Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet

An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible partnership between Apple and major credit card companies. Apple plans to turn its next iPhone into a mobile wallet through a partnership with major payment networks, banks and retailers, according a person familiar with the situation. The agreement includes Visa, MasterCard, and American Express and will be unveiled on Sept. 9 along with the next iPhone, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The new iPhone will make mobile payment easier by including a near-field communication chip for the first time, the person said. That advancement along with Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition reader that debuted on the most recent iPhone, will allow consumers to securely pay for items in a store with the touch of a finger.

Comments

As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be good because it might finally get businesses serious about exception NFC transactions. As long as it's not some proprietary bullshit on Apple's end, of course.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Isomorphic]

This is not really a surprising move from Apple. It was more or less a given once they rolled out TouchID.

On the flip side, I've been listening to various Internet commentators go on and on about how Apple "has to have NFC" (reason: "because Android does"). Meanwhile, I've had an RFID credit card for approximately five years now, and, despite attempting to use it at numerous terminals marked with the RFID symbols, have only been successful in using it less than five times. Apparently no one running a retail payment terminal cares.

Even if you are a hater, you have to admit Apple's entry into this market will help spur businesses to roll out NFC terminals, or switch on NFC on their existing terminals, or just make sure the NFC works.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has one what? The race to the bottom? Then I would agree with you.

Keep ignoring the tiny little thing about Apple making all the profits.

Typical iHater.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[ccguy]

The "as much as I hate Apple" line is getting old. That's like a sentence that starts with "I'm not racist but...".

Quite the opposite. It would like a sentence as "I'm a racist, but that nigger is right..."

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

I don't know where you get your information, probably on some SF local news media like techcrunch, but Samsung alone owns about 2/3 of the Android market. Which itself happens to be 85% of the smartphone market.

But of course while Apple's share keeps going down year after year, there is always a justification in the iCommunity, such as: oh people are just waiting for the iPhone5, or oh people are juste waiting for the iPhone6. Keep the dream alive if you want, but meanwhile the market has spoken. The iShare is about half what it was 5 years ago.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[AmiMoJo]

I use NFC for payment every day without issue. It's a mature, reliable technology, at least in most places. I think where there have been issues it's usually due to retailers insisting on using certain companies with new tech, instead of established ones.

The real problem is the lack of standards. Japan has e-wallets, there is Google Wallet and now it looks like there will be a third and incompatible Apple wallet. What are the chances that other payment providers will be allowed to use NFC on Apple hardware for their own systems? Could you ditch the Apple wallet and install Google Wallet instead?

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[ArmoredDragon]

Apparently no one running a retail payment terminal cares.

Virtually every walmart, walgreens, CVS, and mcdonalds I've seen has one.

This is a long time coming IMO, but I can still see the tinfoil hat crowd rejecting it. Too much FUD goes around about RFID (like those little credit card faraday cages that some infomercials sell) to make it seem somehow dangerous (I remember when the internet itself was considered dangerous by these types...anybody remember the Sandra Bullock movie "The Net"?)

In reality though, RFID payment, at least in the Android implementation I've seen, is by far more secure than magnetic strips as it isn't susceptible to skimming or any other type of replay attack.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[antifoidulus]

You are also oh so conveniently ignoring one tiny little fact, year over year DEVICE SALES ARE GOING UP! Yes, market share is going down, but that's largely because the smartphone market has been growing so fast, Apple's share of it hasn't been growing as fast as the market has. You want to know whose sales have been dipping recently? Samsungs!. But don't let those silly facts get in the way of your baseless ranting!

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The think I find irritating with all of this is that Google wallet only launched in the US, when here in the UK, plenty of places accept wireless payment, I use it at least once per day and would love phone support for it.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Camembert]

Hahahaha! You're proud of being overcharged?

That Stockholm syndrome is some really powerful shit...

Clearly you are a hater. But why waste the energy? I use an iphone 4S since 3 years and I don't mindwhen others use whatever Android device. Good for them. Good for me.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue, or rather concern, with the on-card contact-less payments (VISA PayPass, etc.) is that someone could activate it while it was still in you wallet in your pocket via a specially designed (any maybe illegal; but that hasn't been known to stop thieves) hardware, and that this could be used a avenue for fraud. Not sure if there was ever a real life POC of this working or not.

Now on a mobile phone this would be a non-issue as the NFC could be configured to only respond under certain circumstances, e.g. entering a PIN number.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Pieroxy]

Well, in all honesty, Apple still has the best selling smartphone, undisputed. Granted, the 127 different models Samsung produces are selling more, but Apple makes three phones in the top 6, just like Samsung. The iPhone 5c is the #1.

http://news.yahoo.com/apple-sa...

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[jareth-0205]

The issue, or rather concern, with the on-card contact-less payments (VISA PayPass, etc.) is that someone could activate it while it was still in you wallet in your pocket via a specially designed (any maybe illegal; but that hasn't been known to stop thieves) hardware, and that this could be used a avenue for fraud. Not sure if there was ever a real life POC of this working or not.

Don't worry about it... I mean yes it is possible, but contactless has been widely rolled out in the UK for a while and the sky hasn't fallen. Ultimately you can challenge any bad charges pretty easily (if you notice them) on your statement, and since all this stuff goes tracably through the credit card system then it's not going to take many chargebacks for the dodgy reader to get them all rolled back and the criminal flagged.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Jack Griffin]

Maybe your bank has a poor implementation, Hong Kong has had a universal contactless payment through the Oyster card since the 90's. We've had it here in Australia for a couple of years and it works well (I use it every day for everything - packet of gum, glass of beer, groceries etc, and am starting to phase out my wallet). When the bugs are ironed out in your system, this will be the way transactions are done.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[jonwil]

I am in Australia and have Visa PayWave attached to my card yet I never use it (using EFTPOS instead) because there are fees attached to PayWave but not EFTPOS (with my bank at least) and because EFTPOS transactions show up faster and better on my online banking.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say nobody has them, he said they mostly don't work and nobody cares. Staff at Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and McDonalds not caring is hardly news.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to use an NFC enabled card at a Walmart a few months ago. It was Declined because my card was issued outside the USofA yet using it conventionally worked fine. What a load of steaming dog poo this is.
I've returned to using cash for purchases under $20 these days. Quicker and simpler (if you have the forethought to get the money ready beforehand...)

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK, contactless transactions are capped at a relatively low amount, and periodically require pin entry, so in the case of fraud with them, the bank should only have to write off £80 ish at most, which is a fairly trivial amount for a bank

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

Now on a mobile phone this would be a non-issue as the NFC could be configured to only respond under certain circumstances, e.g. entering a PIN number.

It's a safe bet that any new iPhones will have the fingerprint scanner built in that can be used for this purpose.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

Market share isn't the important factor though. iPhone sales have grown every year. Apple's profits have grown every year. They are the most profitable phone vendor by a long way. If that's failing, I'd love to fail as hard as Apple are.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

I hate apple (the corporation) because it seems their ethics are non-existent

Really? They seem to perform positive ethical acts quite regularly. Supporting gay rights. Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad. Making their products environmentally friendly. Improving the privacy of their users. Why do you think their ethics are non-existent?

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bing Tsher E]

People who use terms like 'hater' are cult members. It's sort of creepy, be it scientologists, moonies, or followers of other cultish movements.

Get over it. Boogeyman 'samsung' isn't out to get your device, just like 'IBM' wasn't out to get your mac.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bing Tsher E]

Apple has really good brand management. Their bullet points are always gleaming, to be certain.

Why, though, is there always the need for some to seemingly worship the brand? Could it be astroturf?

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

One-one was a race horse.
Two-two was one too.
One-one won one race.
Two-two won one too.

Hope this helps, and best of luck with learning to spell.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[IamTheRealMike]

More importantly, the underlying technology is totally different. VISA Europe is not at all the same as VISA USA. VISA in Europe is a coalition of banks, VISA USA is a private company. America has never rolled out EMV, making its banking industry a ridiculous joke compared to, well, everywhere else. You don't get reports of major European supermarket chains getting their PoS systems hacked and magstripes skimmed like you do in the US, because EMV is a much more secure system.

The NFC payment cards that are rolling out around the world (outside USA) now are basically a variant of EMV/Chip and PIN. The underlying crypto is the same. The card signs a challenge from the terminal. They're upgrading to elliptic curve crypto at the moment actually, not sure if all NFC cards do that or not but it would not surprise me. NFC as tried by Google in America is actually a very minor variant on just sending your magstripe data via radio. I believe the CVC code rotates (three digits of entropy lol) and the tech is based on a Secure Element hard-wired to the NFC radio. But the phone has minimal control over the actual payment transaction, thus doesn't add much value beyond being a big battery, and that's why the tech largely stalled. Also they screwed up the compatibility testing and the terminals were full of bugs that meant transactions just sort of randomly failed.

So don't be fooled. The "NFC payments" that we know outside of North America is totally different to what they call "NFC payments", which is an unfortunate piece of linguistic confusion.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[IamTheRealMike]

Your card was declined because they're totally different and incompatible technologies. NFC payment cards from outside the USA aren't the same as "NFC payments" inside the USA (which require mobile phones as far as I can tell).

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Camembert]

Boogeyman 'samsung' isn't out to get your device, just like 'IBM' wasn't out to get your mac.

This was in fact exactly my point.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[wbr1]

That sounds like it should be in Blazing Saddles.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[jrumney]

Some of my best friends use Macs...

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Jack Griffin]

My bank gives me really good services, I'm more than happy to pay a fair price for these...

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

You're really setting up a no win situation here. If they don't perform positive ethical acts, then they are unethical. If they do, then it's just "brand management bullet points".

It's funny though, how we have two people here - one calling them unethical, and one pointing out ethical things that they have done - and you perceive this as "there's somebody here worshipping the brand". Not two people with different opinions. One person with a suspect opinion. That's an odd perception.

Also, if anybody is astroturfing, I'd lay my money on the anonymous coward and not the person with a Slashdot account that is several years old with excellent karma.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The NFC cards work just fine everywhere in Canada, as long as it's less than 50$.

There's a few exceptions (mainly small stores that only recently replaced their swipe POS with chip+pin POS)

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because "ethics" in /. and GNU/Linux means "open sources everything including the kitchen sink"

There may be linux parts in Android, but don't let that distort the reality for the Android fans. That's still a walled garden, just like Apple and Microsoft, and the only one winning the Walled Garden profit is Apple.

Developers do not consider Android hardware to be capable of doing anything meaningful, and thus the iOS versions get priority, and unless the iOS version makes money, the Android version doesn't even get made. There's quite literately too many things running crappy versions of Android on weak parts (Samsung phones and televisions are "Android" but now they're switching some to yet-another-OS for no dang reason other than to take advantage of the fact they have 2/3rds of the Android market.)

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

In reality though, RFID payment, at least in the Android implementation I've seen, is by far more secure than magnetic strips as it isn't susceptible to skimming or any other type of replay attack.

That's why the US payment processors are rolling out cards with EMV chip-on-card now and telling merchants that starting next year any fraud costs for non-EMV transactions will be paid by the merchant instead of the payment processors.

That'll mostly kill swipe cards and should mostly kill NFC cards.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[EzInKy]

The only fair price to enable spending your own money is zero.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[alexander_686]

I am missing one of your point - why does it matter that VISA is owned by bank in Europe and is private in the US? Why does that matter?

I assume that you know that VISA was a single company until 2006. At that point the US Banks cashed out by selling VISA to the public and the European bans went their own way.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You finally hit it on the head - Apple is nothing more than a phone manufacturer now.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Namarrgon]

Monocultures can be very successful. They do have associated risks though. Diversity usually wins in the end.

Apple of course are in no immediate danger, they're doing just fine. Though I do wonder why Apple fans point to their huge profits as a good thing.. Good for Apple, certainly; not quite so much for their customers.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[angel'o'sphere]

The only thing I hate more than racists, is that nigger in my swimming pool!

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in all honesty, Apple still has the best selling smartphone, undisputed. Granted, the 127 different models Samsung produces are selling more, but Apple makes three phones in the top 6, just like Samsung. The iPhone 5c is the #1.

http://news.yahoo.com/apple-sa...

I don't care if it's #42, I'm waiting for that blackberry passport. I love that thing.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

Monocultures can be very successful. They do have associated risks though. Diversity usually wins in the end.

So who "won" in the PC industry?

Dell -- revenues and profits declined so badly they went private?
HP - PC division is doing so bad they almost got rid of it.
IBM -- completely left the business
Compaq - Dead
Gateway - Dead

And at the same time, who is "winning" selling Android? Samsung is about the only one and their profits are declining because of Apple on the high end and Chinese manufacturers on the low-end.

Even Google isn't "winning" with Android since the vast majority of Android phones sold worldwide are not using Google services/

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point. The customer wins, because competition and choices.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[ArcadeMan]

That might explain the lack of Mac mini update in years.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. They only support gay rights because Tim Cook and a lot of others working for apple are pole smokers. They don't give a damn about worker rights and only spring to action after an embarrassing report comes to light. All the factory workers who got sick from the chemicals used on the screen... do you think Apple gave them anything for their pain and suffering? Well, I can tell you first hand they didn't. Everything Apple does is about preserving face.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[SpzToid]

From a user POV, using a VISA card outside of the USA is far more secure then using a VISA card within the USA, in 2014; or at least within the EU. You're correct in that the ownership of The VISA Corporation is irrelevant.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

the CVC code rotates (three digits of entropy lol)

Here's three digits of pi: 678. Find the next three digits of pi. PS: I didn't say I chose the first occurrence of 678 in pi.

Three digits of handshake doesn't mean three digits of entropy. I guess that's why you lolled ...?

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I am aware, Apple has not manufactured a single phone (except maybe prototypes). The make their profits selling phones (and other products) produced by contract manufacturers.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Camembert]

Oh man, you really need a life. Not a hater, but a whiner.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Supporting gay rights.

Almost everyone does that and it does not cost them a single cent. It is just public relations.

Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad.

Again, this is mainly a PR thing. People got upset (for the wrong reasons -- Apple's contract manufacturers may be bad employers by European or even American standards, but people in China appear to be happy to work for them) and Apple had to repair damage.

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that? Last time I checked, they were still the only major supplier of portable electronics with non-replaceble batteries. Their entire product portfolio is based on planned obsolescence. They may be very proud of how much material they are saving by making critical parts as flimsy as possible, but in reality the reduced lifespan hurts the environment more than the minor savings help it.

Improving the privacy of their users

By storing all their personal data in a country that has effectively declared war on privacy? By secretly tracking their customers? Apple is doing the exact opposite of what you claim.

Why do you think their ethics are non-existent?

I cannot speak for the grand parent, but Apple has done many unethical things in recent years. Beyond what is mentioned above, they are employing vendor lock-ins and they arbitrarily restrict what their customers can do with their own property.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bite The Pillow]

But once spending is enabled, is it somehow bad to provide convenience services that cost very little? Especially if the person is happy to pay for them?

Because otherwise your post is irrelevant. Posting something true in a limited context but not relevant where it is posted is not insightful.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[beelsebob]

The ownership is relevant because Banks are much more strictly regulated. The better security is a direct outcome of VISA being owned by a bank.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[swillden]

The real problem is the lack of standards. Japan has e-wallets, there is Google Wallet and now it looks like there will be a third and incompatible Apple wallet.

There are standards. Japan is its own world, but the Google Wallet and ISIS (a consortium of mobile network operators and banks who created the ISIS wallet -- yes they're looking for a new name) relies on standard EMV payment protocols -- slightly modified by the US Visa, MC, AMEX and Discover organizations, but not incompatibly so. Apple will follow the EMV standards as well, or they'll get nowhere, because retailers are a slow-moving, cost-conscious group.

Visa and MasterCard announced two years ago that they'll implement the "liability shift" the end of 2015, which means that from 2016 onward 100% of fraud will be charged to whichever entity in the chain (merchant, merchant acquirer, clearing house, issuer) does not have the EMV smart chip technology implemented. Since merchants get stuck with 98% of fraud, and other links in the chain are moving slowly, this will provide a huge incentive for merchants to install EMV-capable point of sale terminals. That doesn't require them to deploy NFC-capable terminals, but they will, and many of them are.

Not even Apple is capable of creating an entirely new payment ecosystem. They'll play ball with the banks and card associations, or they'll go nowhere.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Bing Tsher E]

The users are winning, because they're not being roped into a monoculture.

It's much the same as the prosperous early years of the PC clones. It didn't matter what brand PC you used, in fact if your computer had a national brand name on the case it simply meant you had paid too much for it. In that era the best deal in PCs was a shop somewhere in your city putting together clones with parts from many vendors.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Bing Tsher E]

I have an SE/30 with NetBSD on it.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple best smartphone? Because it sells most? Does it? So Justin Bieber is one of the best musicians then?

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[gnasher719]

But of course while Apple's share keeps going down year after year, there is always a justification in the iCommunity

I'll tell you what you are missing. You are looking at the share in the "smartphone" market, while I would look at the share in the "phone" market. Apple's share of the phone market has been growing year after year after year without fail. At the same time, more and more phones have been converted from non-smart phones to smartphones, but that doesn't affect Apple's business whatsoever.

There are people comparing Apple's and Samsung's sales, but if you compare Apple and Nokia, Apple now sells more phones, and that's while counting the cheap £10 or £20 phones that Nokia makes. (Well, they are all Microsoft phones now, but who cares).

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[gnasher719]

The users are winning, because they're not being roped into a monoculture.

In the non-Apple PC market, users are losing. The only distinguishing feature between different PCs is the price, so we have a race to the lowest price. This may be helpful to some degree to people without money, but most people end up with a rubbish PC, even if they could afford something much better, because they just can't buy it.

Apple is now making more than 50% of all profits from computer hardware sales. Because nobody else manages to create and sell a product that people would be willing to pay good money for. When people buy a MacBook Air to run Windows on it, you see how pathetic the PC hardware market has become.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[iluvcapra]

Apple best smartphone? Because it sells most? Does it? So Justin Bieber is one of the best musicians then?

Ironically, Justin Bieber is merely the cutting edge of sort of meme-generated, metric-driven and ad-supported celebrity Google and YouTube have enabled and profit handsomely from. Justin Bieber is the sort of musician you get when people don't pay for music, and "sells most" is merely one trivial statistic. What matters for musicians now is their Brand Reach, their impact, their ability to steer demographic groups to ads and products; music is a component, but only insofar as it helps create the aura of "celebrity" necessary to create the brand.

And in the same way, Google doesn't care if Android handsets are profitable, if the apps are profitable, or even if the users particularly prefer them, considering they're usually getting them for free. All they care about is moving units, getting activations, getting the ads in your face, and getting the use metrics back to their dataset. Being "good" at anything is a secondary consideration.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Jon Peterson]

So who "won" in the PC industry?

Dell -- revenues and profits declined so badly they went private?
HP - PC division is doing so bad they almost got rid of it.
IBM -- completely left the business
Compaq - Dead
Gateway - Dead

All those companies won. They made great profits from an important product. So what if many are no longer in business. Many steam engine companies are out of business. That doesn't mean that steam engines were bad and we should have invested more in horses or blimps. Life moves on.

'Losers' would be the likes of Commodore, Olivetti, Tandy, Atari, Amstrad

The Apple iPhone may yet end up as the Commodore Amiga of it's era.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

Supporting gay rights.

Almost everyone does that and it does not cost them a single cent.

They spent money commissioning a video celebrating gay pride.

They spent money on lawyers to petition the Californian government on Prop 8.

They donated $100K to the No to 8 campaign.

Their supplier responsibility reports have been auditing their suppliers for discrimination for years.

It is just public relations.

Again, like the other guy I responded to, you're setting up a no win situation. They don't support gay rights? They are unethical. They do support gay rights? It's just marketing.

Their CEO is widely believed to be gay and I'm sure a hell of a lot of their employees are gay as well. You're asking me to believe they aren't doing this out of principle at all? That's not the most plausible explanation here.

Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad.

Again, this is mainly a PR thing. People got upset (for the wrong reasons -- Apple's contract manufacturers may be bad employers by European or even American standards, but people in China appear to be happy to work for them) and Apple had to repair damage.

Nope, they actually started internal audits of their supply chain and generating public reports several years before all that happened. You can go and download them on their website and see for yourself.

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that?

They've been doing that for many years. Here's the info, specifically the products. Even Greenpeace are singing their praises, specifically, saying: Apple has put its money where its mouth is: Greenpeace's report, "Clicking Clean," found that the company's embrace of renewable energy is genuine, and is leading the technology sector.

Their entire product portfolio is based on planned obsolescence. They may be very proud of how much material they are saving by making critical parts as flimsy as possible, but in reality the reduced lifespan hurts the environment more than the minor savings help it.

This is just FUD. Apple hardware lasts a lot longer than the equivalent from their competitors. I've lost count of the number of laptops, PCs, and non-Apple smartphones I've seen people around me churn through while Apple users with the same needs just buy once or twice in the same time period.

Improving the privacy of their users

By storing all their personal data in a country that has effectively declared war on privacy? By secretly tracking their customers? Apple is doing the exact opposite of what you claim.

By forbidding abusive behaviour in the App Store. By removing application access to identifying information several times. By providing an alternative to third party analytics like Google Analytics that isn't driven by a market need to sell that data. By encrypting a whole bunch of things they aren't compelled to.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[iluvcapra]

All those companies won.

Dell and Gateway were founded after Apple, Apple saw them born and buried them. If you bough $10,000 of Apple stock in 1990 you'd be a millionaire today; if you'd put it on Gateway 2000...

I mean, that they won once is interesting, but what's changed that keeps them from winning? Many steam engine companies are out of business, so why does Apple, a putative "steam engine company," make so much money? Are computers really comparable to steam engines?

GE used to sell steam engines, GE hasn't gone out of business, why not?

Maybe we could say that laptops and mobiles have replaced desktops in the way that internal combustion replaced steam. Fine, but Apple thrives in those businesses as well.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

So Apple's share of a growing market is shrinking. That's exponentially worse. It means that as more and more people decide to buy phones, less and less choose Apple products. I don't see how this vindicates you, but logic was never the strong suit of Apple customers anyways.

Maybe you long for those days where being an Apple customer was special because the company's market share was in the low single digits - but don't worry, it's heading there fast.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

Before making this kind of statement, did you ever listen carefully at a Justin Bieber's song? Did you take a minute to read the lyrics and reflect on their meaning?

Haha just kidding. If I was not boycotting the mod system (which leads to a situation where someone saying that the iPhone is the best phone is voted "insightful") I would mod you up.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that?

They've been doing that for many years. Here's the info, specifically the products. Even Greenpeace are singing their praises, specifically, saying: Apple has put its money where its mouth is: Greenpeace's report, "Clicking Clean," found that the company's embrace of renewable energy is genuine, and is leading the technology sector.

So your evidence that Apple makes environmentally friendly products is that Apple says so, and that Greenpeace (basically the greeners equivalent of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition) is singing their praise?

Here's the real thing (read more on http://www.naturalnews.com/031...):

Many large, multinational companies have operation facilities in China, including HP, Sony, Nokia, Samsung, and Toshiba. But among a list of 29 major companies that run facilities there, Apple turned out to be the worst overall, routinely evading inquiries from environmental groups about environmental pollution and other factory problems.

The report, issued by a group of 36 Chinese environmental groups, cites HP, BT, Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp and Hitachi as among the best companies for both addressing environmental and workplace concerns, and working on specific ways to fix them. But at the bottom of the list were Nokia, LG, SingTel, Ericsson and Apple.

"Apple behaved differently from the other big brands and seemed totally complacent and unresponsive," said Ma Jun, author of the report and Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese non-governmental organization (NGO).

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

Dell -- revenues and profits declined so badly they went private?

You don't know what you are talking about. Dell went private because they wanted to switch the company's focus on enterprise services and software, but the short-term agenda of shareholders was preventing them to do that and was forcing them to keep wasting energy trying to increase their PC sales.

Apple is facing the same problem. They have to deliver gigantic growth each quarter to please investors. That's why innovation has been stalled for so many years in that company, they have to sell and sell and sell - and if management can't deliver that, the board will find someone else that will. That happened in the past.

Dell was in a position to go private because they had a shitload of money and a low market cap. For Apple that's impossible because they don't have the kind of money needed to do that and their stock is immensely overpriced so they can't finance a buyout - they are like someone driving down a hill with no breaks and with the owner of the car screaming in their ear to go faster.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

Here's the real thing (read more on http://www.naturalnews.com/031...):

Why is some random naturalnews.com website I've never heard of and which is run by a single person more legitimate a source than Greenpeace?

More to the point, why haven't you read the sources I provided? Part of the point of the Greenpeace article I linked to is that Apple are making stronger pushes in this area and being more transparent. That article was published in 2014. Your article was published in 2011. So Greenpeace says that Apple are the leaders in the field and have strongly improved, and your article points out that they weren't always as good or open years ago. There's no contradiction there. All you are doing is showing that Apple have taken action and improved.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Chrontius]

I normally don't bother responding to anons, but -

Because most small businesses and sole proprietorships will be owned and operated by people who have a gadget capable of acting as a cash register in their back pocket for unrelated reasons. The transaction-processing capability is just gravy, for them.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Chrontius]

It's worth pointing out that the portion of the smartphone market that's growing most rapidly is the sub-$100 chunk, which could be less-than-charitably described as "crap". Granted, any phone is better than no phone, and any internet access is better than none, but my Asha 501 lacks GPS, even though it has a mapping app. Multitouch is capped at two fingers. There's no flash on the camera, and a minimal amount of the other kind of flash (storage) since they know you won't take too many photos. The headphone wiring is either proprietary, or OMAP. All my headphones are CTIA, and I can't find an OMAP compatible replacement cable for sale anywhere.

We just covered a $35 Firefox OS smartphone. You know what? It's cheaper than the dumbphones my mother and grandfather use. Comparing them to iPhones, the Galaxy S series, and the HTC One series is somewhat disingenuous.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Chrontius]

Apple's profit margin is also their R&D budget. In my opinion, the coolest features tend to come out of Cupertino, not Mountain View.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Chrontius]

I think that Apple has done much more for the security of their end users than Microsoft lately. There is evidence in Slashdot's headlines that they respond to concerns much more readily. When Greenpeace called them out, they admitted that while good, their environmental record could be better - so they made all the obvious improvements. They hold their contractors to account on safety concerns. While we might consider Foxconn pretty dismal, it stands head and shoulders and belly-button over the sweatshops that give China its reputation for cheap labor.

I don't love the company, but I must respect their drive for continuous improvement. And their customer service. And their hardware's reliability, as reported by Consumer Reports - literally half as many malfunctions as the second-best brand, and many of the other brands are closer to tenfold more prone to malfunction.

Also, my buddy the IT manager totally just bought a loaded Macbook Pro as a Windows machine after concluding it was better than any other PC laptop on the market with a high-resolution screen, and cheaper than the second-best choice. (Razer Blade Pro, I believe?)

Apple makes good stuff. Macs aren't for everyone (the gaming tower market most especially), but they do what's needful and stay out of the way better than many other computers for a whole lot of users. Astroturf? Nah, just sick of maintaining and securing a Windows PC under conditions of heavy use, and appalled by the way Windows has a Venn diagram of poorly-documented control panels sprayed around the OS.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

Last week I broke my Nexus. As I was shopping for a new unlocked phone I was astonished by the price differences.

iPhone 5S: $780
Galaxy S5: $580
Nokia 1520: $500
Nexus 5: $350

Yet the actual hardware is not in line with the prices; as an example most of the non-Apple devices in that list have twice the RAM as the iPhone and a much more powerful chip (such as quadcore Snapdragon vs a basic dual-core A7). Or for devices with the same OS, the difference in hardware does not really make up for the difference in price.

For the record I ended up buying a refurb Samsung S4 for $200. It feels less elegant and more clumsy than a Nexus, and it took me a long time to get rid of the Samsung bloatware, but it does the job and it does not get as warm. And next time I buy a phone I will definitely have a look at the sub-$100 devices to see how things have evolved. Who needs a $800 phone? Even $500 feels absurd.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Hashi Lebwohl]

That's odd. I use VISA PayWave all the time, and have never been charged for it. It is a credit card, not debit, I wonder if that makes a difference? NAB if that makes a difference, I can't speak for any other bank.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Bing Tsher E]

So what you're saying is people aren't eager to 'pay good money' for a PC. And Apple is making 50% of the profits. Hmmm. I see a salesman in an Apple store with a sad face on....

Most people don't end up with a rubbish PC. And if they do, it was so cheap ($199 for the cheapest 17" laptops at WalMart last time I looked, doesn't a mouse or a few cables from Apple cost nearly half that??) that it's easily replaced.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

The users are winning, because they're not being roped into a monoculture.

With inferior hardware, horrible support, and crapware infested computers?

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

All those companies won. They made great profits from an important product. So what if many are no longer in business. Many steam engine companies are out of business. That doesn't mean that steam engines were bad and we should have invested more in horses or blimps. Life moves on.

A good company run by strong management knows how to adapt. A steam engine company that went out of business is evidence of management that thought they were in the "steam engine" business and not the business of powering things.

Netflix knew their business wasn't "delivering DVD's to people" and that it was "delivering movies to people" and they switched from DVD delivery to focusing on streaming.

Apple has been selling personal computers for almost 40 years. So why is Apple the most valuable company in the US and the rest of the PC titans has-beens?

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

You don't know what you are talking about. Dell went private because they wanted to switch the company's focus on enterprise services and software, but the short-term agenda of shareholders was preventing them to do that and was forcing them to keep wasting energy trying to increase their PC sales.

So that must explain why Apple had to go private to switch the company's focus from selling computers, to selling mp3 players, music, phones, and tablets....

oh wait...

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[ewibble]

This is actually more of a problem than a solution, low transaction amounts are more likely to be missed by a person, here is a quote from the terms and conditions of a credit card I assume most have similar clauses:

You are responsible for checking your statements to ensure their accuracy and advising us of any mistakes, even if you are not at the address to which you have requested us to send statements. If you do not notify us of a disputed transaction within the time period stated below, then the charge or record of the transaction will remain on your account. If you wish to dispute any transaction recorded in your monthly statement, you must notify us in writing within 30 days of the statement period closing date, giving the following information:

I am very likely miss a $20 transaction on my credit card statement and not at all likely to miss a $2000 one. So I am likely bare the burden of the crime. If they are really that secure why not have all transactions contactless no pin.

I also am interested in knowing if I increase the power of transmission and the size of of the antenna can I increase the range on NFC, Yes it may violate safety standards, but I am sure criminals won't be too concerned.

What really annoys me is I should have a choice of if I want contactless enabled or not, I don't appreciate it being rammed down my throat if I have a credit card, it could simply be an option on the server side saying allow contactless/pinless transactions. When credit card is upgraded I intend to ring my bank and question every transaction under $80, every month.

Yes I understand there are a lot of insecure things about credit cards, but I don't need another.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[mjwx]

I am in Australia and have Visa PayWave attached to my card yet I never use it (using EFTPOS instead) because there are fees attached to PayWave but not EFTPOS (with my bank at least) and because EFTPOS transactions show up faster and better on my online banking.

Australian here, I'll explain this one.

In Australia you have three options when you pay by card, Savings, Cheque and Credit. These define what network the transaction goes through and that determines what fees and charges are applied to the transaction.

Savings and Cheque are part of the EFTPOS network and have a small per transaction fee (usually in the vicinity of A$0.20) that the merchant absorbs. This network is Aus/NZ specific and is not related to similarly named networks overseas.
Credit routes the transaction though the Visa/Mastercard network. This has a per transaction fee plus a percentage of the transaction taken as a merchant service fee (anywhere between 0.5-4%, some high end cards like Amex have a 6% feee). It is entirely legal for a merchant to pass on this fee in Australia (and the Visa/Mastercard terms of service dont override Australian law). Now even if the merchant absorbs this fee, you end up paying in the form of higher prices (that are already too damn high in Oz)

Paypass/paywave automatically routes through credit, so you automatically get the higher fee.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[mjwx]

Not even Apple is capable of creating an entirely new payment ecosystem. They'll play ball with the banks and card associations, or they'll go nowhere.

So what you're saying is that Apple is going to get nowhere.

Apple doesn't follow standards.

Google chose NFC for the Android phones because NFC was a standard, it was well defined, mature and compatible. I can read NFC enabled cards from my phone (all you need is the software to interpret the output). Its only a matter of time before I can make payments via NFC on my Android phone.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[swillden]

Apple doesn't follow standards.

Bluetooth, USB, GSM/CDMA? Apple follows standards just fine when they need to.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[swillden]

Its only a matter of time before I can make payments via NFC on my Android phone.

Oh, I should have mentioned... I've been making payments via NFC on my Android phones for nearly three years. Actually, these days I'd say about 80% of my in-person retail purchases are made with my phone.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[alexander_686]

What regulations are you talking about? In America both banks and charge / merchant / debit cards fall under the same laws. Banks may be more highly regulated but then again they are doing more things. That is, they make loans, take deposits etc. But I can't think of a major difference in terms of principals on how checking is treated differently than cards. For example, the same standards, a signature, are used for both. The differences I know of are on specifics, for example extra safeguards built into checking to clear the checks.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Namarrgon]

The obvious answer is that Apple was farsighted enough to diversify its product line, and came up with some innovative music players and phones.

My monoculture comment was more aimed at the iPhone line specifically. It's been very successful but lost market share anyway, because many people want something different. Apple itself will likely continue to do well, as long as it can create entirely new product lines as the old ones fail (as the iPod is doing now).

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Their computer business was a failing business, with poor sales.

This has changed -- after the iPod became their chief product.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

It's like you think that going private is a bad thing or is a sign of financial struggle. But it's quite the opposite; a company that goes public is basically borrowing money from a shitload of small investors, and giving away the control of the company to a group of board members elected by the investors. And from that point there is an ongoing conflict between the people in the company who want to work on long term projects and the investors who want to see the stock price go up and to receive higher dividends quarter after quarter.

Going private for a public company is difficult because the company needs the money to buy back all their stock in one big swoop, and they have to do that more or less at the current market price, which may be insanely higher than the amount of money the company got at their IPO. So the company needs to have tons of cash, a somehow realistic market cap (i.e how much money is needed to buy back the stock) and private investors who believe in the future of the company enough to pour billions in the operation.

So Apple has never been in a position to go private, even if they had wanted to. When the stock price was low the company had no cash and no investors would take the risk, and when the stock price started to skyrocket even with the good annual profit it was still too expensive. Apple has a buyback program but it's not making a dent. The stock price is way too high for the actual value of the company, and that does not mean the company is not making good products, it just means that investors have unrealistic growth expectations.

The Apple bubble will burst sooner or later. It won't be a bad thing because then maybe the company will be in a position to start innovating again, with less pressure from investors to deliver huge sales every quarter. Then maybe they will have the opportunity to do like Dell, but I doubt it because Apple never had the kind of cash Dell has.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Jack Griffin]

How does this get modded insightful? If you rely purely on paper money, someone has to make that money. Who pays for that? It ain't free buddy, we all pay for that through taxes. Who pays to deliver that money to you? Who pays for the cash register to store it in? Who pays for the mattress you keep it under? Everything has a cost, just because you realise this, doesn't make it any less true. A bank offers convenience, and it too comes at a cost. I'll leave to you to decide if that cost is more or less than all the tin foil hats you spend your paper money on....

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Those passive proximity access cards use NFC, which is a form of communication, it is not a payment system. Apple will align with and use the exiting NFC pbased ayments systems by VISA, MC, and AMEX, they are not going to create they own.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Tough Love]

Apple doesn't follow standards.

Bluetooth, USB, GSM/CDMA? Apple follows standards just fine when they need to.

USB with a dongle. To call that "following a standard" would seem a trifle on the generous side.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever been RAM constrained in iOS?
Also, you're aware the DC A7 has roughly the same FLOPS as the QC Snapdragon?

I swear, in half the /. articles, people say "We don't need to optimize our code; we have an insane amount of resources at our disposal!", and half say "Apple has liek half the ramz and a slowar CPU!!1two".
Completely neglecting the impact of Apple's performance tuning and resource optimization.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[EzInKy]

You should think a bit more about what the phrase "your own money" means before you get all up in arms. Free access to that which is yours is a right, not a convenience.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[AmiMoJo]

Actually sales are tapering off a bit: http://qz.com/122921/the-chart...

Still impressive of course, but it isn't true to say that sales have grown every year.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Bogtha]

That's not right at all. I've had that article pointed out to me before. The author is clueless.

iPhone sales are highly seasonal. A new iPhone gets released towards the end of the year, there's a big spike in sales, which tails off throughout the following year until the next iPhone is released, when the cycle starts again.

What articles like that do is point to the spike at the end of the year, when new iPhones are out and holiday sales are boosting the numbers as well, then point to the following three quarters which are naturally lower (including immediately before a new iPhone is released), and say that sales are "tapering off".

It makes no sense to do that. You aren't comparing like to like. You're comparing the most profitable time of year to the least profitable time of year. Of course sales are going to be lower if you look at it that way - it's true of any product that's seasonal. Would you assume that a suncream company is failing because you looked at their sales in winter and realised that they were selling a fraction of what they do in the summer?

The only sensible way to evaluate sales for seasonal products is to compare year-over-year sales. You compare this year's busy period to last year's busy period. You compare this year's quiet period to last year's quiet period. When you look at the iPhone sales like that - i.e. in the only way that makes sense - sales have never fallen. They have grown every year.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[swillden]

Apple doesn't follow standards.

Bluetooth, USB, GSM/CDMA? Apple follows standards just fine when they need to.

USB with a dongle. To call that "following a standard" would seem a trifle on the generous side.

What are you talking about?

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

It's like you think that going private is a bad thing or is a sign of financial struggle. But it's quite the opposite; a company that goes public is basically borrowing money from a shitload of small investors, and giving away the control of the company to a group of board members elected by the investors.

Wow. When a company sells stock they are selling a share of the company to the public. They are not *borrowing money*.

In fact, a company "borrowing money" and selling equity is completely opposite from each other.

Dell's revenue, profit, and stock price had been declining for years before they went private:

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ADELL&fstype=ii&ei=n-oFVKiwMdDm8QbZpIH4Bg

And from that point there is an ongoing conflict between the people in the company who want to work on long term projects and the investors who want to see the stock price go up and to receive higher dividends quarter after quarter.

And that didn't seem to be a problem for Apple transitioning from a computer company to a company where most of its revenues from phones....

Apple has a buyback program but it's not making a dent.

Not making a dent in what? Apples stock is at an all time high.

Then maybe they will have the opportunity to do like Dell, but I doubt it because Apple never had the kind of cash Dell has.

Apple right now has $67 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Dell had to borrow the money for the buy out.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[lucm]

Apple right now has $67 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Dell had to borrow the money for the buy out.

Apple market cap is about $618 billions. So they would need to find 551 billions to go private.

Dell buyout was about $25 billions. Last time I checked the setup was:
-Loan from banks: 50%
-Dell's company cash: 30%
-Loan from Microsoft: 10%
-Private equity (Silver Lake): 7%
-Michael Dell's own money: 3%

To achieve the same kind of setup, here is what it would mean for Apple:
-Loan from banks: 309 billions
-Apple's cash: 185 billions (3x what they have according to you)
-Loan from Microsoft (or other partner, provided Apple has any): 61 billions
-Private equity (Silver Lake) 43 billions
-Tim Cook's own money: 18 billions

Apple has a buyback program but it's not making a dent.

Not making a dent in what? Apples stock is at an all time high.

The purpose of a buyback program is to BUY BACK stock to progressively regain a higher % of ownership of the company. The higher the stock price, the lower the effect of the buyback. Apple spent about 44 billions to buy back some of its stock over the last year. But it did not make a huge difference.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[david_thornley]

What's the dangerous insecurity of using a Visa card in the US? Sure, it's more likely to get to people it shouldn't, but there are millions of credit card numbers out there, and not a whole lot of problems. You simply can't go around using an account everywhere without letting people know what the account number is.

Legally, I'm liable for $50 of any fradulent charges on my account. Practically, I'm liable for $0.

So, while the EU might be a whole lot more secure, from my point of view a US Visa card is secure, as long as I go over the bill monthly.

Re: As much as I hate Apple

[Karlt1]

The purpose of a buyback program is to BUY BACK stock to progressively regain a higher % of ownership of the company. The higher the stock price, the lower the effect of the buyback. Apple spent about 44 billions to buy back some of its stock over the last year. But it did not make a huge difference.

That's not the reason for the buy back. There are two reasons for a company to do a partial stock buy back.

1. Each share of a company's stock is a share of the company. If the company buys back shares, that makes each outstanding share worth a greater percentage of the company - in theory that raises the value of shares.

There are two ways you can give money back to shareholders - through a dividend and through a share buy back. Because of the way the US tax code is structured, dividends are taxed as regular income but long term sell of stock that appreciates is considered a capital gain with much lower tax rates.

2. Whenever shares are given to employees, it dilutes the value of existing shares making them less valuable. To counteract that, a company buys shares from the open market to counter act the effect.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Pieroxy]

I said: Apple still has the best selling smartphone

You respond as if I had said "Apple has the best smartphone"

Are you still learning to read or are you trolling on purpose?

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[Jack Griffin]

You do have free right to it. Keep it in jar under your mattress and you will pay no fees (I'm not even going to get into inflation). Of course if you want to be able to move money around quickly and easily, that is convenient and offers an alternative to jars and/or pockets filled with paper then there are businesses out there that cater to that. We call them banks, and for a small fee they offer money related services. I still don't get how you think they should give you this service for free? Do you expect someone to mow your lawns for free too? I mean they are your lawns right? How about cleaning your car? Should the car wash guy clean your car for free because after all it is your car? You have free access to your money, just don't give it to someone who you signed a contract with to offer you a fee based service, then complain when they charge you a fee for the service.

Re:As much as I hate Apple

[EzInKy]

The only banks I deal with pay me to have access to my money, not the other way around.

Based on iCloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, what could go wrong?

But will it load EBT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Obama can give out Cellphones AND Food Stamps in one go. Find some way to get Siri to dispense medical advice and the ACA is covered too.

Re:But will it load EBT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find some way to get Siri to dispense medical advice and the ACA is covered too.

Awwww yeah. If ya get Siri to talk dirty it be cheaper than Viagra brudda. Dats what I'm talkin bout!

So it's like Google Wallet?

[fractoid]

Any idea whether it'll work internationally? Android 4.4 has NFC transaction support but it's only actually supported in the U.S.

Re:So it's like Google Wallet?

[citizenr]

lol? whole europe is using nfc now

Re:So it's like Google Wallet?

[_merlin]

Samsung's latest phones do NFC payment in Australia. There's no reason it couldn't work, besides vendor apathy.

Re:So it's like Google Wallet?

[DeSigna]

And Australia's had it for years too. When I ordered it, I had to make sure my phone was the international version with NFC support, because the US model doesn't have it.

Has to be The Onion... ?!

[ReekRend]

Tonight? Now? This has to be an Onion post.

Otherwise it will go down as the greatest non-Onion headline that should have been on The Onion.

As much as I hate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I have enough trouble with businesses not accepting Eftpos (or any card) transactions at all, I find it hard to imagine how "Yet another" payment gateway is going to make it any different.

only about 10 years late

[Anonymous Coward]

NFC payment chips have been in Japanese phones since they got 100Mbps fibre to the premises available.
Sure, they didn't hook into visa or mastercard, but added more to your phone bill.

If Apple is going to be taking a cut of the transactions, then perhaps this is why they bought their stock back?

Bad timing, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering iCloud was hacked and massive amounts of nude celebrity photos were taken from it, people probably aren't too trusting of your security at this point.

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[Bogtha]

That's just 4chan rumours at the moment. No point in taking them seriously unless there's confirmation.

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[u38cg]

Wise words.

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[TheRaven64]

It was on the BBC news this morning, which probably counts as more reliable than 4chan. Most interesting was the claim by one of the women involved that the photos had been deleted. If this is true, then it would be a great example of the fact that just because something is 'deleted' in the cloud doesn't mean that malicious people can't get at it in the future...

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[AmiMoJo]

It appears to be confirmed now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/...

Worryingly some of the affected claim that the images which were leaked had been deleted years ago. If you want your iCloud account deleted rather than just made inactive you have to call Apple and get a tech to call you back.

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the confirmation of how the photos were obtained. Where is that coming from? Is that the 4chan part?

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The leak is confirmed, but the source has not. RTFA, use your head.

Re:Bad timing, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the leaked photos were from users that don't use iCloud. Explain how the fake phots got on iCloud. I mean, why would a celebrity keep fake photos on iCloud. Unless this was a collection of photos people have been collecting over the years from various sources.

Apple said *what* to the team?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Look, I'm not picky or anything, and I know headlines are shortened, but what the hell does " Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet" mean?

Re:Apple said *what* to the team?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Ah nevermind, I got it. It's not terribly obvious though...

Re:Apple said *what* to the team?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shortening titles into the url is horrible but makes for the occasional funny link. But it is not really any better than calling the article some random/serial number - except SEO.

Nothing really new

[Stormwatch]

What's the big deal? Mobile payment exists since the late 1990s.

Re:Nothing really new

[bogaboga]

What's the big deal?

Hundreds of millions of potential customers will have this technology on Apple's [single] platform. Keyword: "Single."

Now don't talk of Android because we know it's all fragmented.

Blackberry? Well, this is of no consequence.

Microsoft? It still doesn't matter.

Who else? Got your answer: Anyone cares about this? I doubt.

Mobile payment exists since the late 1990s.

Yes, but Apple's gonna finally do it "right."

Re:Nothing really new

[cjeze]

The big deal is that they are going to be able to do it better than everyone else. Currently mobile payments suck. By teaming up with the major card companies and using the newest available technology they will be able to make mobile payments mainstream.

No more cards, cheques or cash required on boats, buses, taxis, shops, quik-marts, gas-stations, restaurants, hardware stores etc..

Re:Nothing really new

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

I'm not sure if Google already has a solution (I still use a highly anonymous payment system called cash for most of my financial transactions). But all Android needs is the right API and vendors can potentially design their phones to that spec using components from any of the dozen or so semiconductor manufacturers that matter (Samsung, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc). I mean why can't the hardware component of the payment system not be a "standard" like Bluetooth or 3G? The software part is clearly Google's problem, but the supposed fragmentation of Android isn't an unsurmountable hurdle for a unified mobile payment system.

Re:Nothing really new

[Anonymous Coward]

"The big deal is that they are going to be able to do it better than everyone else."

First of all, it's not Apple that will be making the apps to drive CC NFC payments, it's the banks.

Second, there is no 'doing it better'...It's just NFC and there's nothing innovative about it anymore. It's pretty much useless unless brick and mortar stores accept those types of payments.

Re:Nothing really new

[AmiMoJo]

Android fragmentation is irrelevant. The number of NFC enabled Android phones vastly outnumbers the number of Apple NFC enabled phones, which is currently zero. Even if the iPhone six sells as well as the iPhone 5 before it the market for Apple vs. Android payments (and all NFC enabled Android devices support it, regardless of OS version) will probably force Apple to be compatible at some stage.

Re:Nothing really new

[Tamran]

This is already available for the iPhone and you can buy it for under $20:

http://www.shoeme.ca/products/...

Re:Nothing really new

[c]

Hundreds of millions of potential customers will have this technology on Apple's [single] platform. Keyword: "Single."

Seeing how NFC typically needs hardware support, it would be starting with this generation of devices, and unless Apple does something different from the usual "downgrade existing top tier models and drop the bottom" then only the top end and most expensive models for the next couple years will have it.

Unless they sell a lower-priced iWatch or some other dongle that "expands" the existing iPhone range to support NFC (which would actually be pretty smart of them, so I wouldn't be surprised) or unless the last couple generations of devices have sold with disabled NFC hardware buried inside, it's not unreasonable to say that there will be NFC versus non-NFC fragmentation for at least another year.

Re:Nothing really new

[Threni]

> Now don't talk of Android because we know it's all fragmented.

Wow - people still say that in 2014? This is still a tech site, right? Windows has users on different sized monitors, and slightly different versions of Windows - I guess that's fragmented too.

Re:Nothing really new

[Bing Tsher E]

So when you say 'by teaming up with the major credit card companies' do you mean through an exclusive monopolistic agreement with them? I don't see the credit card companies making that sort of deal, and if they did, we've got a precedent with Apple and the eBook industry, and people are gonna be right on it.

Re:Nothing really new

[iluvcapra]

Google has so far been completely lackadaisical about doing the legwork with business partners to enable their NFC payments system. What Google has to do is go on a stage with Visa and MasterCard, and talk about how every POS will be accepting Android NFC payments in 6 months, and we'll give a free phone to every merchant in America who can't afford to upgrade.

The business deals are necessary before the NFC hardware is useful. Just because Android phones have an antenna and a chip, it doesn't mean that everyone will be drawn by the gravitational force of Market Share to support Android. What they want is a payments platform, and the hardware is only a small part of a platform -- the important, big parts, are the business deals with credit card companies and bank networks. And Google's general attitude with this sort of thing has been "we'll work with banks but we get to define all the terms of the deal," and if banks don't work with us we'll just use include them without their permission anyways.

This is typical of Google's approach in a myriad of business sectors: they design an open system, but design the business model in such a way that they receive a lions share of the benefit, and then they accuse anyone who doesn't work with them of "stifling openness."

Security...

[Keyboard Rage]

Let's hope Apple's new fingerprint reader is better than their previous one: http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Re: Security...

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared this to current payment systems, eg four-digit pin (fairly easily peeked at), or no PIN on small wireless transactions (eg below £20 on my bank), or just having a signature and no PIN at all (common in US?), or waving cash around.

I think a fingerprint hack involving lifting fingerprints and sculpting moulds and resin and stuff is a pretty remote risk.
And while the hackers are playing CSI with your fingerprints, you are likely to notice your phone is lost, and remotely disable it (or track it), as you would a stolen credit card for that matter.

NGH

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite this tech being available for several years at least, the only places I've seen that support it (or at least have payment terminals that supposedly support it) are Walgreens and Arby's.

For this to work, you have to

a.) convince hundreds of millions of folks that its more convenient than a card swipe, and
b.) convince millions of business owners that its worth the investment in new POS equipment.

And it's a chicken and the egg type problem. A won't happen until B happens, and B won't happen until A happens. The MUCH better idea is the electronic card that uses existing POS hardware (i.e. mag strip readers):

https://onlycoin.com/

Perhaps if you had a device that could do BOTH mag strips AND NFC you'd get some traction. But as long as I have to still carry around my wallet AND my phone in the most likely even that they particularly retailer won't have NFC, I'll just keep carrying around my wallet, TYVM. NFC payment is neat-o, but outside of niche applications even Apple won't be able to get the traction necessary to make it mainstream anytime soon.

Re:NGH

[_merlin]

Coin is going to be dead in the water as soon as US requires chip cards. The whole point of chip cards is that the key never leaves the chip and it can't be copied. They talk about supporting it in the future but can't elaborate on a plan, as they don't have one. They also have blatant misinformation about "chip and sign" on their site. "Chip and sign" uses the ICC chip to verify card presence, but you sign the receipt rather than entering a PIN. The Coin people claim you still use the magnetic strip, but that just plain isn't true.

Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[Animats]

A few years ago, those Google NFC payment terminals were all over Silicon Valley. Nobody used them. Newer credit card terminals show no sign of supporting them, although some apparently have the hardware inside for it.

Another problem is that if the technology just requires the phone's presence, not interaction on the phone, it's insecure. "Near field communication" is only supposed to be up to 20cm, but a 2013 paper at Black Hat demonstrated connectivity at 100cm, which is good enough for crime. If it does require interaction on the phone, the user has to activate the phone, navigate to some app, and deal with the app. This is slower than swiping a credit card.

It's easier to do than card-reader skimmers.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[_merlin]

We have NFC credit cards in Australia now. They don't seem to have caused a big uptick in fraud. Also, the worst you could do from a distance (assuming you could communicate with the card for long enough) would be to process a payment of up to $100 - you can't actually copy the card.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[IamTheRealMike]

NFC payment cards in Australia/Europe cryptographically sign a challenge from the terminal, using basically standard crypto. It's EMV all the way. In-person magstripe payments are carefully controlled and risk analysed to ensure they only occur if, for example, the card is broken - or outright banned.

NFC payments in the USA involve the phone sending regular magstripe data to the terminal, with only the CVC code being some kind of cryptographic derivative - a three digit number (less than 1000). The reason for this crazy setup is so merchants don't have to update their backend/PoS systems that still expect magstripe data. There is no plan to perform a complete upgrade thus old style transactions cannot be phased out. It's a dramatically less secure system.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[_merlin]

US is really that backwards? And I thought the "offline mode" in Europe where the card verifies the PIN was bad enough.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[turp182]

With KitKat (Android 4.4 on a Nexus 5), you press the button to wake the phone, tap on the payment thing (starts Google Wallet, no interaction other than the tap), then enter a PIN number for Google Wallet (the user interaction/verification). There's another tap to verify the total and you are done. There is no scenario that doesn't require the PIN.

I wish my local grocery stores supported it.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[JaredOfEuropa]

It looks like they want to combine NFC with some interaction on the phone. It could be as simple as only allowing payments when the phone is unlocked, so with an iPhone 5S that would mean 1) take phone from pocket, 2) unlock by thumbing the home button / fingerprint scanner, 3) swipe phone past scanner. Perhaps there's a popup to confirm the amount if it's over a certain limit. At the very least, I'd expect such integration to mean that swiping the phone will automatically open the payment app if required.

Partnering with major CC companies is nice but what I am really hoping for is integration with companies like Maestro (part of MC), linking the phone to a debit card. This would make the transaction fees for merchants a whole lot lower and would speed adoption in Europe. In my country, pretty much everybody has a Maestro compatible debit card linked to their current account, and almost every shop has a Maestro terminal.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[JaredOfEuropa]

There's an offline mode for payments? I've never seen that in action, and the only portable terminals I have seen have a cellular data connection.

The card itself is indeed capable of verifying the PIN, which is used for online banking and payments (at least it is in the Netherlands). Online banking uses one-time passwords (OTP), generated by a small dongle into which the bank card is inserted. The card's PIN has to be entered on the dongle every time in order to generate an OTP, and the card will lock out after 3 incorrect PINs have been entered. It's not bad, but a pretty good system since the PIN never has to be entered on a computer, only the OTP is entered and that cannot be used by key loggers for replay attacks. The system is still vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks but in principle you can more or less safely do your online banking from, say, a web cafe in Bangkok, if you are careful (only do one transaction per session, end the session and contact your bank if you receive an "incorrect OTP" error).

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[_merlin]

There's an offline mode that's available in Europe where the card verifies the PIN entered on the terminal. This mode has been shown to be vulnerable to compromised hardware as response for a valid PIN is predictable. The cards in Australia are incapable of verifying the PIN at all - you can set or change your PIN for many cards using an online service without the card present.

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Obama!

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[mjwx]

A few years ago, those Google NFC payment terminals were all over Silicon Valley. Nobody used them. Newer credit card terminals show no sign of supporting them, although some apparently have the hardware inside for it.

Another problem is that if the technology just requires the phone's presence, not interaction on the phone, it's insecure. "Near field communication" is only supposed to be up to 20cm, but a 2013 paper at Black Hat demonstrated connectivity at 100cm, which is good enough for crime. If it does require interaction on the phone, the user has to activate the phone, navigate to some app, and deal with the app. This is slower than swiping a credit card.

It's easier to do than card-reader skimmers.

This is why a phone is better than the NFC cards most people have in their wallet right now.

The Paywave/Paypass NFC cards will give the card details to anything that asks for them. All the malicious software has to do is follow the spec available to the general public on Visas and Mastercards websites. That's how this little app came about (actually this is the censored version, the source code is available on github). The card gives out the number, name and expiry date... basically everything written on the front of the card. So harvesting CC numbers has become a lot easier.

With a phone at least you can control who gets that information, a simple popup message saying "x terminal wants your details" with confirm or deny buttons (and an automatic deny in 15 seconds). Above this, you can actually implement some kind of cryptographically secure encryption like a PRNG or at the very least a 2nd factor of authentication.

But it's going to take a government like the EU to force banks to do this. Right now it's easier for them to swallow the cost of fraud (which gets passed on to you anyway). Banks simply dont care about security because it costs money (capex, fraud is opex).

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[mjwx]

NFC payment cards in Australia/Europe cryptographically sign a challenge from the terminal, using basically standard crypto. It's EMV all the way. In-person magstripe payments are carefully controlled and risk analysed to ensure they only occur if, for example, the card is broken - or outright banned.

You know nothing about bank security.

First off, the NFC cards are not cryptographically secure in the slightest. In fact they give out your card number, name and expiry date to anything that asks for it and once a crim has your CC number they can do all manner of things with it from online transactions to cloning the card itself. This app for any NFC enabled android phone can read your card, last I checked the source code is available for the uncensored version. This is not top secret info, it was based on the specifications publicly available on Visas website.

Secondly, there's no requirement for EMV on any Australian terminal. We're closer to the US than Europe in that regard. Magstripe transactions are not controlled in any way, shape or form. I've got a Citibank Plus card that's a few years old and it hasn't got a chip. 100% magstripe and it's never been rejected anywhere (in fact it's been rejected less than NFC in my Mastercard and I use the Citibank card at least 10 times as often).

Re:Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[Wraithlyn]

Love or hate Apple, they're good at simple. There's no way they're going to make people do a full unlock and locate an app for NFC payments, it'll be integrated right into the OS and in all likelihood be disgustingly convenient.

I imagine something like, you'll have activated NFC from your slide-up tray... then probably just swipe your phone near the merchant terminal, slide to accept an alert box, and then thumbprint to confirm the transaction.

Vista??

[Anonymous Coward]

For a moment I read the headline as

Apple Said To Team With Vista, ... :-O

Why all the negativity

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get all the negative comments.

Here in Australia we've had RFID (paypass & paywave) for 3+ years, all fine, great, and is now more commonly used than pin/signature (and that'll grow more given signatures are now officially phased out nation-wide as of ... today I believe?)

NFC ATM access has been around for a good year, I don't even open my wallet when going to an ATM anymore - I open up an app on my iPhone, tap a button on the ATM, enter my pin, and withdraw my cash.

NFC payments at EFTPOS machines here in AU can be done with Galaxy S4's currently, a lot of EFTPOS terminals here support them already, and just like PayWave/PayPass I don't quite see why it wouldn't move just as rapidly.

The only negative side-effect is theft, however this is going to have to happen with both the app open, and you're going to need to accept the charges on your phone... so I personally see this as MORE secure than RFID payments, not less...

RFID payments, despite being hugely insecure and implicitly accepting charges of up to $100 without any confirmation (eg: a pin), have still been massively popular, and most reported thefts have revolved around cases where peoples credit cards were physically stolen anyway... there's to date, not been any high-tech RFID theft going on from people walking through shopping malls (at least here in AU) - this is ignoring the fact anyone remotely tech savvy has an RFID protected wallet by now anyway.

Re:Why all the negativity

[frnic]

The negativity is because this is Slashdot. The second reason is that it is about Apple.

"Nothing new" - yeah, and cell phones existed years before iPhone - how did that work out.

Haters will hate.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation on the NFC chip broadcasting your info 24/7?

You have to enable it in an app/widget/whatever.

Way to spread the FUD though, astroturf much?

Re:Hope for good cloud security

[Hamsterdan]

Please disregard previous comment, reading multiple forums at once ain't such a good idea after all.

Future Apple "Pickings"

[Anonymous Coward]

Future Apple "Pickings" will include chopping of one's fingers and blunt force trauma to the head for maximum criminal spending enjoyment.

This could be big

[Camembert]

NFC exists since several years but there is not exactly general, widespread take-up. Whether you like Apple or not, they are in a good position to enable wide adoption. Their products tend to offer accessible funtionality, and they are big enough to leverage their relationship with the credit card companies, hence I can see them having success.

Even so this is part of normal technical evolution. If Apple doesn't crack the nut, eventually someone else will. I am more interested in the expected wearable health-oriented device (probably an iwatch) that will likely be announced as well next week. Smartwatches in general are terribly nerdy and unattractive, yet a succesful health-oriented product could be a quality of life improver. It could be a big thing.

Why? Nobody uses NFC payments

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution -- same as for receiving a phone call: when the phone detects and NFC payment request it automatically launches an approve/deny dialog. For added security, this dialog could require entering a pin or other code.

When is a PR bot not a PR bot?

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's a ..."according to a person familiar with the situation." bot.

It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am really glad something like this is long over due. But I wish we are not jumping from duopoly to a monopoly.

The cost of handling transactions is steadily diminishing. There was a time it would cost you something between 49$ and 149$ to place a single trade. It dropped to well below 10$ when I was still trading. Would not be surprised if they give you money to place a trade or something now. Compare it to the debit card transaction.

When it comes to creditcard I would not begrudge the 2% to 5% fee charged to the merchants. The credit card companies are essentially advancing an unsecured loan, and it would cost the individual merchants much more to check and advance credit to their customers. (Of course it there is some real competition the percentage might come down). But it is the debit card transaction that is atrocious. Money comes from the bank, there is no risk involved. There was a very nice system, including PIN numbers to manage the POS terminals. Way back when stock trade was 49$, it was 25 cent per transaction irrespective of the size of transaction. This should have become zero. But that is not what happened.

The Visa and Mastecard combined to discourage ATM cards and the POS terminals and undermined the system. They made debit and credit card to go through the same system. And the merchants were forced to pay 2% transaction fees on risk free money transfer from one bank to another.

The time is ripe, with prepaid cards and stored value cards for really cheap and free micro transactions. It took the clout of Apple to hit the music executives on their head and make them wake up, smell the coffee and realize the days of selling single track with 10 more useless tracks for 19$ per CD are gone. It might take such a juggernaut like Apple to make the bankers come around the bend and give up their 2% commission on risk free transactions.

But I wish we are not going from the duopoly of MC + Visa to a monopoly of AppStore. Well one thing at a time. Once the bankers get used to lower fees commensurate with the cost of transactions, may be alternatives to AppStore might emerge, and the system might become more open.

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[Anonymous Coward]

BITCOIN!

end of story

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[Mr_Silver]

There was a very nice system, including PIN numbers to manage the POS terminals. Way back when stock trade was 49$, it was 25 cent per transaction irrespective of the size of transaction. This should have become zero. But that is not what happened.

The 25 cent transaction fee is charged by the acquiring bank, not Visa and Mastercard - whose fees for debit are typically 1 cent per transaction as they are a volume based business.

The reason that acquirers charge is because they incur costs associated with that transaction (including, but not limited to, interchange fees). If they didn't charge, it would fail as a viable business model.

Pre-paid cards still have to use Visa or MC to get the request for the money from the acquirer (who has the relationship with the merchant and typically provides the terminal) to the card issuer (the bank that supplied the pre-paid card).

Regarding AppStore vs MC+Visa, in order for Apple to be able to accept payments directly they would have to get an e-money licence so they could issue virtual debit or credit cards for use on their phones. By doing so, they'd still need the rails that Visa and MC provide - unless they really want to get into the business of connecting themselves to all the banks worldwide (aka becoming a payment processor).

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Visa and Mastecard combined to discourage ATM cards and the POS terminals and undermined the system. They made debit and credit card to go through the same system. And the merchants were forced to pay 2% transaction fees on risk free money transfer from one bank to another.

In my experience, this is not common. EFTPOS transactions may be handled by the same device, but they go through a different network (EC or Maestro) with much lower transaction fees. This is why many merchants that accept credit cards impose a 2-3% fee for credit card payments (especially) on large purchases, but direct debit bank card payments are almays always free for the customer. For the merchant, they are cheaper, safer and more practical than cash.

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in retail. Specifically, I was a software developer for a large chain of convenience stores. Debit transactions are in fact cheaper for the merchant than are credit transactions.

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Some POS terminals will offer PIN pad and a menu "Authorize by signature or authorize by PIN". If the buyer picks "signature" it is treated as credit card transaction. Further, these changes came after lots of protest from merchants and some law suits. When banks started giving out ATM cards with VISA/MC logo, all the transactions went through credit card channel. But it was not clear if the debit cards carried the 50$ liability limit for fraudulent use. Further, since the attached checking account is drained by the fraudulent use, it was not clear how soon the money will be credited back. When this program was rolled in, it was very heavy handed, abusive and one sided.

Re:It is time someone belled the cat. But wish..

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The user could log into the bank account and transfer funds to AppStore account. From there Apple could handle micro payments to the vendors. Vendors cash out from the bank. Completely skipping MC/Visa infrastructure, if the NFC terminals are iPad or iPhone based. Ideally I would like something like this emerge in Android and in iOS so that there is some real viable competition to Visa/MC duopoly.

But looks like Apple is also talking to MC/Visa. So Apple does not seem to be competing with them, rather it is also looking to get a cut like the issuing banks are doing now.

Re:ugh

[gnasher719]

easily lost stolen hacked phone equipped with a radio broadcasting your CC info 24/7

Easily hacked? How would you go about hacking an iPhone?

The art of confusing headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet": In a move intended to "team" with Visa, Apple have added MasterCard to iPhone Wallet. The question is, is this completely nonsensical or is iPhone Wallet so harmful it aids Visa by damaging the competitor's reputation?

Countdown until it is hacked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Starts now. I give it 6 months to a year.

Next Step, iChip!

[docwatson223]

The recent Cartoon Channel show, 'Chippy', conceived and sponsored by a joint effort between Apple, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service, has reached a critical mass in terms of viewership according to a recent media rating survey by the National Government Network. The show, which promotes the implantation and use of the Apple iChip and shows DHS agents busting unregistered gun owners, smugglers, drug dealers, black market medical personnel, Constitutionalist terrorists, and non-'Chippers' has become a significant PR success and increased the demand for chip implementation in the core demographic of 8-12 and, surprisingly, adults as old as 70. The show's tagline 'Chippy is your friend!' has spawned t-shirts, window stickers, screen savers, and a host of DRM-free online episodes as well as a counter-culture of subversive anti-Chippie paraphernalia. From the Pacific White House in Hawaii, the President declared the show a clear success and commented that the revised chip requirement under his Affordable Care Act was 'a keystone in the future of healthcare and commerce in the United States'. In a related story, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the next revision of the iChip will include wireless and cell phone connectivity and a new basic neural interface along with further enhancements to it's current healthcare, credit, commerce, and GPS abilities. The iChip has boosted Apple stock to well over the $1100 mark as of the close of yesterday's announcement at Mac World San Francisco.

Really? Apple?

[koan]

The corporation famous for its slave labor and environmentally damaging manufacturing policies?
The corporation that works with the NSA to cripple your phone and provides whatever is asked of it to the security forces.
Apple who can't even secure their own cloud and thus keep nude celeb photos safe.

In other words..... Crapple, we shit on your security and privacy.

Re:Really? Apple?

[gnasher719]

The corporation famous for its slave labor and environmentally damaging manufacturing policies?

What company would that be? I heard of Samsung whose employees keep dying from leukaemia, but I didn't know they used slave labor. They should have a look at Apple, who is usually years ahead of others with their environmental policies, who have forced agencies to pay back millions of dollars to employees in China, and how force their contractors to send everyone caught employing underage person to send them back to finish school _and pay them a full salary while they are at school_.

The corporation that works with the NSA to cripple your phone and provides whatever is asked of it to the security forces.

What company would that be? I don't know of any company that isn't doing everything to fight the NSA.

Apple who can't even secure their own cloud and thus keep nude celeb photos safe.

Apple cannot even prevent some idiots from spreading stupid rumours.

Apple **IS** said to team...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much room are you saving by leaving out a 2-letter verb?

I first read it as if Apple was speaking to their team, not that Apple is supposedly going to combine forces with Visa/MC.

Pied piper of minor convenience

[gunnnnslinger]

You guys crack me up. One day Slashdot is in a furor over revelations that the overstepping government is voraciously cataloguing and sifting through your personal data, the next you happily buzz about *paying money* for technologies that make government big data collection of your purchases, travel info, communications, lifestyle, reading, etc... more and more convenient and irresistible. It's hard to feel sorry for people that so willingly hand their freedom over, for novelty, time after time, and learn nothing. America will be the first panopticon, and you will all deserve it.

Re:Pied piper of minor convenience

[david_thornley]

There's a lot of my life that I have no qualms about being observed. For this, I can use any convenient technology, no matter how trackable. The important thing is that, when I want to do something and not have it be observed, I can.

Ha ha, need not to apply in Russia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahaha...

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

please say you are retarded and not that stupid

Back to the Future 2

[fruey]

Anyone else thinking of Thumb payments in that?

Wonderful

[koan]

The same corporation that is complicit with the NSA spying, obvious code errors to allow said spying, a variety of other "bugs" and then the recent "nude celeb photos" scandal show you how incompetent Apple is at security, why anyone in their right mind would use anything they make in a security required situation.

My credit cards are already pretty thin

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure I'm gonna save that much space in my pockets.

Welcome to where Android was 2 years ago Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone applaud Apple for doing what others have done for years?