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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

#311

Post by k310 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #214
k310 wrote: post #2

I'll be happy when Airdrop works reliably on Apple equipment. It can't reliably work between two adjacent rooms in my home without arm-waving. A hundred or thousand mile trip through iCloud works tons better.

It depends on Bluetooth to establish the connection so if you are out of Bluetooth range it won't work.

It's within range because it works, but requires some twisting and arm waving to get it to work from one room to the next, no Faraday shields in the home.

Then again, I transferred 4 iPhone photos to the imac 2 feet away and it failed. Worked on the next try. It's flakey as hell, and this is a 3rd generation iPhone SE and M2 mac mini. Not exactly old. I really hate bluetooth.

I got an old Time Capsule at the thrift store, that checked out but I haven't made use of it. It might be time. FWIW, I got PhotoSync app (not free) long ago so as to share photos with "everything" and it runs in the background on the mac, but I stupidly hold to the notion that whatever comes with the operating system otta work.

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

#312

Post by mmmlinux »

monocasa wrote: post #187
matwood wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with usb-c when Apple was one of the main drivers of usb-c adoption.

Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting usb-c on the truly mobile devices.

I remember when usb c first came out and Apple went all in on their laptops and everyone was pissed about that. So much complaining about adapter dongles. So pissed that apple had to bring back the MagSafe connector instead of straight usb c for charging.

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

#313

Post by itopaloglu83 »

lmm wrote: post #194
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s stopping anyone from competing with Apple? Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation, but wait they’re an incredible company that dominated the field with their hard work and diligence, so it’s not fair for them. Similarly, the open markets should apply to everyone, not just dominant American firms. Though, I’m not saying they’re innocent and I think…

> 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…

Since people are getting very fixated on Apple's success and how they dominated all the previous European phone manufacturers, let me state it clearly, they're a monopoly and must be regulated, but you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies.

European regulators are playing favoritism for themselves, not dismantling monopolies for the sake of consumers. There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies. Apple being a bigger monopoly doesn't make others a saint, it's just that those monopolies suit the regulators while Apple doesn't, and that's the original point I made with the ASML example, they're being a hypocrite about it.

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

#314

Post by lmm »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #313
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…

Since people are getting very fixated on Apple's success and how they dominated all the previous European phone manufacturers, let me state it clearly, they're a monopoly and must be regulated, but you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies. European regulators are playing favoritism for themselves, not dismantling monopolies for the sake of consumers. There are a lot of com…

> you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies

Which is exactly what Europe is doing. They have interoperability rules and they're applying them consistently. Nothing here is targeting Apple specifically, they're getting hit by the rules because they're a big monopoly abuser.

> There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies.

What standards would those be, concretely? Have any of them bothered to pursue the EU standard designation process?

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

#315

Post by JustExAWS »

morshu9001 wrote: post #287
JustExAWS wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were hundreds of devices on Amazon that never paid Apple a fee to use Lightning. And as far as USB C on Macs, are you complaining that Apple used an industry standard port?

USB-C wasn't exactly standard when Apple put it in Macs. Nothing else used it yet, and they didn't have any transition period. Its sole purpose for years was to get adapted to other ports. And if you wanted to use it as Lightning, you basically needed the Apple cable.

You didn’t real need a transition, just USB C to USB 2.0 cords and USB C to HDMI cords.

Unless you had the MacBook with 1 port.

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

#316

Post by miladyincontrol »

internet2000 wrote: post #78
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…

It's frustrating how much people want this to be an EU win they'll fabricate evidence. The same happened with RCS in iOS, everybody jumped in to credit it to the EU, when you can find the document spelling out how RCS is a requirement for China.

Imo kinda same about usb-c on iphone. The writing was on the wall that they were transitioning devices away from lightning to usb-c, a standard they too had their hands in. Especially so when wanting to position the pro model iphones as professional cameras with external storage capable of doing decent levels of prores to boot, they werent about to make lightning ssds to do the job.

The only thing perhaps expedited was the push to have it on base model iphones sooner.

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

#317

Post by moi2388 »

mmmlinux wrote: post #312
monocasa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting usb-c on the truly mobile devices.

I remember when usb c first came out and Apple went all in on their laptops and everyone was pissed about that. So much complaining about adapter dongles. So pissed that apple had to bring back the MagSafe connector instead of straight usb c for charging.

MagSafe charging is much better than usb-c though. Saved my laptop several times already.

Then again, I personally wish they remove all ports on Mac and iPhone.

Wireless charging, data transfer over wifi6 is (usually) more than fast enough, reduces attack vectors and can make everything nice and water proof.

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

#318

Post by M95D »

roenxi wrote: post #201
scbzzzzz wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Apple is so successful is because they know how to create a great phone experience. I disagree, may be they were at some time. Now they are successful because the walls of the well are so high. It is insanely difficult for us frogs to jump. Happy that governments are trying to bring those walls down >> I am happy to pay extra for a lot of your dot points. Good for you because you trust them. Problem is I am not. I…

> The security you are thinking is a believable mirage. There are several users who have lost thousands of dollars to scammy appstore in app purchases/subsciptions and apple is doing shit to stop this. And the plan to make this the consensus view is to ban Apple-style curated app stores. That seems to be cheating. When Apple convinced me their App store model was better than the alternative they had to use, y'know, p…

> And the plan to make this the consensus view is to ban Apple-style curated app stores.

Nobody is banning Apple-style curated app stores. They're banning the monopoly of only one app store.

> If the Europeans had any idea how to manage this sort of ecosystem they'd still be running the show.

Maybe Europeans won't engage in immoral profit-making practices? Also, Nokia didn't "sorta died". It was killed by Microsoft.

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

#319

Post by quitit »

madeofpalk wrote: post #309
quitit wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never said they didn't. They did, they announced they would, and it's now shipped.

This entire thread is about whether or not they were forced to do so by the EU.

As another dot point: We also don't have Margrethe Vestager or Thierry Breton (or other EU figures) doing a victory lap on social media as they usually do.

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

#320

Post by ExoticPearTree »

lmm wrote: post #310
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mes…

I compare iPhones with Samsung flagships such as the S line.

Tge iPhones are simply better made: they don’t feel light or plasticky, the UI on Android is way worse compared to iOS and so on.

And the whole SMS thing is just ridiculous: iMessage and SMS are two differrent things, hence they are highlighted with different colors so you know you can’t send pictures via SMS and most likely you have to switch to other apps such as Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Telegram and others. It does not mean you have to buy an iPhone to talk to your friends that prefer Apple products.

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