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Find My Device on Android

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Re: Find My Device on Android

#311

Post by thomas_ma »

foooorsyth wrote: post #168
lupire wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does an anti-theft tech that know one knows is there deter anything? Cars are frequently stolen, as you may have noticed.

Thieves will begin to expect it to be there some of the time, after sufficient police/vigilante response. And perhaps it will be hard to find. Hence, deterrence. Cars are stolen far less often than they would be otherwise partially due to technology like LoJack. Did you grow up in the US? Steering wheel locks used to be on every other parked car. Immobilizers and LoJack made them a thing you buy for your weekend clas…

Immobilizers had an order-of-magnitude larger impact on car theft than LoJack. It used to be relatively trivial to start a car without the keys once inside. Now (disregarding certain Hyundai/Kia models) it’s essentially impossible to start without the key.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#312

Post by shuckles »

idle_zealot wrote: post #250
shuckles wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make fun of it, yet the ecosystem is so popular and well integrated that the US Department of Justice is suing them over it.

The issue is not that they have a well-integrated ecosystem, it's that they build features into their products that only their other products are allowed to use. There would be no need for action if Apple designed a popular ecosystem that all of your devices could participate in.

This is irrelevant. The comment was about Apple’s preferred way of locating lost phones was Apple Watch so they don’t support pinging it from an AirTag. This has nothing to do with 3rd party support, and in fact 3rd parties (Tile) do have the feature Apple doesn’t for their item trackers.

Apple not allowing 3rd parties use of their proprietary technology is not the entirety of the DoJ’s argument. For example, their claims about Messages and Apple Watch are about support Apple hasn’t built, not about what they prevent 3rd parties from building.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#313

Post by Shawnj2 »

lxgr wrote: post #206
Shawnj2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth file transfer was always nearly useless in my experience, airdrop was somewhat revolutionary in that it actually worked reliably most of the time

For me, reliability has been similar. I will say that it is much faster, though (no wonder – hundreds of Mbit/s over 802.11 vs. 2 Mbit/s over Bluetooth EDR). UX is much better too. But would it kill them to just support both? I’d take sometimes janky, always slow transfers to Android over having to WhatsApp photos to somebody literally next to me any day.

Maybe not but IIRC iOS at least used to have support for Bluetooth file transfer so it’s annoying only airdrop works now

Re: Find My Device on Android

#314

Post by bevekspldnw »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #260
bevekspldnw wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the entire MFi program is just a consumer tax paid to Apple. It’s an extortion racket.

Is it a "walled garden" or is it an "extortion racket" then?

The first is the mechanism for the second.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#316

Post by shuckles »

kuschku wrote: post #286
shuckles wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's Find My spec has been available for 3rd party adopters for years.

Only for third party tags, not phone apps, though?

That’s fair. It’s unclear whether they’d allow 3p apps to query their servers to locate devices per the spec.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#317

Post by lxgr »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #313
lxgr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, reliability has been similar. I will say that it is much faster, though (no wonder – hundreds of Mbit/s over 802.11 vs. 2 Mbit/s over Bluetooth EDR). UX is much better too. But would it kill them to just support both? I’d take sometimes janky, always slow transfers to Android over having to WhatsApp photos to somebody literally next to me any day.

Maybe not but IIRC iOS at least used to have support for Bluetooth file transfer so it’s annoying only airdrop works now

Are you sure? I don’t think it ever supported that profile (OBEX). macOS did and maybe still does.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#318

Post by gruez »

mazsa wrote: post #285
non415556 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've measured with an external, unconnected RF monitor. The cell phone shows clear activity when not in airplane mode, and then zero activity when in airplane mode. There's my anecdata...

I was told: "I suspect that in airplane mode it would only communicate at the specific request of the system (and perhaps in spread spectrum mode), so [before baseband is activated from outside] it would not be worth measuring." What do you think?

Isn't that... totally expected? After all, it's the system that told the modem/baseband to enter airplane mode in the first place. Of course it can also tell it to exit airplane mode.

Re: Find My Device on Android

#319

Post by joseda-hg »

master-lincoln wrote: post #297
idle_zealot wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplane mode doesn't turn Bluetooth or Wifi off at all on recent OS versions of Android or iOS.

really? Why did they even leave the feature in then?

It turns off celular which is the main problem (Wifi is common enough in modern airplanes so I have to assume the interference risk is low, same for Bluetooth)

Re: Find My Device on Android

#320

Post by mazsa »

gruez wrote: post #318
mazsa wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told: "I suspect that in airplane mode it would only communicate at the specific request of the system (and perhaps in spread spectrum mode), so [before baseband is activated from outside] it would not be worth measuring." What do you think?

Isn't that... totally expected? After all, it's the system that told the modem/baseband to enter airplane mode in the first place. Of course it can also tell it to exit airplane mode.

You are right, bad translation. She was trying to explain that the problem is that, independently of you and against your will, the remote telecommunications system is able to activate the broadband chip of your mobile phone while it is in airplane mode, where you expect the baseband system to be deactivated.
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