Apple Locks iPhone 6/6+ NFC To Apple Pay Only

Ronin Developer writes From the Cnet article: "At last week's Apple event, the company announced Apple Pay — a new mobile payments service that utilizes NFC technology in conjunction with its Touch ID fingerprint scanner for secure payments that can be made from the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch. Apple also announced a number of retailers that would accept Apple Pay for mobile payments at launch. However, Cult of Mac reports that NFC will be locked to the Apple Pay platform, meaning the technology will not be available for other uses. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the lock down of the technology, saying developers would be restricted from utilizing its NFC chip functionality for at least a year. Apple declined to comment on whether NFC capability would remain off limits beyond that period." So, it would appear, for at least a year, that Apple doesn't want competing mobile payment options to be available on the newly released iPhone 6 and 6+. While it's understandable that they want to promote their payment scheme and achieve a critical mass for Apple Pay, it's a strategy that may very well backfire as other other mobile payment vendors gain strength on competing platforms.

Comments

Jailbreak

[qpqp]

NFC for other uses made available through jailbreak in 3..., 2..., 1...

Re:Jailbreak

[cbhacking]

That NFC will be made available via jailbreak, I do not doubt.

That it will happen quite that *fast*, I do doubt. Apple has gotten really good at lockdown.

Note that Lockdown != Security. Security means preventing unauthorized access. If you can't even authorize *yourself* to get access, it's either not "security" or it's not your device (or both).

If you want NFC, go with Samsung, or HTC, or Nokia, or one of the many other phone OEMs who have been including NFC hardware and software that lets you use it for years now.

Re:Jailbreak

[qpqp]

Ok, cue in 10..., 9..., ...

go with Samsung

No thanks. Yuck!
Now, HTC is a different story, but I still prefer iOS.

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer iOS.

Lots of old people do.

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

That NFC will be made available via jailbreak, I do not doubt.

That it will happen quite that *fast*, I do doubt. Apple has gotten really good at lockdown.

Note that Lockdown != Security. Security means preventing unauthorized access. If you can't even authorize *yourself* to get access, it's either not "security" or it's not your device (or both).

If you want NFC, go with Samsung, or HTC, or Nokia, or one of the many other phone OEMs who have been including NFC hardware and software that lets you use it for years now.

And I'm sure we'll all be very eager to make use of the third party mobile payment options made available for your jailbroken iPhone on Cydia, courtesy of a bunch of hackers you've never heard of before.

Re:Jailbreak

[mwvdlee]

Which will be useful for the average iPhone 6 user in 1,000,000,000..., 999,999,999..., 999,999,998...

Re:Jailbreak

[cbhacking]

Also a valid point. I do a fair bit of phone hacking, but am very cautious about what I install from whom (it helps that I can decompile apps pretty well by now). Most people aren't, and somebody is going to want to take advantage of that.

Re: Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll throw in with old people. Young people today are garbage.

Re:Jailbreak

[rolfwind]

Oh wow, the "my corporate company brand is better than your corporate company brand" fight.

Re:Jailbreak

[Dcnjoe60]

Even if you jail break the phone, is Apple going to let an app in their store that relies on it? No. What legitimate "pay" vendor is going to risk Apple's ire and legal department to provide an independent app that bypasses the Apple Store?

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow, the "my corporate company brand is better than your corporate company brand" fight.

Yeah, we call that "Slashdot", or more generally, "the Internet". Welcome.

Re:Jailbreak

[Bing Tsher E]

It's mostly only the Apple enthusiasts who try to define that divide. Apple has always promoted the notion of an ' versus them' mentality. With the Apple customers,defined as a superior minority. That has been their strategy for decades.

The rest of us just use the equipment that seems most suitable and fits in our budget.

Re:Jailbreak

[beefoot]

That reminded me what my wife told me at her company event recently. He said most management uses either iphone or blackberry while most younger staff members use android. Mind you that may be change because of the bigger and badder iphone 6 size. :-)

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

And which banking company would release the necessary code / keys for a jb device to interface with their systems?

None, I suspect.

You MIGHT be able to use it for basic sharing - that requires no "special" code.

Re:Jailbreak

[ArcadeMan]

You mean, there's no such fights between Windows and Linux users? Xbox, Playstation and Wii users?

Hell, just say something like "vi is better than Emacs" and you'll have a fight between Linux users.

Apple's notion is not "versus them", it's "versus good enough".

Android is good enough.

Re:Jailbreak

[Kevoco]

or Motorola - the NFC on the Moto x does pretty much everything I like, including Moto Skip for NFC unlock, Google Wallet for payments, and I can also mess around reading and writing to NFC tags

Re:Jailbreak

[lordbeejee]

my wife ... He

Re:Jailbreak

[stealth_finger]

Apple's notion is not "versus them", it's "versus good enough".

Android is good enough.

iOS is not.

Re:Jailbreak

[qpqp]

I wasn't talking about mobile payment, but access to the tech (which is available to devs through private APIs anyway). A jailbreak will just make other uses available, which will probably appear in iOS 8.1 or 9, or whatever.
Think invisible QR codes and stuff.

Re:Jailbreak

[qpqp]

I mean for regular users (who jailbreak).

Re:Jailbreak

[Noah Haders]

+5 awesome.

Re:Jailbreak

[Noah Haders]

be honest. when was the last time you owned an iphone? because anybody who uses iOS for a period of time, and doesn't come at it with jaded eyes, likes it. my guess is you already have a feel against it, and only tried it out at the store for a couple mins.

Re:Jailbreak

[Russ1642]

My wife is from China. After ten years in Canada she still switches he and she almost randomly. It can get pretty funny at times.

Re:Jailbreak

[ArcadeMan]

Good enough is the enemy of great.

Re:Jailbreak

[macs4all]

Even if you jail break the phone, is Apple going to let an app in their store that relies on it? No. What legitimate "pay" vendor is going to risk Apple's ire and legal department to provide an independent app that bypasses the Apple Store?

The operative word there is "legitimate".

Re:Jailbreak

[macs4all]

or Motorola - the NFC on the Moto x does pretty much everything I like, including Moto Skip for NFC unlock, Google Wallet for payments, and I can also mess around reading and writing to NFC tags

Honestly, what other uses besides Payment is NFC really useful for?. Traditional Lock and Key (Open your front door with your phone sort of thing?)

I'm not trolling. I honestly don't see many other applications.

Re: Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

My mother owns an Android phone currently and is/was looking at larger phones with larger screens. She apparently hate Apple or their prices.

Re: Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it can be used to transfer small bits of information relatively securely. It's too slow for file transfer, but I think it could be used to establish a secure Wi-Fi link to another device then transfer the file(s). Or transfer contact information (instead of a QR code on a business card). Or games could use it to transfer data, seed values, or establish multiplayer connections.

It's more of a convenience than a necessity.

Re:Jailbreak

[AaronW]

How about bluetooth pairing? I have a bluetooth adapter and all I have to do is hold my phone up to it and it's automatically paired with it. I have a little bluetooth sticker in my car. I just hold my phone up to it and my phone reconfigures itself to how I want it in the car. The one on my keychain basically gives some contact info if found (i.e. email and phone number). There are a lot of interesting uses for NFC besides payment.

Re: Jailbreak

[Redbehrend]

The lock down means you must use apples program which means apple gets the transaction fees lol This is the main point behind it... nfc is not a complicated technology... and has other uses other than payments as devices including blackberry, windows and android has shown.

Re:Jailbreak

[mythosaz]

You almost answered your own question. Keying behavior on NFC tags is the big one. Triggering a sequence of events based on an NFC tag is pretty common. Oh? I'm in the cup-holder in the car? Turn off WiFi, turn on BT, start playing Pandora. I'm on my desk? Turn on WiFi, turn off BT, dim the screen, and start syncing my backups.

My extended family all has NFC-enabled Android devices. Bump phones to quickly exchange a contact or photo or long URL? Done.

Beyond that, it's mostly dorking around reading other NFC tags out of curiosity :)

Re: Jailbreak

[macs4all]

Ok, thanks.

I seem to remember some Dallas Semiconductor Datasheets on this stuff in the mid 1990's, and I think even then, the main suggested application was Payment and Keyless Entry.

Re:Jailbreak

[stealth_finger]

Owned? never. Used? all the time. Everytime my wife says how do I do x? And at work I'm responsible for maintaining over 50 ipads and a few mac suites (educational setting) so it's not like I just dislike them because it's the in thing. I dislike them because I have to use them all the time and it's awkward to get them to do what I want how I want. I'm always searching for work arounds and alternate methods when they're supposed to 'just work'. Very few people can give me actual reasons why 'macs are better' when I ask. I'm in the camp of hate windows the least, except 8. 8 can go suck a fat one.

Re:Jailbreak

[Noah Haders]

I can't judge if macs are better than Linux, and I can't judge if macs are better for everybody because I don't know everybody's heads, but as a longtime windows user I can say that, for me, macs are better than windows. Here's why:

1) macs respect my time. I can't even tell you how much time I've spent futzing with windows computers. It's really hard and messy to uninstall things. drivers for new equipment are usually wrong. a new computer comes with a whole mess of crapware. when I search for the internet for solutions (or new drivers), half the sites I find are trying to get me to download malware. it's a waste of my time to sit down and troubleshoot, and it's a waste of my time to deal with a poorly operating computer that needs troubleshooting.

As a father and a consultant, my free time is extraordinarily valuable. with macs over the past 10 years I have rarely had any problems that sent me to the internet or stopped my work.

2) macs are designed by people who care about their work. I'm the kind of guy that likes to do things well, and hates it when things are done sloppily. I want the other people and things in my life to have the same values. And you have to admit, there's a lot of things about the windows ecosystem that are sloppy. The computers are generally "barely good enough" commodity component crapware-laden bottom barrel cutting corners bs, and you have to admit this is true. a lot of software is super sloppy get-it-out-the-door bug laden with no thought to design or efficient use of resources, let alone security. You have to admit this is true.

for macs, the industrial design of the products is top notch, and the graphical design of the software is top notch. a lot of thought is placed into small details, and I think small details matter. there might be an anaologue on the pc end with sony, but that would only apply to the device, not the user experience.

3): apple respects my privacy. let me preface this by saying I have been wary of google (and facebook) since more than 10 years ago. They give their stuff away because they want to make money on me, by tracking my preferences and habits and using that to advertise to me. That has always made me very uncomfortable. I don't use gmail. I use duck duck go as my search engine. Other people disagree with me, which is their prerogative.

apple is the opposite of this. they make all their money up front, and have no interest/opportunity in my usage. I appreciate this stance. It's true that up until a couple years ago they have been somewhat lax on security. I think this is because historically macs have been immune to viruses due to the inherent secure design (mach kernel, etc) and the user base. So they did not have a culture of explicit security. but they have turned the ship. 2-factor, encryption, local storage. They are also working hard to make the data secure from themselves. Think facetime and imessage.

Here's a caveat, to be fair. Many people who use macs were burned on windows in the 3.1/95/XP/Vista era (remember the I'm a mac, I'm a pc commercials). windows 7 is actually pretty good. still no comparison for me, but give credit where credit is due.

I hope this helps as specific actual reasons why macs are better for me. you may disagree with the points or the points may not apply to you.

Re:Jailbreak

[david_thornley]

I think the question is what you're trying to do with them. I have no problem getting mine to do what I want, but I suspect I'm using it more like Steve Jobs envisioned me using it. The problem with a company making what it sees as commonly-used features dead easy is that they tend to make it really hard to do things they didn't expect. (Apple's probably the worst, but Microsoft's right up there in many products.) That's why my main desktop is Linux: if I want to do anything vaguely within reason, the OS isn't trying to slow me down.

Re:Jailbreak

[david_thornley]

Also, while you can get Android phones in the iPhone price and quality range, you can't get lower-end iPhones (the worst Apple will sell is what was top of the line two years ago). You can get a less expensive and still quite functional Android easily.

Re: Jailbreak

[david_thornley]

Apple's not particularly interested in the transaction fees, although of course they'll take extra money if they can get it. Apple's primarily interested in moving hardware, so their primary aim is to make iDevices attractive. I don't know what the reason for keeping this proprietary is, but there is some fundamental reason why Apple thinks it will make iPhones more attractive.

Re: Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

Other uses of NFC are supposed to be covered by BLE on iOS/Apple ecosystem. Even payments could, but seems the market chose NFC. Personally, I've never seen any actual use of NFC, except by fiddlers on the Internet, so I'm with Apple on this: don't see why pay for it...

So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

NFC technologies are already very well established here (you can wave your phone in front of a vending machine to purchase a drink!), and it's disappointing to see that iPhone users have at least a year to catch up with everybody else.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Japanese people buy Apple? I though they were self-sufficient with their own gadgets. I still remember TRON and similar interesting custom local stuff.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[theNetImp]

iPhone is extremely popular here. Apple has been popular in general in Japan for a long time, so the brand carries it's weight pretty well here. Most iPhone users just put a cover on their iPhone that they can put their NFC card into and use it that way. The NFC card company then has an iPhone app to manage how much ÃfÃÂ¥ is on the card, etc...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And iPhone already supports those crazy high-speed networks you have over there? I thought it was 3G at most.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[AmiMoJo]

The iPhone is popular here but I wouldn't say as popular as it used to be, or is in other countries. I remember them putting out rope barriers for the 5s launch and hardly anyone turned up at Yodobashi in Akiba. Right now interest in the iPhone 6 doesn't seem that high either. There are too many good rival phones.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[phayes]

Good job in exposing your ignorance. Apple Pay uses the contactless specification of the EMV standard to provide "industry-standard EMV-level security” -- essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard. There will be no wait, Apple Pay can be used wherever Softcard is deployed.

Here. Read this and the associated documents.

Apple Pay's adds onto the SoftCard a level of security in using the secure fingerprint reader & in not being able to see user transactions (whereas Google Wallet leaves itself in the loop so that they CAN see each transaction).

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

And iPhone already supports those crazy high-speed networks you have over there? I thought it was 3G at most.

What other silly things do you believe?

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[paintswithcolour]

The iPhone is popular here but I wouldn't say as popular as it used to be, or is in other countries.

Actually quite the opposite - iOS marketshare is huge here, and doesn't show much sign of slowing down. Here is a handy table.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Paradise Pete]

Apple's iPhone 5s Is The Dominant Smartphone In Japan

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

put a cover on their iPhone that they can put their NFC card into and use it that way

Terminology clarification: If it's in a card, it's not NFC, it's a "contactless smart card". NFC is, specifically, a variant of the contactless smart card protocols embedded in a larger, battery-powered device. It does emulate a contactless smart card, which is how it enables payments, but it does a lot more as well. NFC devices can also act as smart card readers (note that "reader" is something of a misnomer; it's just two computers talking to one another) and they can also act as RFID tags or readers (or writers, for tags that are writable).

This broad array of capabilities, BTW, just highlights how unfortunate it is that Apple is limiting it. In Android-land, not only can you use NFC to make payments (Google Wallet, whatever the ISIS Wallet has been renamed to), but there are a lot more uses:

1. You can download one of many smart card reader apps (or write your own) and use them to read any contactless smart card you have around, including many payment cards. What you can see depends on the security protocols implemented by the card, obviously, and also depends on whether your app knows the right commands to send. If you like you can buy your own Javacards, program them, and write your own app to talk to them, to do whatever it is that you'd like to do.

2. Most of said smart card reader apps also support reading and writing RFID tags, which you can buy inexpensively. Many people have come up with uses for these, such as automatically changing phone configuration (volume, etc.) when a particular tag is scanned. My Moto X offers the ability to register an RFID tag as an unlocking device; whenever I scan one of the registered tags, my phone unlocks.

3. Ever since Jelly Bean (IIRC), Android has used NFC as a method to initiate device-to-device data transfer. On several occasions when my wife and I have been driving separate vehicles to the same location, I pull it up on Google Maps, tap my phone to hers and touch the screen, and then it's on her phone. You can transfer pictures, files, and anything else apps care to support. NFC isn't actually used for the data transfer to avoid having to hold the phones together for a long period of time, but it identifies the pair of phones that wish to do the transfer, which is then carried out through Wifi or mobile data.

... and more. Here are some more concrete examples of clever uses to which people have put Android's NFC capabilities: http://trendblog.net/creative-...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard

SoftCard EMV standard? Wow, that's like calling HTTP the Google networking standard. EMV existed long before SoftCard (formerly called ISIS), and in fact long before Google Wallet (which predated SoftCard/ISIS by quite some time)... before NFC existed, even.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[AmiMoJo]

More recent stats: http://bcnranking.jp/news/1408...

Why pick stats from one particular month instead of the latest ones?

Also note that the iPhone has few models, where as sales for other manufacturers are spread over many more different ones. According to those stats over 70% of phones sold are not iPhones, and that's despite the extremely heavy promotion.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[ZiakII]

Why pick stats from one particular month instead of the latest ones?

Because I can't read Japanese....

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Bing Tsher E]

Can you put the above mentioned smart card reader apps into a kind of promiscuous mode? It would be interesting to have your android device in your pocket in a crowded bus or elevator to see what info it could capture.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[AmiMoJo]

Google Translate, or Bing if you are desperate.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[jrumney]

Japanese gadgets are a dying breed. Not only do they have Apple, but they have plenty of Samsung and LG phones as well.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[ArcadeMan]

Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: Bing!
Phil: Bing.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[drkstr1]

You can do whatever the hell you want, within the limitations of the hardware. That's the whole point of an open platform. Sheesh.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "SoftCard EMV standard" meant: the EMV standard that SoftCard uses.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

EMV existed long before SoftCard (formerly called ISIS)

and if your account is empty they behead you! too topical?

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Noah Haders]

And Sony and Philips and alpine and many more. Japanese tech is flourishing.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[macs4all]

NFC technologies are already very well established here (you can wave your phone in front of a vending machine to purchase a drink!), and it's disappointing to see that iPhone users have at least a year to catch up with everybody else.

Who says that the Coca-Cola-s of the world won't get on board with the ApplePay system?

It's really only the "other-than-payment-uses" App. Devs. that are restricted at this point. For the purposes of Payment, Apple is probably anxious to say "come one, come all" to those Devs.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[macs4all]

You can transfer pictures, files, and anything else apps care to support.

Apple already has that capability; but it's far less caveman-like. It's WIRELESS. So, if you have already gotten into your respective vehicles, you can still transfer the information...

Yes, I'm talking about the almost ubiquitious "Share" Button.

Your data-transfer method reminds me of the Zune's "Squirting" feature. How quaint. We iOS users have the internets for that.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[macs4all]

You can do whatever the hell you want, within the limitations of the hardware. That's the whole point of an open platform. Sheesh.

...and so can every shady App developer.

No thanks.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Em Adespoton]

Apple Pay is basically a contactless EMV wrapper for iPhones. SoftCard complies with EMV too, but I've seen nothing indicating that Apple Pay will work with SoftCard processors. This is purely a contractual thing though; there's nothing technical to stop it from working.

What this stops is someone writing an app that uses NFC for whatever they want -- if someone wants to use Apple Pay plus NFC with their own EMV-compliant processor, they just need to talk to Apple's legal department. If someone wants to write an app that leverages Apple Pay, they can also do that.

Basically, you can't roll out something like Google Wallet for an iPhone, but you can support all sorts of NFC payment types with it.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[serbanp]

I wonder how many slashdotters will get this reference...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Ravaldy]

Yep. Global stats agrees with you: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mob...

But not worldwide: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mob...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[ArcadeMan]

That's okay. There's always tomorrow, which is the same as today.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

You can transfer pictures, files, and anything else apps care to support.

Apple already has that capability; but it's far less caveman-like. It's WIRELESS. So, if you have already gotten into your respective vehicles, you can still transfer the information... Yes, I'm talking about the almost ubiquitious "Share" Button. Your data-transfer method reminds me of the Zune's "Squirting" feature. How quaint. We iOS users have the internets for that.

You didn't read my post. Android also uses the Internet for file transfer; it uses NFC to make indicating which device to send it to as easy as tapping the phones together. Obviously there are other options if you like typing or picking from lists, the way you have to on iOS.

Oh, and if NFC were the actual data transfer mechanism, it would also be WIRELESS, because it is wireless. Radio frequency. But at just shy of 1 megabit per second it would be a little slow for moving large files.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

I think "SoftCard EMV standard" meant: the EMV standard that SoftCard uses.

So "Google networking standard" is the network protocol that Google uses (HTTP)?

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

Can you put the above mentioned smart card reader apps into a kind of promiscuous mode? It would be interesting to have your android device in your pocket in a crowded bus or elevator to see what info it could capture.

Sure you can. You won't get much, though, for three reasons.

First, NFC is really short range. Like, less than a centimeter in practice. So you'd pretty much have to actually bump your pocket into another pocket containing a phone or contactless smart card (in a very thin wallet).

Second, at least with Android phones that you might bump into, if the screen is turned off, NFC is turned off, so most of them won't respond.

Third, and most important, the whole point of smart cards is that they're smart. They're microprocessors which implement secure challenge-response protocols, and are picky about what information they'll share with anyone who doesn't authenticate properly. NFC is just smart cards in a different form factor.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

It's really not a problem: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

Apple Pay is basically a contactless EMV wrapper for iPhones. SoftCard complies with EMV too, but I've seen nothing indicating that Apple Pay will work with SoftCard processors. This is purely a contractual thing though; there's nothing technical to stop it from working.

There aren't even any contractual issues, because there is no such thing as a "SoftCard processor". SoftCard transactions are processed by normal merchant acquirers, through normal clearinghouses and back to their issuing banks. Nothing in between even knows it's not a plastic contactless smart card chip. The same is true of Apple Pay, with the exception that at some point in the network the network token gets translated into a issuer-specific data (SoftCard gets issuer-specific tokens delivered to the device).

Google Wallet is different because Google is acting as the issuing bank for the Wallet proxy card, so Google does have to process payments, charging them back to whatever backing instrument you have selected (which needn't be a credit card).

Basically, you can't roll out something like Google Wallet for an iPhone, but you can support all sorts of NFC payment types with it.

Well, on any network that supports network tokenization, which, so far, is only AMEX, MC and Visa, and only in the US. Discover supports contactless smart card payment, but doesn't support Apple Pay (yet; I'm sure they will) because they have to implement the necessary pieces.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[zlogic]

I think one of the most useful things is reading NXP Mifare and similar contactless tickets. It's a very real and valid use for NFC, since a lot of these tickets do not provide any way of getting the number of remaining rides besides using a ticket checking machine.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[mythosaz]

We silly Android people can "Send to" all we want.

It's still vastly easier under in the right situations to just tap two phones together to share a complex URL or map location. Beats "highlight," "select all, "copy" start IM or email, "Pardon me sir, what's your email address? Can you spell that?..."

Bumping to exchange CONTACT INFO precludes private sharing.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[mythosaz]

Because CocaCola doesn't provide their vending machines. An small army of vending machine companies servicing every city in America service vending machines, and put in bill readers and credit-card readers if it makes sense for them to do so.

Most new credit card readers for vending machines already take NFC.

Unless Apple is going to partner with CocaCola and send every one of these mom-and-pop vending machine companies a pile of readers and then pay them to go swap them all out, don't expect change there soon.

Re: So much for mobile payments in Japan

[macs4all]

Still seems more "cute" than "cool".

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[jrumney]

Philips as an example of Japanese tech? Sony and Alpine parent company ALPS are not exactly flourishing

Re: So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

Still seems more "cute" than "cool".

It's actually really convenient. You'd have to try it to see just how smooth it is. Much easier than the "share" button.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[MaryAnnEvans]

If you really remembered it, you'd remember that the 5S launch day coincided with a typhoon. And yet there were STILL people camped out overnight outside that Apple Store.

Only payments?

[oji-sama]

I guess that drops iPhone from consideration, as my NFC enabled speakers and headphones would lose their point.

Re:Only payments?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, I've never managed to send photos via bluetooth to an iOS device either. So I guess expecting this to work was a bit much.

Re:Only payments?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that most wireless speakers and headphones use Bluetooth, not whatever form of NFC supports ApplePay.

Re:Only payments?

[oji-sama]

Well yes, but when you have several devices, the easy pairing is rather nice feature. And no, it's not 'whatever form of NFC', the payment video had a standard NFC capable reader.

"NFC offers a low-speed connection with extremely simple setup, and can be used to bootstrap more capable wireless connections." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Re:Only payments?

[Anonymous Coward]

You never tried a jailbroken phone from someone who knows his way around, apparently.

Re:Only payments?

[Noah Haders]

Bluetooth is only for music and hot spot sharing. You mean wifi?

Re:Only payments?

[spire3661]

WHAT? Bluetooth is a full data sharing protocol. You can send files across it. Why do you think Bluetooth only does what you describe?

Re:Only payments?

[Noah Haders]

cuz that's the only options to do with it. I can connect my phone to my car stereo for phone calls, to my speakers in my office, or I can use the phone to set up a cell phone data bridge. you must be thinking of something else.

Re:Only payments?

[chis101]

You may be mistaking what you use it for with what it is capable of. You can send any arbitrary information over it, as long as an application on both ends understands what you are doing. I believe that Apple devices may impose additional restrictions on what you can pair with (I know that I use Bluetooth to connect to a $5 OBD-II reader in my car, but that my friends with iPhones are unable to make this pairing and have to use the $15 WiFi version).

Maybe take a look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:Only payments?

[psm321]

Bluetooth can absolutely do file transfers, and most (all?) Android phones have that functionality built-in. Many older dumbphones (without wifi) did too. Perhaps you're using an iPhone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:Only payments?

[Noah Haders]

I don't understand androids. I prefer knowing the scope of everything I can do, and doing those things. I don't like these "anything under the sun" pones because that's how the hackers get you. before you know it, they're hacking your Bluetooth with NFC and then making a wifi to infect your root.

Re:Only payments?

[spire3661]

DId it ever occur to you that you can have both? I run a fully stock apple phone AND 'anything under the sun' phones and tablets. Just because YOU fear choice doesnt mean it shouldn't be offered.

Re:Only payments?

[Noah Haders]

Just because YOU fear choice doesnt mean it shouldn't be offered.

I respectfully disagree. think of it in terms of vaccinations. The purpose of a vaccination program is to reduce the potential vectors for disease spreading. if some people don't get vaccinated they become a risk to others. it's kind of like insecure phones like androids. it opens up a vector that puts me at risk because it is potential access to hackers. how long before an android phone is exploited to gain access to bofa or home depot? then we all lose because somebody made a poor phone decision.

Re:Only payments?

[spire3661]

You are silly, have silly ideas and i dont say this often, but you really have no place here on Slashdot with this kind of thinking. It is anathema to what we do here.

Re:Only payments?

[Noah Haders]

You are silly, have silly ideas and i dont say this often, but you really have no place here on Slashdot with this kind of thinking. It is anathema to what we do here.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I agree we were having a silly argument. but I don't see how you can say that there's no place on Slashdot for silly arguments, and it harshes my buzz for you to say that my contributions have not place in "your" Slashdot. its as much mine as yours. it's not like I'm the HOSTS guy or the GNAA guy. I have excellent karma and regularly get +5 comment ratings. so I think my contributions are appreciated.

Do you have any advice on how I can be a better Slashdot community member? I think we should build a space where people are open to discuss different perspectives, and sometimes have silly arguments. just remember, it takes two to have a silly argument.

Re:Only payments?

[spire3661]

Fair enough. Stop saying choice is inherently a bad thing. Security is the search for the place between usability and safety. You cant have perfect security, you cant have perfect usability. Its always a compromise. Dont try to tell people they cant have usability in your search for perfect security. Applying 'herd mentality' logic to all computers isnt going to win you many friends here , the idea being you should secure your own stuff not kill choice so you feel safe.

Nope they are clever

[thegarbz]

The mobile payment market is completely fragmented. Apple is by far not the first company to announce a payment scheme, however it is the first that has managed to make some concrete deals with several companies and it's the first that actually has a chance at taking off.

Apple has locked it down? So what? How is that any different from the last several years where competitors have had NFC and payment support? Why is the upcoming year suddenly going to backfire them right at a time where service providers will likely be questioning whether it's a good idea to promote a system which can't be used on Apple's much advertised phone?

I'm no fan of Apple, but you can't argue that they aren't strategically clever bastards.

Re: Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Most other solutions are locked down, too. E.g. my previous phone linked the NFC chip to my SIM card, so charges would go via my mobile phone bill. Except I was on prepaid, so that was a complete waste. It sounds like Apple can connect NFC with your bank and your credit card, and that's where it starts to make sense.

Re:Nope they are clever

[N1AK]

I'm no fan of Apple, but you can't argue that they aren't strategically clever bastards.

I can, and I will. I already regularily use NFC both via NFC enabled bank cards and my NFC phone. Nothing apple is doing is new. They're just big enough that when they say jump more people listen; literally the only thing about applePay that stops it being an irrelevant me-to is that it is bundled with an apple device that companies know will sell by the container load. Exactly what strategic cleverness does it take to release something that many other people already have, where your success is based on you being the biggest company in the room?

Re:Nope they are clever

[Dahamma]

literally the only thing about applePay that stops it being an irrelevant me-to is that it is bundled with an apple device that companies know will sell by the container load.

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up. The NFC part of it is practically incidental to the feature as a whole.

Sadly the Google NFC implementation will eventually be seen as the irrelevant version, even though it came out 2 years before Apple's... because they totally fucked up the UI, launch, and marketing, things Apple has nailed.

Re:Nope they are clever

[thegarbz]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard. Or maybe just be one of the few people blessed to have the right phone and the right bank in the right location with the right local support and the right platform installed.

That is exactly how the market works at the moment. The market is so fragmented that several local banks are offering NFC stickers that you can link to credit cards and stick on the inside of phone cases because they can't get bloody phones to work. Samsung provide a glimmer of hope by announcing some kind of deal with VISA, but that one one generation ago, yet here I still am with my VISA credit card and my Samsung NFC enabled phone without the ability to make payments.

So you master magician, enjoy your NFC payments, I for one will continue to critisize the fact that I am now on my 3rd NFC enabled phone and still can't make payments because %MOBILE_MANUFACTURER% hasn't made some exclusive deal with %BANK%.

Re:Nope they are clever

[N1AK]

You regularly use NFC for payments?

Just bought my lunch via NFC. When I'm in London at the weekend I shall be paying for my transport via NFC. I'll be the first to admit that NFC has taken far too long to develop, that it isn't widespread enough and that Apple getting in on it is likely better for everyone as it will force progress.

Re:Nope they are clever

[N1AK]

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up.

They got people lined up to support it because they're huge. If Guatamala tried to bring in a new method for passport control do you think they'd have the same chance of it being adopted as it would if the US did? I'm not knocking Apples implementation, I just don't see anything remotely amazing about what they have managed to achieve; yet there's endless fanboys banging on about just that. Give me one example of the marketting for Pay that's so impressive it's worthy of note.

Re:Nope they are clever

[AmiMoJo]

Nonsense. Google already has agreements in place and terminals deployed. It works, people use it, it has taken off. I find it extremely easy and useful.

The reason Apple locked NFC down has nothing to do with payments. They could just ban any payment apps while allowing things like file/data transfers, authentication etc. They must be planning to do their own versions of those apps soon and don't want to be accused of cloning other people's work as happened in the past.

Re:Nope they are clever

[AmiMoJo]

Actually, it might be a technical limitation too. NFC apps need to run in the background and use secure hardware, and they probably don't have an API yet.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

No this isn't clever at all. This is basically textbook "how to create a new monopoly out of an existing product".

It'd be clever if they found a way to to be better than the competitors while still allowing interoperability. Fragmentation in this space helps no one in the long term.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Monoman]

Exactly what strategic cleverness does it take to release something that many other people already have, where your success is based on you being the biggest company in the room?

It's just enough to keep their loyal customers and make more money from them. They know most of their customers prefer new things simplified before being added. That's how Apple does it. It isn't for everyone (including me) but it works for them.

Re:Nope they are clever

[gnasher719]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.

In the UK, an awful lot of debit and credit cards are NFC enabled, and an awful lot of stores have NFC enabled terminals. For payment, you just hold your card against the terminal. Or just hold your wallet against the terminal; the only problem with that is when you have more than one NFC card, you can't control which one will be used (but it's guaranteed that only one payment will be taken).

Actually, I can use NFC payment in my company's canteen to pay for my lunch or breakfast, that's how common it is.

The limitation is that this only goes up to £20, because anyone stealing your wallet can use your card that way until the card is cancelled.

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone, there will likely be no limit because the payment is authenticated with your finger print, and nobody ever sees your debit or credit card number which avoids fraud.

Re:Nope they are clever

[LordLimecat]

Sadly the Google NFC implementation will eventually be seen as the irrelevant version,

Im not clear how that would work. NFC is NFC. Apple pay / Google wallet should interoperate.

Re:Nope they are clever

[nblender]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.

The US isn't the world.

I live in Canada and I also regularly use NFC for payments. Last night I bought groceries with NFC after I bought some diesel with NFC. At the beer store I bought beer with NFC. I bought some irrigation supplies with NFC.

Some restaurants have NFC on the little pay terminals they bring to your table.

Re: Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is this UK you speak of? If it's not in the USA(FUCK YEAH!) then it doesn't count, you should know that. The NFC payment market is fragmented and useless in the US, therefore the world.

Re:Nope they are clever

[thegarbz]

It seems like the last 3 people who posted against me all used examples of the UK. Normally we have to tell Americans that there is this thing called the rest of the world, but I don't normally expect it from the UK.

I am jealous, but the reality is a large portion of the world has contactless payment systems, yet a very small portion of the world has something compatible with a phone.

Re:Nope they are clever

[thegarbz]

Oh google? You mean mean the Google Wallet that isn't available in large parts of the world? They need to deploy terminals? That's a fail right there. Is this the same Google that partners with companies like Samsung who make the most popular Android handset and yet by default install a completely different payment system on their handset?

And you say fragmentation is nonsense... what next? The sky isn't blue because you once saw a nice red sunset?

Re:Nope they are clever

[MachineShedFred]

They don't have to interoperate, they just need to co-exist. Much like Visa and MasterCard.

Competition is a good thing.

Re:Nope they are clever

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

NFC implementations (should) be interoperable unless somebody screwed up implementation to spec; but that promises nothing about compatibility for anything built on top of NFC.

Right now, ISO 7813 mag-stripe cards are nice and standardized; but that only gets you as far as having the reader hardware work. Whether your card will be accepted by a given vendor is an entirely separate matter governed by some ghastly pile of contractual arrangements.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

"You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard. Or maybe just be one of the few people blessed to have the right phone and the right bank in the right location with the right local support and the right platform installed."

He just doesn't live in the US. You guys are several years late over there. Next thing you'll tell me you still use cash or cheques to pay rent and stuff.

Re:Nope they are clever

[gnasher719]

Im not clear how that would work. NFC is NFC. Apple pay / Google wallet should interoperate.

Since they are both for _making_ payments, I'd expect them not to interoperate at all. However, both should interoperate with the same devices that are made for _accepting_ payments. At least one would hope so.

Re: Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

It's south of Scotland.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up.

They got people lined up to support it because they're huge.

And Google isn't? I thought Android won? Face it, they don't bother with talking to anyone, they just expect them to come to them to beg working with them because they are so fucking awesome. And if they do, they abandon them after a couple of years because Google refocuses.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard. Or maybe just be one of the few people blessed to have the right phone and the right bank in the right location with the right local support and the right platform installed.

He lives in a country where NFC was used years before Android invented it.

Re:Nope they are clever

[AmiMoJo]

You mean mean the Google Wallet that isn't available in large parts of the world?

Well, Apple Pay isn't available anywhere in the world yet, so Google is still ahead.

They need to deploy terminals? That's a fail right there.

I agree, Apple screwed up there. Good job Google's system works with existing terminals.

Re:Nope they are clever

[AmiMoJo]

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone

Really? Are you saying that the phone needs to be unlocked before it can be used to make a payment? Sounds incredibly inconvenient.

With current phone payment systems there is no need to unlock the phone or open an app before using them, you just touch the phone to the payment terminal with the screen off and it pays. It would be annoying when trying to use the phone during busy periods to get on public transport or pay for stuff at the station otherwise.

Before someone screams that it's insecure, NFC debit/credit cards don't need to be "unlocked" either. The payment limit is so low that the banks just eat the losses which are more than made up for by you using NFC instead of cash all the time, and any thief will be more interested in the phone itself.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

The mobile payment market is completely fragmented. ApplePay only makes it more so. They have done nothing but further muddy the waters.

Re:Nope they are clever

[swillden]

Oh google? You mean mean the Google Wallet that isn't available in large parts of the world? They need to deploy terminals? That's a fail right there.

Apple Pay will be able to use Google Wallet / ISIS (SoftCard) terminals, and vice versa. They all use the same protocols and base technology.

Apple Pay will be successful, and Apple will garner much praise for that success from people like you who don't know the industry, but what's really going to make it successful isn't anything Apple is doing or has done, but what Visa and MasterCard did two years ago, when they announced that the liability shift will be imposed in the US in October 2015. That policy change by the card networks will give merchants huge financial incentive to get all of the necessary terminals deployed, which is why many of them are now (and have been for some time) gearing up to integrate and deploy chip-capable point-of-sale terminals.

And, if you want to look at the causes for Visa and MasterCard's decision... the biggest single factor was almost certainly the deployment of Google Wallet, which moved NFC payment in the US from a "someday" possibility to "people are using it now". At the end of the day, Apple Pay will owe most of it's success to Google.

I don't want to disparage Apple too much here, though, because they have been able to do one thing of huge significance, and it is their market position and clout with the mobile network operators (MNOs) that made it possible: They helped push through the deployment of network-level tokenization. This is a somewhat abstruse technical detail, but it's pretty important.

Right now Apple Pay, SoftPay and Google Wallet all use different approaches to how they push the transaction through the networks. Google Wallet uses a "proxy card". When you pay with Google Wallet you're actually paying with a Google-issues MasterCard debit card. That's what the merchant sees. Then Google turns around and charges whatever backing instrument you've specified (Wallet balance, bank account, debit card or credit card). This approach offers maximum flexibilty; if someone dreams up some payment mechanism and Google integrates it, you can get your payments directed to it. The downsides are that (1) it's the same credit card number every time, which means that if it gets stolen and used fraudulently (which is far harder than for a magstripe card) then Google has to take on the fraud liability; (2) the point-of-sale transaction is "card present" while Google's transaction with your payment instrument on the back end is "card not present", which means if the backing instrument is a credit card Google has to eat the difference between the front and back-end transaction fees; and (3) all transactions pass through Google, which means Google sees how much you spend through Wallet and where (which has some upsides as well; I like the payment notifications it enables and the ability to look up my payment history on any device as well as the level of control it offers me). Note that Google can't see what you bought, but obviously a lot can be inferred from location.

SoftPay (nee ISIS) uses "issuer tokenization". You can only pay with credit cards from a certain (and still fairly small -- AMEX, Chase and Wells Fargo) set of issuing banks. The banks issue "tokens" which look like credit card numbers but are only good for a single use. These are stored in the secure element on your phone and transmitted to the merchant when you pay. Security is arguably better than with Google Wallet, and there are some corner cases that are less problematic. SoftPay doesn't get involved in your transactions, although there are some indications that the app may deliver information about them to SoftPay and to your carrier, though they don't provide that information back to you as a convenient transaction log like Google does. The reason the list of cards you can use is small is because each individual issuer has to get their systems set up to support token issuance. That'

Re:Nope they are clever

[Bing Tsher E]

Google should make provision for ApplePay on android devices. Then, when Apple won't allow Google's payment app on iOS, it's time for an anti-trust investigation. Google can incorporate an authentication mechanism as powerful if possibly slightly less convenient, as Apple's thumbsmudge method.

Re:Nope they are clever

[StormCrow]

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone

Really? Are you saying that the phone needs to be unlocked before it can be used to make a payment? Sounds incredibly inconvenient.

You have to use the TouchID sensor with your fingerprint. I don't see how that can be considered inconvenient, it takes under a second and requires basically no additional thought or movement.

Re:Nope they are clever

[liquidsin]

McDonald's has NFC enabled Interac handsets in their drive-thru. I wave my wallet at a machine for coffee a couple times a day. It's really more uncommon for me to find a vendor/retailer who *doesn't* have the NFC terminals these days. Back on topic, does this mean the new iPhones won't be able to use their NFC for anything besides payments? I quite like touching the backs of two NFC enabled android phones together to send links, contacts, photos, etc.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Skater]

Here in the US, I've done it once, and that was to confirm the chip in my card worked before I flew off to Europe with it. Turns out it's a chip-and-signature card, so it was as useless there as any other non-NFC card...perhaps even more useless come to think of it, because it ACTED like it was working. (From reading Slashdot, I knew this was likely the case before leaving, and I'd asked my banks about a chip-and-PIN card and got back, "Wuuhhh?", so I was prepared for this problem.)

So, for us, the Apple pay is actually a nice leap forward - as others said, right now it's a very fragmented market. I've had an Android phone with an NFC chip for two years now, and I've used it perhaps half a dozen times, just playing around to see if I could scan a credit card, my passport, or my cat's RFID chip (no go on the cat). Until I saw the Apple Pay announcement, I didn't care whether my next phone (which I had already decided was going to be an iPhone) had an NFC chip or not. I get why people in other countries wouldn't care as much about it, though.

Re:Nope they are clever

[AmiMoJo]

I guess you have not seen how people swipe through the gates at stations. It certainly would be more hassle so I can see people sticking with their NFC cards for the daily commute. Does it work even if the phone is locked?

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issue with NFC right now is you stand there waving a phone or wallet at the thing like "Take my money" and everyone around you including the cashier is embarrassed because they think you lost your mind. Those few times when NFC works on the first wave and the cash register actually acknowledges the NFC you do feel like a Sorcerer.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Grizzley9]

I'm not as familiar with NFC yet as I will be in the next week, but there are a lot of payment pads in the US that accept contactless charging of your cc which I'm assuming is NFC related. Barring that you swipe the magnetic stripe. While I like the direction, I'm not seeing that huge of a benefit of "put phone/card near reader vs. swipe card through reader". Still many stores just take your card and swipe it themselves (to be changed by 10/2015 chip and pin?). The only benefit I currently see is the 2 seconds time saved by Apples version by using your fingerprint vs entering a 4 digit pin.

"well you don't need to carry your cc's". So yeah, it will be quite a while before I stop carrying my wallet and I've seen many stores that accept paypal too.

Re:Nope they are clever

[bluefoxlucid]

I want chip-and-sign. I Have stupid chip-and-pin, but I solved that by writing the PIN on the back of the card.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Ranbot]

I'm no fan of Apple, but you can't argue that they aren't strategically clever bastards.

First they attempted to lock-up the PC hardware/software market (and thankfully failed). They colluded with AT&T to lock the smart phone market. Walled off iTunes to corner the MP3 market. Tried to fix pricing in the digital book market (which a federal court slapped them for). Now Apple our credit/debit cards in their sights... Bastards is right on.

Re:Nope they are clever

[bluefoxlucid]

The US isn't the world.

The US is the third world.

Re:Nope they are clever

[bluefoxlucid]

The liability shift from Visa's incredible marketing of the Visa Shield protecting you from identity theft with charge backs and banks calling you to tell you they're declining a suspicious gasoline charge in California after you've been using your card in Vermont all morning and since forever to "oh, someone else used your card? Well, sucks to be you. We can close the account and give you a new card number."

How do I turn this into a hot story to get the production crew salivating over running this on the evening news?

Re:Nope they are clever

[Vitriol Angst]

"remotely amazing"

-- not the tech. This is like iTunes all over again. AFTER itunes -- everyone and their brother has digital music for sale. BEFORE iTunes -- it was a minefield of different contracts and protected content.

Apple lined up companies that they very likely will come into competition with. There was likely an army of lawyers and experts to try and negotiate all the various deals.

Nobody has done this before because of all the legal agreements and negotiations -- otherwise, everyone would have swipe to pay.

The fact that it seems simple and no hassle on our end, just shows why Apple is so damn good at implementations.

Re:Nope they are clever

[quetwo]

Um... I've been using Google Wallet with my Samsung (and now my HTC) phones for about 3 years. Last night I paid for my groceries at a small mom-and-pop grocer with NFC. I paid for gas at a Sunoco with NFC. I got breakfast at McDonalds with NFC. I think the only thing I needed to use cash for was parking. And since the Target thing last year, most retailers I visit have been replacing their card readers with NFC and Chip+Pin readers. The only retailer that really bugs me is Staples -- they have had NFC readers for about 4 years in all of their stores but their register software has no idea what to do with it (it scans, but then it pops up a screen on their register asking for the Authorization Code.)

When you use Google Wallet, you load the app, and enter your pin. You swipe, then chose which bank account you want to have the money paid from. It then pops up a copy of the transaction, which in my case I can put into a category. It's amazing how simple it is to use, and I've never had an incompatibility issue, except when the register isn't working (their card reader won't read anything).

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

The NFC cards can (and in the case of Google Wallet and Apple Pay, do) change the payment info on every transaction, so they are secure from the simple replay/cloning attacks that magnetic cards are susceptible to. Chip and pin offers similar improvements to security (although it still has flaws).

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

On the "so what" front, they also locked down touch ID . . . and now that they've had it be only 'theirs' for a generation,now it's open.

They've touted the discreteness of the chip for security . . . they'd better damn well beta test the API to connect to it before they give it to everyone.

We'll probably see it in iOS 9, after they've got most of the bugs worked out and see how it works in iOS 8.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

So much this.

I welcome Apple's entry in to the NFC payment market because they have the weight to slap carriers around. Just like with original iphone. (No Verizon. You can't put your nickel and dime shitware on our phones and disable our built-in apps) And just like with the ipod and the itunes store. (The first commercially successful online music retailer that slapped the music industry in to line with reasonable prices and terms)

NFC is currently a shitfest (At least in the US) because the carriers saw dollar signs and fought as hard as they could to insert themselves as a middle men. They wanted to be the gateway for phone based payments and wanted a cut of every transaction simply because in the US they have a stranglehold on handsets and the transport. Anyone remember stories about google's efforts with payment systems to insert DRM not to lock users out, but to ensure carriers could not disable/hijack the NFC system with custom android installations? That's not an exaggeration. This literally happened.

It looks like apple has spent a lot of time on their NFC efforts. It's certainly the most comprehensive effort I've seen anywhere. Even if you don't use an iphone I have a hunch Apple will set a precedent that will normalize the market a bit so other players can join in too.

Apple is not your enemy. The carriers are.

Re:Nope they are clever

[qpqp]

More importantly, does it work, when the phone's battery is dead?

Re:Nope they are clever

[tlhIngan]

And Google isn't? I thought Android won? Face it, they don't bother with talking to anyone, they just expect them to come to them to beg working with them because they are so fucking awesome. And if they do, they abandon them after a couple of years because Google refocuses.

The problem with Google's implementation is that Google wants to be the payment provider. This is "better" in some ways because it means more flexible funding schemes (Apple requires Visa, MasterCard or American Expess). However, it has a major downside - Google is now a major participant in your transactiona because the retailer charges Google, and Google charges your payment provider, so now Google gets the details of your transaction, which depending on the retailer can include what item you actually bought.

The other downside is it means Google has to work with every payment system out there to get them to accept Google Wallet as a valid payment mechanism.

Apple's method means it works anywhere that accepts contactless Visa, MasterCard or American Express cards. Because Apple Pay appears to the retailer as a regular credit card so retailers have to do zero effort. Google Wallet makes it so they have to sign up with new payment providers and all that to specially take Google Wallet.

Use Apple Pay and Apple doesn't know about the transaction as it's a more standard credit card transaction that's handled between banks.

As for NFC restricted to Apple Pay? That's iOS 8. It most likely means the APIs for it are far from stable and/or Apple doesn't have a good way of handling events in NFC under the current security architecture. iOS9 can easily change it.

it's just like TouchID - last year it was only for bypassing the PIN and for iTunes purchases. In iOS8 it's allowed to be used for third party authentication in apps. You can bet iOS9 will have NFC APIs for app use.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we've got NFC pretty much rolled out, and it works great with credit (probably debig as well, can't say) cards, but I haven't seen anyone use their Android (and maybe WP?) phone at all to make payments. Yes, I am a very small sample size, but it's definitely not a wide spread.

Re: Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Jane, you ignorant slut.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Straif]

I use NFC whenever possible but I have found a small oversight with some of those NFC enabled interac machines. It seems in most restaurants I've tried them in they are set the same as McDonald's terminals, in that they just accept your payment but never prompt you to enter a tip. If you insert your card instead, you'll receive the tip prompt but tapping just pays. I'm assuming it's just a simple config setting but makes me a bit hesitant to use at a real sit down restaurant unless I happen to have some cash in my pocket.

I've only seen one that actually prompted for the tip first before allowing you to tap to pay.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not Canadian other wise you would have said "I bought a two-four of labatts with NFC."

Re:Nope they are clever

[BronsCon]

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone

Nope. They sure can't! We mostly agreed that this was a non-issue (aside from the fact that Apple claimed their fingerprint reader read *below* the surface, which this hack clearly shows to be false) because who would go through that much hassle to access your phone data? In reality, a large number of people would, but not your typical phone thief. Of course, your typical phone thief *will* go through that trouble to access your entire wallet.

Re:Nope they are clever

[sexconker]

When you use Google Wallet, you load the app, and enter your pin. You swipe, then chose which bank account you want to have the money paid from. It then pops up a copy of the transaction, which in my case I can put into a category. It's amazing how simple it is to use, and I've never had an incompatibility issue, except when the register isn't working (their card reader won't read anything).

Pull out phone
Unlock phone
Open app
Enter pin
Wave phone over reader
Choose payment method

Pull out wallet
Pull out desired payment method (card)
Swipe

Re:Nope they are clever

[Mullen]

> You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.

I use Google Wallet all the time: Pete's Coffee, 7-11, Whole Foods, Home Depot, Target (I'm pretty sure I used it at a Target last time). With the Target hacking, most of the Payment Terminals are being replaced and support Google Wallet.

Re:Nope they are clever

[stephanruby]

Apple has locked it down? So what? How is that any different from the last several years where competitors have had NFC and payment support?

When the ISIS Association initially locked down NFC, it only locked down access to the NFC secure element. In other words, third party developers were still able to use NFC for other purposes, than making payment applications with it. In that sense, Apple is far more paranoid and repressive than ISIS itself.

As a user, I personally couldn't care less about the latest power struggle between big players. I just like to be able to read my Clipper card with it. And I just like to pair with my speakers/my headset, or my friends devices, without having to even think about it (or without being forced to buy NFC Bluetooth speakers at twice the price because they an exclusive deal with Apple).

Re: Nope they are clever

[macs4all]

Exactly. Most other solutions are locked down, too. E.g. my previous phone linked the NFC chip to my SIM card, so charges would go via my mobile phone bill. Except I was on prepaid, so that was a complete waste. It sounds like Apple can connect NFC with your bank and your credit card, and that's where it starts to make sense.

Actually, it is MUCH better than that.

"Apple" doesn't "connect" ANYONE. The transaction happens ONLY between you (your iPhone/Apple Watch), the merchant, and your bank. Apple is NOT in the loop. And the merchant only gets a One-Time Authorization Code. They never even get to see your CC#, Expiration Date, or CVV code.

It's a beautiful system, seriously.

Re:Nope they are clever

[macs4all]

Google should make provision for ApplePay on android devices. Then, when Apple won't allow Google's payment app on iOS, it's time for an anti-trust investigation. Google can incorporate an authentication mechanism as powerful if possibly slightly less convenient, as Apple's thumbsmudge method.

Google CAN, but WON'T.

Apple sells computing devices. Google sells data. Specifically, your Data.

That's the difference.

And for all the Apple-Bashing that goes on around here, do you think that Google or Microsoft (remember the Microsoft Wallet?) would commit to a Privacy Policy like THIS ?

Apple has come to the (correct) conclusion that people are getting more than a little sick and tired of being Data-Mined by everything and everybody. The great thing is, that as primarily a hardware company (who really only makes software to sell their hardware), Apple doesn't even have to change its Business Model one iota to (truthfully) establish itself as The platform vendor who doesn't try to make money off of the most intimate details of your LIFE ...

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Magstripes vs chip+pin is another tech where america is horribly behind (and with much worse consequences to the victims than "nfc payment system not supported")

Re:Nope they are clever

[Anonymous Coward]

London Underground very recently launched contactless payment and NFC has been in use for years at shops. Not to mention, chip and pin has been around for at least a dozen years.

Time for the US to enter the 21st century.

Re:Nope they are clever

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Not quite.

Google's implementation is irrelevant because Google funneled all your transactions through Google because they're not big on privacy. Apple doesn't.

Oh, and they failed to support all the Nexus phones with NFC readers.

The UI, the launch, and the marketing fuck up are significant, but not as much as the above two.

Re:Nope they are clever

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

I have a hunch that NFC is locked down because of the secure element. Not that it's not secure. But rather that there's probably some detail about NFC chipsets where once you have it some mode, it's hard to switch in and out of it.

So say ApplePay is active, then in order to do stuff with the NFC reader for CustomApp1, you need to turn off ApplePay and then reload all the state data for CustomApp1. Then If you decide to switch to CustomApp2, then it has to unload all the state data for CustomApp2. Meanwhile, the user flips out because they can't pay for their soda using ApplePay while CustomApp2 is launched. That'd be shitty.

(I don't know if that's actually the problem. But while playing with NFC on Android, there's a lot of fucked up situations I've seen/heard of including Samsung Galaxy S2s bricking their own NFC reader permanently. So I wouldn't be surprised.)

Re:Nope they are clever

[Dahamma]

Yes, intentionally failing to be a competitor in order to try to sue for anti-trust regulation is an awesome strategy.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Dahamma]

Eh, your points are valid but I consider them all part of the holistic fuck up that was Google's NFC solution.

It's amazing how Google can innovate technology and then completely and utterly blow its introduction. Chromecast is another great example. They had the chance to take over the streaming hardware & software market but they put out a beta-quality device, completely shit the bed on the launch, and then just practically abandoned it. Now they have given everyone else plenty of chance to catch up - there will be dozens of similar devices that do more and do it better coming out soon.

Not sure all of the reasons that this keeps happening, but I have seen first hand one big one is arrogance. Apple is arrogant, but they still actively reach out and try to make relationships and deals with as many companies as they can before launching a product. Google puts out something and expects everyone to come begging to them to use it.

Re:Nope they are clever

[Fnord666]

And, if you want to look at the causes for Visa and MasterCard's decision... the biggest single factor was almost certainly the deployment of Google Wallet, which moved NFC payment in the US from a "someday" possibility to "people are using it now". At the end of the day, Apple Pay will owe most of it's success to Google.

The biggest single factor was the shift to chip and PIN in Europe. That drove a large volume of card fraud to the US where card swipe and track 2 authentication was still the norm.

Re:Nope they are clever

[strikethree]

The US isn't the world.

LOL, What planet do you live on?

(Just kidding. It is common for people to assume that what is around them is normal. I am just making a joke.)

Re:Nope they are clever

[swillden]

Good point.

Re:Nope they are clever

[david_thornley]

If you're the biggest company in town, and are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future (which really isn't that long), what's wrong with basing success on that? Apple does take technical steps forward, but this isn't one of them. Instead, it's an ease-of-use feature combined with "Nice store you've got there. Profit streams break, you know, but if you sign up with us we'll help make sure that doesn't happen.". Seriously, one of the best things about the original iPhone is that Apple pushed AT&T into setting things up like Apple wanted. It added an additional choice of who you wanted to be screwed by to the US mobile phone market (so it wasn't just AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint, none of them notable for using lube).

Re:Nope they are clever

[david_thornley]

Takes under a second? Maybe if you've got easily read fingerprints. If I can do it at all, it takes at least several seconds. (Back when people wore mood rings that changed color depending on skin temperature, mine always stayed black. Might have something to do with it.)

Re:Nope they are clever

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

I think the problem with Google is that while they're driven to be innovative, they're only driven to be innovative around the field of data collection. They care little about experience (have they finally given people a way to contact them for customer service?). I'm not even certain they care about money. They most definitely care about data.

I mean, they're the company who singlehandedly fucked up the meaning of "beta software" by deploying Gmail "beta" live to the world in order to refuse to provide technical support. Now that the general public thinks "beta" means "works for most people but no support", all us other devs are fucked every time we want to do a real public beta.

Perhaps I'm jaded from watching them screw it all up, but it boils down to trying to run themselves like a well-funded startup who continues to push out their minimum viable product as long as it meets their goal: getting more data.

Chromecast: Doesn't care about experience. Just cares about encouraging people to use Google Play Movies so they can find out more about what you like, as well as seeing what people actually want to do with streaming devices.
Google Wallet: We want to see where people spend.
Android: We need an mobile platform where we can still deploy ads with tracking tags.
Self-Driving Car: We can't map the world fast enough with human drivers.
Google Glass: We think it's cool. But we don't have a clue what to do with it, so we'll put out a developer launch in order to gather ideas from other developers.

I also agree they're arrogant (in a different way from how Apple is also arrogant). Not sure why. I'd guess they're used to being the darling of the tech industry when they still believed in "don't be evil."

Re:Nope they are clever

[Dahamma]

Wow, a post on /. of which I almost entirely agree! Rare moment ;)

I also agree they're arrogant (in a different way from how Apple is also arrogant). Not sure why. I'd guess they're used to being the darling of the tech industry when they still believed in "don't be evil."

Anecdote when working on a Chromecast app:

One of the Google "support" engineers (i.e. no one actually BUILDING the product, he was glorified QA) came to our office to "help" with integration/certification. On taking a lunch break with us he was shocked we wouldn't pay for his meal, and said "well, next time we should do this at at my office, we get free food!" (emphasis not added, that was his actual tone). All the while he's saying this to people who have worked for *real* startups and can tell he was probably Google employee number 30,000 (and this of course was just one example - he was unbelievably arrogant in every interaction...)

Can I reiterate enough how little shit I give about free lunch? Free lunch at a company of 50,000 employees is not a "perk", it's part of a "compensation package." But as you said, Google still tries to preserve their image of "the world's biggest startup". In some areas that is still serving them well, and in others it REALLY isn't.

Re:Nope they are clever

[nblender]

I am canadian. Doesn't mean I'm from Saskatchewan.

Re:Nope they are clever

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Wow, a post on /. of which I almost entirely agree! Rare moment ;)

Hehe, with so many people on here, it's bound to happen someday! ;)

I also agree they're arrogant (in a different way from how Apple is also arrogant). Not sure why. I'd guess they're used to being the darling of the tech industry when they still believed in "don't be evil."

Anecdote when working on a Chromecast app:

One of the Google "support" engineers (i.e. no one actually BUILDING the product, he was glorified QA) came to our office to "help" with integration/certification. On taking a lunch break with us he was shocked we wouldn't pay for his meal, and said "well, next time we should do this at at my office, we get free food!" (emphasis not added, that was his actual tone). All the while he's saying this to people who have worked for *real* startups and can tell he was probably Google employee number 30,000 (and this of course was just one example - he was unbelievably arrogant in every interaction...)

Can I reiterate enough how little shit I give about free lunch? Free lunch at a company of 50,000 employees is not a "perk", it's part of a "compensation package." But as you said, Google still tries to preserve their image of "the world's biggest startup". In some areas that is still serving them well, and in others it REALLY isn't.

That support engineer deserves to be the annoying character of a Valley made-for-tv drama or something. That's amazingly delusional for him to expect a free lunch everywhere he goes. I mean, sure, there's a number of startups who do the free lunch thing. But really?

Perhaps it's simply anecdotal, but the other company making a run for "world's biggest startup" (Facebook) doesn't seem to be arrogant. Naive, perhaps, but that's a whole nother can of worms. Most employees I've met from there also mention free food and doing fun random stuff at work, but I haven't had one rub it in my face before.

Re:Considering Republicans...

[R3d M3rcury]

Considering Republicans are so against NFC and haven't allowed any bank to invest in this technology

Really?

So much for *LOTS* of things

[cbhacking]

Interesting! Not too surprising either; Japan is often on the leading edge of technologies like that.

Of course, NFC has got other uses, too. I've seen restaurants with NFC "Tap your phone here to leave feedback about your dining experience" stickers, businesses and hotels with "tap here to call a cab" stickers, smartphone car kits which automatically launch the navigation app when you insert your phone, and all manner of other such things... in the US and Europe. They aren't widespread yet, but they exist. Then there's stuff like the whole "tap-to-send" for inter-device file transfer that Samsung has been advertising for years.

NFC is a lot more than *just* payments... though it definitely does those, too.

Too Late for Aus

[upuv]

NFC has taken off in Aus in a big way. With most retail outlets having terminals that take Paypass/Tap&Go ( NFC payment brand names here ) accepted across competing financial institutions. There is zero chance Apple will make any headway here asking retailers to forgo the already established infrastructure. Also basically asking retailers to stump up money to install another payment network. Given the existing network was no additional cost to them. Apple is making a mistake here. I don't think it will hurt them too much but Apple Pay will certainly not be a reason for market share growth of the platform. The larger screens most certainly will give them some growth but not this ridiculous shackle.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[Anonymous Coward]

What they did in the US is, at least what they said in the Keynote, that it can be used anywhere that accept NFC payments. The deals they did was that all McDonalds restaurants etc will start accepting nfc payments.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[_merlin]

US NFC payment system is apparently completely incompatible with the systems used in the rest of the world. The US system emulates swiping the magstrip while the European and Australian systems use some kind of PKI challenge/response.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[Tri]

My Australian paypass card works fine in the US at the (very) few shops which have the logo.

It's obviously pretty rare because you sometimes have to convince the cashier to look at the little screen and see that it says approved.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[phayes]

Australia & Europe NFC seems to be SoftCard based from what I understand. Apple Pay will be compatible with Softcard (with additions like needing the fingerprint reader to authorise sales instead of just accepting all requested payments blindly).

Look here for more info.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[thegarbz]

NFC has taken off in Aus in a big way.

NFC yes, mobile payments, no. The only reliable solution I have found at the moment is customers of Commonwealth Bank and Mastercard (not OR, you can't use it with another mastercard) can make NFC payments from the phone. Google Wallet is not available (not supported anyway, if you have root you can side load it). And while Samsung claims they made a deal with VISA back when the Galaxy S4 came out, I've so far failed to get any solution working on my phone without rooting and sideloading apps.

This may not work out so bad for Apple. Remember how we have had 3G video calling since the late 90s yet when Facetime came out on the iPhone people collectively said "OMG AMAZING MUST HAVE!" Don't underestimate the stupidity of the collective.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[pipedwho]

In Aus, the NFC terminals (Paypass/Tap&Go/etc) all use the same protocol, in the same way that all the Visa/Mastercard/Bankcard magstripes were written in a common industry format. American Express/Diners were outliers and originally required their own terminals, which is why they always had to fight an uphill battle to be accepted by smaller merchants. These days, the EFTPOS machines and banks have facilities for multiple card types, and the EMV standards encompass implementations for both NFC and Chip&PIN.

The NFC in smart phones use the same RF protocols that are in place for other wireless payment cards (and can easily be updated to provide slight protocol changes if necessary). The hard part is that Apple needs to partner with the big payment providers to allow their generated 'one-time' payments to be correctly cleared in the same way any given issued credit card is cleard. Currently Visa/Mastercard/etc do this for their branded cards and are the biggest players in this sector, which is why Apple needs to work with them to avoid having to set up any of its own infrastructure (beyond it's internal payment gateway and integration with backends at Mastercard/Visa/etc).

There is no reason once deals are struck between Apple and Visa/Mastercard in Australia, that any merchant here would require a change to their installed Paypass/Tap&Go systems. There may be some technical integration problems between Apple and Visa/Mastercard that need to be sorted out first, but that work has most likely already been done (or mostly done), otherwise Apple wouldn't have announced it with such fanfare.

Like everything, for some reason these deals take longer to happen in Aus when the technical and business solutions may have already played out elsewhere in the world. Take iTunes for instance; we had to wait much longer than the US, because it took longer to get the distribution agreements worked out thanks to our local incumbents with pre-existing contracts being reluctant to renegotiate and move with the times.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[swillden]

Paypass terminals will accept Apple Pay payments.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[quetwo]

Every McDonalds I've been to in the last three years has accepted NFC. In fact, they were one of the first to do it when they started refreshing their stores.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[quetwo]

I have used my USA based phone with a USA based app in Europe (UK and Germany) as an NFC payment option with no issues. I think the NFC enabled cards don't work in Europe -- but I've never actually seen one of those in the wild in the USA either...

Re:Too Late for Aus

[BronsCon]

From where I'm sitting, it sounds like you've seen more widespread implementation of NFC payment systems in Aus than we have here in the US. It's only just now got a chance of becoming widespread here because Apple has started doing the one think nobody else has done yet: marketing it.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[mykro76]

The Paypass/Paywave terminals here do work with essentially any chipped credit card you have. But even after three years of operation Google Wallet still can't be installed on Australian phones and while some banks are running closed trials to have phone-based NFC work with these same terminals, there is no app yet that I know of that is available to the general public here. So while I agree that Apple are making a mistake, they aren't necessarily all that far behind in the phone payments race.

Re:goodbye apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, you troll. NFS is the silliest of all of the features you listed.

Thank you apple!

[GeekWithAKnife]

I can only thank apple for making these sort of decision to help everyone embrace a more open platform in Android.

How many companies make android phones? how many have to compete to make the best?

One day people will wonder whatever happened to those iPhones...

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

While they may still be selling well, the iPhone's market share has been declining for quite some time.

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're still selling more phones than ever before. Their share of the market has dropped, but the market has got bigger

Re:Thank you apple!

[stealth_finger]

Any day now... Apple will dry up and blow away. It's getting near impossible to even find an iPhone! And NOBODY is buying one and the company stock is collapsing at this moment.

I don't know who is the bigger idiot: The deluded apple fanboy or, the pathelogical apple hater.

Is this an opinion or some kind of poem?

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Microsoft

I can only thank Microsoft for making these sort of decision to help everyone embrace a more open platform in the Linux Desktop.

How many groups make linux distributions? how many have to compete to make the best?

One day people will wonder whatever happened to those windows desktops...

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because there's all kinds of people outside of deluded Slashdot world that give a single fuck if the NFC is restricted to payment only. People are going to be running away from iOS in droves now! Mass exodus! Especially since most of the other stuff that NFC is used for is already covered by other features of iOS that do it better, on much faster radios (WiFi, Bluetooth).

Get over yourself.

Re: Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Android touchscreen phones came out after iPhone and was in most ways a knock off of the buttonless design. Remember the G1? The brick with both buttons and a screen sandwiched together?

Apple struck gold with their design - they were first to market with multitouch phones. Android competes with iPhone in the market that iPhone created.

Re:Thank you apple!

[thegarbz]

How many companies make android phones? how many have to compete to make the best?

And you've hit one of the biggest problems with this system on Android. Unless you're in one of the countries which supports Google Wallet your ability to use this system will depend on which company made which deal with which financial institution and offered the fruits on which model.

Open platforms are like standards, there are so many to chose from, all similar yet incompatible and none of them really do what you want.

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoiler alert: Nobody gives a shit about your crappy Android or Linux platforms.

Re:Thank you apple!

[Savage-Rabbit]

But they're still selling more phones than ever before. Their share of the market has dropped, but the market has got bigger

...and it is amazing how hard it is for some people to understand the difference between losing market share in a saturated market and your market share growing slower than a still expanding market. In percentages your market share may be declining even though your sales are still growing. Apple's iPhone line has been uninspiring since the iPhone 5 came out so sales growth was also less than what it might have been. I for one skipped the iPhone 5 because I felt it didn't represent a sufficient upgrade over my iPhone 4S but the iPhone 6/6+ is a whole different story. I'm not going to write Apple stock off as an investment option because the pontifications of a few angry Android users on slashdot or some tech analyst's totally unrealistic predictions of Apple achieving world domination on the smartphone market haven't come true.

Re: Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bookmarking for a laugh 10 years from now.

Re:Thank you apple!

[bluefoxlucid]

Market share isn't growing slower; it's declining.

Re:Thank you apple!

[Dragonslicer]

...and it is amazing how hard it is for some people to understand the difference between losing market share in a saturated market and your market share growing slower than a still expanding market. In percentages your market share may be declining even though your sales are still growing.

Uh, the definition of "market share" is the percentage of the whole, no matter the size of the market. If the percentage is going down, then by definition they are losing market share, even if raw sales numbers are increasing.

Whether the most important number is market share, raw sales number, amount of profit, or something else, that depends on who you ask.

Re:Thank you apple!

[BronsCon]

You're missing the point of using NFC for those things the other radios do better. It's not that you actually use NFC for it, but that you use NFC to bootstrap the process of using those other radios (e.g. exchange configurations and credentials), then use those other radios just like iOS does.

One example: Parrot Zik Headphones. They use NFC to identify devices and automatically switch to the correct configuration and connect to the correct Bluetooth device. NFC isn't used for the actual audio transmission, in part because it's too slow, in part because the range is too short, but mostly because the people who designed it aren't idiots and already knew about the other two factors.

Incidentally, Samsung's NFC file transfer uses wi-fi or bluetooth for the actual file transfer. If both devices are on the same wi-fi network and can discover each other, that connection is used; if neither is connected to wi-fi, an ad-hoc wi-fi connection is used; if the devices are on different networks, only one is on wi-fi, or they're on the same network but can't discover each other, bluetooth is used as a fallback. What makes you think anyone in their right mind would develop a file transfer system that requires 2 people to hold their devices in contact and nearly completely still for the duration of a file transfer effectively capped at 300kbps after accounting for protocol overhead and radio interference?

Re:Thank you apple!

[Anonymous Coward]

While they may still be selling well, the iPhone's market share has been declining for quite some time.

If what the Fandroids said was right - that it declined because they didn't have bigger screens - guess what will necessarily happen now?

Anyway, their share in mobile phones as a whole is still going up last I've seen.

NFC isn't used for just payment

[_xeno_]

Apple does realize that NFC isn't only used for payment systems, right? My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC. It allows you to take high quality pictures of something and then post them straight to whatever social media you're using without going through a computer. It's a really nice feature when you're wandering around someplace photogenic and don't want to be limited to a cellphone camera.

Oh, right, Apple declared proper digital cameras "dead" in their iPhone 6 keynote. I guess that feature will never make it to iOS then.

Not to mention other types of data transfer that's possible with NFC like easily sharing contact information or things like that.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does realize that NFC isn't only used for payment systems, right? My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC. It allows you to take high quality pictures of something and then post them straight to whatever social media you're using without going through a computer.

Your phone's a computer. Why not just post straight from your camera?

You can do all the other things you mention on an apple device without using NFC

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[thegarbz]

A favourite of mine is S-Beam which makes it easy to setup a file transfer with one click. No need to go enable bluetooth, dig through settings, pair, join, then transfer the file. Just tap two Samsung Galaxy phones back to back while the image / video / file is open and tap the screen. It sets up a wifi connection (I think, though it may be bluetooth I can't remember) between the devices and sends the file across.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do that with bluetooth.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[_merlin]

Yes, S-beam is great. The phones exchange some information, set up a one-time WiFi Direct connection and transfer the file. No messing with Bluetooth pairing or any crap like that, authentication is provided by proximity.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Your phone's a computer. Why not just post straight from your camera?

Because there's no way to transfer directly pictures from the camera to the phone?
Besides, an Apple phone isn't a computer in the sense that unlike a computer he can't use the available hardware to its full potential because of artificial restrictions.

You can do all the other things you mention on an apple device without using NFC

Even if you can, NFC file transfers aren't about enabling previously impossible scenarios, but rather making them easy and convenient (which is supposed to be Apple's thing, if you believe their hype).

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Sockatume]

How many people actually bother to use those features though? Is it really worth building in OS-level support for a feature that Samsung doesn't even include in its advertisements any more and almost nobody actually has?

This is the essential philosophical difference between Android and iOS. Android says "yes, because some people might use it"; iOS says "no, because not enough people will use it".

That's not to mention the platform synergy effect that Apple wants to cultivate: you can do the same stuff as NFC, if your products are all Apple ones...

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

pfft, a pale imitation of apple's version. s-view requires tapping and other work, apple's version uploads your photos to icloud and they are automatically shared with the entire world

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC. It allows you to take high quality pictures of something and then post them straight to whatever social media you're using without going through a computer. quote>

All that you have to do to not have to use a computer is go through this other, pocket sized $650 computer! After that your images aren't uploaded to a server, they are sent to a series of computers in a managed cluster that acts as a server!

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

These are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[AmiMoJo]

I use it with a sleep monitor to read back data. Many other health devices use it. It's better than Bluetooth for things that don't need real time monitoring because it's much lower power. My sleep monitor supports the iPhone but the battery lasts a few days instead of a few weeks if you have one.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Insomnium]

You're making the assumption someone wants to send their pictures to a server. Or the transferable file is a pic at all. The thing is. Apple does not have a fully functioning bluetooth, contact sharing or any wireles medium whatsover and it will not have a fully functioning NFC either. This is not new. And I am talking about fully functioning, not some "it has bluetooth cause my 200e apple bluetooth speakers work on it."

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Insomnium]

Entire world? Yes if you mean leaked nudes. No if you mean convinient file transfer between people. At least samsung devices have the ability to connect to other devices.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has AirDrop which doesn't require tapping to share.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer.

You mean the Android people, right? Cause its Apple that thinks Bluetooth is for things like better location tracking (as used for iBeacon and Kevo door locks) whereas the Android stack is missing too many portions of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard to support those uses.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

Given how many bluetooth accessories you can buy directly from Apple, claiming that Apple "are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer", is wilfully ignorant.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just like AirDrop then, except that you have to be right next to each other instead of just in the same building.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[pipedwho]

The speed of NFC is a few hundred kbps and is not designed for bulk data transfer. The NFC is most likely used to setup a much faster Bluetooth or Wifi transfer in a way that guarantees that the transfer has been initiated by a device in close proximity.

With longer range protocols (Wifi/Bluetooth/etc), you need other ways to pair the devices to make sure you're transferring your naked photos to the right endpoint.

With NFC, what you see is what you get, but the NFC layer is only used for connection setup.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Insomnium]

Apple does not support many standard technologies and artificially limits the usability of the device that is double the price of other devices on par on features. Except for the crippled functionality of many features.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Insomnium]

Not on apple devices.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[John Bokma]

AirDrop only requires that both enable Bluetooth. No need to dig through settings (you just can do that via the control panel). It works quite well, I use it to transfer photos from my wife's phone to my iPad (and vice versa).

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC.

Technically, NFC is too slow to transfer photos, so the transfer happens via Bluetooth with NFC used only to set up the pairing.
Bluetooth file transfers being another thing iOS doesn't do (except to other iOS devices), so yeah.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stinkyj]

i worked on NFC/Bluetooth(BT) for a smartphone manufacturer. Your camera is not transferring over NFC. It may pair the BT devices for you, but the transfer is definitely over BT. NFC range is too short for most tasks, and there is no file transfer protocol that runs over NFC like OBEX on BT.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Grizzley9]

Oh, right, Apple declared proper digital cameras "dead" in their iPhone 6 keynote.

Only if you believe that a point and shoot is a "proper digital camera", and they were right. P&S's are a declining market. They said nothing about today's DSLR's, which frankly I get tired of carrying mine around when my smartphones camera is so good and usually "good enough". The only thing DSLR's have the market on now for non-professionals are the lenses. If someone could make an add-on lens to a popular smartphone that wasn't crap (as most of them currently are) and emulated a 50mm or a zoom, it would take market share. (or if an app could emulate the look of it at least).

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

Ok, lets try bluetoothing something from my phone to yours or vice versa. Expand to syncing with stuff and call it a day. Fair enough I'm only talking file transfer but that is all I've ever used bluetooth for.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[spire3661]

Yes, but it does require iphone 5 or above......

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[spire3661]

It DOSNT work quite well for people on hardware below iphone 5. Airdrop is another proprietary piece of shit. Call me when an android user can share a file to an Apple user with AirDrop. Until then its shite.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Hussman32]

It seems your statement declares Apple said that they won't use NFC for other purposes. I don't believe they've said that, they've just finally put the NFC hardware in, more applications will come later. Presumably in a controlled-experience fashion.

My guess is they didn't have the real estate to handle the NFC hardware footprint before, but now that the phones are bigger...

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[BronsCon]

Right, and I can connect my bluetooth headphones to my iDevice without NFC, as well, but being able to tap them against the back of my phone, realize I want them to connect to that device, and have it "just work" is really nice. And that's why I use an Android phone and have an NFC tag stuck on the bottom of my MBP and the inside of my iPad case. I prefer not having the already too bulky item I take in and out of my pocket all day in a case and I've found that stickers don't tend to last long in that environment, so sticking an NFC tag to an iPhone isn't a viable solution; even if I did put my phone in a case, it's not a solution at all for the iPhone 6, as it would interfere with the phone's own NFC.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[BronsCon]

Not defending Samsung here (I'm an HTC guy), but you can transfer files over S-beam without having to tap the phones together, it just requires a bit more interaction with the device itself, just like AirDrop (also a Mac and iPad user, so yes, I use AirDrop). The difference, here, is that S-beam gives you an easier way to initiate the transfer if you *do* happen to be in the same room.

If you know of a way to enable AirDrop transfers without requiring both parties to actively open AirDrop, please do tell, as I would find it most useful.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the old "Why bother with that feature, not enough people will use it". If a device can do something, why artificially limit it from being able to do it?

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

Oh, puhlease. Abraham Lincoln's must have been presciently thinking of you when he said: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

I share my iPhone's 4G to my rMBP daily over bluetooth. Yet another use of bluetooth on iOS which directly contradicts your ignorant statements...

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

Oh, puhlease. Abraham Lincoln's must have been presciently thinking of you when he said: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." http://support.apple.com/kb/PH... http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

I share my iPhone's 4G to my rMBP daily over bluetooth. Yet another use of bluetooth on iOS which directly contradicts your ignorant statements...

Well that's either something they added since the last time I used one or something which only goes between idevices . Those links seem to suggest transferring from mobile to desktop so either way, well behind the times or well restricted. Neither world surprise me.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

Contrary to to the ignorant tripe you were spewing, general BT file transfers has been available on iOS since at least the 3GS but don't let that stop you from exposing your ignorance. I suppose we should judge your sanitary habits from back when you regularly dumped into your nappies, because like the iPhone it's not as if anything has changed in the meantime, right?

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

Well maybe you could explain the procedure to me? I just tried sending a image from my phone to an ipad. They could see each other thought Bluetooth well enough, Paired them and everything but every time I try to send the file it says not sent and fails. Is there something special I have to do to make it work or is another of those things that works perfectly fine if everything is apple but take one step outside the edge of that garden and you can forget it.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

Ahhhh, all becomes clear. You clearly have no idea what Bluetooth profiles are, are unaware that different telephone manufacturers use different profiles & ignorantly blame Apple for not implementing the BT profiles on some other non/PC/Mac device that you use.

The problem isn't with Apple but with the BT forum for allowing the plethora of incompatible BT profiles. As mobile devices are ressource constrained, each manufacturer chooses the BT profiles they support. PCs & Macs not having this problem, support pretty much all of them. Thus it is possible to transfer from BT devices to/from a PC/Mac as I have been doing for years, while being impossible to transfer between two different BT devices. Use of two devices from the same manufacturer will work (because they use the same BT profiles) but use of devices from different manufacturers often will not (different profiles).

The BT profile morass is what, in large part has made the use of BT devices a PITA as it is difficult to determine what profiles are are used in 2 devices spending hours debugging them & often discovering that they are incompatible. Each & every one of the devices is BT compliant, yet they cannot work together. It is no more Apple's fault for choosing profile X Y & Z than it is Motorola's for choosing A B & C & Lenovo's for choosing D E & F. Next time learn a little more about the subject before ignorantly criticizing Apple (or Motorola, or ...).

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

So, much for just working eh? I've never had any problems bluetoothing anything to anything unless it's an idevice. Even my old motorola v525 never had any problem transferring stuff to anything I tried to transfer to. Maybe I've just got lucky that everyone I've tried has been compatible. Admittedly I bluetooth rarely but it's yet another thing where it seems apple only wants to work with apple. But before I go on let me go learn all about bluetooth profiles and chip design and different storage and ram types and battery technology and the plethora of other things that go into everyday devices before I'm allowed to have an opinion on them.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

If your only incompatible BT devices are iDevices than you've visibly been exposed to very little BT kit.
Who was it that ignorantly & falsely stated "they are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer.". You did.
Did this statement come from a wealth of experience? No, quite the opposite.
Did any research whatsoever go into it? No, you never even took the time to look up BT on Wikipedia.
Do you have any idea how BT works? No, that's much too much work. You expect things to just blindly work. If you were a doctor, you'd transfer blood to & from patients without typing & then blame those that died for some imaginary reason.

You think bluetooth profiles and chip design and different storage and ram types and battery technology and the plethora of other things that go into everyday devices are all the same, which only true in that they all have one thing in common: You understand none of it.

You are a fool. every post confirms it more & more.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

Get off your high horse mate. Well done you, you know all about Bluetooth. I freely admitted I hardly use it, what I said was everytime I've had a problem with it it's been with an apple device. Seems to be that outside of the apple garden it works fine, inside it works fine but try to mix them and it all falls down as usual. Try reading the comments properly instead of getting all uppity. I never said all that stuff was the same, It was a sarcastic dig as you seem to be offended that I can think bt on apple sucks even though I don't know everything there is to know about apple or Bluetooth, you just didn't understand it, but don't let that get in your way. Personally I appreciate the irony.

Ride on you brave Slashdot warrior, and defend your apple gods. I feel you are more offended at the notion that they are shit and couldn't care less about the Bluetooth ignorance.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

I'll "climb off my high horse" (stop pointing out that you are a blathering idiot making false statements) when you stop saying stupid shit.

I have no problem with criticism of Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc, when it is factual. Learn how Bluetooth works or STFU. Snort, uppity... Happens to you a lot doesn't it. You publicly jump to a false conclusion on a subject you know very little about and those around you start beating you with a clue stick. All those "uppity" people who actually take the time to learn about the subjects they talk about, pointing out again and again where & why you are wrong...

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[stealth_finger]

All I said was "These are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer." That's the full post. Ok, so they can sync with a bunch of other shit and transfer files among themselves and there's a bunch of different profiles that only really present issues if you try to cross apple with non apple or use a lot of bluetooth. I've learned that. What was it about that original statement that provoked such anger about not being intricately familiar with Bluetooth technology? Because it was definitely more anti apple than Bluetooth. If the post was about the video capabilities on a mac and I mentioned they don't support .avi by default and .mov is a pain in the ass to work with on a pc would you go off on one about codec design and how I just need to understand quicktime better?

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[phayes]

No, all you said was "These are the guys who think Bluetooth is just for syncing with your computer.".

Still wrong, still ignorant.

Detectable by scanners?

[thatshortkid]

While the NFC services would be restricted to Apple Pay, does this also mean that general NFC scanners won't be able to 'see' them? I use tags with this now https://www.adafruit.com/produ... but was hoping that the watch / phone would be visible too.

Re:Detectable by scanners?

[skeldoy]

Your PN532 would probably detect it's presence. But what to do about that? Unless they support the standards that triggers events on the phone then you have nothing. Seeing that they will not even allow people to create custom applications for at least a year - well; even though the chip is there you can't use it for nothing. Say that they open up the chip for use in custom applications after a year - well dang - it's still not supporting the standards - so it's going to behave very differently from every other NFC-enabled device out there. I'll buy a Samsung Galaxy S5 now. I've had it with waiting for Apple to start supporting this tech.

Re:Detectable by scanners?

[Anonymous Coward]

tough to support these hipster part shops when their markup is 600% that shit is 4 dollars from china with free shipping.

Re:Detectable by scanners?

[thatshortkid]

For my application I'm not trying to trigger events on the phone, just trigger events on the device that uses the PN532 if the watch / phone is detected. I don't need pairing, just "NFC object with id 0xF00 was sensed."

Incorrect speculation

[gnasher719]

It seems someone is speculating that Apple doesn't want other NFC based payment options on the iPhone and therefore closes down NFC.

That's nonsense. There is no f***ing way in hell that the banks would allow NFC based payments from iPhones through anyone other than Apple, because Apple is the only one with access to the bank-designed secure enclave in the iPhone. That means Apple is the only one who can guarantee to the banks that any payment request is genuinely coming from the user and not created by some hacked, jailbroken iPhone or some malicious or buggy app on the iPhone.

The only way to get alternative payment methods is for other phone manufacturers to build similar hardware into their phones, get an agreement with the banks, and create similar apps.

Re:Incorrect speculation

[skeldoy]

There are similar apps all over the place. It's only in america that this thing hasn't already started. Sure they want to make it secure. But they could still sell their ApplePay as a "premium unhackable product" and allow other actors to use the chip for other purposes. Their approach is great for Apple in the US. But for the consumers it just means another level of lockin. The rest of the world; well they just got one more reason for buying something else.

iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[glennrrr]

The same basic information came out on Ars Technica the other day. But the slant on that was not that Apple was locking out 3rd party credit card processors, but rather that the NFC hardware was not being used for anything else because Apple was not ready to say the whole stack was perfect yet, from a security standpoint. This is all new code and new hardware, for Apple, and they would rather not have stories about massive credit card theft come out next week. So, this is an example of slant driving angry diatribes in the comments; if it'd been presented in a more neutral tone people would have judged Apple's actions in a more balance way.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[gnasher719]

The interesting thing is that for Apple Pay, NFC itself doesn't need to be secure. With Apple Pay, the phone sends data over NFC that cannot be forged, that cannot be modified in a useful way, and that cannot be decoded or reused if it is recorded. The worst that an attacker could do is to interfere with the transmission somehow and stop it from working. Or count how often a terminal was used to take payments.

I suspect that for many applications you would want your communications to be secure, and that is probably not available (yet).

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[skeldoy]

NFC just can't be "secure" like that. The whole thing about security on NFC is the proximity needed to communicate. You can easily eavesdrop on the communication by sitting in between the devices communicating. So there is really no security work needed here. What they need is to just implement the standard that all the other phones have had for years. It's that simple. The only reason that they don't start in that end is that they see this thing as serving their own purposes first and foremost. If they spend an entire year "polishing the stack" then they get a bigger piece of the pie. If they started by implementing this thing properly right away and then building their service on top of that - that's another story. All they really needed to do in order to get this right for the rest of the world was to follow the standard. The Android implementation is completely open source so getting that done would be a matter of weeks not years.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[AmiMoJo]

That's not how NFC payments work. The transport layer is untrusted, the same as when you talk to your bank over TCP/IP. Apps couldn't steal credit card info if they wanted to, it's a one time challenge/response per transaction.

Either the API isn't ready or Apple just doesn't want to share so it can release its own apps first. Security is not an issue.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[MachineShedFred]

Oh, so just like the Touch ID, which is getting an API in iOS 8.

It's almost like people around here are looking for any reason to bash Apple whatsoever...

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[pipedwho]

Security of the transport is not what is at issue. The security of the entire stack needs to be evaluated for a weak link further down the chain before security could be claimed to be a non-issue.

You are right though that the API probably isn't completely ready and/or Apple want to release their apps first. Probably not a bad idea while they iron out any problems before all and sundry spew forth apps. It is much easier to deprecate an API element to fix a major security or other problem when your own implementation is all you have to worry about breaking.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[hsmith]

I doubt Apple will open NFC up. They released their proprietary ibeacon technology which oh a few aspects has a leg up on NFC. I don't see them undercutting iBeacons.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[Savage-Rabbit]

The same basic information came out on Ars Technica the other day. But the slant on that was not that Apple was locking out 3rd party credit card processors, but rather that the NFC hardware was not being used for anything else because Apple was not ready to say the whole stack was perfect yet, from a security standpoint. This is all new code and new hardware, for Apple, and they would rather not have stories about massive credit card theft come out next week. So, this is an example of slant driving angry diatribes in the comments; if it'd been presented in a more neutral tone people would have judged Apple's actions in a more balance way.

I agree with you completely except for the notion that it is physically possible for Apple to be discussed in a balanced way by a bunch of Android using Linux geeks on Slashdot.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[Sez Zero]

It is no surprise really. Doesn't anyone remember when there were no third-party native iOS apps?

The initial implementation of something that can take my money is handled by a single vendor on their hardware while they sort out everything? Sounds like a good plan to me.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[spire3661]

Its because the philosophy of the two are vastly different. Apple limits functionality for ease of use and profit protection, Android tries to give as much user freedom as is possible. Apple has no problem saying 'Thou shalt not do that, because i said so'. OF COURSE these two philosophies are going to clash.

entropy = 0

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not news at all. They are EXPECTED to do this. It's what they did with Bluetooth also - you cannot transfer files, photos, mp3s via Bluetooth because of their misplaced sense of copyright protection....meh!

Re:entropy = 0

[macs4all]

This is not news at all. They are EXPECTED to do this. It's what they did with Bluetooth also - you cannot transfer files, photos, mp3s via Bluetooth because of their misplaced sense of copyright protection....meh!

Yeahrightsure.

That's why they have a "Share" button in nearly every (probably actually IS every) App.

And besides, Bluetooth was never intended to be a mass-data-transfer protocol. It was essentially intended to be the RF version of IrDA. Apple has the "Share" button (which allows several methods of data-transfer) and AirDrop for the uses you mention for Bluetooth.

And also, in iOS 8 and OS X 10.10, there are signs that the Post-Jobs-Apple is loosening the reigns a bit. Is it wonderful yet? Meh. But, keep in mind that this is only the beginning.

I was going to get one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I need other payment options.
So iApple has effectively locked me out of their market.
Too bad.

it's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

that they want apple pay to be the only nfc-paying system on their phones - aside from obvious business-reasons, it's also about security - if any other nfc payment vendor fucks it up , it would reflect badly on apple. better wait for a standardized sollution with it's own big brand-name,mwhich you can't avoid in the end.

now nfc for other purposes than pay, that's another story, and will hopefully be available sooner than later

WTF

[skeldoy]

I've been a long time iPhone user (every model since it's inception) and I have liked all those phones a lot. I've made some apps and have made myself completely tied down to the platform by spending money on apps and music. This NFC-thing is kind of like magic. I have a friend with that capability on his phone and it seems to me that this NFC-thing is a complete no-brainer in terms of interconnecting devices. I was actually waiting for the moment that Apple finally introduced this NXP-chip into the iPhone. Apple want to restrict the use of the chip to ApplePay? Guess what: In the country where I live - there is already an NFC-infrastructure and the banks have apps that use it - just not on iOS. What to do? Should I ditch the whole Apple universe and go for a Linux-phone and at the same time leave my wallet at home. Yeah. I think I might just do that. One year of waiting for Apple to "maybe" get their shit together and realize that the world is larger than the US; that's a long time for something that's been around for years now. Bye bye Apple. It's been good. iOS is the best OS and the iPhone is catching up. But this is it for me. I want that wallet-killer right now - not "when Apple decides that it has enough monopoly in the US to maybe open it up for other actors".

Re:WTF

[clemdoc]

Given that the EU forced Microsoft to include a browser choice and keeping in mind their recent dealings with Google, it will be interesting what they have to say about this.

Re:WTF

[skeldoy]

Very interesting indeed. It's also going to be interesting to see just how much this will impact their sales in any other country than the US. They want to eat the whole cake but they are missing the bigger picture. The cake is far bigger than contactless payments in the US. If they loose their position in the global devices game - well - it will be a very different world to conquer by the time they lift their heads.

Re:WTF

[cyber-vandal]

Do Apple have the majority of the market in smartphones and exert an undue influence on that market? Nope, they're not even the biggest player in that market. Not at all the same as Microsoft having 95% of the desktop market and Google having over 70% of the internet search market and using their market position to keep out competitors. I don't like what Apple do but if people don't like Apple's behaviour there are half a dozen other manufacturers happy to take their money instead.

Re:WTF

[Sockatume]

In which way? Microsoft and Google were each investigated for exploiting their monopoly position (Google has ~95% search share in Europe; Microsoft had a similar share in OS) to push a product (servers, ads) in a manner which reduced competition. As we keep being reminded, Apple has nothing like a monopoly position in search.

Re:WTF

[Sockatume]

s/search/anything

Re:WTF

[Sockatume]

I'm not sure how switching to Android is going to help you; Google Wallet is the only NFC payment system of note there, and after three years it's US-only.

Re:WTF

[benjymouse]

Do Apple have the majority of the market in smartphones and exert an undue influence on that market? Nope, they're not even the biggest player in that market. Not at all the same as Microsoft having 95% of the desktop market and Google having over 70% of the internet search market and using their market position to keep out competitors. I don't like what Apple do but if people don't like Apple's behaviour there are half a dozen other manufacturers happy to take their money instead.

In the EU you do not need to have the majority of a market to run afoul with the Commision. If you have a dominant market position and use it to unduly lock out competitors you'll get in trouble. As you should.

This reeks like Apple want to establish their own payment system as the defacto standard. And they are prepared to use their significant market share to do it. That could (and should) get them into trouble.

Re:WTF

[mfraz74]

Google Wallet the only Android NFC payment system? I must be imagining being able to pay with EE MasterCard NFC on my Samsung S4 then?

Re:WTF

[gnasher719]

In the EU you do not need to have the majority of a market to run afoul with the Commision. If you have a dominant market position and use it to unduly lock out competitors you'll get in trouble. As you should.

On the other hand, I can't see Apple doing anything to prevent other phone manufacturers from doing something similar.

Re:WTF

[Bogtha]

You're massively overreacting to a biased headline. What is meant by "Apple locks NFC to Apple Pay" is simply "Apple have only provided APIs for Apple Pay so far".

This is pretty standard practice with new Apple hardware features.

Bluetooth? Originally developers couldn't access that at all, only the higher-level gaming APIs used it.

Touch ID? Again, developers couldn't access that at all to begin with, but iOS was released yesterday and that introduced an API for developers to use it.

The camera? Originally developers could only tell the system that they wanted a photo. Now we've got fine-grained control over shutter speed, etc.

Apple have a habit of introducing hardware features then providing a third-party API after they've had a chance to see it deployed at a large scale. If you are a long-time iPhone user, you've seen them do this time and time again. The fact that there isn't an API for it on day one doesn't mean that they are trying to lock it away.

Re: WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

That just goes to show how far behind they are on everything but design (if you disregard protruding lenses). That they were not working on this already is just one more reason to move to a new platform. Either that or they are deliberately slowing this down to get traction on payment in the US, leaving the rest of the world with pretty much no choice apart from spending their money on some other device.

Apple Pay DOA

[Anonymous Coward]

They had to do this, or otherwise Apple Pay would have been DOA, since competitors could have just made their already established solutions available on the phone. This strategy will surely fail in places where iphone market share is low and/or NFC payment options are already widely used, i.e. basically everywhere except for North America.

People Searched More on Google : Iphone6 or ISIS?

[MjBlast]

When America and the rest of the world faces such a terror threat from ISIS organization , its such an irony that most searched on Google is IPhone 6 . There would be people in America and the other developing nations who would not know anything about ISIS and would be joining the line to buy IPhone 6. http://mjblast.com/what-people...

Another nyah-nyah moment from the brats at Apple..

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's ours and if you don't play *our* way, you can't use it!"

Maybe it's about battery life

[Anonymous Coward]

For payments Apple can just run the NFC chip in card emulation mode. This is a operation mode where the NFC controller can run with very little power usage. For the other modes like tag reading or peer-to-peer the NFC controller has to go into active mode and generate a quite juicy magnetic field. This drains the battery a lot more than just doing card emulation.

Re:Maybe it's about battery life

[koan]

Yep pretty you will need an additional battery to use it, and maybe an external keyboard... and hell why not an even bigger screen... and hey did you hear laptops are making a come back....

Re:goodbye apple

[stealth_finger]

Whole my life as apple customer I had to suffer from apple control freak maniacal obsession with limitations. Crippled bluetooth, jail of itunes, internal access limits, etc. NFC is already late for two years and even not usable for me(NFC tags and readers). The limitation of NFS is the final straw for me. Goodbye apple , I will buy Sony Xperia Z2 instead.

I got a Z a year and a bit ago and really regret it. If you want the Z2 cool, but make sure you want it.

On topic though my z has a nfc chip just stuck to the outside under the camera. It looks tacky and cheap. I made sure it was off when I first got it and have no cause or desire to even wonder if it would work for anything. In hindsight I should've peeled it off and flicked it in the bin before putting the protective stickers over the top. For me, the fewer things that can access my bank account or authorise payments the better.

Re:People Searched More on Google : Iphone6 or ISI

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't care about other people unless they're close to them.

How many people do you know who've had their family killed by ISIS?

You'd think after a few centuries of recorded human psychology people would vaguely understand human nature by now, but no, every day people are surprised by things like this.

Moving on.

'Woz' gives up Android for iPhone6

[SternisheFan]

Steve Wozniak tells TMZ reporter that he wants tap to pay also,,, http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/17/...

You don't need to make "deals"

[brunes69]

You need an open platform that emulates a card that everyone accepts. Google Wallet works EVERYWHERE, because it just emulates a Visa card. You can use it at ANY Paypass or Paywave terminal regardless of if it says Google Wallet on it.

The only need to make "deals" is if you want to take a cut of the transaction to increase your bottom line. Google tried that, failed, and changed Wallet so that it is totally open.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[thegarbz]

Google Wallet works EVERYWHERE, because it just emulates a Visa card.

You misspelt nowhere, but yeah everywhere/nowhere the keys are right next to each other.

Here's a fun fact. Google wallet actually works as you describe it. It emulates a card. It also works on pretty much any NFC terminal. It's just a shame that it is actually supported in VERY FEW COUNTRIES. Yep, despite looking like a generic VISA card Google Wallet is geo-locked and won't even appear in the Play Store in many parts of the world. Hence companies have gone and done their own thing. Hence my comment about fragmentation.

You can talk it all up as much as you want, but until it works without having to root the phone and side-load the application my original comment still stands, this is a good marketing move by Apple, and Google and the Android eco-system are so fragmented that they are effectively being bypassed by banks who are getting sick of this mobile shit (as mentioned in another comment some banks here offer NFC stickers people can glue to their phones to get around the solution that really doesn't at all work "everywhere").

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[brunes69]

Google has the app geo-locked to US credit cards for reasons I do not understand because it actually works everywhere. I am in Canada and can use Google Wallet (with my US credit card).

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[Khyber]

"You misspelt nowhere,"

I haven't had a single problem using Google Wallet anywhere, from TN to CA to WA. That's including stores and banks.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[Anonymous Coward]

So much drama trying to prove something that can't be proved. Dry your tears and move on your original point fell down around the time you made it.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[BronsCon]

All of which are in the US. Which was the point thegarbz was trying to make. His use of the word "nowhere", as a diametric opposite to the annoying all-caps "EVERYWHERE" he was countering, made it sound like he was trying to imply something else; he completely destroyed his own (factually correct) argument by being over-dramatic.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[MaryAnnEvans]

I haven't had a single problem using Google Wallet anywhere, from TN to CA to WA. That's including stores and banks.

Another lie. You said on Tuesday that you owned an LTE Score, which doesn't have NFC as a feature.

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Laugh

[koan]

What asshole would trust Apple as a wallet?

Re:Laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've bought Apple stuff there isn't much left in your wallet to steal.

Re:Laugh

[gnasher719]

What asshole would trust Apple as a wallet?

It seems you're one that wouldn't.

Re:Laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've bought Apple stuff there isn't much left in your wallet to steal.

You must have a low paying job.

No just payment!

[ramriot]

If Apple proceeds with locking away the NFC API from developers they will be making a Huge mistake. NFC is not just for payments, it is a use agnostic technology, and as such can be used anywhere you need short (1-2") data communications i.e.
# Door locks / home security
# Wifi tap to secure.
# Bluetooth Pairing
# End to end encrypted messaging tap to exchange / sign public keys
# Second factor online authentication
etc etc.
On Android all these uses are available because the API is open.

Re: No just payment!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we haven't really seen what people can do with the technology yet. There are literally hundreds of immediate applications for this. The beacon thing is cool and all but NFC is a door-opener for interacting with the physical world in radically new ways to complement beacons and other technologies.

Re:No just payment!

[mick129]

These features sound like they're covered by HomeKit, Bluetooth, AirDrop, iMessage, etc.

Sure, it'd be nice for developers to get access to this new hardware. There is a security cost though, to opening up the hardware, which might not be an acceptable loss. Especially since there are other ways to get the benefits you listed.

Higher prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the prices be higher for the items you purchase for appl€ to get their 30%?

Re:People Searched More on Google : Iphone6 or ISI

[radl33t]

isis is a regional problem. "the world" and america in particular face no terror threat from isis.

Re: People Searched More on Google : Iphone6 or IS

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Isis is no real threat to the us. Good of you to fall for their propaganda. Boo!

I would say you have it right.

[tlambert]

I would say you have it right.

Apple initially didn't open up the iPhone to Apps at all because Steve was deathly afraid of building another Newton.

Then they wanted to open them up, but there was not rational set of APIs, there was just an internal morass, because it had never been designed with the idea of hardening one app on the iPhone from interference by another app on the phone, or hardening the phones functions against a malicious app.

This is a single App on a single use, incomplete, API, one which was built only to host this App and nothing else. Could that API be exposed, and used for other applications? Yeah. Would that enable all possible NFC applications which you might want to implement in the future? Not a chance in hell.

This is just Apple wanting some bake time so that they can rationally support an API that they happily demonstrated opening hotel doors and other things which they are not prepared to open up at this point in time.

WoW !!! never saw that coming ?!?!?!?!/

[marky_boi]

As if they would EVER allow anyone else to use NFC while they are growing a new walled garden/money spinner.

Re:Considering Republicans...

[Attila Dimedici]

What is most interesting is that the poster you replied to does not seem to realize that Republicans have not been in a position to stop banks from doing such things for almost six years now.

NFC has never caught on, never will

[gelfling]

NFC has never caught on being freely available. It won't be adopted with even tighter restrictions. Sorry by NFC is a failure that was never articulated honestly or clearly, never implemented widely and so we don't know how or if it will work or what happens when it goes wrong.

Re:NFC has never caught on, never will

[Ranbot]

You haven't traveled or read about much outside of the US have you?

Re:NFC has never caught on, never will

[gelfling]

Yes, yes I have. But thank you for being a precious snarky asshole.

Re:NFC has never caught on, never will

[BronsCon]

Well, I haven't, and even I know NFC is widely used in other countries. Japan and Australia come to mind.

iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank You for correcting the record.

there goes that

[slashmydots]

And all of this right after they proved their amazing focus on security with the icloud hack...and the fingerprint reader that didn't work worth a crap...and the announcement of dozens of security flaws in iOS8...and their gotofail SSL flaw in iOS7 and on and on and on.
Nobody wants NFC and nobody wants their kids paying for things with their iphones. You'd think the multi-million dollar lawsuit about kids making purchases on their iphones might have hinted at that. This is a disaster. It's like a glaring reason to not buy an iphone.

and.. there's more..

[Anonymous Coward]

https://jobs.github.com/positions/8ac597b0-3ad3-11e4-8327-6c82b47e516f - Apple Pay

Japan? Try Europe.

[citizenr]

And I mean complete ass of Europe countries like Poland. We have been paying with our phones for _two years_ now.

Welcome to two years ago America.

Make the NFC function LOUD and Noisy

[jraff2]

If the NFC communications were LOUD and NOISY when someone attempts to NFC you in a crowd the LOUD noise would alert the abused to the attempt. This would probably cut down on the number and frequency of attempted thefts a lot!

More Apple-Is-Inherently-Evil FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the Ars Technica take on this and the bias in the summary will be seen for what it is.

Web Micropayments?

[timeOday]

Do you think there is any chance that NFC might allow micropayments on the Web to become a reality? I don't like what the ad-driven Web has become, and I'm allergic to auto-recurring subscriptions.

Its income not age ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer iOS.

Lots of old people do.

Actually the strongest correlation in the US is with zip code not age. The more income a neighborhood has the more iOS users, the less income the more Android users. Developer data seems to support this hypothesis. 4+ times the revenue per download on iOS compared to Android.

OH NOES, APPLE IS TEH DOOMED!!!!!111

[sootman]

It will be ONE WHOLE YEAR MORE before they get into NFC in a big way!* This will certainly doom them, just like how they went out of business when they were late to the MP3 party, and again when they were late to the smartphone party, and again when they didn't let people install apps on their smartphones on Day 1, and then again when they didn't ship the first tablet...

Those morons, in the last 15 years they've doomed themselves so many times they just have to sit in the corner and console themselves with the fact that they're one of the biggest and most profitable company in the world. IDIOTS!

So wrong on so many levels. 1) Apple DOES has A solution for payments, just maybe not the one you want. 2) NFC is not the ONLY reason that someone will or won't buy a new iPhone. (Fun fact: they sold FOUR MILLION in the first 24 hours.) 3) Things CAN and WILL change. That year will go by pretty quick. They aren't going to miss the boat entirely just because they're not on it this year. 4) Did you notice Apple is the biggest company in the world? They have some smart people there doing good work. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, they analyzed their options and decided this was the best, and MAYBE it'll turn out that that's true.

* Besides all the pull they have with retailers and credit card companies to make them use Apple on the back-end... besides that one little detail, DOOMED!

Re: OH NOES, APPLE IS TEH DOOMED!!!!!111

[Anonymous Coward]

One year later?! The rest of the planet has this stuff already. The other mobile devices have had this for years. They are just arrogant because they are de-facto nouveau Microsoft.

Re:goodbye apple

[spire3661]

I actually like the Sony NFC nub. I have one on my a6000 camera. What is it you dont like about the Z2? The Z3 has some features im interested in (multi wifi camera control) but i would love to hear your take on the Z2.

The difference between Apple and others is trivial

[Overzeetop]

So it's nearly identical to all other secure payment systems on the market. You still have the payment processor is the bank - who is a VISA/MC/AMEX 3rd party vendor who tracks and sells your information - instead of a non-bank corporate VISA/MC/AMEX 3rd party vendor who tracks and sells your information. No other secure system uses your CC, expiration date, or CVV code as part of a transaction either - not your smart-chip credit card, not google wallet, not the wireless providers.

The only difference here is that there is that Apple isn't privy to your transaction data at the register - though the merchant, the bank, and VISA/MC/AMEX still are. That and they have you transmit a photo of your credit card (and photos are unhackable, just ask the stars who took nude selfies) instead putting the onerous task of entering twenty two digits *all by yourself* into another payment processor's web/app form. I mean, that's 15 seconds you'll never get back.

Re:goodbye apple

[BronsCon]

Or it was a typo, considering that he was talking about NFC, a 1-char difference.

Re:The difference between Apple and others is triv

[macs4all]

...The only difference here is that there is that Apple isn't privy to your transaction data at the register - though the merchant, the bank, and VISA/MC/AMEX still are.

1. The fact that Apple isn't privy to the transaction is a significant and unique difference, data-mining-wise.

2. Please tell me how the merchant, your Bank, and the CC company can somehow conduct a transaction without the details.

That and they have you transmit a photo of your credit card (and photos are unhackable, just ask the stars who took nude selfies) instead putting the onerous task of entering twenty two digits *all by yourself* into another payment processor's web/app form. I mean, that's 15 seconds you'll never get back.

1. The picture of the card, if it is even sent to your bank, is done once, and I would guarantee it is encrypted as part of their Proprietary Setup Protocol, and is only used to establish that you actually have the card in your hand. I assume this procedure actually setup up some Public Key stuff.

2. The picture of the card may actually just be used by software in the phone itself, and again, just for the purposes of one-time Setup.

3.. Oh wait. Here's the answer. Your card-photo is obviously simply used by the phone to do OCR so users that wish can avoid having to type (Dyslexics and others do exist, and do have problems with long, unbroken strings of characters, you insensitive clod. But, as you can see from the freely-available information that you chose to ignore (that took me exactly 2 seconds to Google), you are free to spend the 15 seconds if you don't trust your own phone to do a little OCR (on an OCR font, BTW).

. The Apple-Hate runs strong in this one...

It's this kind of behavior that drove me away

[Anonymous Coward]

It's this kind of behavior that drove me away from iPhone. The unpolished state of Android however is what made me go back to it

NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

and also, Yubikey

iPhone just ruined their Canadian sales

[Anonymous Coward]

iPhone users are gonna look so old school paying for their coffee crack with barcodes while everyone else taps their way to their swill:

http://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/about/timmyme.php

In Canada choosing not to support Tim Horton's is pretty much proof you're dead.

I don't want NFC for payments...

[rthille]

I want it for external encryption, with my Yubikey Neo. Until that works, I'm unlikely to upgrade from my 4S.

That explains a lot

[pem]

Like why google seems to be a lot more careful with customer data than Apple.

It's their lifeblood.

Re: That explains a lot

[macs4all]

Like why google seems to be a lot more careful with customer data than Apple.

Citation, please.

It's their lifeblood.

So you actually approve of a Business Model based on Tracking (and Selling) your every online move?

...and people think Apple aficionados are delusional???

Re: That explains a lot

[pem]

Citation, please.

Well, you can read all the headline news about how all the malware is on Android because Apple keeps it off of iWhatever, or you can try to figure out which system is better for the stuff you're actually going to use:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131011092523.htm

You can read the false equivalence narrative about how both Apple and google suffered data breaches recently, or you could use your brain and realize that you have seen evidence that it's pretty easy to get "private" stuff out of Apple's cloud, but there's not much evidence of getting it out of google's cloud:

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2364799/google-confirms-five-million-customer-data-dump-but-denies-breach

You can read about how Apple is going to revolutionize payments, or you can read some of the user stories here about how people have been using google for payments for a long time with no problems, and you might think about how, even a few months ago, Apple had a major https problem:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/24/apples-security-breach-should-scare-you-more-than-targets-did/

And finally, you can ooh and aah about how iOS is now encrypting everything in a way that only the user can decrypt it "unlike [Apple's] competitors" and google is playing catchup, or you can dig deeper and find out that this has been an option on Android for three years, and all google has to do to match Apple is turn it on by default. (They probably had it off by default simply so Apple wouldn't be beating them in storage benchmarks.)

So you actually approve of a Business Model based on Tracking (and Selling) your every online move?

Now I have to ask you for a citation. Google targets ads to you, but AFAIK, unlike, say, Facebook, they don't actually sell your data directly to others. That's because, believe it or not, it is precious to them. Whether or not I approve the business model is immaterial, but I reject the premise that Apple is capable of handling data better because their business isn't based on handling data. Seriously, doesn't that sound like a stupid claim?

...and people think Apple aficionados are delusional???

That's only because enough of them are that it's a thing.

Re: That explains a lot

[Dahamma]

You can read about how Apple is going to revolutionize payments, or you can read some of the user stories here about how people have been using google for payments for a long time with no problems, and you might think about how, even a few months ago, Apple had a major https problem:

http://www.theblaze.com/storie... [theblaze.com]

Well first, you quoted "The Blaze" which makes your entire point suspect. But beyond that, did you actually READ the post you quoted? It's a hypothetical issue from February - can you cite a specific example where it was exploited?

And seriously, I have no loyalty to Apple or Google, but cherry picking is not a good argument, it's easy to do the same with Google, and in this case there is definitely confirmed malware...

Google's Doubleclick ad servers exposed millions of computers to malware

Re: That explains a lot

[pem]

The blaze was just the first one that came up when I searched on terms I remembered from last winter.

You can easily google for it on lots of other sites, but you knew that right? We may never know if it was exploited, but it was certainly extremely easy to exploit, so it doesn't fall anywhere near the realm of a "hypothetical" bug.

As far as google serving up ads with malware, (a) that didn't go on for 18 months, and (b) while I don't condone javascript in ads (or ever have this enabled), this is actually, generally, a lot safer than it used to be. This particular malware, which made the news precisely because it is rare for google to serve malware, requires either an ancient flash install or an unpatched XP/IE installation, in order to infect a system.

Trying to serve others' javascript safely is a much more complex problem than implementing SSL correctly, and that this attack for ancient systems went on for half-a-month, while Apple's exploit for all current iOS systems was available for 18 months, may not be making the point you think it is.

cherry picking is not a good argument

No, much better to make blanket assertions that Apple handles data better because that isn't its business (which is the original assertion that I was responding to).

Those examples were just that -- examples. Did you bother to read the link I gave about how apps from the same companies leak more user data on Apple than on Android?

Re: That explains a lot

[Dahamma]

We may never know if it was exploited, but it was certainly extremely easy to exploit [zdnet.com], so it doesn't fall anywhere near the realm of a "hypothetical" bug.

Real bug, hypothetical exploit, of course. I guarantee you almost every piece of software you use has at least one exploitable bug (and every OS has dozens), but their exploit is obviously hypothetical and unlikely.

As far as google serving up ads with malware, (a) that didn't go on for 18 months

Who cares? It was real, not hypothetical. Sorry, but that makes all the difference *in practice* (being the definition of not hypothetical ;)

No, much better to make blanket assertions that Apple handles data better

Never remotely said that and I don't think it's true, anyway. Google surely collects orders or magnitude more of your personal data than Apple, and overall they are VERY good at protecting it (luckily for all of us!) But if you want to start quoting iOS vulnerabilities it's trivial to find Android vulnerabilities as well. My point is a bunch of anecdotes doesn't make an argument.

And *Android* sure as hell isn't a good example of best security practices. Or I guess you could say Apple's draconian approach to locking down their hardware and evaluating submitted apps in fact does result in a lot less distributed malware. Is that Google's "fault"? Not sure I'd call it that, Android is intentionally more open just like a desktop OS is more open. There are a LOT of pluses to that, but security and malware prevention may not be one of them...

Re: That explains a lot

[pem]

Real bug, hypothetical exploit, of course.

I sincerely doubt the exploit was merely hypothetical, but I know for a fact that that's exactly the sort of thinking that leads to real exploits.

Who cares? It was real, not hypothetical.

"Pics or it didn't happen" is a cute saying that has no bearing on reality. Are you from that generation? Any security expert will tell you that an 18 month unpatched hole like the Apple one is, in fact, a huge deal.

Speaking of pics, it's my understanding that more of those surfaced recently from iCloud.

Never remotely said that

Who never remotely said that? The original post I was responding to was from macs4all -- are you him? His argument was essentially that your data is safer with Apple, ostensibly because of their privacy policy, and that their business model is the perfect one because everybody is tired of being data-mined, so Apple is who you should trust your data with.

That's a bit disingenuous -- if you read more of the articles about the Apple bug, you will find insiders that claim, basically, that it was bound to happen, because of the culture inside Apple.

And a couple of months later, it happened again -- Apple patched 26 bugs, each of which could allow remote code execution, and half of those had been reported to them by google.

Look I don't care whether or not you believe that at some point enough anecdotes stacked end to end amount to data.

But I still think it's stupid to say Apple is incented to do a better job with your data. Google absolutely needs people to be able to trust the internet, and AFAICT, it is in their DNA to take this seriously and to work hard to try to find and report flaws in, e.g. Apple's browser, as well as in their own stuff, because if enough Apple users stop doing stuff online, yes, google will be hurting.

Apple absolutely needs this trust too, in order to have the market keep growing. But they weren't born an internet company, and although they are learning, IMHO, their security is nowhere near as mature as Google's.

My point is a bunch of anecdotes don't make an argument

Which is obviously why you keep focusing on the anecdotes and ignoring, e.g. the study I pointed to, which says, for the typical user using applications from the exact same well-known companies, more data gets leaked on Apple than on google.

Which says it's not just their security model. I would say that Apple is still learning about how to use data properly, Facebook and linkedin are focused on exactly how far they can go, and google has internalized some sort of compromise on data handling that nobody who uses Facebook should bat an eyelash at, and that even a lot of people who hate facebook can accept.

More to the point, google actually tries to apply this consistently as much as possible, which only nets them grief because of their universal privacy policy.

Apple's privacy policy may be "better" than google's in some theoretical fashion, but if more user data is leaked via iOS apps than Android apps, how is that better in the real world for a typical phone user?

Re:goodbye apple

[stealth_finger]

It's just the regular Z I have and it's not that there's anything particularly wrong with it, it just didn't hold up as well as it's competitors. Probably the thing that annoys me the most that I can put my finger on is the speakers are not very loud at all, considerably quitter than an s4 even with xloud on. The Walkman software is another underwhelming feature which I was disappointed with. Overall I'd just say do more research than I did (which wasn't much) I did get it in purple though so that's pretty cool but I still wish I'd got a HTC One.

Whoa!

[NulDevice]

Whoa! You mean Apple made a technology on one of their devices *proprietary*??!?!??!?!??!

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS WHY ISN'T THIS A HEADLINE AROUND THE WORLD? /sarcasm

Only new hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

NFC is really the only new hardware on the phone (except for maybe a barometer) in fact I had ordered and iHome NFC to arrive the same time. I keep asking myself what Steve Jobs had disappointed us? from my memory, no he wouldn't hsve. They're idiots running Apple today b