Enlarge / Beeper Mini's promises of "Blue bubbles" on Android seemed to have been nixed by a certain Cupertino-based firm on Friday. (credit: Beeper)

Beeper Mini, the Android app born from a reverse-engineering of Apple's iMessage service , is currently broken, and it is unknown whether it will resume functioning.

Beeper desktop users received a message from co-founder Eric Migicovsky late on Friday afternoon, noting an "iMessage outage" and that "messages are failing to send and receive." Reports had started piling up on Reddit around 2:30 pm Eastern. As of 5:30 pm, the app was still reporting errors in sending and receiving messages, with "Failed to lookup on sever: lookup request timed out." Comments on Beeper's status post on X (formerly Twitter) suggested mixed results, at best, among users.

The Verge, messaging with Migicovsky , reported that he "did not deny that Apple has successfully blocked Beeper Mini"; to TechCrunch , Migicovsky more clearly stated about an Apple cut-off: "Yes, all data indicates that." To both outlets, Migicovsky offered the same comment, re-iterating his belief that it was in the best interests of Apple to let iPhone owners and Android users send encrypted messages to one another. (Ars reached out to Migicovsky for comment and will update this post with new information).

Enlarge / The iPhone 15 Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

According to a report in Bloomberg , Tang Tan, vice president of Product Design, is leaving Apple, and his departure heralds a shuffle of executives heading up some of the company's most important products.

Sometimes, you might wonder just how much a specific executive influences the grand scheme of things, but the report claims that people within Apple see Tan's departure as "a blow," clarifying that he "made critical decisions about Apple's most important products." His team reportedly had "tight control" over the look and functionality of those products.

Tan oversaw major aspects of iPhone and Apple Watch design, and he was the executive overseeing accessories and AirPods, as well. He reported to John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, who is likely a more widely known name.

Enlarge / Apple's 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The MacBook Air is Apple's most popular laptop, and when the Apple M1 and M2 chips landed, they came to the Air first. That changed with the M3 chip generation , which came to the MacBook Pro and iMac first but left the Air untouched.

That situation should change early next year, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman . Apple is reportedly preparing to launch updates to the MacBook Air, as well as several new iPad models, in "the March time frame." Apple hasn't released any new iPads in 2023, and the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air was introduced in July of 2022.

Gurman says not to expect design changes from the M3 Air. The M2 version introduced a new non-tapered design with a display notch, a new keyboard, and a MagSafe port, and the M3 Air should look externally identical.

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

Android users' hopes that Apple's iMessage would be forced to open up in the European Union have been dashed. Bloomberg reports that iMessage won't qualify for the EU's new "Digital Markets Act," allowing Apple to keep iMessage exclusive to Apple users.

The EU is deciding what should and shouldn't be under the new rules set out by the "Digital Markets Act." The idea is that Big Tech "gatekeepers" will be subject to certain interoperability, fairness, and privacy rules. So far the wide-ranging rules have targeted 22 different services, including app stores on iOS and Android, browsers like Chrome and Safari, the Android, iOS, and Windows OSes, ad platforms from Google, Amazon, and Meta, video sites YouTube and TikTok, and instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Google recently rolled out a campaign to implore the EU to qualify iMessage for regulation, as Android's iMessage incompatibility is a big deal in the US. iMessage hasn't made the list, though, and that's despite meeting the popularity metrics of 45 million monthly active EU users. In the EU and most other parts of the world, the dominant messaging platform is WhatsApp, and with the Digital Market Act's focus on business usage, not general consumers, iMessage will just squeak by. Right now the EU is "investigating" a handful of borderline additions to the Digital Markets Act, with a deadline in February 2024.

Enlarge (credit: Dilok Klaisataporn | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

Governments have been secretly tracking the app activity of an unknown number of people using Apple and Google smartphones, US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) revealed today.

In a letter demanding that the Department of Justice update or repeal policies prohibiting companies from informing the public about these covert government requests, Wyden warned that "Apple and Google are in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps."

Push notifications are used to provide a wide variety of alerts to app users. A friendly ding or text alert on the home screen notifies users about new text messages, emails, social media comments, news updates, packages delivered, gameplay nudges—basically any app activity where notifications have been enabled could be tracked by governments, Wyden said.