gill figured out how to bring together the blue-bubble iPhones and green-bubble Androids, transforming the texting experience for users of both platforms.
"It was more just curiosity, wanting to figure out how the thing worked and also like it'd be cool to mess around with it, you know?" he said. "I wanted to know how it worked, and I knew it was possible... I just kept working at it."
Gill successfully cracked iMessage using his program, "Pypush," and shared the results on GitHub, where users noted its commercial potential.
Earlier last year, US Senator Elizabeth Warren had raised questions about Apple's decision to limit a competitor.
"Green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big Tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors. Chatting between different platforms should be easy and secure," she wrote on X.
Green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big Tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 10, 2023
Chatting between different platforms should be easy and secure. https://t.co/fHAS5ckaEA
The Justice Department was preparing an antitrust case against Apple, citing unnamed sources, reported the NY Times.
Beeper, a single app to chat on various chat networks, has hired Gill to use his algorithm in creating Beeper Mini, an app for Android users to securely use iMessage.
