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Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

developer.ibm.com

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Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#51

Post by jseliger »

brad0 wrote: post #46
jseliger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most modern cameras have, for the last couple years, used NFC to quickly and easily transmit photos from the camera to the phone. From what I understand, on Android this works pretty effectively. On iOS, however, weak NFC implementation means that one must use a kind of janky WiFi transfer system. It works, but it's kind of difficult to use and not very elegant.

Are you sure it's transmitting over NFC? I thought NFC is quite a limited bandwidth connection. Maybe it's creating the initial connection over NFC and doing the actual transfer over wifi?

Good point; you're probably right and I'm probably wrong, since I'm recalling seeing videos that demonstrate how NFC works w/ cameras on Android versus iOS. I do have an iPhone, so to get pictures from a camera I have to (usually) manually select the camera network, then go to the app, then start downloading.

The clunky software camera companies ship doesn't help, of course. If I were in charge of a camera company I'd publish an API and SDK and welcome the world's many hackers to make the camera better, but alas I'm not and no one asks my opinion.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#52

Post by brians »

hdhzy wrote: post #17
MikeKusold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Yubikey NEO is the only NFC device that ever got me excited. It'd be nice to be able to store all my TOTP tokens on the device instead of the phone. Also, signing/encrypting text with PGP from the yubikey.

Sadly there is no NFC token that supports 4096 bit RSA keys (I'm not even talking about EC keys). Fidesmo also has support for PGP/U2F over NFC.

That's okay. RSA-4096 is suitable for long term secrets, but we're talking about authentication: typically signing short challenges, or DH key shares, for immediate verification. The requirements for that application are much lighter.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#53

Post by rhodysurf »

maratc wrote: post #26
threeseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest use case is probably for public transport. That's something where you are tapping on/off multiple times a day.

Reading NFC transit passes doesn't sound too exciting. I mean, if a phone has an NFC chip, why not use the phone (plus an app) instead of a transit pass, tapping with your phone where you're expected to tap with your pass? This is like your phone wouldn't come with a music player, but would come with a full-fledged oscillograph instead.

That was what the original poster was saying: Using the phone as the pass instead, not reading the pass itself

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#54

Post by dzhiurgis »

giobox wrote: post #49
givinguflac wrote: post #13

Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing here?

It reminds me of the ridiculous excitement over iBeacons when Apple announced their proprietary NFC-like tech a few years ago. Virtually every iOS dev I know bought some cheap iBeacons thinking "wow this is so cool" and never ended up building anything useful. I wasn't immune either, as the abandoned iBeacon in my desk drawer attests to. There's undoubtedly great use cases for NFC on phones (payments, travel passes,…

iBeacon protocol is not proprietory. BLE covers larger area that NFC does not.

I agree there aren't much real uses tho. But we might not know yet.

For example LoRaWAN networks are deployed worldwide fairly quietly.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#55

Post by MBCook »

brad0 wrote: post #45
MBCook wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it's read only so that stuff won't be coming to iOS.

I don't believe you need to write to the card in order to do payments. You send byte streams and it generates OTPs.

I was thinking of cases where you may need to update the balance on the card.

You're right, if you only used it as authorization I guess you wouldn't need write access.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#56

Post by MBCook »

rosser wrote: post #20
givinguflac wrote: post #13

Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing here?

I suspect that the general lack of exciting things involving NFC might have a little bit to do with the fact that ~half the mobile audience couldn't do anything with them. That appears to have changed, so this consequence probably will too.

I always figured that was a big part of why QR codes didn't take off in the US (irony: Apple just added support in iOS 11).

Even so, I'm kind of surprised that NFC hasn't come up with more interesting use cases than easy pairing and as a mode/location switch to mark you're at home/work.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#57

Post by MBCook »

ben1040 wrote: post #27
givinguflac wrote: post #13

Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing here?

One nice thing is bluetooth pairing. I bought a pair of Bose QC35 headphones recently. There is an NFC tag embedded in the headphones. I just had to tap my phone to the headphones and hit an "accept" button on my phone, and they were paired. Similarly a friend has a box plugged into their stereo that's essentially just an A2DP receiver with RCA outputs, and has NFC on it for pairing. I wanted to play some music on hi…

Apple sort of does something like this using BTLE on the 4th gen Apple TV as part of setup. It's kind of nice.

But the idea of having it in headphone and routers and printers and other things? I can get behind that. Easy pairing is a use case that makes a ton of sense.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#58

Post by hengheng »

brad0 wrote: post #46
jseliger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most modern cameras have, for the last couple years, used NFC to quickly and easily transmit photos from the camera to the phone. From what I understand, on Android this works pretty effectively. On iOS, however, weak NFC implementation means that one must use a kind of janky WiFi transfer system. It works, but it's kind of difficult to use and not very elegant.

Are you sure it's transmitting over NFC? I thought NFC is quite a limited bandwidth connection. Maybe it's creating the initial connection over NFC and doing the actual transfer over wifi?

NFC is used to transmit the login credentials, which is fairly nifty actually.

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#59

Post by rconti »

ben1040 wrote: post #27
givinguflac wrote: post #13

Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing here?

One nice thing is bluetooth pairing. I bought a pair of Bose QC35 headphones recently. There is an NFC tag embedded in the headphones. I just had to tap my phone to the headphones and hit an "accept" button on my phone, and they were paired. Similarly a friend has a box plugged into their stereo that's essentially just an A2DP receiver with RCA outputs, and has NFC on it for pairing. I wanted to play some music on hi…

Do you just tap, or do you have to launch an app first? I only ask because the bluetooth pairing process is already pretty painless (I have QC35 and an iPhone).

Re: Apple joins the NFC party, providing iOS developers the ability to read NFC tags

#60

Post by abritinthebay »

giobox wrote: post #49
givinguflac wrote: post #13

Neat, but I've yet to see a single NFC use case that gets me anywhere near as excited as this author. Amiibo is a cool concept but obviously limited. I've used some writable tags for android settings changes and such years ago, but it just doesn't seem useful to me. Anyone know a killer use case I'm missing here?

It reminds me of the ridiculous excitement over iBeacons when Apple announced their proprietary NFC-like tech a few years ago. Virtually every iOS dev I know bought some cheap iBeacons thinking "wow this is so cool" and never ended up building anything useful. I wasn't immune either, as the abandoned iBeacon in my desk drawer attests to. There's undoubtedly great use cases for NFC on phones (payments, travel passes,…

Beacons a) aren't Apple exclusive b) are really cool.

The trouble is that the category of features they solve can often also be solved by GPS, Network, or other similar technologies.

There are a myriad of cool things that Bluetooth Beacons can do but none of them are particularly consumer must-haves.

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