The last people who claimed android/iMessage unification were literally running a Mac mini server farm and mitm’ing their own users to give people the illusion of seamless interop. If you want that sort of thing, cool - you don’t, but sure, cool - maybe let somebody else be the crumple zone for whatever ridiculous sec-model chicanery these shops are selling before you give away your iCloud password.
Beeper is working with iMessage yet again, though Apple is likely to fight it

Co-founder denies Apple's claims of security and privacy concerns for its users.

Ars Technica
@mhoye it's already back. there's no chicanery at work here; their source is available.
@0xkruzr I really can’t believe that people are lining up to stand in the middle of a compatibility arms race with the biggest tech company in the world over colour of their text bubbles.
@mhoye @0xkruzr Any reasonable solution to the problem has the cryptographic endpoint on the Android user's device and the transport just routed thru whatever. If they're putting the cryptographic endpoint in their cloud shit, they're 100% scammers.
@dalias it is on the device, which I know bc I turned debugging messages on out of curiosity.
@mhoye