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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

#71

Post by janekm »

wensheng wrote: post #66
abritinthebay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be off-topic, but anyone know what other techs provide indoor distance tacking/localization other than BLE beacons? WIFI's accuracy is too low.

There are very promising "ultrawideband" solutions (allowing distance to be determined from time of flight of a message rather than signal strength) but the use cases are limited as there is no existing infrastructure. The best that can be done on phones is "sensor fusion" from all available sensors (including wifi and BLE, also integration of motion data) but it requires very extensive mapping of the location in advance. iOS suppports this since a few releases ago but only for locations that have been mapped by Apple so the use cases are rather limited, presumably the mall/airport feature just shown used it.

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

#72

Post by rtpg »

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.

if you could go beyond reading NFC tags (and also allow apps to use the NFC chip fully), then you remove the need for things like physical loyalty cards (like the Starbucks card).

That's a really basic use case, but popular enough in Japan, where even old flip phones had NFC

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

#73

Post by DINKDINK »

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?

iPhone support for a NFC 2FA key would be powerful.

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

#74

Post by bschwindHN »

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?

The only thing I use it for is checking the balance on my suica card (train pass) on Android, but iOS already has a suica app.

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

#75

Post by potatolicious »

MikeKusold wrote: post #15
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?

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.

Absolutely this. SMS 2FA has security flaws that are becoming ever more evident - U2F via NFC is a great way to authenticate on Android, and I'm looking forward to having it on iOS as well.

Edit: Welp. Looking at the U2F NFC spec it looks like some exchange with the key needs to occur, so without transmit access we're boned.

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

#76

Post by coupdejarnac »

wensheng wrote: post #66
abritinthebay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be off-topic, but anyone know what other techs provide indoor distance tacking/localization other than BLE beacons? WIFI's accuracy is too low.

I worked at a consulting company about a decade ago that designed an indoor tracking system. It could track a device to within a meter, and that was no trivial undertaking. I always have a laugh when I see some startup making a child tracker/pet tracker using iBeacon. You need a large array of radios to track the beacons, you have to model the physics of the building's construction (absorption, Rayleigh scattering, etc), account for multiple floors, and come up with a working algorithm that combines all the RSSI readings to produce a precise location.

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

#77

Post by pathompong »

rconti wrote: post #59
ben1040 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I have Galaxy S7 and Sony SBH20. It's just a tap and they're paired.

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

#78

Post by ClassyJacket »

MBCook wrote: post #61
adambrenecki wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, because the payment terminals have their own power source, previous iPhone generations lacked the induction coils necessary to support passive NFC tags. Presumably they were added to the iPhone 7?

It could also be some kind of security thing where the 7 was designed to be able to have 3rd party access where the 6/6s would have required the secure enclave to do something risky. Pure guess.

Well, the Secure Enclave is in every device with a TouchID, so that's the iPhone 5S and newer.

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

#80

Post by phil21 »

threeseed wrote: post #16
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?

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

This already exists in Chicago at least - just using Android Pay though. I know they also have been working on an app as well, but I haven't paid attention to it once they got initial NFC payments working. I do know transfers do not work with android pay (I imagine due to rotating card numbers), but luckily I don't have to deal with that and Yet Another Silly App.

I will say it's quite great. The time is very near where you can leave your home with only your cell phone as the single item you need to remember. Also scary in that if you lose that single item, you are getting increasingly more screwed. That is now my transit pass, money, taxi ride, and front door key.

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