iMessage on Windows 10 (pre-release 19592)
March 31, 2020 3:45 AM Subscribe
I believe I asked this question a long time ago and the answer is probably still "no" but I thought I'd give it a go. I use my iPhone for everything and all my friends/work colleagues have iMessage. I do not use Facetime and do not need calls over my PC. I use Windows 10. The one feature I miss about OS X is iMessage and contacts. Asking for everyone to use WhatsApp or another platform is not feasible due to the technical diversity of my friend groups (details inside if it matters). Is there anyway in iMessage on Windows 10 pre-release that doesn't involve jailbreaking something?
iOS seems to intentionally cripple group threads with Android users by not displaying things like the Twitter "cards" (OpenGraph things in general). I would love nothing else but have an iMessage app on my Windows 10 and as native as possible. FB somewhat has taken some messaging off of iMessage but I have professional friends (doctors, lawyers) who purposely don't use FB.
My other friend and professional groups are artist/creative types who use iPads as their primary laptop and getting everyone to switch to another platform for me would be not be feasibble. Plus I airdrop a lot for business purposes and iMessage seems to be the dominant platform.
Without jailbreaking my iPhone, I'd be willing to setup whatever overly complex setup to get iMessage working on Windows 10. I'd be willing to use WhatsApp/Telegram whatever as long as I show up as "blue" and appear native along with syncing with my iPhone. As in "Hey" on my desktop should also show up as "Hey" on my iPhone.
I don't care about the celebration animations, etc. I have no knowledge of SMS/MMS technology and I'm guessing iMessage is proprietary with some fallback but there's got to be an option. Everything else in the world seems to get "cracked" and seeing as I have physically have my iPhone if encryption is the issue I should be able to share keys? The whole iMessage protocol and how it works confuses me but I haven't delved into it.
If the answer is "no" a technical explanation why no one has hacked this like everything else would be great. Also Apple Pay has become defacto way of moving money around whether I like it or not so I can could see close friends "adopting" WhatsApp until it becomes an inconvenience.
I'm even okay with ApplePay or some advance features being iOS only as long as I can write and participate as native iMessage as possible.
FYI I have a MacBook Pro with Windows 10 but completely not worth it to boot into OS X to type messages.
Thanks!
iOS seems to intentionally cripple group threads with Android users by not displaying things like the Twitter "cards" (OpenGraph things in general). I would love nothing else but have an iMessage app on my Windows 10 and as native as possible. FB somewhat has taken some messaging off of iMessage but I have professional friends (doctors, lawyers) who purposely don't use FB.
My other friend and professional groups are artist/creative types who use iPads as their primary laptop and getting everyone to switch to another platform for me would be not be feasibble. Plus I airdrop a lot for business purposes and iMessage seems to be the dominant platform.
Without jailbreaking my iPhone, I'd be willing to setup whatever overly complex setup to get iMessage working on Windows 10. I'd be willing to use WhatsApp/Telegram whatever as long as I show up as "blue" and appear native along with syncing with my iPhone. As in "Hey" on my desktop should also show up as "Hey" on my iPhone.
I don't care about the celebration animations, etc. I have no knowledge of SMS/MMS technology and I'm guessing iMessage is proprietary with some fallback but there's got to be an option. Everything else in the world seems to get "cracked" and seeing as I have physically have my iPhone if encryption is the issue I should be able to share keys? The whole iMessage protocol and how it works confuses me but I haven't delved into it.
If the answer is "no" a technical explanation why no one has hacked this like everything else would be great. Also Apple Pay has become defacto way of moving money around whether I like it or not so I can could see close friends "adopting" WhatsApp until it becomes an inconvenience.
I'm even okay with ApplePay or some advance features being iOS only as long as I can write and participate as native iMessage as possible.
FYI I have a MacBook Pro with Windows 10 but completely not worth it to boot into OS X to type messages.
Thanks!
How To Geek says no too. There are complicated workarounds but none that are less troublesome than booting into OS X to type messages.
posted by Chairboy at 5:03 AM on March 31, 2020
posted by Chairboy at 5:03 AM on March 31, 2020
The workarounds are very annoying, and all the "good" solutions that come out (eg gateway apps that proxy your messages onto some other platform) don't work for very long before Apple shuts them down.
Apple don't want you using other platforms. So they don't make it comfortable to do so.
I have an old iPhone (WiFi only) which lives in a cupboard and I can use TeamViewer to access. An old Apple laptop (eg with a broken screen) could also be sourced cheaply and accessed remotely for a slightly better solution. But in both cases anything other than simple text messages are pretty kludgey.
Unfortunately this is a classic arms-race situation. Apple use increasingly draconian methods to keep iMessage exclusive (its a VERY significant source of "stickiness" for their platform, a lot of people are effectively locked in due to iMessage) and users adopt increasingly complicated hacks to make things work as they want. There was some evidence a while ago that Apple had an iMessage android client internally, but I really doubt they'll ever launch messaging on a non-Apple platform unless some regulator makes them. There are good security justifications, and superb business justifications, for keeping it locked down.
posted by samworm at 5:34 AM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
Apple don't want you using other platforms. So they don't make it comfortable to do so.
I have an old iPhone (WiFi only) which lives in a cupboard and I can use TeamViewer to access. An old Apple laptop (eg with a broken screen) could also be sourced cheaply and accessed remotely for a slightly better solution. But in both cases anything other than simple text messages are pretty kludgey.
Unfortunately this is a classic arms-race situation. Apple use increasingly draconian methods to keep iMessage exclusive (its a VERY significant source of "stickiness" for their platform, a lot of people are effectively locked in due to iMessage) and users adopt increasingly complicated hacks to make things work as they want. There was some evidence a while ago that Apple had an iMessage android client internally, but I really doubt they'll ever launch messaging on a non-Apple platform unless some regulator makes them. There are good security justifications, and superb business justifications, for keeping it locked down.
posted by samworm at 5:34 AM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]
The “easiest” way right now is to run a virtualized MacOS in Windows.
Here is a tutorial, dunno if it is still valid:
https://www.ilounge.com/imessage-on-pc
posted by tomierna at 6:01 AM on March 31, 2020
Here is a tutorial, dunno if it is still valid:
https://www.ilounge.com/imessage-on-pc
posted by tomierna at 6:01 AM on March 31, 2020
Response by poster: So those familiar with tech it seems like everything gets broken at some point. Since I have a valid iOS device I assume whatever it needs to be a valid "iMessage device" could be written in a cross platform sort of way or is the code for iMessage so horribly obfuscated that decompiling it isn't an option? Or even whatever is sent over to validate that it is a valid iMessage is itself encrypted meanining you'd need a root cert to make it happen?
posted by geoff. at 9:04 AM on March 31, 2020
posted by geoff. at 9:04 AM on March 31, 2020
Wow there's a lot to unpack here.
iMessage is not cross-platform, and cannot be made cross-platform. That's why some of the search results for this boil down to "VNC into your Mac running iMessage" and the rest are "download and install this malware that will work for sure."
De-compiling an iOS application that ships on and almost certainly blurs the lines between itself and its proprietary operating system, that itself runs on proprietary non-x86 hardware so that you can then re-execute it on an entirely alien platform is just not something that can realistically happen. Which I hope explains why all the google results for something like this come from spammy sites riddled with malware that are trying to sell you lies so you click on something you shouldn't.
You really, really shouldn't be running on "pre-release" Windows 10 at this point, particularly if you're clicking around spammy fake-tech-support sites like that. Doing that with an unpatched five year old prerelease OS is asking for unrecoverably disastrous trouble. I cannot emphasize this enough.
posted by mhoye at 10:05 AM on March 31, 2020
iMessage is not cross-platform, and cannot be made cross-platform. That's why some of the search results for this boil down to "VNC into your Mac running iMessage" and the rest are "download and install this malware that will work for sure."
De-compiling an iOS application that ships on and almost certainly blurs the lines between itself and its proprietary operating system, that itself runs on proprietary non-x86 hardware so that you can then re-execute it on an entirely alien platform is just not something that can realistically happen. Which I hope explains why all the google results for something like this come from spammy sites riddled with malware that are trying to sell you lies so you click on something you shouldn't.
You really, really shouldn't be running on "pre-release" Windows 10 at this point, particularly if you're clicking around spammy fake-tech-support sites like that. Doing that with an unpatched five year old prerelease OS is asking for unrecoverably disastrous trouble. I cannot emphasize this enough.
posted by mhoye at 10:05 AM on March 31, 2020
Response by poster: Yes I'm aware of that and I know it is highly tied to iOS, I figured there might be a way to VNC into an old MacBook that was painless but it looks like that's not the case. Thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. I'm using pre-release version of Windows for work reasons and I develop software so I'm well aware of risks.
De-compiling an iOS application that ships on and almost certainly blurs the lines between itself and its proprietary operating system, that itself runs on proprietary hardware, so that you can then re-execute it on an entirely alien operating system is just not something that can realistically happen. Which I hope explains why all the google results for something like this come from spammy sites riddled with malware that are trying to sell you lies so you click on something you shouldn't.
Again, I'm not familiar with how iOS applications work except from a high level of knowing how operating systems work and I've done extensive work doing custom Linux kernel builds unfortunately. It appears from my non-spammy sites they tie iMessage somehow to both the hardware and use certificate pinning. I would not be surprised if they had something in the kernel or the hardware itself that obfuscates and does weird unexpected behavior to get iMessage to run. Again, I'm not very up on incredibly secure hardware in the sense that it appears unless you're a state agency Apple might have invested that much to protect iMessage which is a bit crazy. I remember old game systems would rely on weird CPU timing or other fun hardware things that were undocumented to get around pirating.
Given there's some sort of unique ID with Apple servers per device, iMessage must have some non-standard execution where it really locks down protection rings around the kernel which I guess you can do when you control your own hardware. Obviously with pretty much any consumer OS I can think of if I wanted to I can get to Ring 0 and maybe I can with OS X but who knows what witchcraft they're using.
So just curious on this, I wouldn't consider iMessage a "must have" feature but it is something I'd pay for to be able to run it cross platform simply for convenience.
Again, I haven't gone deep into kernels and OS levels in a long time so I could be getting my terminology wrong, I'm way abstracted from days of device drivers and accessing low level functions.
posted by geoff. at 10:24 AM on March 31, 2020
De-compiling an iOS application that ships on and almost certainly blurs the lines between itself and its proprietary operating system, that itself runs on proprietary hardware, so that you can then re-execute it on an entirely alien operating system is just not something that can realistically happen. Which I hope explains why all the google results for something like this come from spammy sites riddled with malware that are trying to sell you lies so you click on something you shouldn't.
Again, I'm not familiar with how iOS applications work except from a high level of knowing how operating systems work and I've done extensive work doing custom Linux kernel builds unfortunately. It appears from my non-spammy sites they tie iMessage somehow to both the hardware and use certificate pinning. I would not be surprised if they had something in the kernel or the hardware itself that obfuscates and does weird unexpected behavior to get iMessage to run. Again, I'm not very up on incredibly secure hardware in the sense that it appears unless you're a state agency Apple might have invested that much to protect iMessage which is a bit crazy. I remember old game systems would rely on weird CPU timing or other fun hardware things that were undocumented to get around pirating.
Given there's some sort of unique ID with Apple servers per device, iMessage must have some non-standard execution where it really locks down protection rings around the kernel which I guess you can do when you control your own hardware. Obviously with pretty much any consumer OS I can think of if I wanted to I can get to Ring 0 and maybe I can with OS X but who knows what witchcraft they're using.
So just curious on this, I wouldn't consider iMessage a "must have" feature but it is something I'd pay for to be able to run it cross platform simply for convenience.
Again, I haven't gone deep into kernels and OS levels in a long time so I could be getting my terminology wrong, I'm way abstracted from days of device drivers and accessing low level functions.
posted by geoff. at 10:24 AM on March 31, 2020
Someone writing their own iMessage client that can pretend to be someone else is way into "nation state with capabilities that match (or exceed) those of the NSA" territory.
posted by sideshow at 2:27 PM on March 31, 2020
posted by sideshow at 2:27 PM on March 31, 2020
You may be in luck if you have or are willing to buy a newer Dell (January 2018 or later). They are in the process of rolling out a new version of Mobile Connect that offers advanced screen mirroring of iOS devices, so you can control your phone from your Dell. I assume this means using its iMessage as well. Details.
posted by lhauser at 7:29 PM on March 31, 2020
posted by lhauser at 7:29 PM on March 31, 2020
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posted by LoveHam at 4:40 AM on March 31, 2020 [4 favorites]