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The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

arstechnica.com

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Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#301

Post by xp84 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #148
tristanj wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Apple didn't add USB-C to iPhones because they planned to remove all ports from the iPhone entirely. They envisioned it as a wireless only device. EU regulation stopped this from happening, and now once they added USB-C it's difficult to take this feature away. I predict we'll be stuck with the USB-C port and form factor on most phones for the next decade.

This is completely illogical. There is no world that wireless charging or data transfer was going to be as good as wired. Was the iPhone all the sudden not going to work in the millions of cars that had wired CarPlay?

This is a silly reason to hold back if that was their plan. You can buy, for $20 and up, little USB-sticks that allow wired-CarPlay cars to do wireless CarPlay. Apple could manufacture 100 million of those, at a cost of $5 for the boards and maybe $8 in glass and aluminum, and sell them at a huge profit for $79.99 and advertise them as a revolutionary breakthrough they invented.

Wired CarPlay is not holding Apple back. I think they just figure it’d be harder for them to repair partially-bricked iPhones if they had no port to do DFU or whatever. That or they actually have done the market research and customers said they’d hold off on buying a portless iPhone because it’s a stupid idea.

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#302

Post by xp84 »

MBCook wrote: post #102
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one was accusing Apple of e-waste when for decades the world had decided common standards were a great way to reduce e-waste. Outside of America this has been obvious since the mid 2000s when people complained about a proliferation of chargers with phones because pre-iPhone the non US cellphone market was far more advanced.

Really? Do you remember the user shit storm when they dumped the dock connector and went to lightning? People wouldn’t shut up for years, even though lightning was way way better.

So, your position is that some users whined about that… so what? Apple knew those users were, quite frankly, wrong, the 30-pin was fragile and one-way. And the cables themselves were never expensive, and used scarcely more resources than many disposable items we throw out every day.

Apple never apologized for the changeover, the iPhone 5 sold like hotcakes, everyone quickly loved having a reversible and small cable that was less fragile than 30pin, and everyone lived happily ever after. The whiny boomers annoyed that they had to finally replace a dock they bought in 2004 for an iPod made zero difference to anything. People whining online are not a problem at all unless they stop buying — and nobody stopped buying. After all, switching to Android would have necessitated buying a new cable anyway, at any point prior to 2023!

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#304

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

xp84 wrote: post #301
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely illogical. There is no world that wireless charging or data transfer was going to be as good as wired. Was the iPhone all the sudden not going to work in the millions of cars that had wired CarPlay?

This is a silly reason to hold back if that was their plan. You can buy, for $20 and up, little USB-sticks that allow wired-CarPlay cars to do wireless CarPlay. Apple could manufacture 100 million of those, at a cost of $5 for the boards and maybe $8 in glass and aluminum, and sell them at a huge profit for $79.99 and advertise them as a revolutionary breakthrough they invented. Wired CarPlay is not holding Apple bac…

So can you also do 10Gbps data transfers wirelessly like the iPhone Pros do? Can I just plug up my phone to any old monitor with a USB C port or use a standard video cord?

Apple prototypes a lot of stuff including a smart car. Despite what people think, Apple doesn’t do everything at the whim of the EU.

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#305

Post by cyberax »

jdiff wrote: post #66
KK7NIL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USB-C is a worse mechanical connector for a device plugged in thousands of times over its lifetime. USB-C connectors are usually rated for 10k cycles. Do you have any evidence that lighting connectors are rated for more cycles than that? > The female port of a USB-C connector has a relatively fragile center blade. Lightning's layout was the opposite which makes it more robust and easier to clean. This is very weak…

My Pixel 8 certainly hasn't gone through 10k cycles and it barely holds on to any USB-C connector I put inside it. They all fall out even when laying still on a flat surface. There's always outliers, of course, but I had this issue with USB Micro-B on at least one other device and never saw it with a Lightning connector.

I've had dozens of devices with USB-C. I've yet to have even a single one that had any problems with them. To be fair, I'm using iPhones mostly for app testing, so I also had very few issues with them.

What do you guys all do with your devices?!?

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#306

Post by xp84 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #304
xp84 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly reason to hold back if that was their plan. You can buy, for $20 and up, little USB-sticks that allow wired-CarPlay cars to do wireless CarPlay. Apple could manufacture 100 million of those, at a cost of $5 for the boards and maybe $8 in glass and aluminum, and sell them at a huge profit for $79.99 and advertise them as a revolutionary breakthrough they invented. Wired CarPlay is not holding Apple bac…

So can you also do 10Gbps data transfers wirelessly like the iPhone Pros do? Can I just plug up my phone to any old monitor with a USB C port or use a standard video cord? Apple prototypes a lot of stuff including a smart car. Despite what people think, Apple doesn’t do everything at the whim of the EU.

I didn’t say there were no reasons that smart/pro customers should dread a portless phone and appreciate the port. Of course there are reasons!

But Apple could definitely make the “non-pro” phone portless- exactly the way they arbitrarily force USB 2.0 speeds (hello 2004!) even on the iPhone 17 non-pro’s port - rendering it worse than Wi-Fi for data transfers.

They must have market research proving it would cost them sales. That’s the only thing holding them back.

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#308

Post by stouset »

tristanj wrote: post #178
stouset wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a common trope on Reddit but makes literally zero sense. There are a ton of wired accessories that this would make completely useless overnight, including things like CarPlay. And for what?

You probably viewed this as a common trope because you were not aware of the actual source of the rumors. No, these are not claims are not from reddit, they're from Mark Gurman in 2018. > Apple designers eventually hope to remove most of the external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including the charger, according to people familiar with the company’s work. During the development of the iPhone X, Apple weighed remov…

Mark Gurman’s track record with Apple is spotty at best. He may have been the original source of the rumor, but Reddit’s enormously anti-Apple user base is more than happy to grab onto any notion that Apple might do something even slightly unpopular and run wild. One dude with one report and middling accuracy does not a reliable narrative make, no matter how many times it’s reposted.

Apple prototypes a lot of shit internally. I am utterly certain they had prototypes of wireless-only phones. I am wholly unconvinced they had anything resembling firm plans at a leadership level to actually move forward with such a device. Apple has been more than happy to poke a finger in the eye of the EU repeatedly to see what their real limits are; I doubt they suddenly got cold feet over this one issue.

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#309

Post by madeofpalk »

quitit wrote: post #258
madeofpalk wrote: post #27

People keep mentioning Wi-Fi Aware with this, but so far haven't seen anyone actually prove that this is the case. Apple undoubtedly added Wi-Fi Aware support to iOS https://developer.apple.com/documentation/WiFiAware , but its not clear whether iOS actually supports AirDrop over Wi-Fi Aware. Apple clearly hasn't completely dropped AWDL for AirDrop, because you can still AirDrop from iOS 26 to earlier devices. Note t…

If the EU forced Apple to adopt Wi-Fi Aware then Apple would just fence it to EU users. The attempt of trying to paint this as a powerplay by the EU is tenuous: - Apple, along with Microsoft and Intel are founding members of the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose objective was to introduce a standard of interoperability through Wi-Fi Aware.1 - This work commenced long before the EU showed any interest in regulating tech. - Apple…

Apple _did_ adopt and support Wi-Fi Aware as a protocol iOS supports. It just doesn’t use it for AirDrop.

Re: The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop

#310

Post by lmm »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #281
lmm wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who’s stopping anyone from competing with Apple? Apple's dominant market position and abuse of network effects via their proprietary standards, like the one we're talking about from this article. > Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation No-one's arguing for any equivalent of that to happen to Apple. Just that when there's an open standard for inter-dev…

I think it is wrong to force Apple to support various "open standards". Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better. Like Google cried to every possible regulator that Apple is the big bad wolf that doesn't want to support RCE. Why? If it was that good, more people would use Androids for that. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone else be…

> Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better.

That doesn't work when they're a monopoly. Did the whole robber baron era just not happen in your world?

I'd flip it around: Apple should make better devices so that they can retain customers on their merits, rather than because their friends' phones are going to "accidentally" lose their text messages if they dare try a non-Apple phone.

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