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New iPhone Prototypes Have Integrated NFC chips and Antenna
zacharye writes "Apple's next-generation iPhone will feature an integrated NFC chip according to a new report, suggesting the Cupertino, California-based company may soon make its entrance into the mobile payment space. A report from 9to5Mac states that an analysis of code from Apple's latest iOS software includes references to an integrated NFC chip and antenna."
The Apple smartphone will finally have feature-parity with other smartphones one-to-two generations after the fact? This must have never happened before!
Sweet. Now I don't need to be anywhere near you to steal your personal account information and emulate an RFID "card present" transaction (which doesn't require an ID or any of that other security crap like PINs and stuff)... I'll just wait for your phone to download an update for one of the 100 apps that are set to autoupdate whenever it's within range of a wifi, do an injection attack, and then wait for your personal info to appear in my inbox. Oh Apple, it's nice to finally meet someone who understands me!
-- Your Best Fan, J. Random Criminal
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So this is why Apple is backing off on their claims of virus immunity. NFC is a big target.
That's OK, you'll have to hold it a special way to get it to work.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Badly implemented features that are first to market are often less important than implementing the feature correctly.
An example is the iPod. The click wheel and master/slave method of managing music was, in the terminology of biology, an overwhelmingly successful adaptation. The MP3 player market effectively ceased to exist. There was just the iPod market. What they did was make it really, really, really, really easy to play your music. Creative Zen, on the other hand, added buttons. And more buttons. And more buttons.
Thus making it harder to use the key feature.
So yes, how you include a feature counts a lot.
What "big target", this has been a feature of many phones in Japan for years, probably with deployment in the tens of millions. I haven't even heard of one successful virus.
Whoa, don't tell me Apple is playing follow the leader with Google. I thought Apple always thinks of everything first, and this is why they like to sue everybody.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
How is an OS that only runs white-listed software more vulnerable?
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
anybody who watched the keynote and saw the passbook feature of ios6 had to know this was coming
You can't do that even if you want to. Even if your details are saved into the phone, you absolutely *must* enter your password at least once to get it to update.
In iOS5, what you say is true. If you've been following the threads of developers testing iOS6 you will have read that one of the changes in iOS6 Beta 1 (haven't read yet whether it's still there in today's Beta 2) is that you are never prompted for your password when you download an update of an App.
I do wonder if Apple's intent behind this change was just to allow Apple and App developers to auto-install security updates on your device in much the same way that the latest beta of Mountain Lion removes (1) your ability to control how frequently OSX checks for updates, (2) your ability to control downloads of OSX security updates and (3) your ability to approve, disapprove or postpone installation of downloaded OSX security updates.
Most mobile phones of the olden days, when NFC payments were first introduced, didn't use Linux at all. Felica was introduced in 2004. Mobile Suica in 2006 or thereabouts, long before the initiatives you link to. Besides, isn't iOS a BSD clone, just like the "Linux stack" allegedly used in "most Japanese phones"?
Doh. "Just like" => "just as 'open' as"
this is a security vulnerability but it is not one for viruses.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
After reading TFA and other sources, I still am not clear on what the NFC chip does, and what its benefits are...... ?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
I like a smart phone...I don't need it to be a 'tap' to my money. I have a perfectly good, physical wallet that I trust way more than this.
I prefer to pay most things in daily life with cash. I don't need or want any more credit than I have (and I have TONS available to me)....I don't want to make it easier to have my cash sucked out of me, especially by someone setting up a receiver scanning for me to walk by. At least with a real pickpocket, I might actually 'feel' the theft attempt.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I have a Galaxy Nexus with the feature, and it's a simple option in the Settings menu to turn it off.
I don't understand why people think Apple will have anything to do with NFC when they have already been setting things up for quite some time to use Bluetooth 4.0 for the same applications.
Why have both? All Apple needs to do is push stores to offer bluetooth 4.0 compatible equipment, which should cost about as much as NFC handling equipment... and it's not even like Bluetooth is not a standard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't understand why people think Apple will have anything to do with NFC when they have already been setting things up for quite some time to use Bluetooth 4.0 for the same applications.
Why have both? All Apple needs to do is push stores to offer bluetooth 4.0 compatible equipment, which should cost about as much as NFC handling equipment... and it's not even like Bluetooth is not a standard.
I don't necessarily believe its how Apple sees it, but IMO, from the very start until today, Bluetooth is all hype, a cool word for a technology that had a narrow window of usefulness that is somehow clinging to the perception of relevance. Except for wireless peripherals like mice and keyboards, every other implementation is a poor match. I have yet to hear or hear of any Bluetooth headset that do not make the audio of your cell call sound about half as good as landlines from the 1920's, and the experience is always worse than that for the person at the other end of the call. The idea that A2DP provided high fidelity stereo audio wirelessly from your device sound files was, to put it simply, bullshit. At the time when it could have mattered, file transfer was painfully slow, and if that bandwidth has increased to useful speeds, it is already superfluous as faster wireless protocols have become nealy ubiquitous. Bluetooth was a trendy logo and a name that has somehow inserted itself into the collective consciousness as necessary technology, and yet it still fails to deliver anything that is anywhere near acceptable beyond the simple wireless input peripheral.
The Admin and the Engineer
We are referring to the OS with a kernel jailbreak that could be activated by a webpage. You decide.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
So this is why Apple is backing off on their claims of virus immunity. NFC is a big target.
Oh, the good old days when people simply wrote "First Post!" instead of some nonsense that sounds like it could be on topic.
Knowing Apple they will probably patent it or something obvious to do with it and then demand import bans on all the handset manufacturers who already have it for copying their unique innovations. I actually used to like Apple just can't stand the way they do business any more.
I agree with you about higher-end bluetooth connectivity, and about bluetooth headsets specifically (I dislike them). That part is not working out too well.
But the lower power mode in 4.0 is perfectly suited to a whole host of devices that require minimal connectivity, payment systems among them... but also many other kinds of sensors that need to be able to run on solar or years on a battery.
Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC are both new - but Bluetooth 4.0 is in a LOT more iOS devices at this point than there have been NFC devices shipped, I can't see NFC winning.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, cashless transactions aren't the only reason for this. It would be great for when your screen breaks, you could move all the data from the broken phone to the replacement easily.
As to cashless transaction, it wouldn't affect me at all, because I'm not going to be keeping financial info on a phone, anyway (I won't even bank or pay bills by internet).
Free Martian Whores!
Bluetooth was very useful on my last two phones. It was the easiest way to send photos and home movies and backups of the address book and sound recordings to the computer, since neither phone had wifi. It works fine for those purposes, the dongle I had to get for the PC was worth the $20.
I'm sending a bluetooth dongle to my daughter for her computer, since her iPhone has wifi but it can't be used for sharing files with her computer (had a conversation with her about that the other night, she has no internet access except for the phone and I suggested tethering via wifi. It won't work, according to her).
Free Martian Whores!