Show HN: An iMessage Scheme REPL. scheme [at] irepl.im

irepl.im

23 points·dpkendal··10 comments

(I'm one of the creators.)

If you're curious about how we did it, take a look at https://github.com/46Bit/irepl. Messages Beta for Mac still has AppleScript bindings from iChat. We're (ab)using them to pass the iMessages to Heist and then reply.

that is very cool! now to hack this a bit and get it doing other weird and wonderful stuff... :)

I realised there's no instructions on how to use it, so quickly wrote some up from memory: https://github.com/46Bit/irepl/blob/master/INSTALL.md. Let me know if you have any problems.

That sounds like quite a workaround - I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't any reverse engineered iMessage (or Facetime) clients out there.

Would you happen to know if there is some technical or crypto reason for this?

Reverse engineering protocols well enough to build a polished app atop is hard. iMessage is new.

When apple unveiled FaceTime, Jobs said it would be an open standard. Sadly it never came to be. I wonder why - that could easily be a competitive advantage over Skype or countless other competitors... Maybe a stupid patent (that Apple has licensed to use, but has no right to let others use it too) is the reason?

Actually I remember reading that part of the reason FaceTime hasn't turned into the open standard that Steve promised is that when he made that announcement at the event, this was the first time that anyone had heard of it being an open standard. The FaceTime team had no idea and then maybe he dropped it after meeting with them. It isn't referenced anywhere except in the video of the event and breakdowns of the event on blogs.

Ingenious.

I can't wait to see what other iMessage-based services pop up now that the AppleScript bindings are exposed.

Haha, that is awesome.

Good job chaps!

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