Biuebubbles is based. I was running on an old Mac mini then switched to a vm on my server (spoofing the hw info from the Mac mini) for Ventura + lower power consumption.

I use an old iphone to link my phone number, but will eventually switch to pypush as a way or registering without the iPhone

I just use Beeper. I had my own Matrix server up but getting all the bridges to work was cumbersome.

I set up AirMessage, and it is very glitchy. I can’t message some people because I get an error every time. You need to own a Mac to set it up, and it needs to always be awake. So if you have a laptop, it doesn’t really work. There is an option to give your apple login info to a third party, and they will run it on their Mac, but I don’t trust that at all.

It’s been on my agenda for a while to set up a Matrix server with an iMessage bridge with the idea I could interact with all of my message protocols from one place. I haven’t gotten around to it, but it might be worth a look.

Nah. Fuck em. I don’t need iMessage.