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Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

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Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#41

Post by matthew-wegner »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #19
solarkraft wrote: post #15

The "find my" program is interesting to me because, for the first time (as far as I'm aware) it uses your devices to provide utility to Apple (to resell). They remain serious about privacy, but there's still something invasive about it I think they've never done before and always seemed implicitly positioned against.

Does it matter if they now know where my bike is parked, given that they already know where my phone is (i.e. I am) at all times? Meanwhile, I agree with you. It would be nice if Apple (or anyone) didn’t have this type of location information about me. However, it seems that ship has sailed and 5G + mesh networks will make it even more precise.

I don’t think that’s what the parent comment is referring to (Apple knowing, and they might not have that capability anyway).

Find My-tracked devices emit a Bluetooth chirp. If any Internet-enabled iOS devices hears it, it forwards to iCloud/Apple backend.

I can lose a WiFi-only iPad, and it can be fully off any WiFi connection, and still get a ping on its location if its Bluetooth chirps get relayed by a stranger’s iPhone.

This exists now, for i.e. the offline iPad example. This larger launch extends the Find My network to a new class of Internet-less, long battery life tag devices.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#42

Post by swiley »

solarkraft wrote: post #15

The "find my" program is interesting to me because, for the first time (as far as I'm aware) it uses your devices to provide utility to Apple (to resell). They remain serious about privacy, but there's still something invasive about it I think they've never done before and always seemed implicitly positioned against.

They've been doing this with WiFi since forever (that's how ipod touches had such accurate geolocation despite IP geolocation being accurate to a municipality level at best.)

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#43

Post by swiley »

thitcanh wrote: post #13
CharlesW wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and your stuff through their devices, privately. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet...

This sounds cool, but does it make sense? “It uses just tiny bits of data that piggyback on existing network traffic so there’s no need to worry about your battery life, your data usage, or your privacy.” How do you piggyback on existing traffic without increasing it?

It does increase traffic but probably not extra sockets/processes which is why they say battery life isn't an issue.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#44

Post by floatingatoll »

bigiain wrote: post #39
floatingatoll wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s guidelines for whether or not you need to join MFi: https://mfi.apple.com/en/faqs.html To build on this for other than personal use, you would either need to purchase Find My microchips from someone who is in the MFi program, or you would need to join the program yourself if you intend to produce your own microchip implementation of Find My. For personal use, Apple truly doesn’t care.

I haven't tried this, but I did bookmark it in case I want to some weekend: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack "OpenHaystack is a framework for tracking personal Bluetooth devices via Apple's massive Find My network. Use it to create your own tracking tags that you can append to physical objects (keyrings, backpacks, ...) or integrate it into other Bluetooth-capable devices such as notebooks."

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342504

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#45

Post by centimeter »

swiley wrote: post #40
solarkraft wrote: post #17

Why hasn't Google or a large Android manufacturer been doing this for years? BLE is not that young and and the contract tracing thing was executed extremely quickly and on the same technology (afaik, please correct).

It's not even that complex, just keep a hash of position fixes and MAC addresses and overwrite it occasionally. I could probably hack something "good enough" on my pinephone in under an hour. There's the global network where everyone is sharing fixes though... oof I don't really even want to be part of that.

Last time I looked into this, Apple actually used quite a bit of clever crypto engineering to protect user privacy. It's not just a big database of locations that Apple keeps.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#46

Post by bigiain »

floatingatoll wrote: post #44
bigiain wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tried this, but I did bookmark it in case I want to some weekend: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack "OpenHaystack is a framework for tracking personal Bluetooth devices via Apple's massive Find My network. Use it to create your own tracking tags that you can append to physical objects (keyrings, backpacks, ...) or integrate it into other Bluetooth-capable devices such as notebooks."

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26342504

Yeah - probably where I bookmarked it form...

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#47

Post by rootusrootus »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #25
CharlesW wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is literally about about locking people even further into a closed ecosystem by increasing its utility. (And I say this as an Apple fan.)

From the business perspective, Apple probably doesn’t care about selling the tags, the real value is in making the iPhone experience better. So if a user buys a tile tracker and it works better on iOS because of the iPhone network, that’s a win for them. They don’t have to wipe out tile.

But it will wipe out Tile, unless I am missing something. Apple's solution would instantly make all iPhones into tag detectors, which is a vast improvement over the current Tile situation where only Tile customers' phones are tag detectors. Seems like the only answer for Tile is to get integrated with Apple's solution.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#48

Post by yazaddaruvala »

Seems unlikely but I’m very hopeful about Apple sneakily creating the world's largest mesh network. Slowly, but surely adding functionality to the mesh.

First, tiny packets piggy- backed through wifi/wireless carriers. Seamlessly sharing wifi passwords with friends.

Next, peer-peer downloads without any network. Specifically for sharing public, location sensitive, and cacheable data through UWB without any network involved. e.g. Apple Maps, Weather, News, Offline Translations, Stocks.

It seems even less likely Apple would expand the capability further, but maybe.

I hope they don’t open up the API though, or do a crazy good job to bake in privacy. It’ll be too easy to track people near each other. I’d be ok with an app permissions model of Wifi/Data XOR Mesh Data Transfer.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#49

Post by PurpleFoxy »

rootusrootus wrote: post #47
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the business perspective, Apple probably doesn’t care about selling the tags, the real value is in making the iPhone experience better. So if a user buys a tile tracker and it works better on iOS because of the iPhone network, that’s a win for them. They don’t have to wipe out tile.

But it will wipe out Tile, unless I am missing something. Apple's solution would instantly make all iPhones into tag detectors, which is a vast improvement over the current Tile situation where only Tile customers' phones are tag detectors. Seems like the only answer for Tile is to get integrated with Apple's solution.

Tiles main business model is selling the hardware. They can sell an apple compatible version which will work incredibly and light years ahead of their current product, and then keep selling the base version for android users.

Re: Apple’s Find My network now offers new third-party finding experiences

#50

Post by PurpleFoxy »

kalleboo wrote: post #36
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the business perspective, Apple probably doesn’t care about selling the tags, the real value is in making the iPhone experience better. So if a user buys a tile tracker and it works better on iOS because of the iPhone network, that’s a win for them. They don’t have to wipe out tile.

Yeah, Apple doesn't seem to have much interest in selling little plastic tiles to people. They've avoided selling their own HomeKit gear, they're licensing AirPlay to be put in TVs so people don't have to buy AppleTVs, and they stopped selling routers long ago. Even when it comes to dongles which everyone thinks Apple loves selling, they have a meager selection and have outsourced many of them (e.g. they don't have a…

I have to say that the dongles situation for iPads is so much better on USB c. The apple adapters cost a fortune compared to the USB c versions.

I was blown away when I plugged a full laptop USB C hub in to my iPad Air 4 and was able to use a USB keyboard, mouse and hdmi out.

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