16 Year Old Developer Releases App Bringing Apple iMessage To Android

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One useful feature that iPhone includes that is absent in Android devices is the useful Apple iMessage functionality. Enabling easy and convenient communication between iOS devices, iMessage allows users convenient features like being able to see when your friend is typing, easily sharing pictures and video, and even cool perks likes sending cash through messaging. Until now, Android users have been left out in the cold when it comes to the functionality of iMessage, but Roman, a 16 year old app developer, has recently released an app called weMessage that brings the feature to Android devices.

Apple iMessage = weMessage

As mentioned above, weMessage brings the functionality and convenience of Apple iMessage technology to Android users. However, the app’s life may be short lived. Similar apps have released before, but in an effort to defend the integrity of their closed ecosystem, Apple has been pretty quick when it comes to shutting these programs down. However, this budding young developer hopes his situation will be different due to his commitment to continually updating his app to circumvent Apple’s efforts to lock him out.

In a post on reddit, Roman explained exactly how weMessage works to bring iMessage to Android:

“My name is Roman, and I am a 16 year-old app developer. I have recently published my first app to the Play Store, called weMessage. weMessage is an app that allows you to use iMessage on your Android phones or tablets. I created weMessage due to the inability of people on Android to use iMessage’s ecosystem. Although it is allows you to use iMessage on your Android device, I cannot close the gap between Android and Apple completely because weMessage is reliant on an Apple computer, which I will explain below.

weMessage is composed of two pieces of software: the Android app itself and a messaging server that I called the weServer. In order to use weMessage, you need to install the weServer on a Mac computer. The weServer acts as a “bridge” between the Mac computer and your Android device. The weServer is a messaging server that processes and relays iMessages to and from the Android device. The reason why an Apple computer is needed is because the iMessages need to be sent through an Apple device in order to be delivered. The iMessages need to be sent through Apple’s servers, and the only way to do this legitimately is to use an Apple device. If the weServer supported Windows or Linux, I would not only be violating several EULAs but would be relying on an exploitation that would likely be fixed in the future.”

Whether weMessage actually succeeds in its bid to bring Apple iMessage to Android long-term remains to be seen, but it’s very likely that Apple will do their best to shut things down. Despite using a Mac to transmit messages and, therefore, technically being in the clear, it’s obvious that Apple doesn’t want a main draw of their ecosystem to be delivered into the hands of a competitor. Regardless, it’s an excellent effort that brings a useful feature to Android users (provided they own a Mac computer.) We certainly hope that it’s here.

Check out more about the app in the reddit post or at the weMessage website.

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